Number of underage mothers claimed by Texas continues to dwindle

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.

REASONABLE suspicion that their ID is forged. And not “indefinitely”, but for a reasonable period of time while authorities are investigating the person’s identity.

If we’re ever going to rid our country of illegal aliens (both the economic variety and the terrorist variety), “conservatives” better get over their hatred of serious ID systems. We have illegal aliens running all over the country with various forms of false identification. Some of it is stolen or forged from stolen identities, and some of it is issued by legitimate state offices where someone is accepting bribes. If nobody is required to be able to really PROVE who they are, then we might as well give up arresting anybody for anything.

>>>All women with infants under age one, regardless of whether the mother was over or under 18, were allowed to remain with their infants.

Point taken. But for the record many women nurse until age 2. I am still not Ok with a 13 month old being forcibly taken from their mother. Or a 5 or 6 year old for that matter.

I'm all for govt. intervention in the case of child sexual abuse. So I think Texas needed to do something. However why didn't they arrest the men? Why split up the women and their 13 month old babies?

It is a bad repeat of the Short Creek raid which ultimately failed as well. I suppose Govt. doesn't always learn from past mistakes that well.

Bureacratic procedures account for a lot of the separations. Sucks, but then there are lot of people insisting that there should have been much MORE following of bureacratic procedures to gather more evidence before a “raid”, even if that meant not ever getting the evidence and leaving the adolescent girls to continue getting raped and brainwashed to think it’s okay.

They couldn’t arrest the men, because they didn’t yet have any evidence of specific men who definitely committed rapes. They knew it was happening in the community, and that the whole community approved of it, but that’s different than having evidence against a specific man — it’s enough to reasonably warrant removal of children for their safety, but clearly not enough for arrests of adults on criminal charges. The only way to obtain the evidence was go in and seize records, and seize the children and get them to talk, and get their DNA tested. The children who were old enough to provide information were not willing to talk honestly while be supervised and coached by their mothers, who were in turn taking orders from the men via cell phone. So the decision was made to separate the mothers from the children, except in the case of mothers believed to be minors themselves (and some no doubt claimed to be minors, even though they weren’t, so they could stay with their children).

Trouble is, CPS has no authority or budget to house and support adult women. And no other state agency has authority or budget to house and support adult women who are not under arrest, and who are not destitute, and who aren’t claiming to be victims of domestic abuse. CPS ended up being able to get a court order to keep the adult women who were still nursing with their babies, though it’s not clear that anyone has yet figured out exactly how that’s going to get paid for. I think CPS would have preferred to keep mothers with their children under age 5-6, since those children are unlikely to be able to provide any useful information for the investigation beyond their DNA samples, but again, no authority or budget.

Just letting the younger children go back to the ranch with their mothers and whatever those men really are to them, was also not really workable because the cult’s history suggests they would be quick to try get the children out of the state, because many of those younger children are living evidence (and in many case the ONLY solid evidence) of the rape of minors. It’s doubtful that authorities could have prevented the smuggling out of children, when there were a huge number of children, and a large number of adults eager to follow orders from leaders to help smuggle out the ones (not yet identified by CPS) who were born to mothers who were underage at the time of pregnancy. Authorities would essentially have had to turn the entire ranch into a big prison, with LEOs controlling all movement in and out, and with none of the adults (much less all of them) facing specific criminal charges, there was no legal authority to take over the ranch and scrutinize and control the movements of its adult residents.

For someone who goes by the Nom De Plume Government Shrinker you seem to go to quite great lengths to paint the Govt's obvious beraucratic mess they have tied themselves up into in a positive light.

Fundamentally, I agree with you that something had to be done. Intervention. However, to put it bluntly, CPS is staffed overwhlemingly by victim stance liberals and its its guiding philosphy and mission reflects as much. The Government lawyers on staff for the State are incompetent if they couldn't figure out the basic legal ramifications and constitutionality/unconstitutionality of their actions.

Here's the thing. Because they didn't do it correctly chances are the kids will go back to the abuse you so decry, just like the Shortcreek raid.

The Texas SC made clear that Judge Walther may put significant restrictions on the parents and children, to ensure the safety and non-disappearance of the children.

The comparisons to the Short Creek raid really aren’t valid at all. That raid was about polygamy, not about forced marriages of child brides. Marriages of early teen girls were not common in the FLDS community back then, and mariages at any age were not forced. There was a group of leaders, rather than a single autocratic prophet, and the extreme level of control that Warren Jeffs has imposed on the members simply didn’t exist. Many young women went to college, there was freedom and variety in dress, and men and women who chose to leave the group were still able to visit and keep in touch with their families. Many former members have fond memories of growing up in that community, but are horrified by the things that Warren Jeffs has forced onto the community since he took power in recent years. There was no good reason for the Short Creek raid, and it seemed to be rooted mainly in the LDS Church’s desire to rid the state of polygamy because it embarrassed the LDS Church.

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