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.
The state took legal custody of the baby, and also has legal custody of the mother. They are not separating minor mothers from their babies. They’re keeping them all in custody so nobody disappears.
This mother of two is a minor and the father of the children is nowhere to be found. What “basic unit” of family are you talking about?
You could have fooled me with the way you keep trying to find every which way to excuse what went on in that compound.
Yup.
A milkweed or a ragweed ... hard to decide.
Not true. When Warren Jeffs was convicted they had legally admissible evidence. They should have done this then.
What behavior? Polygamy was already illegal. Non consensual sex with anyone was already illegal. Absent lawful marriage sex with someone 14-16 was already illegal, unless the partners were 3 or less years apart. All the law did was ban legal marriages for 14 and 15 y/o olds.
If the law had not been changed, rest assured that there would be a legion of Freepers defending their right to marry 14 year olds "spiritually" as they could marry them legally with a marriage certificate and who needs the government anyway? Surely you can agree that that defense that would have been advanced if the law had not been changed. Yes?
Maybe, but it would still only apply to one male one female marriages, not polygamous ones, nor to otherwise legal unions of anyone but 14 and 15 year olds.
The issue of requiring state permission is a separate one. There are plenty of other folks, having nothing to do with polygamy or Mormons of any stripe, who think the government should never have gotten into the business of marriage licenses and such. It is still a relatively new thing even by US standards, let alone if one goes back to the northern European cultures from which our nation grew. Previously all marriages were either "spiritual" that is sanctioned by a church or other religious body, common law, or civil, that is conducted by a civil official (that was fairly uncommon as I understand it, common law was less rare than civil)
That’s two today. Both from cult defenders. Fancy that.
Yeah, I’ve picked up on that since that post.
The fact that marriage licenses are "relatively recent" does not automatically mean that they are bad. The abuse of spiritual marriages to simply obtain young sexual partners and/or breeding stock is not a strong argument against government involvement in marriage. It is exactly these sorts of horrible abuses which lead to intrusions of government on all of us. While it does not speak well of the government's intrusion into our lives, it does not speak well of the incredible propensity to evil that humanity posseses either.
I told my kids that if they made that call, they should call 911 while they were at it, cause they were going to need it.
I've been wondering how far they really plan to go with this. It is troubling to me. The other issue is the idea that children can be taken due to belief in future abuse that will be a tricky thing legally.
One thing is for sure, this mess will keep many lawyers, and the courts tied up for years. I have already noticed many legal "experts" in the media saying everything the authorities did was legal and by the book, and just as many claiming everything was done wrong. Should be interesting to see how they sort it all out.
It does indeed. But I sure wish people would supprot their statements with sources, when their statements are in addition to the information in the article posted.
BTW, is the kid 16 months or 20 months old? Your snippet says 16 months, another snippet somewhere up thread says 20. Not very important, or unusual either, but I dislike inconsistencies.
So how do you feel about the 12 months thing? That seems kind of excessive too to my way of thinking. And it's not like I don't have some knowledge of younger children. My grandaughter turns 3 in less than a week, and I hate to think of the state taking her from her mother, because of allegations against someone in the same community or even against my son in law. It would be devastating for her. Even if as some have stated, the kids call multiple women "mother", being separated from all of them has to be pretty rough for 1 to 4 year olds especially, the same is true if none of them are their biological mother.
Now you might retort that the cult does the same thing. But if they do, they don't do it in my name. The state does.
Exactly- legally they have been taken away, and can be physically remove quite easily now with the paperwork sitting there already signed.
It seems a bit excessive to me, too. I would have liked to see 3 or 4 be the cutoff. And that's not fun either. I cannot imagine either of my daughters being under the care of the state. It's a nightmare for any parent.
Unfortunately, it appears that the day-to-day life of the cult was a nightmare for the kids.
Don’t forget his nephew who Warren Jeffs forced himself on when he was a child. I am not sure when that is going to trial. I just hope the nephew stays safe & is protected. He brother killed himself over Warren’s attacks. I hope Warren Jeffs spends every day of the rest of his life in jail for the evil he has done.
No they are not. Only those chidren under one year, which will not include this mother's other child.
That according to the link provided by the808brass, which says in part:
The couple also have a 16-month-old son, who is being held at The Children's Shelter in Austin.
Crimmins said Jeffs and her infant will be placed in a shelter together, assuring their safety. CPS has allowed mothers to remain with infants 12 months old or younger who are in state custody.
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