Posted on 05/22/2008 10:46:31 AM PDT by ElkGroveDan
SAN ANGELO, Texas - A state appellate court has ruled that child welfare officials had no right to seize more than 400 children living at a polygamist sect's ranch.
The Third Court of Appeals in Austin ruled that the grounds for removing the children were "legally and factually insufficient" under Texas law. They did not immediately order the return of the children.
Child welfare officials removed the children on the grounds that the sect pushed underage girls into marriage and sex and trained boys to become future perpetrators.
The appellate court ruled the chaotic hearing held last month did not demonstrate the children were in any immediate danger, the only measure of taking children from their homes without court proceedings.
How nice for you to thwart the real issue here. A pregnant teenager ny another teen is not what we are talking about here. It is a CHILD raped by a pedephile freak much older telling her she will go to hell if she doesn’t. Nice comparison...NOT!
Do you beleive that a pregnant teen girl would not be protected (on the outside) if it was found that the father was an older male? Of course not. We see plenty of cases where men go to jail for preying on little girls or young teens.
I'm a Texan. I don't approve of polygamy, but I don't approve of the government breaking the law either.
Please cite ONE post on this thread where someone states that they think nothing abusive was going on at the cult’s compound.
Many people cite a lack of PROOF, but that is NOT the same thing as saying they think nothing happened.
Isn’t there something out there called “due process?”
No surprise here, but we’ll continue to watch for what game will be played next in this case?
The only abusive thing I see going on here is with cults like the Texas CPS and our government. They have become corrupt, inept, intrusive and punitive.
Make no mistake, this government behavior, activities and conduct has not been overlooked or missed by most Americans that are capable of critical thinking.
I think most people here would agree with you in that particular instance. However, we haven't seen proof that that has happened.
It gets stickier when you're talking about girls of 16 and 17 years. They can legally marry with parental consent. Maybe the mothers consented to a situation that I never would. Does that mean the girls need to be removed? What if the girls say they agree to the marriage? CAN they be really "willing" having been brought up in that environment?
I don't know.
And whatever happened to the little kids being physically abused? I was assured by a poster that was the reason for removing all of the children.
There is plenty of proof. THERE IS AN INVESTIGATION STILL GOING. The appellate court ruled on the REMOVAL ISSUE ONLY because the YFZ attorney (probably a child rapist himself) ran to the appellate court to protest.
Interesting turn of events. If the judge currently administering the case hasn’t been able to go over all the proof as it is building, how is the appellate court judge able to make the determination that there is no proof? Sounds like a bought and paid for judge.
An interesting thought..
I wonder how many of the mothers & older teens would return if given the option
and the alternative would be to NOT return but to be taken care of and protected financially/emotionally through this
Minor girls being forced to bear children with 40+ year old men...isn’t that proof?
What a stupid comparison.
If there is PROOF already, why are there no charges?
Heavens! A lawyer protested the removal of hundreds of children from their mothers. What a crybaby...
Seems like the appeals court judge might have ignored some evidence he didn't like, and ruled about as narrowly as he could have, not that narrow rulings are always a bad idea.
He ruled that the CPS (and the family court judge) had improperly treated all the families on the ranch as a single household. That makes it much harder to justify the removal of all the children.
He seems to have ignored the fact that these people had to have known that some of their members were abusing children, did nothing about it, and allowed those people to interact with their own children.
He shot down the idea that they boys were abused because they were being brought up in an environment that taught abuse, which was obviously a huge stretch, and without treating the ranch as one big household, they can't say that most of the boys were living in a household in which someone was being abused.
There wasn't evidence that the prepubescent girls were at risk of direct abuse, so if they weren't from the same household as one of the pregnant minors, it's hard to justify them remaining in custody as well.
Same with the older girls that were not abused and were not from the same household.
It sounded like the adults in the same household as the children which sexual abuse was alleged were not among those appealing the ruling, so it seems likely that the kids from those households will remain in custody.
I'm sure this will be appealed and the CPS will submit any new evidence they have gained to this point, but unless the ruling that they are not one household is overturned, it sounds like most of the children will be returned to their parents while this case makes its way through the legal system rather than them remaining in custody while the case goes through the system.
It just seems strange to me that things like the CPS not even being able to determine which children were from which household at the time were completely ignored by the appeals court judge.
That problem might have justified their actions at the time, but since the appeals court has ignored it, and it will likely be resolved by the time this ruling is appealed, there is no reason to appeal his ruling based on ignoring that issue. If he ignores the thing that might have justified their actions he gets to slam the CPS and the lower court, but his own ruling doesn't have to stand up to appeal because the case will have moved beyond those issues by the time it could be appealed.
It seems like the judge is trashing the CPS and lower court, ignoring some of the issues, and then giving them time to address those issues by not ordering the children returned immediately.
Sounds like a bit of politics going on behind the scene, but he does seem to justify his ruling quite well. It's only the omissions of some issues that makes me wonder about it.
They should be released to their parents immediately.
Good plan.
I know a woman whose ex's family did everything possible to take her son and daughter away. I think they just thought her children were pretty. Her sister-in-law would make comments like: "I want the girl." Because they had money and connections and she didn't, they made her life a living hell for years over custody and visitation. Only recently, the courts finally have begun ruling in her favor.
Absolutely true! However, this is why there is an INVESTIGATION still going on. I live in Round Rock. I hope they shut the whole mess down.
I also can’t wait for the felony non-support of dependents cases to hit the courts and the welfare fraud cases. Looks like these people won’t keep their kids for very long. Oh, I forgot. They will just send them to other cult mommies and daddies to be raped if they are girls and tossed out into society if they are boys.
I think we need have the law clarified to allow state removal of children based on professed or demonstrated allegiance of the parents to a group which explicitly promotes illegal activities that can reasonably be expected to cause serious harm to children. We need to stop looking only at the comparison with good parents who may harbor unpopular religious or political beliefs, and start looking at the comparison with groups like NAMBLA and radical Muslim groups that send their children to schools where they’re taught that they should aspire to blow themselves up and kill “infidels” in the process.
Using the radical Muslims as an example, I don’t think we should have to show that one child in the family has already blown himself up in order to remove the others, or that the parents have already provided the child with an explosives belt and instructions to use it on a certain date in a certain place, nor do I think we should only remove the boys if the school is only teaching boys that they should aspire to blow themselves up.
The beliefs and practices of the FLDS are well-documented. Their “prophet” has already been convicted of one sex crime involving a minor and is currently on trial for several more. Yet these parents at the YFZ ranch still had the “prophet’s” picture displayed in all the homes, and in every school classroom, and all the young girls interviewed by CPS said they would eagerly marry whoever the “prophet” told them to, regardless of their own age at the time, or the man’s age. In my book that’s plenty of justification to remove ALL the children.
Most of the people here who are criticizing the removal of the FLDS children would be eagerly supporting an identical action, if the compound had been run by NAMBLA, and all the children had been attending a NAMBLA-run school where they were taught that it’s just wonderful for grown men to have sex with little boys. I don’t believe for a second that any of the critics of the FLDS removal would be saying that we have no right to remove all the underage boys from the NAMBLA compound unless it can be proven that each child removed has already been raped.
....and they could tell that minor girls were being forced to have babies by 40 year old men, just by looking around? I don’t think so.
“The state never provided evidence that the children were in any immediate danger,...It also failed to show evidence that more than five of the teenage girls were being sexually abused, and never alleged any sexual or physical abuse against the other children,” the court said
NO EVIDENCE! NO CHILD RAPE! NO PREGNANT TEENS! NO CHILD IN ANY IMMEDIATE DANGER!
Go figure. CPS lied.
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