Posted on 05/23/2008 1:24:53 PM PDT by Belasarius
SAN ANGELO, Texas - Tina Louise Steed had just one question for a judge who declared her an adult Thursday morning. "I'm wondering how come they wouldn't believe my ID in the first place?" she asked Judge Jay Weatherby. The Texas Department of Family and Protective Services acknowledged that Tina Louise and three other "disputed minors" are actually adult women - admissions that came as the Third Court of Appeals in Austin ruled it never had sufficient evidence to remove any children from a polygamous sect. At least three more women were to be declared adults Thursday afternoon or Friday, but those hearings were canceled after word of the decision reached the Tom Green County Courthouse. And more are on the docket next week. The admissions by the state left a rapidly diminishing count of women in a disputed age category that is central to its claim of underage mothers found at the YFZ Ranch. The state alleged that 31 women ages 14 to 17 were pregnant, mothers or both, a count that included 26 mothers whose ages were disputed. As of noon Thursday, just eight mothers remained in the disputed category. And an attorney for one 14-year-old said Wednesday her client also is wrongly being listed among the 31 pregnant or mothering teenagers.
(Excerpt) Read more at sltrib.com ...
I seriously doubth Reno and Bubba give it a second thought. These killers are cold-blooded and without remorse.
And you persist to close your eyes about this. Look, here's an excerpt from the Mormon-owned Deseret News newspaper published May 23, 2008:
During grueling questioning on the witness stand, Louisa Jessop answered, "I don't know" to many questions CPS lawyers posed to her, including where she lived before, how she came to be there, and who lived in the home with her. Testimony revealed she lived most recently in a home with YFZ Ranch leader Merrill Jessop and his son Dan, who is her husband. But Jessop struggled to name anyone else who lived in the home, aside from Merrill Jessop's wife Barbara and her own husband, Dan, and her children...Asked if she would allow her 3-year-old daughter to marry at age 14, Jessop replied, "No. Not right now.” http://www.deseretnews.com/article/1,5143,700228606,00.html
I think you’ve hit it on the nose.
susie
Actually, in your scenario, false report, feds raid, THEY SEE EVIDENCE OF ABUSE, and took children, that makes the story just a little different, but it was what really happened here. Why do you continue to leave that little tidbit out?
susie
Really? Pikers? Hmmmm how many of the kids were roasted alive or sent off to Cuba?
susie
Albert Hawkins, the state's [Texas] executive commissioner for health and human services, said it was unclear whether members of the sect have private insurance. He also said that officials have found no evidence that anyone from the sect is receiving any sort of public assistance.
What would you do in the situation you imagine she is in? Do your suspicions justify the outrage of holding adult women against their will while denying the validity of identification which is now recognized to be legitimate?
Evasive testimony, if that's what it was, is something she has chosen to do. Supporting the illegal acts of the CPS is something YOU have chosen to do.
In her case, any suspicion leads you to believe the worst. In the case of the CPS, proof of outrageous denial of human rights gets a shrug. You continue to believe that CPS is simply incompetent and not evil.
What will your opinion be if, at the end of this incident, all that can be claimed is that several people have been proven to be living in unofficial polygamous relationships, but there is no proof of rape, sexual abuse, non-consensual marriage, or illegal underage marriage? Will it be sufficient that this supposed "polygamous sect" is in fact a polygamous sect?
Will all the outrageous justifications for action be just fine with you? What do you expect that life will be like for the rest of us when that becomes the standard for the authorities; that unsubstantiated accusations of any kind can be used to examine every aspect of a person's life?
Why did you challenge me, then, if you’re going to come around and partially agree with me? What you say here is what I said (in part). If you want to use the word “evasive” instead of the phrase “deceive authorities or just plain leave them in the dark” that’s fine with me. How is ”evasive” any different than “just plain leaving them in the dark?”
The only difference we’re talking about it your reference above is to one person under testimony, and my reference was to CPS interviews of dozens not under oath. (And due to potential charges of perjury, which venue is more likely to receive a more forthright response to a question?)
The difference we are talking about is due process. It is a violation of due process to hold a 27 year old woman with official identification as a minor.
The judge in this case has evidently allowed a photo of Jeffs' to get into circulation. If I understand correctly, the photo shows Jeffs kissing the girl who was a victim of rape and for which crime Jeffs is serving time.
One can only wonder, where are the other photos of the other many brides? If those existed, wouldn't they be more illustrative of the law-breaking that has been described? Or do you expect to see more people charged with the rape for which Jeffs was convicted?
Prosecutors & the CPS are going to save photo evidence pertaining to others; they're not going to "show their hand" for a witness who has no pertinent testimony pertaining to those other folks.
The difference we are talking about is due process. It is a violation of due process to hold a 27 year old woman with official identification as a minor.
