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.
I give up.....
Fun fact: Loretta Lynn's husband beat her on a regular basis. Cheated on her constantly.
Pick another paradigm to hold up as a great example of youthful marriage.
Lets get the whole picture here.
The fLDS is a separate sect from the mLDS (Modern LDS) which is a distinguishable sect from the dLDS (disincorporated LDS Church) which was previously the oLDS (The original LDS).
The oLDS practiced Polygamy but kept it a secret.
The dLDS church published the Revelation and not only practiced Polygamy but preached it as well. The dLDS Church became disincorporated in 1882 when the US Government began enforcing anti-Polygamy statutes.
In order to re-incorporate, the dLDS President issued a statement denying that the Mormons were engaged in any more polygamy (but the practice continued under the table until at least 1904 when the second manifesto was issued.
When the SLC dLDS Church reincorporated it became what is now the mLDS (Modern LDS).
When the second manifesto was issued saying "Hey we REALLY mean that we aren't going to be polygamists anymore" those who followed that Manifesto became the mLDS and those who continued to practice polygamy (like their predecessors the oLDS and the dLDS) became the fLDS.
Now which of these churches is not like the others.
The boys were almost all underage at the time of their ‘casting out’.
But should retain custody of those girls during the investigation phase, while evidence is gathered. You are a really twisted piece of work.
I admit that I am biased on this subject, for the same reasons.
I'll just post your statement again. Bears repeating.
the808bass: “As I’ve said before, you do not find, try and convict the arsonist before you put out the fire.”
I don’t think anyone on this thread opposes the taking of children from homes where abuse is clearly evident. I think some of us simply aren’t convinced the children were in imminent danger.
My daughter once cut her knee while playing, and I was given the third degree by both a doctor and someone else on the staff (a social worker?). It was...unsettling. Fortunately, my daughter’s story apparently matched my own enough to satisfy the interrogators (and no, her injury truly was an accident).
Now I understand abuse does occur, but we are supposed to be innocent until proven guilty. In other words, we are presumed to be innocent. In this particular case, I’m very concerned about the rights of the parents as well as the children.
Now I know people shouldn’t be afraid of an “interrogation” so long as they have nothing to hide, but that seems a tad bit too Nazi-like to me.
Perhaps the government is doing the right thing here, but the burden of proof should be on them, not the parents or the children. So what if the children and/or parents aren’t cooperating as nicely as the bureaucrats wish? A reluctance to talk to government interrogators isn’t proof of guilt these days, is it?
Since they are not legally married (civil) then they cannot be committing illegal polygamy since the definition of polygamy is MARRIED to more than one spouse.
Thanks! That quote can never be repeated enough.
I wonder how long these changes will take, whether we’ll convert to socialism in my lifetime, or my children’s...At the pace we’re going though, I’ll be lucky not to get carted away myself as a mentally-defective (conservative) enemy of the state. :-D
And Loretta will tell you to this day that she willingly, lovingly was entered into marriage with ‘Doo’.
The issue is not only age, but free will. Freedom to choose who you have sex with as a teenage girl.
Something not practiced in FLDS.
Your source for lifetime duration is...what exactly?
I don't care how long it takes. We have a legal process, let's use it. And yes, I do hold them 100% accountable for crossing every 't' and dotting every 'i'.
What happens when we rush things? Innocent lives are destroyed. Remember the child daycare fiasco? How may lives were destroyed because people believed a child that was coached and threatened by the DA. Remember the Duke LaCrosse Team and that fiasco. Evidence is suppressed, so some DA can make a name for himself.
If a crime has been committed, we don't round up the usual suspects and throw them all in jail. We do the legwork, we gather evidence (legally), and we present a case. This is the way our founding fathers set things up. I see no reason to disregard our Constitution because some people want to have a witch hunt.
Our Constitution is more important than the FLDS. I would not stand to see them denied their rights, as I would not stand to see your rights denied. If we deny the FLDS their rights to a speedy trial of their peers, then our Constitution is meaningless.
Don’t you see the difference?
You fought for your kids! These creeps are not doing that!
Did that really happen?
As young as 12, as old as 18. The fact that you remain ignorant of this particularly troubling feature of the cult suggests to me that you're not at all interested in the particulars of the case and prefer to argue a hypothetical case utterly disconnected from the present reality.
Yes, it's illegal. It's called child abandonment. And even if it wasn't, surely we could argue against it on moral grounds. After all, the government's actions in this case have been perfectly legal. And you have no problem arguing against them on moral grounds. Or you're just naturally cognitively dissonant.
You were also here a few weeks ago saying that a non-consenting 14 year old married as wife number 4 to a 50 year old man was a ‘real’ wife (based on him having sex with her).
I never said, or would say such a thing.
Read my comments carefully on that subject, because you interpreted something which I did not say.
Hey, I got laid off, so I have an excuse.
Just got a new job, starting in a couple weeks. So, my severance essentially gave me a 4 week vacation. Besides, what else is there to watch on a weekday afternoon.
One can only play XBox games so long ....
Hmmmm,
Give me a minute.
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