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.
Amen to Ben Stein. He sums up what many of us think about this travesty. it is reminiscent of some of the tactics of Waco or Ruby Ridge. The Gov’t takes a kernel of evidence and multiplies it into a mountain of license for the taking of individual rights. (And, on occasion, lives!)
I recommend the link in your post to everyone on this thread.
I told her yesterday to stop calling an M113 a tank - but did she listen to me? Noooooo.....
LOL.
Actually, what I said was, there would probably be a couple of FReepers along in a momment, to tell me I called it a 557.
Thank you for posting these links. I just read some of the commentary from the mental health workers who witnessed what happened at the coliseum, it breaks my heart to see how these mothers and children were treated by CPS workers. To think that these children went through all of that and then placed in the homes of strangers. There will definitely be emotional damage to some of these children.
An acquaintance is "working" with those children. Won't say much about it... except... it is f'd up.
AND... since this all went down, gun sales in Texas are reportedly up by 40%.
Yeah, I'd say CPS and the state have a major mess on their hands.
It's AMAZING that the reaction I'm getting from posting that now is TOTALLY OPPOSITE what I got before...when the Pro-Raid Lefties were ruling the threads.
Thank you for providing that documentation.
It is much better to have than the slanted views of a reporter or blog.
Very nice choice. You can go with your 2 and 4 year olds or stay with your newborn.
I thought CPS said they'd keep siblings together?
There's no way I can say this that isn't going to sound condescending, but it has to be said.
This story has suffered greatly on FR because of the number of people who post, as fact, things they don't know.
We would all be better off if speculation was labeled speculation, and "facts" were accompanied by links to where those facts were obtained.
In your post, you presumsed that most of the wives were in plural marriages when there is no evidence to indicate how many were in that circumstance, you presumed there was no birth certificates for most of the children when there is no evidence to support that claim, and your "not sure" statement is at least partly refuted by facts presented multiple times on FR about the records which were seized from the FLDS compound.
"Abuse of discretion" is lawyer-ese for really seriously screwing up. It's more than just a mistake. It means roughly that no competent or reasonable judge would have acted as she did.
Please cite, with links, your source that there is a 14 year old who gave birth while in government custody. I have yet to find such a reference in the news
TBP didn’t insult me at all.
Exactly. There is absolutely NO evidence whatsoever that ALL of the children were in “immediate danger”.
It technically only applies to those who petitioned for the writ. But the reasoning was so broad that I think it will apply to all. IIRC, they even said it’s not enough to find a pregnant minor. They have to prove that she was impregnated by someone old enough to make it statutory rape.
...legal process to individual liberty and innocence until proven guilty meanwhile protecting a conviction by association only.
That’s exactly what the defenders of the terrorists in Gitmo say. it’s not enough to see the tail, head, tusks and body of the elephant...not enough to call it what it is...for the legalists.
Every family in America is in danger if they can do that to the FLDS. I don’t blame people for buying guns. My image of Texas was wrong, apparently, as I thought it was a state where the government was kept in tow.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=19XjUDLED_g&feature=related
The poster I was responding to suggested the pro-CPS folks really were secret perverts who loved thinking about kids being raped.
That was certainly uncalled for, no matter what they had said about other people.
Tomorrow we could have a mass of arrests in this case, and they will all be back to calling us names again.
Why not try having nobody call anybody any names, and just discussing the issues raised by the story?
I read the opinion quickly, while I was at the office. But if you look at the last sentence or two, I think it vacates the lower court order, then says the writ will issue later if the judge doesn’t comply. One of my partners e-mailed it to me. If you know where a copy of the order is on the net, I’ll look at it again.
I also remember that you were declared guilty, based on the same criteria that many are saying was used against the YFZ Ranch families.
Someone called the abuse hotline on FR, and made a hoax call, and got your account banned.
Then, those posters insisted that the fact they got you banned was proof you were guilty. When I pointed out you were ‘unbanned’ they had nothing to say.
I guess you missed it, but they got me banned as well.
I was told I had two accounts, UCANSEE2 and Tcats.
I was only banned for about an hour, but I thought it was ironic. I was innocent, yet I got thrown in jail anyway.
So were you and DONEIT. But nobody cared about our ‘rights’, except the MODS, who realized someone misled them, and fixed it.
Well it's pretty hard to know who's "married" to whom and how many wives the various men had when the FLDS shredded most of the documentation.
The Baptists were willing to step in and help take care of the children when the CPS stupidly seized 460 kids with no place to put them.
The State would like to destroy religion, but it’s religion that steps in and saves the day when the state screws up.
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