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.
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.