A group of women from a polygamist sect’s Texas ranch returned to the compound Monday after authorities separated them from the 400-plus children now in state custody.
State troopers escort buses carrying children being relocated to the San Angelo Coliseum on Monday.
Rhonda Jeffs, mother of two of the children and a spokeswoman for the other women, said mothers of children 5 and older were told they could not remain with the children but could go back to the ranch or to a women’s shelter.
The number of women who chose to return was not immediately known, but it appeared to be fewer than the 130 who had accompanied the children taken after an April 4 raid on the compound.
“We wanted to come home,” Jeffs said. “Where else would we want to go? They didn’t even let us say goodbye to our children.”
In West Texas,dozens of lawyers squeezed into a courtroom Monday[/color] as a judge started to sort out how to handle the custody battles of the 416 children taken from the sect’s ranch.
Since each child must have representation in court, an overflow crowd packed the Tom Green County courthouse as Judge Barbara Walther tried to marshal attorneys from across the state for the case.
Sounds like another full-employment act for lawyers…
Yes that is sickening. They still have not found the 16 year old girl who they claim was living in FLDS colony and being abuse that was the stated reason for the raid. And the man they claim was abusing her seems to have been in Utah the whole time. They have not shown any evidence this girl even exists.
Rhonda Jeffs, mother of two of the children and a spokeswoman for the other women, said mothers of children 5 and older were told they could not remain with the children but could go back to the ranch or to a women’s shelter… “We wanted to come home,” Jeffs said. “Where else would we want to go? They didn’t even let us say goodbye to our children.”
Sounds like another full-employment act for lawyers…
When police officers armed with weapons and protective gear descended on a West Texas ranch owned by a polygamist church, its members responded by going to their knees in prayer.
Images released Tuesday show police entering the Yearning for Zion ranch on April 3 wearing body armor and carrying automatic weapons, backed by an armored personnel carrier.
“They responded by singing and praying,” said Rod Parker, a Salt Lake City attorney who serves as a spokesman for the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. He released four still photos and a slice of video to The Associated Press.
I am not completely sure of the accuracy of everything in these two articles, but they have good photographic documentation and are worth reading. But he is most right that “This Texas Raid Is Really A Travesty.”
Polygamy Trail Leads to Colorado
Texas Rangers Take Part in Arrest of Woman Who Allegedly Made Hoax Call in Colorado
Texas Rangers participated in the arrest of a Colorado woman who allegedly pretended to be a girl locked in a basement. The Rangers were in the state as part of their investigation into the Texas polygamy custody battle, local police told ABC News.
Judge rules state will retain custody of FLDS children
By Brooke Adams and Kristen Moulton
The Salt Lake Tribune
Article Last Updated: 04/18/2008 06:55:54 PM MDT
Posted: 6:54 PM- SAN ANGELO, Texas - District Court Judge Barbara Walther has ruled all 416 FLDS children will remain in state custody, and that the state has met its burden of proof required by law.
Walther told the parents they must work with Texas Child Protective Services, and informed them she is able to restrict their parental rights or even terminate them. She also ordered maternity and paternity testing of both mothers and fathers, and said DNA samples will be collected from children Monday.
Many parents dropped their heads in sadness and walked out, one by one, upon hearing the ruling. Richard, an FLDS father of seven children in state custody who declined to provide his last name, said :"It’s just a continuation of a bad thing.”
An attorney representing two children, ages 8 and 9, left the city hall auditorium in tears. Deborah Cascino said she had mixed feelings about the judge’s order.
“I just feel sorry for the parents, and I feel sorry for the children,” said Cascino, who has been a family lawyer for four years and said she knows parents always want their children back.
Whether the judge made the right ruling, she said, only time will tell.
Shortly before the ruling, FLDS mothers testified they were willing to do whatever the judge required, including moving away from the sect’s
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YFZ ranch and getting jobs, to regain custody of their children.