As I've said on other threads, it's not all that unusual, for example, for even a juvenile to be temporarily held in an adult custody facility when the arrested person has no ID. This can happen, for example, when several illegal aliens are picked up.
Upon discovery, the error is fixed. (And I don't see posters like you screaming about the plight of such folks at risk)
You're missing the point. The cult leaders controlled the courts, police, school board, and most medical facilities in the Utah and Arizona counties where the main communities are located (and to a large extent still do). The documents would "check out" just fine, even if they contained false information, because they would have been issued with false information.
I think they definitely needed to go in and break up the child sexual abuse which does occur in these groups. Unfortunately, though it is very hard to crack down on polygamy. The same thing happened in the Short Creek raid in 1953. Pretty soon it turned into a PR disaster and they returned the kids to their parents. It's one of the reasons Utah and Arizona haven't tried it since.
I am stil hopeful that something good will come out of it to stop the abuse, but at the same time taking nursing newborns away from their adult mothers for 2 months is just wrong.
And just what is the evidentiary value of the picture of Jeffs? If you were a judge, would you consider not allowing that picture into evidence due to its prejudicial effect on a jury? Or do you expect that Jeffs will be a defendant in a coming trial also?
So on that basis the official documents are presumed to be illegitimate and adult women can be held indefinitely? Or does Texas have a duty to recognize the official acts of other states, as mandated by the Constitution? The legal presumptions of innocence are intended to protect the innocent. They are not to be ignored by anybody simply because they have suspicions.
For how long are you willing to detain an adult woman against her will in order to prosecute a rape you suspect was committed against her?
Texas is not required to regard ID documents as “official acts of other states” when it has reason to believe the documents may contain false information and were not authorized by the state in question. Same goes for real state-issued ID documents obtained fraudulently by illegal aliens. No state is required to put aside common sense when evaluating ID documents. Many, if not most, of the women and children had given different names to interviewers at different times. When those women/children then produce ID documents matching only one of the names they’d given, the state of Texas is not required to suddenly forget the other names the same individuals had claimed as their own.
With documents such as birth certificates, which contain no information that can be verified as matching the document to the individual presenting it, there is plenty of reason for skepticism on the part of authorities. In some cases, Texas authorities would have been able to confirm age with reasonable certainty after having the opportunity to check multiple sources of information and see if they match — that would include government-issued IDs, the “Bishop’s Record” and other documents found at the ranch, and the results of medical analysis of X-rays. No doubt this is why there has been some delay between certain young women’s original presentation of a government_issued ID document, and CPS certification of the young woman as being over 18.
Fine. Given the high number of women who we are now told are exactly as old as they claimed, perhaps you can tell me how many of the women originally lied about their ages.
Nope, I'm saying what I said when it started. You can't violate laws to enforce other laws. You can't plant evidence, subourn perjury, lie to judges , or a lot of other things. These guys had to be creative in a bad way to pull this thing off and the court didn't like it.
I'm very tic'd that a story listing a fictious number of "minor" women was published. If it couldn't be determined then they shouldn't have published that story. Another case of wishful thinking that makes this all look like something less than a shoestring operation. If they can't be gotten fair and square then they need to be left alone. You'd think that Texas, having had the experience with the Branch Davidians not so long ago, would have been very cautious about this.
Time will tell. There are no doubt some who lied in the other direction, claiming to be minors when they had previously claimed to be over 18, because they had children over age 1 and would be allowed to stay with them only if the mother was a minor. I read at least one specific account of such a last minute claim, literally as buses were being loaded, and CPS tok her claim at face value. So some of the young women who had been classified as minors but are later found to be over 18 will be cases where it was the young woman who identified herself as a minor, and not CPS.
There were no nursing newborns taken away from their mothers. All women with infants under age one, regardless of whether the mother was over or under 18, were allowed to remain with their infants.
The photos of Jeffs kissing the young girl are of one of his own “wives”, named Loretta. He was convicted in Utah of being an accomplice to rape for forcing a 14 year old girl named Elissa Wall to marry her 19 year old cousin. He is currently on trial in Arizona for several other charges relating to sex with minor girls.
The photos being introduced into evidence were quite relevant to the specific family into whose case they were introduced. The father identified the girl as his own 12 year old sister, and the mother told the court that Warren Jeffs “is perfect in my eyes”. This tells us all we need to know about these parents views regarding allowing adolescent girls to be raped in the name of religion. The father knew his 12 year old sister was being raped and didn’t report it to authorities, and the mother knows Warren Jeffs raped a 12 year old and still thinks he is “perfect”. They are clearly not fit to parent children at this time. Hopefully, they’ll get their heads fixed and eventually be fit to parent their children.
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