What the
state of
The
actions of the state of Texas child custody services posed a great risk to all Christian
families as it would have set a precedence for the removal of children for religious
beliefs, second guessing peoples thoughts, and bible teaching. Understand that home schooling parents were in
danger here in
Also
another very troubling event related with all this is that the age of consent
in Texas had been 14 years old and the state arbitrarily raised the age of
consent to 16 in effect setting up a trap specifically to make those in the
FLDS compound law breakers This has been reported in a number of news
articles and reported that it was done specifically towards the presence of
the FLDS compound.
Once the
raid was done they reported that a small number women there had In times past
had children before they were 18 years of age which threw up a lot of dust as
Texas had raised the law to 16, and that shortly before that it had been
14.
Thought
the state has the right to change the law regarding the age of consent it seems
that it is illegal to have altered the law so that they might entrap FLDS
members and to retroactively entrap them after the fact that they had
originally been in compliance what was law and more than likely were obeying
the new law but they had in times past not been incompliance to the new law
before it was ever made.
What
should have been done? Instead of a raid state officials should have met with
FLDS members talked with them about these laws, and that any practice of underage
marriage within the borders of
As it was after the raid health care workers examined all the women
and children and no sexual abuse was
found and all were found to be healthy and happy and this evidence was used to
reverse all that was done by child care services in the raid.
The Third Court of Appeals
in
It was not clear when the children
now scattered in foster homes across the state might be returned to their
parents. The ruling gave a lower-court judge 10 days to release the youngsters
from custody, but the state could appeal to the Texas Supreme Court
and block that.
The decision in one of the biggest
child-custody cases in
"It's a great day for
Sect elder Willie Jessop said the
parents were elated, but added: "There will be no celebrations until some
little children are getting hugs from their parents." He said his faith in
the legal system will be restored "when I see the schoolyard full of
children."
Every child at the Yearning For Zion Ranch in Eldorado was
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.
Child-protection officials argued that
five girls at the ranch had become pregnant at 15 and 16 and that the sect
pushed underage
girls into marriage and sex with older men and groomed boys to enter
into such unions when they grew up.
But the appeals court said the state
acted too hastily in sweeping up all the children and taking them away on an
emergency basis without going to court first.
"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 state failed to show that any more than
five of the teenage girls were being sexually abused, and offered no evidence
of sexual or physical abuse against the other children. Half the youngsters
taken from the ranch were 5 or younger. Only a few dozen are teenage girls.
The court also said the state was wrong to consider the
entire ranch as a single household and to seize all the children on the grounds
that some parents in the home might be abusers.
CPS spokesman Patrick Crimmins said department attorneys had not decided whether
to appeal. "We are trying to assess the impact that this may have on our
case," he said.
CPS's
umbrella agency, the Department of Family and Protective Services, issued a
statement defending the raid, saying it removed the children "after
finding a pervasive pattern of sexual abuse that puts every child at the ranch
at risk."
"Child Protective Services
has one duty to protect children. When we see evidence that children have
been sexually abused and remain at risk of further abuse, we will act,"
the department said.
The decision technically applies to only 38 of the roughly
200 parents who challenged the seizure. But Balovich
said she expected attorneys for all the other parents to seek to join the
ruling.
Balovich
said the court "has stood up for the legal rights of these families and
given these mothers hope that their families will be brought back
together."
Of the 31 people the state initially said were underage
mothers, 15 have been reclassified as adults, and one is 27.
Five judges in
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 there in their trademark prairie dresses and braided hair.
CPS 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 sprawling state,
with some brothers or sisters separated by as much as 600 miles.