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.
You could write a book.
I bet that girl has more freedom and more control over what happens to her baby now than she would have had inside that prison.
good one. Excellent point. Hunble is crazy to compare the basic unit of our civilization to this crazy, kooky, child-molesting, child-molesting protecting, koolaid drinkin’ bunch of lunatics.
Like I tell my children — you pick the crime, you do the time. You choose the wrong, you choose the consequence.
I grew up for 10 years of my childhood being molested & raped by an upstanding member of the clergy who was protected by his wife and others I won’t name, and told ME to suck it up and do whatever he wanted to do to me. When the law got involved, they considered the wife an accomplice to the multiple count crime. So true.
And BTW — How is lying about which children are yours and who the daddies are, anything close to being a Christian (since they claim to live such pure and holy lives)?????
Just askin’ the question...doesn’t really need an answer.
I doubt anyone would read it lmao! I have dealt with abused boys (2 I raised) & have taken in boys for short times. I would rather deal with the boys any day then girls.
That's a good point about why this was likely done. But there's no need to use term's like "stupid" when others just don't see things exactly the way you do. Calm down, there really isn't a reason to get so wound up here. We are just discussing this- and nothing we say here holds any water with the actual case either way.
What happened to you is horrible, but why was the person responsible not prosecuted in a court of law?
Please do not confuse my defense of the family, with excusing criminal behavior.
It must be a bitter pill to swallow for someone who’s convinced himself that he’s going to be a god someday.
I noticed nobody seemed to mind that fact too much, that we pay for these cults. It bothers me quite a bit.
The older son wasn’t with her because she was in the hospital.
The “mothers staying with children 12 months and under” are adult women.
Minor girls with children are being placed together.
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,353919,00.html
Of things which occurred in Texas? Somehow I kind of doubt it. The Texas authorities have been primed to go after this bunch since *before* most of them moved to Texas. That's why the law on legal marriage age was changed in 2005.
Hmm. I’m the opposite. I’ll trade you a girl for my son. :)
(Just kidding. He drives me NUTS, but I’m keeping him. )
You know what?
The fact that you don’t recognize a VERY famous political quote, changed to fit the circumstances isn’t really my problem.
Do you take everyone’s taglines so personally, or am I the only one to get a lecture?
I am sure Warren from the video’s I have heard isn’t too happy in jail. He is afraid of Black Americans & has made some nasty tapes about them. He must not be feeling too good about what vile things he has said about them. I wonder how safe he would feel if his fellow inmates heard his preaching/ranting about them?
Ok, ladies, this is a test. If you don’t know where my tagline came from, I’ll change it......with a heavy heart, mourning over what has happened to FR.
You are not, in your posts defending the family as a concept. And you are at the very least SUPPORTING criminal behavior.
Women who stay married to sexually abusive men enable the continued practice. Everyone who has been through it will tell you that, as will any textbook on the matter. But you want the children to have to stay with these women during the investigation phase of this process, because indictments - if it gets to that point, trial and conviction haven't happened yet.
I wonder how many of the “Give the children back!!” crowd would be willing to be responsible if/when a child is abused, raped, or disappears from the cult compound?
I bet they’d be screaming about the “state” and blaming the Sheriff and CPS.
Funny thing is I’d read that report on Fox earlier, but had missed that statement. But you can see from the story I linked that it’s not clear, since that story does not differenciate between the mothers who are minors and the other mothers. Although it’s not clear who the statement “Minors with children were placed in the foster care facilities together.” is coming from. Presumbably it’s background information provided to reporters, by either the authorities or by the lawyers for the FLDS and the individual women and children. (The men have no lawyers, at least not ones making statements to the press, since they haven’t been charged with any crimes yet, other than the two charges dealing with “resisting” one or more of the warrant services”.)
Women who stay married to abusive men as my mother did are just as bad IMHO. I had to leave home in my teens to escape his beatings. My brother & I would try to stop him from beating her from the time we were children. We would get him to hit us instead. When I was able to give her a home to live in she stayed with my dad. I have no idea why. I wish I did, & I think for the rest of my life I am going to wonder over that. She knew darn well when he was beating us but she decided to drink. I went though many years of pain & total shock that she didn’t leave. I was lucky enough to have gotten over most of it. My brother never really did & died through drug abuse.
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