Posted on 05/22/2008 10:46:31 AM PDT by ElkGroveDan
SAN ANGELO, Texas - A state appellate court has ruled that child welfare officials had no right to seize more than 400 children living at a polygamist sect's ranch.
The Third Court of Appeals in Austin ruled that the grounds for removing the children were "legally and factually insufficient" under Texas law. They did not immediately order the return of the children.
Child welfare officials removed the children on the grounds that the sect pushed underage girls into marriage and sex and trained boys to become future perpetrators.
The appellate court ruled the chaotic hearing held last month did not demonstrate the children were in any immediate danger, the only measure of taking children from their homes without court proceedings.
Not for as long as you are leading people to believe.
Also, this is proof that the gubmint ain’t out to get them. If so, they would have been hounded early on. Everyone knew what was there, although it was not expected because the guy purchasing the land lied about it’s use...said it was going to be a hunting resort.
Well, maybe he didn’t lie...the hunt little girls.
How many Protestant clergy DID molested children? 1% - 3%?
Lets see a bit of balance here soli.
If you're going to condemn the entire Catholic Church for what a handful of filth did, lets see you bashing the Baptists and the Methodists and the Pentecostals for what their handful of filth has done.
Here, give this a look and tell me, does this make all Baptist Preachers slavers?
http://www.sullivan-county.com/nf0/combs/
Or are you just out to slander the Catholic Church?
Warrants were issued based on the affidavits posted in post #334.
Yes I know it has both criminal and civil components but the appeals is only on the civil side by 38 moms. So we’ll see what comes down on the criminal side. Hopefull this will not taint the criminal prosecution should the evidence lead to indictments.
Show me the source. Many posters jumped to the conclusion that reports of CPS taking CUSTODY of the newborns meant the state was physically removing them from their mothers. It doesn’t. It is just a legal classification and has nothing to do with the location of the infant.
In plenty of affidavits. There are no names and you know this. I don’t know any personally. Go learn to read.
Nope.
I believe most of us got it right.
But there was a sizable bunch that were extremely rabid in their support of the Gov't actions.
Their vile replies to anyone who questioned ANYTHING CPS did was among the worst displays I've ever seen here.
It quickly became easier to just ignore the FLDS threads than to put up with their abuse.
I, among many, am pleased that at least one court has seen fit to rein in overzealous Gov't thugs.
You are right. These cults with their worship of the dead and unwedmotherhood are creepy and hundreds if not thousands of their leaders are pedophiles. We should sieze all Christian children immediately to prevent them from being brainwashed!
I don’t make the laws and there’s still such a thing as due process. If they disallowed investigators access then the investigators still must get a warrant based on reasonable belief that something illegal is happening. Not allowing access to an investigator or relying on a fake call is still not reasonable belief. I feel bad for the kids too but the rights of the cult must be upheld or we live in a Communist Society.
It’s not the State’s fault that these people bred like rabbits. Regardless of one victim or 300...you don’t NOT investigation because of the large numner of victims.
Stop your hysterical rant that Big Brother is vicitimizing child rapists. The State doesn’t want the kids...they want to make sure that the kids are OK and that criminal charges are brought where needed which will be the case here.
“they have a right”? You are not looking at this case appropriatly. The measure of law on an appellate level is how these rules will apply to ALL citizens not just creepy cults.
If you allow the alegation to equal probable cause then ANYONE can destroy a life by mere alegation. We saw this in the legal arena with divoces where mothers would accuse fathers of abuse in order to obtain a tactical advantage in settlment.
remember the late Richard Jewel? His mistake was trying to get people to safety and he ended up accused of being the olymic park bomber. Where did he go to get his good name back.
Accusations that are fake but accurate are best left to CBS.
What I expect next is a rehearing where some of the families will get the children back. (the 10 or so monogamous families where parantage is not an issue at the very least).
I also expect this will impact the CPS “what you have to do to get your children back” laundry list.
I also expect the CPS incompetence in this case (not minimizing the actual charges) is going to jeopardize future cases as perpetrators learn from CPS’ mistakes.
The fact is that girls DO get pregnant at age 12. They do so on purpose, and with full knowledge (for a 12-year-old) of what they are doing.
My daughter had a friend who decided to get pregnant at age 13. My daughter tried to talk her out of it, but to no avail. I knew the girl and her brothers. She was a nice girl, just whatever she was taught didn’t lead her to think having sex with an older boy at age 13 was the wrong thing to do, even with counseling.
Society should strongly discourage children from having sex, and people from having sex outside a committed relationship.
But society encourages kids to have sex. Only when it’s old men with young girls does society draw the line, although society does give half-hearted protests if an older woman has sex with a young boy.
TV, Schools, Movies all conspire to teach our young that they haven’t really made it until they make it. Rarely is the long-term impact of decisions shown, and usually that is to discourage childbearing and encourage abortion.
CPS exists because some parents do bad things to children. But CPS’s existance depends on parents doing bad things to their children, and in fact the MORE parents are alleged to do bad things to their children, the more power, money, staff, etc. the CPS gets.
If CPS was able to SOLVE child abuse, they would all be unemployed. But so long as they can show increasing numbers of children being abused, they can grow their staff and pretty much have guaranteed jobs.
Further, no CPS person gets fired for taking a child when it is later found that there is no abuse. After all, you just can’t be too careful, its “for the children”. CPS employees WILL get fired if they are stupid enough to leave a child in a situation where the child ends up being abused.
You may have been sarcastic, but while we should enforce laws even against groups, the child abuse laws and the civil remedies of removing children from their individual parents is, by it’s very nature, a law that applies to individuals, not to groups. The FLDS case is an exceptional case because the individuals are living in a tight-knit community, with a strong individual leadership. And even here a court has ruled that you can’t just smear everyone with the same brush, that you need to show each individual child has an immediate risk.
Outside this specific case, you would be hard-pressed to find a situation where the actions of a group would lead to the punishment of individuals who belong to the group, without having to show the individuals were involved in the bad actions.
I figured I was wasting my time with you.
I’ll not continue to make that mistake.
Only the underaged are unnamed, not the 18 year-olds.
“It’s not the State’s fault that these people bred like rabbits. Regardless of one victim or 300...you don’t NOT investigation because of the large numner of victims.”
So people with large families are breeding like rabbits? Thanks for making a comparison between people with families that are more Biblical (read Genesis — multiply and replenish the earth) with rodents?
But if you can’t enter the residence and find out what children are there, and require DNA testing of the children and purported parents, then it makes no difference how the perps got the children, because authorities can’t investigate and find out. Children are for sale for $50 bucks apiece in many 3rd World countries (including the infamous Thailand), and are often being sold by their parents, no questions asked. That’s how the child brothels in Thailand are “staffed”. White children are available in Eastern Europe for just a bit higher prices. It’s not hard to get kids (or adults) across our borders without documentation. Our homegrown public housing projects are full of kids whose mothers would readily sell them for the price of a vial of crack. People who want kids for criminal purposes can get them easily.
“Whatever happened to “facing your accuser”? “
How do you deal with an accuser who is brainwashed to not say a bad thing about their rapist “husband” or they will die and go to hell?
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