Polygamists: Authorities Prepare For the Worst in Texas

Regardless, child welfare authorities say 31 of the 53 girls aged 14-17 have children or are pregnant.

hawkeye10 wrote:

I think that the state will not be able to prosecute if a 16 year old claims to be married to the man she is having sex with, and has a church document to that effect. A court might convict, but it will be a certain appeal. I think that the supremes would have to take the case.

Baloney! If they cannot provide a legitimate marriage license - and they
can't - the alleged "husband" will be charged with statutory rape. No need
to appeal or bother the supreme court. Texas law states it very clearly.

Even a common law marriage between an adult and a minors is illegal.

1) You are wrong about legal history, hawkeye. See Blackstone's Commentaries on the Laws of England (1765), written before there was a state of Texas, or even a US Supreme Court. In his chapter titled "Of Husband and Wife" Blackstone states unambiguously that "OUR law considers marriage in no other light than as a civil contract." That's quite different from your concept of "marriage consecrated by the church and registered with the state".

2) How is this a constitutional case? What are the relevant constitutional provisions that would govern the outcome of this case?

Few answers in Texas
A month after raid on FLDS ranch, authorities have not achieved much resolution
By Nate Carlisle
and Brooke Adams
The Salt Lake Tribune
Article Last Updated: 05/03/2008 08:03:04 AM MDT


SAN ANGELO, Texas - On the one-month anniversary of a massive raid at a polygamous sect's ranch, here are the numbers:
* 599 DNA samples collected;
* 464 children in state custody;
* 16 group shelters caring for the children;
* One warrant canceled;
* No charges issued.
As of Friday, Texas authorities were no longer actively pursuing an Arizona man named in a search and arrest warrant that triggered the April 3 raid at the YFZ Ranch in Eldorado.
From the start, Dale Evans Barlow said - and his probation officer vouched for him - that he knew nothing about the 16-year-old girl whose phone calls claiming abuse led authorities to the ranch. The calls, to a San Angelo family violence shelter, now are being investigated as a possible hoax.
But Texas Child Protective Services said they found other evidence of underage marriage and polygamous marriages at the ranch, owned by the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, that justified removing all 463 children living there. A baby born this week added to the total.
As events unfolded in Texas, Barlow remained at his home in Colorado City, Ariz. Texas Rangers traveled to St. George to interview Barlow but did not arrest him.
The Texas Department of Public Safety canceled the arrest warrant
for Barlow with little explanation.
"The bottom line is the warrant is no longer active," said spokesman Tom Vinger.
Vinger said he did not know when the warrant was canceled. He would not comment on whether the cancellation confirms the girl's calls for help were a hoax.
"We're still investigating that," he said.
The April 3 warrant alleged a 16-year-old girl called the shelter to report she was married to Barlow, 50, and that he was abusing her.
Two weeks later, Texas authorities announced they were investigating Rozita Swinton of Colorado Springs, Colo., who is suspected of making the calls. She has no known connection to the FLDS but does have a documented history of prank calls falsely claiming abuse.
Vinger said detectives have sent evidence regarding the calls to a crime laboratory and may wait for the results before taking a case to prosecutors. "We're known for being extremely thorough," he said.
Rod Parker, a Salt Lake City attorney representing the FLDS, said, "The cancellation of this warrant is just one more piece of evidence that this call was a hoax and the state of Texas did not properly check this out before they raided the ranch."
But Parker acknowledged the development has little legal bearing on the children's pending custody cases.
The Texas Department of Family and Protective Services said that even if the call was phony, investigators found a "pervasive pattern" of abuse that centered on young girls being groomed for marriages to older men. That evidence showed all children at risk on the ranch, the agency concluded.
There also have been no formal charges filed against Levi Barlow Jeffs, 19, who was arrested during the raid for interfering with law enforcement. Schleicher County Attorney Raymond Loomis on Thursday said he was still waiting for the police reports on the case. Jeffs is the oldest son of FLDS leader Warren S. Jeffs, who is in jail in Arizona.
No formal charges have been filed against LeRoy Johnson Steed, either. Steed was arrested April 7 for tampering with evidence during the investigation at the ranch. The Tom Green County District Attorney's office Wednesday said the grand jury that will consider the charge may not convene until June.
ncarlisle@sltrib.com
brooke@sltrib.com

