Subject: Court: Texas Had No Right to Seize Children at Polygamist Ranch Thu May 22, 2008 7:31 pm
A Texas appeals court ruled today that state child welfare authorities had no right to seize dozens of children living at the ranch of a polygamist religious sect, saying they were in no immediate danger of abuse.
The 3rd Court of Appeals in Austin ruled in favor of 48 mothers seeking the return of more than 130 children who had been living at a ranch near Eldorado, Tex., associated with the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.
An attorney for the women said the ruling is likely to become a precedent for other mothers seeking the return of the 468 children in all who were taken from the ranch last month by the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services.
Texas authorities launched a week-long raid on the 1,700-acre Yearning for Zion ranch starting April 3 after receiving an anonymous tip that underage girls were being forced to marry older men and bear children. Under Texas law, girls younger than 16 are not allowed to marry, even with their parents' permission.
In its ruling, the appeals court directed a district court to vacate its temporary orders granting custody of the children to the Department of Family and Protective Services. The department can appeal the decision, however, and attorneys for the mothers said it was not immediately clear when they might be reunited with their children.
"It's a great day for families in Texas," said Julie Balovich, an attorney with Texas RioGrande Legal Aid, which represents the 48 mothers in the case. "It's a great day for justice in Texas."
She told reporters that the appeals court decision gives the trial court 10 days to comply. The decision "covers only the mothers we represent," Balovich said. Ultimately, however, "I believe that it's going to apply to all the children and all the mothers," she said.
"The fact that the court would rule this way provides a lot of hope for all the other mothers as well," said Cynthia Martinez, a spokeswoman for the legal aid group. "There's a legal argument they can work with."
In its nine-page ruling, the 3rd Court of Appeals said the Department of Family and Protective Services had failed to prove that there was any danger to the physical health and safety of the children of 38 mothers, that there was any urgent or immediate need to take custody of the children or that it made any reasonable efforts to avoid the removal. Ten other mothers and their children were covered by a second opinion from the court today, Martinez said.
The ruling harshly criticized the department's rationale for acting in the case and refuted the evidence it presented. It said the only danger identified by the department to the prepubescent children was a "pervasive belief system" at the ranch that the department said groomed boys to be perpetrators of sexual abuse later in life and taught the girls to submit to sexual abuse after reaching puberty.
"There was no evidence that the male children, or the female children who had not reached puberty, were victims of sexual or other physical abuse or in danger of being victims of sexual or other physical abuse," the court said in its opinion.
Except for five girls who became pregnant between the ages of 15 and 17, "there was no evidence of any physical abuse or harm to any other child," and none of the five were among the children whose return was being sought by the mothers in the case, it said.
The court said the department conceded that teenage pregnancy by itself is not a reason to take children away from their parents. But the department argued that immediate removal was necessary in this case because of a "mindset" at the ranch encouraging young girls to marry and bear children.
"The Department argues that the fact that there are five minor females living in the ranch community who became pregnant at ages fifteen and sixteen together with the [church's] belief system condoning underage marriage and pregnancy indicates that there is a danger to all of the children that warrants their immediate removal from their homes and parents, and that the need for protection of the children is urgent," the court said in its ruling.
"Evidence that children raised in this particular environment may someday have their physical health and safety threatened is not evidence that the danger is imminent enough to warrant invoking the extreme measure of immediate removal prior to full litigation of the issue as required" under Texas law, the court said.
The ruling came amid a series of hearings in San Angelo, Tex., designed to establish procedures for parents at the ranch to regain custody of their children. The hearings have been marked by confusion over the ages and identities of both children and parents in the case.
During the course of the hearings, child welfare authorities have acknowledged that a number of those in custody who were originally identified as underage mothers are actually adults. Officials initially listed 31 young mothers taken from the ranch as being underage. They were placed in child foster care along with the hundreds of children who were seized.
But as of today, authorities have conceded that 15 of the 31 are really adults, and that one of them is actually 27 years old, the Associated Press reported. A few are as young as 18, but many are at least 20, the agency said.
Another girl listed as an underage mother is 14, but her attorney said in court that she neither has a child nor is pregnant, AP reported.
The sect, known as the FLDS church, was formerly headed by Warren Jeffs, 52, who is currently serving a prison sentence in Utah on charges stemming from his role in arranging illegal marriages between his adult male followers and underage girls. The sect broke away from the Mormon church in the 1930s in an effort to preserve polygamy, which the Mormons had officially renounced.
The FLDS church is estimated to have as many as 10,000 adherents residing in communities in Utah, Arizona, Texas, Colorado and South Dakota, as well as in the Canadian province of British Columbia.
