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 told you that you read things into my posting that didn’t exist.
And yet, you didn’t respond or even apologize.
Good on you!
Well one way would be to start posting the stuff that is being sent to you on your page. When I had a problem with a FReeper I did that & we became friends. He thought what I posted was very funny & said leave it up. Its there to this day. In regular email I would block the person if your email has that feature. Or you could just plain come out & say, look I don’t like getting this sex stuff so knock it off. I guess you sometimes have to be blunt. As for me I am not nice. I get blunt.
I thought that I had replied about this subject.
If not, what was your question?
.............
You told me you were threatened with a banning a few weeks ago.
Are you worried you’ll be banned today and that’s why you are archiving your posts? Are you archiving the back and forth exchanges between your posts and others and you post to each other, keeping the context in the discussion intact?
I ask because I wonder how detail oriented you are and if you are really concerned.
I suggest you lose some weight and get a suntan.
Sadly, we had to cancel our yearly scuba diving trip to Cozumel Mexico this year.
My wife needed cornea transplants in both eyes, and that had priority over our sun tans.
The following is how you responded at #460, mocking me. And then my post that followed at #478 was ignored.
What a gentleman you are! Your reputation will proceed you.
ROTFLMAO!
TigersEye, are you blinded, now?
Oops.
Time for bed.
I was expressing that children have been taught who they can notify, if they are being abused.
Read my postings again, with the understanding that I expect children to make their own personal choices between right and wrong.
I expect the same thing from my cats!
Giggle, there is a reason why my cats are not allowed to use the Internet...
If you have questions, just ask me.
If not I’ll have to gouge my eyes out. And my eardrums. I’m watching a special on Bob Dylan so I’m washing some of the awful sound out.
After some major internal eye surgery, and days in the hospital, her eyes have recovered after a few months.
Sorry, but my suntan in Cozumel had to be canceled this year.
You said that already.
I think it will take more then Dlyan....I am thinking more on the lines of DEVO ....Whip it!
LOL
You have no sense at all of what is and isn’t appropriate do you?
There is absolutely no legal reason they can take her kid. If they are doing this, then why aren't ALL babies born to miniors being stolen at gunpoint??
Some animals are more equal than others.
My daughter lied in court and use the "sexual abuse" card in an effort to get custody of her daughter.
The Judge was so upset, that he gave custody of Elizabeth to her father, and she was prohibited from moving out of the State.
My daughter got pregnant, in an effort to force a married man to get a divorce. I was so upset with her, that I did not talk to her for three years. That is her second daughter.
Tonight, I got an email from her (see below) asking for help.
I will get involved and talk with the father (Steph) in the morning. I want to know what is actually going on.
My daughter spent the rest of the evening begging me not to talk to Steph.
You think that I do not pay attention to what is being said on Free Republic about child abuse?
Something smells very wrong, and I will call Steph in the morning.
A concerned father; Hunble
----------------------
Howdy Pop,
Well here is my latest update. Tomorrow is my last day of class and I have no babysitter as of this time. My babysitter has to leave town tomorrow and so far all of my backups are either going to be out of town, or had a sick child. Argh!! Oh well, I suppose if I have too I will just take her with me.
Stephane is giving me grief because I want to take Elizabeth to Utah with me at the end of the month because it is the last week of school. Never mind that I have already cleared it with her teacher. He drives me insane. I've let Lizzy go to Martinique twice now, last summer she spent a month. And they have taken her every spring break for the last four years. The ONE time I want to take her for a vacation he gets pissy about it. I'm taking her wether he likes it or not. We haven't seen my family for six years. I've never met my niece and nephew, and grandpa isn't getting any younger. I don't expect I will ever get the chance to see him again. So tell me what is more important, her family, or a week in school that will not be graded? Hard choice.
Anyway, enough griping. How are you?
Love ya!
I was four years old, my sister was two months old, when it began. As it progressed over the years our mother would have denied it to the police. The police in 1966 would not listen to or investigate allegations from small children.
Which is my point. Our mother was typical of mothers in sexual abuse situations. In your clueless ignorance, you are determined that children stay in the custody of potentially dangerous people during an investigation into whether they are being harmed.
You have no credible reasoning as to why that should happen, only a dogged automatic dismissal of evidence being produced by said investigation.
It is clear how this guy got banned for 10 years. If his behavior continues on it’s present course, probation is likely not going to go well.
Au Contraire. It is legal to take children into protective custody during an abuse investigation. as it should be. Respond to post 38. Do you have a counter as to the reason lawmaker's have made this legal?
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