Posted on 05/30/2008 6:40:22 PM PDT by Utah Girl
The devil was in the details.
Discussions about a proposed order involving the return of children taken from the Fundamentalist LDS Church's YFZ Ranch broke down late this afternoon when attorneys for the families wanted to review proposed changes with their clients.
Judge Barbara Walther announced the attorneys had better get all of their clients' signatures before she would sign the agreement and abruptly left the bench late this afternoon.
A lawyer for the families, Laura Shockley, said she expected attorneys would return to an Austin appeals court Monday to push for an order returning the children. It was the 3rd Court of Appeals that said Walther should not have ordered the children to be removed from the ranch and warned that if Walther failed to act, they would do it for her.
Lawyers for the families said that an agreement had been tentatively reached with Child Protective Services when they walked into court earlier today. Walther, however, expressed concerns about the proposed agreement and called an hourlong recess. She then returned to the bench with her own proposed order.
That led to concerns from many family attorneys who raised objections and questions on behalf of their clients.
The judge added additional restrictions to the the agreement, including psychological evaluations and allowing CPS to do inspections at the children's home at any time. Several of the more than 100 attorneys in the courtroom and patched into the hearing through phone lines objected to the judge's additions.
"The court does not have the power, with all due respect, to enter any other order (other than vacating)," said Julie Balovich of the Texas RioGrande Legal Aid over the telephone. She argued that no evidence justifying the additional restrictions had been entered as evidence before the judge.
After reviewing the appellate court decision, Walther returned to the bench and announced she believed the Supreme Court's decision upholding the appellate court decision gave her the authority to impose whatever conditions she feels are necessary.
"The Supreme Court does say this court can place restrictions on the parents. I do not read that this decision says that this court is required to have another hearing to do that. You may interpret that however you choose."
With that, the judge abruptly left the bench, saying she would await any submitted orders.
Immediately, attorneys in the courtroom and over the phone, expressed confusion.
"What did she say?" one attorney asked.
"Do We have another hearing?"
"What did she order?"
No additional hearings are currently scheduled. The judge signed no orders that would allow for the release of any children.
Lawyers for CPS left the courthouse declining to speak about the hearing.
"I'm going to do what the court directed," said CPS attorney Gary Banks.
Included among us is the Appeals Court and the majority of the Texas Supreme Court. Not bad company considering that this is a legal matter.
No, it isn't. If the judge is justified in imposing such conditions on the parents, then she can do so UNILATERALLY without any agreement from the parents. She can issue a court order to each parent to that effect and she can enforce the order with contempt charges.
But, she cannot condition the vacating of her original order to take custody of the children on ANYTHING. The higher court has ruled that her decision was unfounded legally and must be reversed.
And I find it likely that if the judge does impose a unilateral imposition which is identical for all parents, the Appeals Court will strike it down also. The higher courts have already stated that the risks to the children are not all identical. Thus the legal remedies cannot all be identical.
The problem seems to be that the judge does not agree that she has a burden to see evidence to justify any actions by the CPS for any particular family.
There are no "innocent" men in this child abusing sex slave cult. There are a lot of innocent children.
This Texan is not supporting CPS either. After all is said and done here CPS needs to be held to account and that likely means criminal charges. They are not above the law and in this case they certainly aren’t protecting kids. They are in fact doing just the opposite. Do you think the young children involved here want to be with total strangers or their mothers? This case is seriously bordering on kiddnapping.
After the coming smack down from the TSC, judge Walther should be impeached and removed from the bench.
Anyone know if this is the judge that signed off on the original warrant authorizing the military style raid on FLDS property?
What?
They have been found guilty ?
Then what is the problem ?
What court found them guilty ?
You are like my post describes. A member of a mob. You have NO FACTS nor does the Texas CPS. What is more they have walked around the law.
Like the law says, if they did it they will pay. Without proof at this time it is just a mob mentality.
That attitude is dangerous to our rule of law.
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-polygamist31-2008may31,0,2453789.story
From the Los Angeles Times
FLDS raid appears to have backfired
As polygamist families from the Yearning for Zion Ranch await the return of their children, officials in Texas face the fallout after trying to crack down.
