Posted on 06/10/2008 8:51:53 AM PDT by abb
As a district judge heard the state's case for keeping children from a polygamous sect in custody, hundreds of electronic and telephone messages were pouring into Texas Gov. Rick Perry's office.
They came from around the country - including Utah - and most made the same point: Send the children home to their mothers.
By April 17, three days after separating mothers from their children, the office had received 449 messages opposed to the removal of the children and just 32 from people who supported it.
"If you do nothing to protect these rights, you can be assured that you will not have my vote now or ever in the future," one Texan wrote.
"Do something!!!" said another.
Yet, Perry kept his distance from events unfolding in west Texas. Through his staff, Perry said only that he was in full support of the Department of Family and Protective Services - a position he reiterated last week in an interview with a Texas newspaper.
The public response to the removal of about 450 children from the Yearning for Zion Ranch in Eldorado is included in nearly 3,000 pages of documents acquired by the sect through a records request and provided to The Salt Lake Tribune.
The documents show that in late March, Texas Rangers and Child Protective Services were independently contacted about an abused girl at the YFZ Ranch and had begun separate investigations.
As CPS prepared to visit the ranch, Texas Rangers asked the agency to hold off until it readied its own response. That helps explain why four days lapsed between the call - now known to be a hoax - and the raid, initiated on April 3.
The documents show high-level state officials received hourly updates as law officers entered the ranch and began removing children, taking them first to Eldorado and then to a fort in San Angelo.
The inadequate shelter conditions at Fort Concho were quickly apparent. An April 7 e-mail states: "We have reached the saturation point in San Angelo and some of the buildings do not have air conditioning, which is a problem."
That led the state to look for another shelter and within a day it had settled on a Salvation Army facility in Midlothian. As part of the move, it planned to separate adult mothers from children. But there was a snag, according to an April 8 e-mail: The Salvation Army wanted no part of the conflict and asked that the separation occur elsewhere.
But the move to another county was nixed and the state devised a new plan, relocation to the San Angelo Coliseum - a move that again included the "highly complicated and risky operation" of separating out adult women.
The women were to be told only that they were moving to the coliseum, the e-mails show.
Officials feared that some women were planning to escape, so they increased the number of staff and law officers. They also took steps to remove three "first" wives - older women, apparently - who seemed to hold sway over other women.
State officials kept tabs on media reports from across the country and circulated talking points to ensure public comments stayed consistent and on target.
Kathy Walt, Perry's deputy chief of staff, said in an April 18 e-mail that if media were "overlooking" testimony about alleged abuse, the staff should give reporters court documents and "talk the issues over with them."
brooke@sltrib.com
Perhaps a fubared frame.
The Governor’s mansion in TX just burned down. I wonder if there is a connection.
Those children should never have been taken away from the parents to begin with.
Title says, “parents.” But the article refers only to “mothers.” Not both parents.
How can you "escape" if you aren't being held against your will? And how can you be held against your will without charges being filed?
No just a bunch of weirdness. Wanting those kids back in that nutty situation is insane.
It is one thing to individually and genericly “wnat the child with its parent”. It’s another thing to want to turn kids over to a heretical pack of cultists looking to “spiritually wed” their 12 year old daughters off to nasty old farts.
So now we know all those stories about the LEO’s having observed this or that at the compound and deciding to remove the children were lies also. They went there intending to remove the children from the start.
Definitely a source of differences of opinion on this issue. I’ve noticed that like the Texas Supreme Court we have some Freepers with a very high degree of toleration for child rape, provided, of course, it’s kept inside the “extended family”.
The “talking points” thing is remarkably similar to former Durham DA Mike Nifong’s strategy. It didn’t work for him, either.
Gov. Perry KUDOS!!!
This is a very confounding set of events.
1) You have the multiple marriage and underage sex thing, both against the law; and rightfully so IMO. Laws on the books, clear path to prosecute all offenders.
2) You have a bunch of men (FLDS) who have designed a way of acting out, documenting and communicating about said behaviors in such a way that makes it nearly impossible to prosecute.
3) Prosecutors become frustrated and overreach; take custody of the children with scant if any *real* evidence of a crime. This is sad but true if you truly believe in innocent until proven guilty.
4) As a result of overreaching, the victims become the ones being punished and held against their will. The would be offenders in this case are left at home to settle with satisfying their sexual proclivities with the women of age.
5) Public cries out about the treatment of the children by authorities and right back to the love nest they go.
The prosecutors need warrants for the arrest of the true offenders here, but how to prove the crimes? I don’t blame the governor one bit for asking them to get the hell out of Texas. It’s a cruel hoax being played out at the expense of innocents - boys and girls.
