Small steps
Follow-up custody hearings great in number, incremental in progress
Five judges. Hundreds of hearings. More than 460 children.
One blueprint.
Beginning Monday and lasting for nearly three weeks, the largest custody case in U.S. history returns to San Angelo as dozens of state attorneys present polygamist sect parents a plan to reunite them with their children.
The service plan is mostly boilerplate, attorneys say. It's short on specifics and leads many of those representing mothers in the cases to make amendments by denying charges of abuse or noting that no specific allegations have been made against their clients.
"Most attorneys that I'm aware of are taking the service plans and adding modifications," said local attorney Brad Haralson, who represents some mothers in the case. "CPS is taking a boilerplate service plan and applying it to everyone."
The state's Child Protective Services agency has taken temporary custody of more than 460 children who lived at the YFZ Ranch, a Schleicher County compound run by the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. That Mormon splinter sect split decades ago from the mainstream Mormon Church after the latter renounced polygamy.
Beginning Monday, CPS attorneys will tell Tom Green County's district judges what the parents must do to regain their children, with the steps spelled out in individual service plans.
Language in the plans is similar because each child is in a similar situation, said CPS spokeswoman Marleigh Meisner, but she added that caseworkers will meet with parents after the hearings to individualize the plans - a process the public will not see.
"They'll all look very similar, but we'll continue to assess them," she said. "It is important to remember these issues are very similar."
While attorneys may seek clarification about their specific clients, the hearings are not expected to produce major changes in course. In more traditional family cases, status hearings generally take 30 minutes and are held informally in front of the judge's bench.
Decisions about the placement of children are not generally made at such hearings.
Although the template is largely the same in each case, its language heartened some attorneys by listing family reunification as the state's ultimate goal.
"I am encouraged it's unification and not termination," said Susan Hays, a Dallas attorney in the case.
That's of little consolation to attorneys such as Ellen Haas, a former Corpus Christi district judge whose client, Joseph Steed Jessop, 25, lives in a monogamous relationship with his adult wife, Lori. He has fathered three children since their marriage five years ago and lived in a single-family residence on the ranch.
Lori Jessop, 23, testified April 17 during an en masse initial custody hearing, telling the court she had worked as an emergency medical technician and would willingly live away from the YFZ Ranch to regain her children.
"Her husband does not fit any of the boilerplate or any of the en masse descriptions," Haas said.
Last week, Haas won a temporary restraining order preventing the state from removing Jessop's infant son once he turned 1.
"They're supposed to individualize these plans," Haas said. "Parents are supposed to be a part of it."
The plans do not address specific cases, instead telling all parents they must undergo genetic and psychiatric testing, provide proof of income and allow CPS to monitor their homes. That's regardless of whether the parents have been specifically accused of abuse, or even whether they have children at an age where the state says abuse was likely.
The plans do not make clear whether returning to the YFZ Ranch is an option, Hays said, and do not discuss polygamy, a core tenet of the FLDS faith, which involves spiritual unions not intended to be recognized by the law.
"If they take a hard line on polygamy, you're putting a lot of moms out there who are now single parents," she said. "If abuse is even living on that ranch, you've made them all homeless, and that's a real potential problem."
CPS must provide all the parents their service plans by Monday - the 45th day after CPS sought and received an emergency order from 51st District Judge Barbara Walther to remove all children found at the ranch - and all hearings must be completed by June 5, the 60th day.
With Walther, the county's other three district judges and a retired appellate judge will hear the cases, which will be sorted by sibling groups based on the children's mother.
The Tom Green County District Clerk's Office continued to update settings lists through the end of the past week, warning attorneys and reporters that the schedule was subject to change without notice. As well, the office warned that questions - such as whether a listed child was a duplicate of a similarly named child, or whether a particular hearing had been set twice - remained unresolved, "but it is not because we have not tried."
The difficulty of the case is undeniable, Haas said.
"It worries me as a mother and a grandmother," she said. "It's not that people are trying to do something bad. It's complicated. We need to really be thoughtful about each family situation."
Live reports
- Follow the sect children's hearings with regular reports from the courthouse on Monday. gosanangelo.com
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