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.
Spunky, we know from the women who have escaped the cult. What they reveal would make your hair stand on end.
So because the cult does it, the government can do it? That makes it okay?
No. The courts are extending their powers far beyond the limits they should be allowed. Nobody cares right now because it’s just a bunch of whack-job cultists, but have you ever known the government to relinquish power?
THEY DIDN’T TAKE THE BABY AWAY FROM THE MOTHER. SHE IS WITH BOTH OF HER CHILDREN!!!!!!!
Families have been destroyed by this cult. That is what has got the rest of us upset.
Another blitz...I’d give a dollar to know who is directing this nonsense.
So, out of a sample size of 462 children, we have just under 10% with evidence of a broken bone. I had a couple of bones broken when I was under 18, and my parents never abused me. Not once. I broke my collarbone by falling out of bed, I broke a couple of fingers in Tae Kwon Do. I had a friend who broke his leg by jumping off the tractor. As a kid, didn't you ever break a bone? Jumping out of a tree, falling off a ladder, playing sports?
1 in 10 kids having a broken bone can't be that far off the statistical norm for this age group. Now, show me some evidence of cigarette scars, and you have a topic. But this truly appears to be a distortion by the media.
Texas says that under 16 requires parental consent. And, that requires a submission of the parental consent to the judge and proof that any prior marriages were dissolved. And then you need a marriage license. But those are pesky details which simply establish guilt and innocence in the case at hand. It's more fun to pretend that everything's perfectly normal here, just a little different than what we're used to.
Sure they can. If Jessop isn’t the true father, they may have the DNA of the real father.
No, they are NOT “a bunch of whack job cultists”—except, perhaps, to you. They are human beings who do not deserve to be abused and held in sexual slavery. The adults may CHOOSE that life, but the children should not be subjected to it.
The girl is in state custody because she is not an adult. She can’t make decisions for herself. She can’t authorize medical treatment for herself.
Yet you think she should have total control over that baby. In a “normal” situation, both girl and baby would be in the custody of the girl’s parents. Since her “parents” handed her over to be raped, they forfeited the right to make decisions for her and her child.
This is where you and I depart.
You have assumed that these disgusting cartoon depictions of these families are actually true, before anyone has been proved guilty in a court of law.
I view this situation as families being torn apart by the government, before anyone has been proved guilty of doing anything wrong.
For some people, the concept of "guilty until proved innocent" is how some people think that our government should operate.
For this Freeper, Americans are "innocent until proved guilty!"
You just answered your own question.
Abused abuse. Abusers abuse. They don't stop.
Can you give us one good reason why you would think that this baby would all of a sudden be safe when the long sordid history of this cult would indicate it wouldn't?
Except that not all of the kids in this group have achieved the age of 18. So, you have a large portion of the kids who are very young and in whom we would not expect to see evidence of broken bones. So, if you change the sample to ages 8-18, does the percentage go up significantly? Or do we see broken bones in kids under 5? Are there radial fractures or are they broken collarbones from the nonexistent jungle gym?
The bottom line is that neither side has enough public information on the broken bones to start performing statistical analysis on the data.
Just like the cult?
That worked out real well, didn't it?
I hope you're right, but I can look at Germany today and know you're wrong.
shut up now.
Okay, didn't much like talking to you either. :-)
I have done the same thing, and fully agree with you.
Perhaps that is why this situation gets me so darn upset.
These are loving families that have just been destroyed by the government.
You don't have to worry, they're not with the cult anymore.
MizSterious: “So from this, we can presume that you would prefer to allow a child to be abused, perhaps even to his death, rather than removed from an abusive home? I mean, after all, we can’t be doing things “for the children,” now, can we?”
My concern is the same concern all freedom-loving people should have. I’m amazed at how quickly some FReepers jump to the defense of the government. That is NOT a conservative position. Conservatives, of which I am one, should always be highly suspicious of any government action, even more so when children are being taken from their parents. That’s why the burden of proof is supposed to be on the government, even when children are involved.
What if these children really aren’t in the abusive situation some of you imagine? What about the trauma they are experiencing NOW as a result of the government’s action? What about the parents rights and the agony some of them are no doubt experiencing? Is every single mother and father assumed guilty of abuse simply because they live in this cult?
Posting one's opinion on the probable outcomes and originations of this case is not in any way related to "innocent until proved guilty." Me believing that this particular cultist locale behaved in the same way as the other specimens of the FLDS (giving teenage girls to older men as breeding stock) in Colorado City, AZ, Bountiful, B.C., and South Dakota doesn't place anyone in jail. It doesn't cause anyone to serve prison time. It doesn't make anyone "guilty." Silly argument.
Do you all exchange emails or does this stuff come naturally to you?
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