Best of luck on judgment day to anyone defending this as a religious practice.
Coming soon to a CPS department near you. Well, maybe, if CPS can win a PR victory with the FLDS raid.
Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me. : Matthew 25:40
If the Texas CPS was actually in the business of protecting the children at the FLDS ranch, they'd have actually had some evidence, presented it to a judge and gotten valid arrest warrants for the people involved, based upon the testimony of the informer that the sheriff had inside the ranch for four years.
But no, they decided to just get a search warrant based on basically no evidence, unless you count a pseudo-anonymous phone call casting allegations against people that didn't even live at the ranch.
That makes it much more likely to be a test of how far the CPS department could reach rather than a genuine attempt to help the FLDS children.
As it is now, CPS has basically tainted all of the evidence though their high-handed witch hunt and now the chance of actually prosecuting any child abusers inside the FLDS ranch is is practically zero.
Which any first year law student could have told them before they started all this.
It's not like a governmental department like CPS hasn't had dealings with the justice system and is ignorant of the rules of evidence.
So, since they knew what it was they were legally required to do and then didn't do it, one has to ask, "What exactly was the purpose of this evolution?"
My suggested answer to that question is my modification of your response which I posted above.
The county sheriff had an informant inside the ranch for four years. A male.
If there were evidence of crimes one would think that someone on the inside like that would have witnessed it.
So we have to believe one of two things.
The informant saw nothing illegal there in the last four years.
Or,
The informant reported illegal activity and the sheriff chose not to get arrest warrants based on those reports.
On the other hand, I have had the unenviable position of dealing professionally with the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services (DCFS), which I have affectionately renamed “Don't Call for Service”, which is a more accurate description of the agency.
I have witnessed, personally, them leaving kids in situations where there were being severely beat and the report comes back “unfounded”. I have witnessed severe neglect cases where the parent was a crack head and the report comes back unfounded. Over the years there have been many cases where they have “reunified” children with mentally ill, drug addicted, parents who have killed their children.
I have also witnessed when students were an annoyance in school and the parents refused to place the child on Ritalin and DCFS took them to court for medical neglect (something which a number of lawsuits finally put an end to).
I have also seen them, without evidence, take children too many times to count, because a divorcing spouse alleges abuse to further their divorce settlement.
I have witnessed cases where they will go out of their way with every resource imaginable to support neglectful 14 year old, inner city mother (and not take the child), while pulling a child from a stable two parent family with little to no evidence.
In my opinion of my dealings with them, most of their workers are overworked, incompetent, and full of themselves and their “power”. When they want to go after someone, they do.
So forgive me if I have a rather jaundiced view of this government agency that is supposed to “protect” children.
This appeared to me that most of the “facts” were unsubstantiated and unproven by the Texas Family Services agency and apparently the Judge agreed. Additionally, it is an absolute abuse of power to pull hundreds of kids out of their homes. If they had specific allegations of instances of individual children being abused, they should have followed the law and their department policies and investigated the cases individually. But that clearly was not their agenda and they do not have the resources or manpower to have done that.
While your post is interesting it really should have been posted in reply to the original article. It had nothing to do with me or my post.
Unless, “In as much as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me. : Matthew 25:40” only counts for perverts and rapists then I wouldn’t want you kept away from the Bema Seat for a deliberate misrepresentation of the Lord’s words. I’m the least too. Try not to distort my words.
I found that very odd too, that adults not charged or convicted in the US could “escape.”
Actually, it did.
If the Texas CPS can grab children from their parents without charging someone with a crime simply because they can allege wrongdoing in the home, then they can do the same to anyone. Provided they can whip up public sentiment against that group first.
The passage from scripture is therefore quite apt.
NOTHING explains why four days elapsed between the call and the attempted rescue. This was sufficient time to track the source of the calls and would have been an absolute necessity to guard against the possibility that the victim was mistaken about her location.
How do those of you who suggest that we are "molester defenders" explain this delay and the lack of attention to the source of the call?
There was plenty of evidence. Maybe they overstepped and maybe they didn’t but clearly at least SOME of these children were abused. These families ALL lived in a comunal home. Therefore the children were all at risk.
Also, if you choose to equate 13 year olds forced into marriage with old men and 12 year olds being homeschooled, that’s your business but I don’t think most homeschoolers would appreciate it.
CPS has plenty of problems but they did this one just fine as far I’m concerned. It aint over until the fat lady sings and she aint sung yet. More will come out of this and I hope plenty of these FLDS nut cases end up in jail.
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