Caregivers blast Texas' treatment of polygamous sect's women, children
By Julia Lyon
The Salt Lake Tribune

Article Last Updated: 05/13/2008 09:17:24 AM MDT


Mental health professionals who helped care for FLDS women and children in the weeks after an April raid on the YFZ Ranch describe conditions and treatment they perceived as harsh and unnecessary.
"Never in all my life, and I am one of the older ladies, have I been so ashamed of being a Texan and seeing what and how our government agencies treat people," wrote one employee of Hill Country Community Mental Health and Mental Retardation Center in an unsigned statement.
Texas contracts with Hill Country to provide mental health services during disasters. Staff members met with the center's board of trustees last week, leaving them "spellbound." The board has gathered nine written statements critical of Child Protective Services.
Chairman John Kight said he wants state legislators and the governor to hear the employees' stories. "You have damaged these children for their lives," he said. "This is an agency that looks like it's gone out of control." A Texas CPS spokesman acknowledged the allegations were "very serious" and said they are being investigated. But he noted the women and children were held at a historic fort and a convention center in San Angelo in an unusual emergency situation.
"It was as comfortable as possible under the circumstances," said Patrick Crimmins. "But you have to remember it was a shelter, it was temporary arrangement until we could arrange for foster care for the children."
The raid was triggered by a claim of abuse at the ranch, home to members of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, a polygamous sect traditionally based on the Utah-Arizona border. A baby born today brought the total of children in state custody to 465.
Not all Texas CPS employees were criticized by the Hill Country employees. One young man was described as sitting for two hours comforting a toddler separated from his mother. The Texas Rangers were "respectful and polite," according to another statement.
But the statements focus on the Hill Country staffers' dismay at uncaring behavior they say they witnessed by CPS employees.
A boy estimated at age 3 walked along a row of cots asking for someone to rock him after he was separated from his mother, one employee wrote. Two CPS worker trailed the youngster taking notes but not helping him. His brother, age 8, eventually took the child into his arms and sat with him in a rocking chair.
"That little boy will always be in my mind," the employee wrote. "How can a beautiful, healthy child be taken from a healthy, loving home and forced into a situation like that, right here in America, right here in Texas?"
Mothers who initially were allowed to stay with their children were later required to leave if their child was older than 12 months. Describing that day, one employee wrote, "the floor was literally slick with tears in places."
After the separation, a baby was allegedly left in a stroller with no food and water for 24 hours and ended up in a hospital, according to another statement.
"We don't believe that's the case, but we're checking into that," Crimmins said.
Several of the employees stated they do not condone polygamy or the alleged abusive treatment of children. But, they added, the FLDS mothers were not silent or hostile, as CPS had warned they would be. Instead, they were polite, focused on caring for the children, and willing to establish relationships, the mental health workers said.
Several writers claimed CPS workers repeatedly lied to the mothers regarding where they were going to be moved to and other issues.
Crimmins said he disputed that. The state has asserted the FLDS mothers were uncooperative with authorities, such as providing inaccurate or changing information about names and ages.
jlyon@sltrib.com

ELDORADO

Raid, aftermath's early cost: $7.5 million
Senate panel to examine expenses of largest child removal in U.S.
By Corrie MacLaggan

AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF


Friday, May 16, 2008

The massive child welfare operation that began in early April with a state raid of a West Texas ranch owned by a polygamous sect cost nearly $7.5 million in the first 19 days, according to records from Gov. Rick Perry's office.

A spokeswoman for Perry cautioned that the numbers — obtained through the Texas Public Information Act — are preliminary and unaudited, and Perry's office has yet to release official costs.

But the numbers do reveal clues about the financial impact of what Texas officials have said is the largest removal of children in U.S. history.

Expenses have ranged from housing and feeding more than 400 children in shelters in San Angelo to busing them to foster care around the state. And the costs are likely to grow; it could be a year before Child Protective Services and the courts sort out whether the children — removed because of what state officials say is a pattern of abuse — can return to their parents.

"Everyone recognized that resources were going to be necessary in order to achieve a fair outcome here," said state Sen. Robert Duncan, R-Lubbock, whose district includes Eldorado's Yearning for Zion Ranch, owned by the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.

Duncan is a member of the Senate Finance Committee, which will examine Eldorado expenses during a Capitol hearing Tuesday.