By Miguel Bustillo and Nicholas Riccardi
Los Angeles Times Staff Writers
May 31, 2008
ELDORADO, TEXAS — As officials haggled Friday over how to return more than 400 children to their parents, it was becoming increasingly clear that Texas’ audacious attempt to rein in the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints had backfired — and become a lesson in the difficulty of cracking down on the 10,000-member polygamist sect.
“If you want to make any change . . . it has to go case by case, one child at a time,” said Ellen Marrus, co-director of the Center for Children, Law and Policy at the University of Houston. “It’s going to be very slow.”
The children, who have been in foster homes scattered around the state, were set to be reunited with their families beginning Monday. But the deal was complicated when a trial judge late Friday refused to approve it unless dozens of parents filed pledges not to leave Texas — a process that could take several days.
Legal analysts said that reuniting the FLDS families would make it harder to prove any children were abused. “It’s very hard to talk to a child about what’s going on in a household,” Marrus said, “when they’re in that household.”
Authorities raided the FLDS compound in April after receiving an anonymous phone call. Although they did not find the caller, who said she was a minor being sexually abused on the compound — the call appears to have been a hoax — officials said they discovered evidence that all of the children there were at risk.
snip
Talks to return children to polygamist ranch break down
12:00 AM CDT on Saturday, May 31, 2008
By EMILY RAMSHAW and ROBERT T. GARRETT / The Dallas Morning News
AUSTIN – An agreement to reunite children removed from a West Texas polygamist ranch with their parents fell apart at the last minute on Friday, after a district judge and attorneys for the religious sect sparred over the details.
‘It is extremely disappointing to watch someone in the judicial system not be willing to stay at the table long enough to fix the problem,’ sect leader Willie Jessop said after talks broke down in San Angelo.
The courtroom drama followed four hours of negotiation on a plan that would’ve returned the youths to the Yearning for Zion ranch starting Monday, as long as their parents agreed to keep them in Texas and fully cooperate with child welfare investigations.
Now, it’s unclear when the children, separated from their parents for seven weeks, will go home and how soon a new compact can be reached.
Attorneys for the sect mothers said a clearly frustrated judge told them just after 6 p.m. that they should try to come to their own consensus over the weekend and that she would resume the hearing Monday.
“It is extremely disappointing to watch someone in the judicial system not be willing to stay at the table long enough to fix the problem when there are so many innocent children’s lives at stake,” said sect leader Willie Jessop, who said parents were hopeful all afternoon that they’d see their children on Monday.
snip
http://www.star-telegram.com/state_news/story/673170.html
Posted on Sat, May. 31, 2008
Dispute over restrictions could delay release of sect’s children
By BILL HANNA
Star-Telegram Staff Writer
SAN ANGELO — A state district judge who had been ordered by two higher courts to send children from a polygamist sect back home refused Friday to sign an order that would have started the process of reuniting them with their parents.
The judge’s unexpected move came after four hours of legal wrangling where it appeared some of the children from the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (FLDS) would be going home as early as Monday.
Attorneys left the courtroom scratching their heads over Judge Barbara Walther’s abrupt end of the hearing.
The sticking points centered on restrictions Walther added to an order that had been agreed upon among attorneys for Child Protective Services, the parents and the children.
Instead, Walther added additional restrictions, including restricting the parents’ movements and giving CPS 24-hour access to the Yearning for Zion Ranch near Eldorado, where more than 400 children were taken from after an April 3 raid.
The Third Court of Appeals ruled last week that the agency had overstepped its authority by removing all of the children from the compound. On Thursday, the Texas Supreme Court agreed with that decision and ordered the CPS to return the children to their homes.
snip
http://www.theleafchronicle.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080531/OPINION01/805310304
Texas went too far in case
The Texas Supreme Court’s ruling that the state did not have a right to remove more than 400 children from a polygamist compound was a victory for the families involved. It also was a triumph for people who believe government’s power over family life should not be all-encompassing.
Under Texas state law, children can be taken from their parents if there’s a danger to their physical safety, an urgent need for protection and if officials made a reasonable effort to keep the children in their homes
In what may be the largest custody battle in U.S. history, the 3rd Court of Appeals in Austin found the state failed to provide any evidence that all of the children who were rounded up and put into foster care were in immediate danger of physical or sexual abuse.
That state’s Supreme Court affirmed the decision.
The Texas Department of Family and Protective Services had said all the children at the Yearning for Zion Ranch in west Texas were at risk because they lived communally under a religion that sanctioned marriage between underage girls and older men.
