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.
Exactly.
Poor woman. God Bless her. She must have tremedous faith and God was not about to fail her.
Ummmm..a 14-year old just gave birth to a child and is scared to name the father.
Oh, I forgot...there is a record number of men from the compound who disappeared...making sure they cannot be present for DNA testing.
Huh? I hadn’t read that? I thought the two born in captivity were proven to be 22 and 27. Maybe I got the wrong information....
Please point to who and where they said they approve of what the FLDS was doing.
Please point to who and where they said they approve of what the FLDS was doing.
No, not really because Texas does have a statue regarding common-law marriage called “informal marriage” however, the water is muddy because minors cannot enter into it. So in a sense, yet, they are polygamists but then again, the wives are mostly minors.
Also, this particular issue of polygamists wanting others, legal systems, etc to accept their right to have more than one wife doesn’t reconcile the fact that they are now denying certain element of their “religion” to hide from investigators.
This is a brilliant insight. "Village" is in reality a euphemism for 1984 Big Brother monolithic all-powerful government armed to the teeth and holding absolute power over defenseless citizens. This is what they say we need "to raise a child."
I don’t know about a Swingers Club, though. Arent’ those clubs with age accepted people who are clearly volunteering to be in that situation?
I have called it a child rape factory. They breed kids over and over...keeping ALL the girls and almost none of the boys when the boys get old enough.
CPS in my state, especially in the county I lived in, is like this.
My brother (who had sole custody of this children) took his daughter to the doctor after the grandmother of his ex-wife reported his daughter having a rash in her vaginal area. My brother and a former girlfriend of mine (who was babysitting his children on a regular basis over a two week period) took his daughter to a doctor. The doctor examined my brother's daughter, said it was not caused by any vaginal penetration, but was just a rash - and wrote a script for medication. A few hours later, the police and CPS show up my brother's door. The grandmother reported the rash to CPS and her belief it was due to sexual abuse. I got a call from the police department and they wanted me to talk to my brother who was at the police station (without an attorney - that was dumb) to convince him to confess and to "get the help he needs." I remember that phrase as clear now as it was back in 1995.
My brother's daughter was over at my parents while my brother was being questioned. The police let me brother go after questioning of several hours. I later found out that the police and CPS "just knew" - exact quote - that my brother had molested his daughter, and that they would prove it.
Eventually, CPS had to drop their complaint, but my brother was placed in a state system which retained or ten years all complaints of suspected child abuse which are not proven.
My brother appealed this decision of placement in the state tracking system and filed a complaint with a state administrative law judge. The county CPS and police testified. My brother represented himself. The doctor who initially examined my brother's daughter indicated that he had told my brother he believed that the rash was due to some sort of sexual abuse. My brother sat slack jawed
My brother then called in my old girlfriend. What CPS and the police did not know was that she also worked for CPS - in a neighboring county. She was admitted as an expert witness and my brother said that for the rest of the hearing, the CPS case worker who claimed he had abuse his daughter just stared at the floor. She (old girlfriend) told the ALJ that the doctor had NEVER indicated that the rash was due to sexual abuse. Further, she indicated that she had been watching my brother's daughter for going on two weeks prior to the alleged sexual abuse and that she had never seen any evidence of sexual abuse, etc, etc.
The ALJ ordered the removal of the record in the state system which tracks complaints of child abuse, indicating that the CPS and police both overstepped their bounds. It was exceedingly rare to get such complaints removed from the state system.
The point of this long story is that 1) once some people get it in their mind that something has occurred, they will do what they can to end up with that being the outcome, regardless of evidence.
My brother now has his children. The court terminated the parental rights of his ex-wife. They are good kids, high honor roll, but for a time, the county was gunning for him, and instead of finding all the evidence, apparently was picking evidence which made it's case - and nothing more.
Unfortunately in this case, everything they have learned to this point is poisoned by the original actions. I suspect the judges will toss all evidence at this point.
I'm amused that the government will "investigate" crime rings for years on end, all the while knowing there are human costs all along the timeline, to generate those big headlines.
The children from those households may remain in custody because there is evidence that sexual abuse occurred in those households.
There are also 5 girls that allegedly became pregnant at age 15 or 16 that are still minors.
The ruling doesn't appear to direct that they be returned to those households, and it seems possible that every child from those households might remain in custody.
There doesn't seem to be evidence of direct abuse to prepubescent girls or any boys, but the law does consider them to be in danger of abuse if the household contains someone who has abused another child.
However, if the men from those households leave, the mothers may regain custody of the children since that would appear to remove the clear threat of abuse.
This doesn't however mean that these people won't all lose their children again IF criminal charges are filed and it is proven that they either abused children or were complicit in that abuse. However, in the meantime, it seems likely that most of the children will be reunited with their mothers.
However, if the evidence does show that girls were abused, I sincerely hope that any adult that was complicit ends up in jail.
“Apparently there are five. The adult members of those households don’t appear to be among those that filed this particular appeal.”
Because they are hiding. So much for their beleifs in what they are doing. They know damn well they were wrong. But, since they got away with it in Utah, Arizona and Colorado, why not Texas?
I agree with you. But I also have a *HUGE* problem with representatives of our government lying and breaking the law. Yes, the situation needs attention and *should* be investigated, but people in positions of authority can't abuse their power in the process.
You are so wrong. Whereas the MEN received work contracts and money coming in from such, the women, or girls who were NOT LEGALLY married to the men were and are collecting welfare for those kids. They have a whole book on how to “bleed the beast” and coach the women what to say and do at the welfare office.
The other day I was watching the Oscar-winning movie "Tender Mercies," one of the gentlest and most Christian movies ever made in Hollywood (because it was financed by Robert Duvall and Horton Foote -- not by a Hollywood studio). The movie takes place in the middle of Texas. The mother says to her son, "I was 16 when I married your Daddy, and 17 when I had you, and 18 when I became a widow" (during Vietnam).
Here I thought I was watching a touching story of love and redemption, but according to the lynch mob here at FR, it turns out the movie was really about a child-rape cult.
“CPS exists to protect children, and they are conditioned to do so.”
In my limited experience, there is no one more arrogant and aggravating that some social worker with a head full of theory and little successful life experience. Yet, these people are frequently making decisions that tear families apart. I wouldn’t trust CPS as far as I could thrown them.
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