Posted on 05/01/2008 4:44:54 PM PDT by Politicalmom
SAN ANTONIO — A judge ordered that the baby boy born to a girl taken from a polygamist sect's ranch in West Texas be placed in state custody, according to documents released Thursday.
Texas District Judge Barbara Walther signed the order Wednesday giving the state custody of the 1-day-old infant born to a teen believed to be 15 or 16 years old.
The girl has claimed to be 18, according to an affidavit signed by Ruby Gutierrez, a Child Protective Services caseworker, but officials believe she is younger and placed her in foster care with other children taken from the ranch.
The newborn is the teen's second child; the first is a 20-month-old boy. The father of both children was identified as Jackson Jessop, 22, but state officials say they don't know his whereabouts.
Child welfare officials now have 464 children in their custody, swept from the Yearning For Zion Ranch in Eldorado because authorities believe underage girls were forced into marriages and sex with older men. Authorities are also now investigating possible sexual abuse of boys.
Church members have vehemently denied there was any abuse, and civil liberties groups have raised concerns at the sweeping nature of the removals.
Individual custody hearings are set to be completed by June 5.
CPS and law enforcement raided the ranch on April 3 after a girl who was purportedly 16 called a domestic abuse hotline to complain of abuse at the hands her much older husband. Authorities are investigating whether the calls were a hoax.
Regardless, child welfare authorities say 31 of the 53 girls aged 14-17 have children or are pregnant.
Under Texas law, children under the age of 17 generally cannot consent to sex with an adult. A girl can get married with parental permission at 16, but the girls who belong to the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints are not believed to have legal marriages.
FLDS is a breakaway sect of the mainline Mormon church, which disavowed polygamy a century ago.
That said...I think this girl has a better chance of keeping her children than the ones who are playing games about whose kid belongs to who. My sympathy is with the children and the younger women. Those that have a hardened heart and choose to go back, probably are to far gone to help. JMO
7:38= 66861...no change :'(
I'll take this as your admission that you cared not a whit for the young men being abandoned by this cult on a regular basis. Your belated concern for the familial building block of civilization is not altogether convincing.
I note you are unable to refute post 38 (as all of the sexual abuse apologist crowd both is and will be), yet you persist in demanding the children be returned to the cult. What does this tell us about you, and your motives?
Politicalmom: “Maybe if you aren’t abusing your kids, you don’t have to worry so much.”
Ah, presumption of guilt. How nice. Unfortunately, it’s also un-American.
They went into the ranch in answer to a distress call. Once there, they saw signs of abuse, and obtained a valid warrant. It’s called “due process,” and it’s what our country’s laws are all about. Perhaps you would be happier with NO law, and NO order, just a bunch of lawless yahoos running around doing what they please, harming whoever and whatever they want. That isn’t my idea of civilization, sorry.
In this cult, she would have had her baby taken away at some point, and passed to another woman -or two or so...
Can you give us one good reason why you would think that this baby would all of a sudden be safe when the long sordid history of this cult would indicate it wouldn't?
As the child of the abused, I tell you that it can stop. It only takes one person to break the cycle. This girl could be that one, unless the state decides they can't risk it and removes her children to government-approved homes to live among strangers.
Only members in good standing. I say that with half my tongue in my cheek.
Sometimes you’d almost think that a bunch of fLDS members are on here trying to drum up public support for their demonic cult, wouldn’t you?
They're not legally married; polygamy is illegal in Texas.
The age of consent is 17 in TX. It's totally irrelevant who did what in the past and where around the world it happened. What matters is what has happened now in the state of Texas, and sex with a minor girl under most circumstances is statutory rape.
If you don't like that, go have the law changed. Until then, it's the law and people have to abide by it. Or move where the law suits them better.
Then you of all people should know that without help the woman often goes right back into the abusive relation.
True, but suspicion is not the same as proof. I can be as suspicious as I want to be - but until you have solid proof, you should not be able to do anything.
One of the points of contention I see in these threads are the hate of the FLDS pitted against the conservative fear of a government that is growing out of control.
I find very little redeeming in the FLDS group; however before we do a blanket removal of all of the children, we should have solid, concrete evidence. This is not the case.
For example, less than 1/3 of the members in the FLDS faith practice polygamy - yet they are all grouped together. Would you dare propose that we go into Mexican or Black communities and use the same standard of 'justice', and remove every black or Mexican baby because their environment is conducive to drug use? NO, that would be absurd. But the gov't has gone in and seized 100% of the children from people who have only 1 thing in common, they go to the same church. By virtue of sharing a religion, they have all been deemed unfit parents.
While this may, or may not be true - the part that I fear is that once a power has been usurped by the gov't, it is never freely given back. Today, it's the FLDS - who is it tomorrow? Consider carefully,someone in your church may do something illegal and the gov't will have a precedent to go in to your church, find the membership records and take everyone's child. That is my fear. They take your kids, guilt is assumed. Now go and get a lawyer and go bankrupt trying to prove your innocence, and maybe the gov't will consider giving your kids back. Then again, maybe not.
I'm a patient person. If a crime has been committed, gather evidence, have a trial and a jury will determine guilt. However, a raid and one mass 21 hour over-night hearing on the fate of 463 children is simply insanity.
Of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.
C.S. Lewis
These are not families. There is no such thing in this cult as a “family” unit of one father, one mother, bonded for the nurture and well being of their children.
It appears that there are former insiders, people with some pretty intimate knowledge of the cult, sympathizers aplenty, and some local bystanders on the postings. It was fascinating to me. Maybe it's just me. Grain of salt and all.
It’s folks like you who make this a whole lot worse than the reality. Here’s why: since the girl is in State custody, if the state does not take custody of the newborn the newborn will not be with his mother. Get it? The mother is in custody because there is reasonable cause to beleive she was unlawfully impregnated, not once but TWICE! Sheesh.
It can indeed, but there first needs to be investigation, and if necessary therapy and training for these children and children of children. I am not willing to just throw the dice with these children before this thing works through the system. as imperfect as the system is - it is far better than just leaving children in harms way and hoping for the best.
I think that you do not.
Unless you’re dealing with a group that acts like a barbaric group.
Sex with little girls voids your ‘you’re a good family’ ticket.
Which they have NOT done, but Texas gets NO credit for that.
They bent over backwards to coddle the cult women, and got stabbed in the back for it.
They are doing their best to care for these children, keeping them together as much as possible, even though they are being hampered in their attempts to identify identities.
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