Perry, Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst and House Speaker Tom Craddick have authorized state agencies to spend money from their 2009 budgets early to cover costs of the operation. What's still not clear is how the agencies will be reimbursed. One option is for agencies to tap into money left unspent at the end of the budget year; another is for the Legislature to make an emergency appropriation at the beginning of the 2009 session.

"Often times when you have emergencies like this, that's how you handle it," Duncan said of making an appropriation next session.

City and county governments are submitting expenses to state agencies.

State Comptroller Susan Combs told Dewhurst, Craddick and Perry in a letter that she plans to work to "utilize funding allocated in the current state budget to cover the allowable emergency costs."

But some government officials aren't sure what "allowable emergency costs" include, and that's making them nervous.

Tom Green County Treasurer Dianna Spieker said: "We're operating under faith" that the county will be reimbursed. She said last week her county had spent $70,000 on everything from overtime for law enforcement to paying the road and bridge department to set up barricades.

State Sen. Judith Zaffirini, D-Laredo, a member of the finance panel, said the operation is largely a state responsibility.

"We should reimburse local agencies as soon as possible for any action they have taken that is state responsibility," she said.

Technically, many of the court costs are the responsibility of the counties, but state leaders say they plan to use state money.

"We can't wash our hands from it — we're the ones who did it," said state Sen. Bob Deuell, R-Greenville, a member of the Finance Committee. "I hope it turns out it was the right thing to do."

Some lawyers who volunteered to represent the children are now wondering what they've gotten into financially. Susan Hays of Dallas, an attorney for a young girl, said she's spent nearly $1,000, mostly on gas to visit her client in East Texas and the client's mother in San Antonio.

"We were all told it was a one-day hearing," she said. "My case is now spread out all over the state. The Legislature is going to have to do something."

State agencies incurred the bulk of the $7.5 million — $5.3 million.

Stephanie Goodman, a spokeswoman for the Health and Human Services Commission, said her agency is reviewing Eldorado cost estimates from the state health department and Child Protective Services to make sure they are additional costs incurred because of the operation.

A draft document from the governor's office showed that the Office of Court Administration projected in late April that court costs for the civil and any criminal cases could be about $1.8 million, including everything from expert witnesses to jury pay.

Glenna Bowman, chief financial officer for the office, said Thursday that the next draft of her estimate will be closer to $2.2 million.

"We're trying to look into our crystal ball," she said.


State agency costs

Department of Family and Protective Services $2,174,302

Health and Human Services Commission $1,045,656

Department of Public Safety $970,000

Department of State Health Services $930,563

Other state agencies $191,828

Total state agency costs $5,312,349


Volunteer organization costs

Salvation Army $51,302

Other $8,251

Total volunteer organization costs $59,553


Vendor costs

Bus costs $633,736

Baptist Child & Family Services $527,236

Wells Fargo Pavilion $10,100

Total vendor costs $1,171,072


City and county government costs

City of San Angelo $820,000

Tom Green County Not available

Schleicher County $81,607

Other $42,727

Total city, county government costs $944,334


TOTAL ESTIMATED COSTS $7,487,308

Source: Governor's Division of Emergency Management preliminary, unaudited estimates

SAN ANTONIO (AP) -- When Texas child welfare authorities released statistics showing nearly 60 percent of the teen girls taken from a polygamist sect's ranch were pregnant or had children, they seemed to prove what was alleged all along: The sect commonly pushed girls into marriage and sex.

But in the past week, the state has twice been forced to admit "girls" who gave birth while in state custody are actually adults. One was 22 and said she showed state officials a Utah birth certificate shortly after she and more than 400 minors were seized from the West Texas ranch in an April raid.

The state has in custody two dozen other young mothers and others whose ages are in dispute. If most of them also turn out to be adults, it would be a severe blow to the state's claim of widespread sexual abuse.

If it turns out the other 24 disputed minors are adults, the number of actual 14- to 17-year-old girls with children could drop to as low as five or six. That would amount to about one-fifth of the girls that age found at the ranch -- substantially higher than the average rate of teen pregnancies in Texas but a far cry from 60 percent.

"It's not widespread, and you've got to look at every family individually to determine whether there's a problem in a family," said Rod Parker, a spokesman for the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, the renegade Mormon sect that runs the ranch.

"There's no reluctance on our part to go ahead and take appropriate action if and when we can determine these are adults," said Patrick Crimmins, a spokesman for Child Protective Services. "We are working as quickly as possible to sort this out and realize the urgency."