Subject: Corrupt state child welfare authorities on Friday appealed a stinging court ruling Fri May 23, 2008 9:09 pm
Corrupt state child welfare authorities on Friday appealed a stinging court ruling
SAN ANGELO, Texas (AP) — State child welfare authorities on Friday appealed a stinging court ruling that said their seizure of more than 440 children from a polygamist sect's ranch was unjustified, but they also agreed to reunite 12 children with their parents while the case moves on.
The agreement narrowly specifies 12 children, some of whose parents had filed a motion with a state district court in San Antonio for their release from state foster care.
Lori Jessop cried when she and her husband, Joseph, were reunited with their daughter and two sons.
"The little boy just grabbed for his daddy," when CPS workers handed him over, said their attorney Rene Haas.
Child Protective Services spokesman Patrick Crimmins declined to comment on the agreement.
CPS agreed to allow the parents to live with their children in the San Antonio area under state supervision, said Teresa Kelly, a spokeswoman for Haas. The families cannot return to the Yearning For Zion ranch, where they lived before the raid.
Aside from mothers staying with their infants in foster care, no other parents from the west Texas ranch have been allowed to stay with their children.
CPS's case for removing all children from the ranch was thrown into doubt Thursday when the Third Court of Appeals ordered a lower-court judge to rescind her decision giving the state custody of more than 100 of the children. The ruling was broad enough to cover nearly every child swept up in the April raid on the ranch run by the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.
CPS said in its appeal to the Texas Supreme Court that the appeals court was wrong to say that the vast majority of children at the ranch did not face the sort of extreme danger state law requires for them to be removed without a court order. The agency cited evidence it said showed that the church pushed teenage girls into spiritual marriages with older men.
"This case is about adult men commanding sex from underage children; about women knowingly condoning and allowing sexual abuse of underage children; about the need for the department to take action under difficult, time-sensitive and unprecedented circumstances," the state agency said in its appeal.
The state asked to keep the children in foster care while the case is reviewed.
The limited agreement CPS offered covers 12 children who belong to three families.
Lori and Joseph Jessop had been scheduled to appear in Bexar County district court on their motion to release their three children — ages 4, 2 and 1 — but CPS offered the agreement instead, Kelly said.
Similar agreements in the near future are unlikely; the couple filed their motion in a different court than the other families.
State officials said in their Supreme Court filing that it would be impossible to return all children covered in Thursday's ruling because they have not determined which children belong to which parents, and DNA tests were incomplete. The appeals court ruling technically applies only to the 38 mothers who filed the complaint.
In justifying their removal of the children from the ranch, Child Protective Services cited as "documented" sexual abuse a statement from a girl who said she knew a 16-year-old who is married with a 5-month-old baby; and the statement from another girl that "Uncle Merrill" decides who and when she will marry. The state also cited five underage pregnant girls.
Authorities also said the appeals court overstepped in its ruling because a lower court had discretion to rule in the custody case.
Attorneys for the parents whose case is under high-court consideration urged the justices to reject the state's appeal, saying their children "are being subjected to continuing, irreparable harm every day that they are separated from their parents."
Rod Parker, a spokesman for the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, said the appeal was no surprise "although one would hope that at some point they would realize the futility."
The parents were prepared for an extended legal battle, he said.
"They're hopeful to get on with their lives, but in reality, they understand," he said.
The agency accused parents of being uncooperative and not providing proper identification — though in dozens of individual custody hearings this week, parents provided state-issued birth certificates. Other sect members mistakenly believed to be minors also provided drivers' licenses as proof of their age.
The Third Court of Appeals said the state acted hastily.
"Even if one views the FLDS belief system as creating a danger of sexual abuse by grooming boys to be perpetrators of sexual abuse and raising girls to be victims of sexual abuse ... there is no evidence that this danger is 'immediate' or 'urgent,'" the court said.
"Evidence that children raised in this particular environment may someday have their physical health and safety threatened is not evidence that the danger is imminent enough to warrant invoking the extreme measure of immediate removal," the court said.
The children were taken into custody more than six weeks ago after someone called a hot line claiming to be a pregnant, abused teenage wife. The girl has not been found and authorities are investigating whether the calls were a hoax.
Five judges in San Angelo, about 40 miles north of Eldorado, had been holding hearings on what the parents must do to regain custody when the appeals decision was issued. Those hearings were suspended after Thursday's ruling.
The custody case has been chaotic from the beginning. During the first round of hearings, held two weeks after the April 3 raid, hundreds of lawyers crammed into a courtroom and nearby auditorium, queuing up to voice objections or ask questions on behalf of the mothers, who were dressed in trademark prairie dresses and braided hair.
The state conceded this week that at least 15 of the 31 mothers being held in foster care as minors were actually adults; one is 27.
The state has struggled for weeks to establish the identities of the children and sort out their tangled family relationships. The youngsters are in foster homes all over the state, with some brothers or sisters separated by as much as 600 miles.
Subject: Court: Texas Had No Right to Seize Children at Polygamist Ranch 
Thu May 22, 2008 7:31 pm
