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.
My daughter-in-law has been a foster mother for almost 16 years and has had many children in her care in that time who have come from the most vile homes and have been so abused that one’s heart bleeds. Still, the state tries to get the parents to turn themselves around and change their lives so that they can have their own children back. It does not work in so many cases.
But all that said: this is not about other places and other people and other times. This is about a sick and vile and wicked demonic cult that has bred children for sexual exploitation for decades and has done every manner of vile and wicked things to the children and women and boys who are kept behind their iron curtain.
We know about them because of the escapees from behind the iron cutain of flds.
Now the State is doing what must be done. And God bless Texas for it!
That’s how I see her. I was raised with the notion that a frying pan has two uses.
My position is the result of mine, my sister's, the other children's who were in the same place and hundreds of others whom I consider my closest friends.
Available research promotes the position that what happened to us is not the isolated rarity it should be. And I am unwilling that any who can be saved from that be abandoned.
I have never demanded intervention out of hand, or the assumption of guilt. But I do insist that since numerous allegations of sexual abuse have been made, that these children be protected to the best ability the state can muster during the investigation. And in reality that can not be done by assuming that any custodian from the place they just came from is safe.
If I was a textual critic of your statement, I would say you are working from a source "Q" as yet unknown, which is based upon oral tradition built up in support of the FLDS.
96%!!!!!!!!!! Do I owe FR 5 dollars yet?
Bears repeating. It is false to boil this down to a choice of "protecting our children" or "protecting our liberties." This commune did not appear on law enforcement radar like a bolt from the blue.
I laughed really loud at this point of your post. Your concern for the state treasury of Texas is duly noted.
I wasn't going to post tonight...but I can't help myself...
PROMISCUOUS GIRLS?!?!?!?! Have your read anything about this case prior to coming here and posting THAT? You honestly think the promiscuity is the culprit? What their revealing dresses?
This is an emotional issue and I am trying my best to be civil.
If I say something wrong and it sounds like a personal attack, please let me know.
That will never be my intention, since I respect the views of all Freepers.
I am only debating about something our government is currently doing and expressing my views on this subject.
Got any evidence? Then present it, if you do not have evidence then you have nothing. Again, we are a nation of laws; not knee-jerk reactions. One woman's testimony does not convict an entire community. If abuse is there, and you have evidence; I'm sure the state of Texas would LOVE to get it.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/1999328/posts?page=325#325
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/1999328/posts?page=343#343
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/1999328/posts?page=360#360
And then post #364 was deleted.
You appear to be very sympathetic to the FLDS and their beliefs and 360 was the post I remembered about a 14 year old being in a real (polygamus) marriage with sexual relations (not rape).
We are all conjecturing, and I am merely pointing out that it does not fit the horny old goat/forced marriage paradigm we have heard and heard and heard. It does fit a more common social pattern, though - the one that creates so many mother-minors all over the USA. No one is blaming the girl, just showing what pattern it more closely resembles.
CindyDawg: “If a boss wife goes back with no change of heart, new wives and new children will come along and life as she knows it will go on, hurting others. That’s why IMO abusers and enablers must change their behavior or go to jail.”
I’d back you up on that so long as it’s proven the “boss wife” broke the law by giving an underage daughter to a man. In that case, she facilitated child abuse. On the other hand, young woman of legal age can have sex with whoever they want.
I’m opposed to polygamy. I also admit the situation here (with this cult) is very suspicious. However, I also value individual liberty. When a government entity seizes hundreds of children from their parents, shouldn’t that be cause for concern? I think so.
Refresher course! When Warren Jeffs built zion he went to all his cultic homes and took wives and childen from their husbands and gave them to other men because they kissed his butt! He also took many children under 6 yrs old to zion away from their homes because he wanted them pure and undefiled. Why do you suppose he did that? Why are the
“mothers” not allowed to hug these children. Why do the children not even know who their mothers are? Do you feel sorry for the children taken from their family and given to the stepford wives to “fatten” up for the old men to start drooling over? Think about it!!
So...you would remove your 14 y/o but leave the 10 and 12 y/o there?
So sorry metmom. I meant that reply to LongElegantLegs whom you addressed.
For LongElegantLegs
“A court of law in this case is not needed to prove the guilt of the cult for all the accusations against them, as to the rape of young girls who are bred for sex slavery in this cult and the taking away of the children fromt heir birth mothers and passing them to other mothers multiple times and even to other fathers.
The facts are not hidden, and the members of the cult themselves have condemned themselves by their own words and actions, multiple times. Their leader is in prison for the things like this, and just one among the other lawsuits pending against him is that of one of his nephew’s, who is suing him for sexually molestating him, from the time he was 5.
What you are hoping for is a technicality -not justice- to set the evil men and women free of the ability to be punished for their “most well known” crimes.”
I don’t hit the abuse button. Never have. Never will. It’s an internet forum.
Destroy all that creates bonds, makes use feel for our kids and defend them, Remove all marks of the passage of years and make all actions a key to get into heaven.
You have a cult leaders perverted dream.
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