If, in fact, these marriages are taking place in violation of state law, prosecute the perpetrators.
But do it the old-fashioned way — case by case.
snip
http://www.sltrib.com/News/ci_9436377
FLDS standoff
Meeting on kids’ fate gets nowhere
Children’s return in doubt as judge fails to vacate her order
By Brooke Adams and Julia Lyon
The Salt Lake Tribune
Article Last Updated:05/31/2008 04:15:58 AM MDT
SAN ANGELO, Texas - Hundreds of children of a polygamous sect were no closer to going home Friday when 51st District Judge Barbara Walther left the bench without abandoning her order keeping them in state custody.
Two higher courts have told Walther to do so.
But the judge abruptly ended a four-hour conference with attorneys after being challenged about changes she made to a negotiated plan to return the FLDS children home.
Before leaving the courtroom, Walther told attorneys to work on an agreement and get it signed by the 38 mothers who appealed her earlier order holding the children in state custody - something that will take days, lawyers said.
That “essentially incarcerates the children and the mothers of our children for another 48 hours,” said Laura Shockley, a Dallas attorney, moments after startled lawyers filed out of the Tom Green County Courthouse.
Texas child welfare workers have alleged that the sect promotes marriage between underage girls and older men, and that boys are groomed to continue the practice.
About 450 children taken from the YFZ Ranch, home to members of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, remain for now in shelters across Texas.
The children were taken from the YFZ Ranch in Eldorado between April 3 and April 5, based on the state’s fear that children were being sexually and physically abused.
“It is a very sad demonstration of the legal system when a judge throws a tantrum and is not willing to sit at the table long enough to resolve the problem of getting little children back home,” said Willie Jessop, an FLDS member and spokesman.
Attorneys for parents and the state arrived at the court with an agreement that called for children to be reunited with their parents beginning Monday.
Walther called a recess to allow attorneys to review the deal, but came back an hour later with her own “tweaked” version, which she said would apply to all the FLDS children.
snip
http://www.telegram.com/article/20080531/NEWS/805310324/1020
The right decision
Texas court rules state overstepped authority
The Texas Supreme Court has ruled properly that state authorities were unjustified in taking more than 400 children from their parents in a religious community. “On the record before us,” the court ruled, “removal of the children was not warranted.”
Indeed, it was apparent from the start that the raid by child protective officials on the Yearning For Zion Ranch almost two months ago — on the basis of a single, unverified phoned-in allegation of abuse — was a dubious action at best. Authorities’ conviction that there was a cycle of child abuse within the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints seems to have been founded largely on rumor and speculation rather than evidence approaching probable cause.
It may well be that serious crimes were committed at the ranch in West Texas. As we have said before, if members of the sect took multiple “wives” or engaged in incest or statutory rape, they should be prosecuted to the full extent of the law. As the court ruled, however, authorities had no basis for taking hundreds of children from their parents — and the only home many of them have known — and shipping them off to temporary group homes around the state. In doing so, the state trampled the most fundamental principles of due process.
snip
Could be a long fight just to get the agreement to go home hashed out.
I look for motions Monday morning to have Crazy Judge Walther removed from this case and ultimately from the bench. We say all this happen in Durham during the Lacrosse Frame. It is still going on. Several Judges up there need to go to jail, as does Walther. Also look for complaints to be filed with the Texas Bar. Judges cannot flip off their State Supreme Court and get away with it.
After browsing through the newspapers this morning, it appears the CPS and the Texas “justice system” is loosing the PR battle badly.
We did see it with the Duke case. I can’t imagine that her actions won’t yank someone’s chain higher up. She has been a rogue from the beginning and doesn’t like to hear long arguments obviously.
I am beginning to suspect collusion between the judge, the phone caller, the CPS, and the local police. Either that or sheer idiocy, but I am starting to lean toward the former.
Thank God, sanity and rule of law wins the day and people understand that. I get worried watching posters here sometimes. Seems that PR battle is a bit lost here though on the top side - http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/backroom/2023187/posts?page=911#911
Never seen that before. One long time poster banned.
Anyway I hope that they put their egos’ aside and start taking each individual case separately, and making the most of the opportunity to put an end to the law breaking and abuse, if it actually occurs rather than try and convict and take away children on thought crime.
She's a member of the Oligarch of Robes.
Get with the program!
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