All 463 of the children removed from the Yearning for Zion Ranch have been in state custody for six weeks and are scattered in foster care facilities around the state.

Crimmins said he's not sure how long it will take to resolve the disputed-minor cases. Child Protective Services has complained that sect members refused to cooperate with their investigation, constantly changing answers or refusing answers to questions about age and parentage.

Parker said the state ignored evidence the young mothers presented, including birth certificates and Social Security cards. He said that with their long braided hair, makeup-free faces and pioneer dresses, the women look very young.

Patricia Matassarin, Jessop's attorney, questioned how a person proves her age if officials won't believe a birth certificate or driver's license, which Jessop also gave the state.

"The issue is how does anyone prove the date of their birth? We don't get a date stamp when we're born," Matassarin said.

A birth certificate combined with testimony from Jessop's mother were presented, and state officials conceded in Austin on Thursday that Jessop is an adult.

Crimmins said many of the sect members whose ages are in dispute don't have documents typically used to establish age, like birth certificates, driver's licenses or public school records. The FLDS children were home-schooled.

"We've been trying, sometimes with very little success, to get as much information as possible on the children," he said. "What we've said is consistent. We think there was some abuse -- some physical abuse and some sexual abuse -- at the ranch. This ranch was considered as a very large household."

The children are being treated the same as siblings of abused children in smaller households, where removal is common, Crimmins said.

The FLDS case is one of the most complicated custody cases in U.S. history, but all the children from the ranch were sent to foster care after state District Judge Barbara Walther found they were being abused or were at risk for abuse because adults were pushing underage girls into sex and marriage with older men.

In Texas, girls who are younger than 17 generally cannot consent to sex with adult men.

No one has been arrested or charged in the case.

All the children are scheduled to have hearings in the next three weeks to determine what steps their parents will need to take to regain custody.

The FLDS, which teaches that polygamy brings glorification in heaven, broke away from the mainline Mormon church, which disavowed polygamy more than a century ago.

Sect leader Warren Jeffs, who is revered as a prophet, has been sentenced to prison in Utah for being an accomplice to rape in arranging a marriage of a 14-year-old follower to her 19-year-old cousin. He is awaiting trial in Arizona, where he is charged as an accomplice with four counts each of incest and sexual conduct.

Jeffs' lawyers want the incest counts dropped, arguing that prosecutors in Mohave County cannot pursue those charges along with the sexual conduct counts. A judge is considering the request

Hearings under way in polygamist sect custody case
(Associated Press, May 19, 2008)

SAN ANGELO, Texas — The parents of the more than 400 children taken from a polygamist sect's ranch are in a Texas court as part of an enormous custody case.

Hearings began Monday morning, with parents laying out their individual cases and finding out what they must do to regain custody.

Texas child welfare authorities have 463 children in foster care. They were taken amid allegations that members of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints were forcing underage girls into marriage and sex at the sect's compound in Eldorado. FLDS members deny any abuse.

The massive case has stretched the legal and child welfare resources of the state, and the hearings were set for all five courtrooms in the Tom Green County Courthouse over the next three weeks.

Mother Has Hearing in Polygamy Case

By KIRK JOHNSON
Published: May 20, 2008
SAN ANGELO, Tex. — Texas policy holds that when children are taken from their parents for investigation of abuse, geographic distances should be kept to a minimum to allow supervised visitation.

That has not, by a wide Texas mile, been the experience of Nora Jeffs.

Since her eight children were taken in the raid at a polygamist compound last month, said a state case worker said in a hearing here on Monday, Ms. Jeffs has been transformed into more or less an itinerant traveler, trying to visit her children, who are 18 months old to 14 years old.

She has two children in foster care in Amarillo, up in the Panhandle, one in Gonzales on the Gulf Coast, two in San Antonio, in West Texas, and three in Waco, south of Dallas, a lawyer for Ms. Jeffs said. The closest are nearly 200 miles from her home in Eldorado and the farthest are more than nine hours from one another by car. The children themselves, who are not allowed to travel while in state custody, are being encouraged to use conference telephone calls to stay in touch and to send drawings and letters.

“Her children are scattered to all corners of Texas,” said the case worker, Irene Schwaninger, in a hearing before state Judge Thomas Gossett. “It’s something I’m working to rectify to the best of my ability,” Ms. Schwaninger added.