After seeing pictures of Mexican and Black men in law enforcement uniforms herding all these White women and children onto buses, now this! Where is a countryman’s community of men to rise up and say, “ENOUGH! Return the children to their parents!” But we’re an abomi-Nation, now, and spy on each other and betray one another to the “government.” I am physically ill.
What this says is that any distinct group of people can be targeted and destroyed. Texas actually raised the age of consent in order to entrap the FLDS, although the principal opponent to the FLDS would have said it was to protect the girls..
In 2005, the sect’s relocation to his district prompted Rep. Harvey Hilderbran, R-Kerrville, to push for changes in the marriage law, including increasing the minimum age at which teenagers can marry to 16, if they get parental consent or a court order. Previous law allowed someone as young as 14 to get married with parental consent.
Hilderbran seems to have been the prime mover behind the opposition to the FLDS.
“Had this bill not passed, there would have been quite a few of them that were married and were pregnant for instance or married with kids that were under 16 that they could not have done much about,” Hilderbran said. “I’ve got some pride in it. It’s one of those things I knew it was the right thing to do.”
Whether or not one likes polygamy or the marriage of the very young, one must be aware of this as precedent, as Waco was precedent, and not expect our government to respect our rights.
As you said before; “things are very bad for young women today in the general culture, and many are brainwashed to think this is normal.” I ask why aren’t they arresting Planned Parenthood staffers for facilitating the sexual abuse of young girls? Why is it ok for young girls should be taught that fornication is normal by “sex educators,” or put on “pill,” and passed around and abused by young perverts? And this is funded by the same government that attacks the FLDS Church?
It’s no secret that the State of Texas has been itching for a confrontation with the FLDS ever since their arrival in Texas in 2003. The problem wasn’t with their isolationist or patriarchal behavior. If that was the case, then every Christian fundamentalist in the state would have to be rounded up. Mennonites in my part of the world require their girls and women to wear funny costumes, while the boys and men wear regular clothes. I’m sure that the FLDS doesn’t have the market cornered when it comes to strict patriarchal religious dogma. If allegations of child abuse are grounds for raiding a church’s property and executing a wholesale roundup of all of its members, then why aren’t all the Catholic churches and schools in America padlocked and all their occupants warehoused? Why aren’t SWAT teams sent into Amish enclaves to rescue those women and children who are subjected to a harsh patriarchal lifestyle?
The author of that article makes a good point too and scary from our standpoint, who will the state attack next. The reason why state hates these people is; it sees them as “White Christians,” living outside of the control of cultural marxism and they like to have children. The state wants us dead. My main point was “general culture” has a sickening tolerance for sexual abuse of young girls. The sad truth is there are more and far worse things happening to young girls in the average American high school these days; than in this sect. I was shocked by some of stuff girls talked about or told me when I was a high school student. Well, God bless you for trying to make one of them a little better place.
We try. I am far from the only one who sees the schools as a place to make a difference.
Yes, society as a whole is completely willing to sexualize and misuse young girls; and the girls in mainstream society are complicit in it. Watch enough entertainment on MTV and you (a girl, that is) would want to be like the women portrayed there...sin is portrayed as glamorous. And let’s not even think about BET…
God bless and keep our young ladies.
Laurel
p.s. Sometimes I think the reason the FLDS attracted negative attention is because the younger girls who were married and sexually active had children. I wonder if anyone would have taken note if they had not had children? If a 14 year old public school student is having sex, no one notices unless she gets pregnant or comes down with an STD. Sad, huh?
The mental images and opinions being shaped by the visual media coverage are more than disconcerting. Modestly dressed white women with long hair, little girls who don’t act or look like Britney Spears, dads present, boys who aren’t slouching around with their eyes half closed and their gluteals hanging out, not public schooled.....Hey! That could almost be MY family!!!!! I am aware of a sneaking feeling rising up inside that I have to justify myself everytime we are in public. Yes, the community snitches are being well conditioned to serve faithfully in rooting out elements harmful to the NEW AMERIKA… “for the sake of the children,” of course.