The hearings, technically meant only as a 60-day check-up of the state’s plan in handling the children and families, have exposed the clanking machinery of the Texas child welfare apparatus, which is strained at the seams and has spent millions of dollars to handle one of the biggest and most complex child welfare cases in the nation’s history.

Ms. Schwaninger said that in the crush the caseload, she had not even had a chance to meet Ms. Jeffs in person until Monday morning before court.

“I’m very excited,” she said, stressing that the state’s goal was to reunite the Jeffs family if at all possible.

The hearings, which are expected to go on for three weeks — one at a time before five judges here at Tom Green County Court House — have also put a human face on the drama. In the first round of hearings last month, the families and children were represented en mass only by lawyers representing whole groups of children by age.

Altogether, 465 children are now in state custody, after being taken from the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, or FLDS, in a raid that began April 3 after someone called an abuse hotline, said and said she was 16-year-old child bride being abused by her older husband in the church’s compound. The caller still has not been found.

Members of the FLDS hew to the old ways of Joseph Smith’s brand of 19th Century Mormonism, with plural marriage as a centerpiece. Mainstream Mormons in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints disavowed polygamy in 1890 and excommunicate polygamists today.

In Ms. Jeffs’s case, which was the first of the day in Judge Gossett’s court, and took just over an hour, moments of cool bureaucracy were interspersed with periods of seemingly heartfelt emotion and other times of open confusion.

Judge Gossett in approving the state’s interim plan for the family but reserving the right to amend it later (if he stays on the case, which he admitted he was not sure about) had stern words for Ms. Jeffs, who said in a written statement supplied by her lawyer that she would do anything to get her children back and insure their welfare as long as it did not violate the precepts of her religious belief.

“That doesn’t give me a lot of confidence,” Judge Gossett said, staring down from the bench at Ms. Jeffs, who was dressed in a pale blue prairie dress. “Your right to your religious belief ends when it violates the law.”

State officials said the raid and the taking of all the children in the church’s compound, called Yearning for Zion, were necessary because the culture of the FLDS led to illegal underage marriage for girls and acceptance of that practice by boys — a pattern that state officials have said endangers both sexes.

»

But also on Tuesday, two cases came up that revealed girls as young as 15 and 16 had been unified in spiritual marriages with older men.

One of those girls, now 19, was ruled an adult by the courts but not before she said in a conference call to the court that she could have been no older than 16 when her daughter was born on Aug. 19, 2005.

And in another courtroom, information gleaned from the records of a 17-year-old indicated she had to have been 15 when her first child was born.

Crimmins denied any suggestion that the agency's massive case may be on the verge of collapse, adding, "The numbers aren't important to us."

What is important, he said, is that the children that were purportedly abused are now safe and protected. He said CPS was stymied by conflicting and false information given by families, which made establishing ages nearly impossible.

He added that his agency never intentionally misled anyone when it said it believed it had more than two dozen females who were being sexually abused as minors.

But also on Tuesday, two cases came up that revealed girls as young as 15 and 16 had been unified in spiritual marriages with older men.

One of those girls, now 19, was ruled an adult by the courts but not before she said in a conference call to the court that she could have been no older than 16 when her daughter was born on Aug. 19, 2005.

And in another courtroom, information gleaned from the records of a 17-year-old indicated she had to have been 15 when her first child was born.

Crimmins denied any suggestion that the agency's massive case may be on the verge of collapse, adding, "The numbers aren't important to us."

What is important, he said, is that the children that were purportedly abused are now safe and protected . He said CPS was stymied by conflicting and false information given by families, which made establishing ages nearly impossible.

He added that his agency never intentionally misled anyone when it said it believed it had more than two dozen females who were being sexually abused as minors.

The Third Court of Appeals in Austin ruled that the grounds for removing the children were "legally and factually insufficient" under Texas law. The ruling did not immediately order the return of the children.

Quote:

Earlier Thursday, attorneys for Child Protective Services said 15 of the 31 mothers authorities had put in foster care as children have now been declared adults, including one who is 27.

Another girl listed as an underage mother is 14, but the state has conceded she is not pregnant and does not have a child.

It is far too easy for state officials to overreact based on popular predjudice.

The number of things the state got wrong in its mad rush to judgement is ridiculous.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/24777095/