Yearning For Sanity

Life is good. I am not the Attorney General of Texas, nor am I the 51st District Court Judge in Deep West Texas, nor am I a caseworker in the Texas Child Protective Services (CPS) Division. All of those folks are dealing with a nightmarish fallout from the removal of the 400+ children from the FLDS (Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day-Saints) compound outside Eldorado, TX. Without a dog in this fight, it's hard not to feel sympathy for parents whose children were taken hither and yon by CPS caseworkers under the direction of a ruling by the state judge with jurisdiction over the environs of Eldorado. Now the kids, who nearly all have the same pair of family names: Jeffs or Jessop, will be toted back to the Yearning For Zion Ranch as the FLDS compound is known. Complicating all of this was the release (leaked by the Texas CPS Division?) of the despicable — and currently jailed — FLDS Prophet, Warren Jeffs swappin' spit with a couple of teeny-boppers in prairie dresses. Lovely. What I know about "The Principle" (upholding plural marriage) supposedly foresworn by all in Utah except the FLDS is from watching the first two seasons of HBO's "Big Love." This prime time soap opera provides the lives of 3 really desperate housewives who live with 1 husband in a Salt Lake City suburb in 3 houses side-by-side on a cul-de-sac. Lovely. Art imitates life. One small quibble: the mainstream fishwraps and the electonic media keep harping the same erroneous term to describe the plural marriage of one man with more than one wife. It ain't polygamy, folks. Polygamy is gender-neutral and merely means multiple spouses. In the case of one man and more than one wife (like Warren Jeffs with a 12-year-old "spiritual" wife to go along with his dozens of adult wives), the correct term is P-O-L-Y-G-Y-N-Y, polygyny. If this is (fair & balanced) cultural anthropology, so be it.

Copyright © 2008 Ben Sargent
[x Associated Press]
Texas, Polygamists Reach Tentative Deal On Kids
By Michelle Roberts

More than 400 children removed from a polygamist sect's ranch will be returned to their parents beginning Monday, state officials chastened by a state Supreme Court ruling said Friday as they hammered out an agreement with the families.

The children won't be able to leave Texas but they will be allowed to move back to Yearning For Zion Ranch, where child-welfare officials have alleged that underage girls were pushed into spiritual marriages with older men. The parents say there was no abuse, and two courts ruled that the state overstepped its authority in removing all children from the ranch, from infants to teenagers.

Texas Child Protective Services took custody of the children from the west Texas ranch after a raid nearly two months ago. A court order that a judge restore custody to parents applies to only 124 of the children, but state officials said about 300 others taken under identical circumstances also will be returned.

A draft agreement released by CPS attorney Gary Banks says the parents can get their children back after showing identification and pledging to take parenting classes and remain in Texas.

The agreement was reached with 38 mothers of 124 children who filed the complaint that prompted the Texas Supreme Court's ruling Thursday.

The agreement does not specify that the fathers must stay away, and it allows the children to return to the ranch run by the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints in Eldorado, about 40 miles south of San Angelo.

Texas District Judge Barbara Walther made revisions to the deal, and attorneys on both sides were reviewing them Friday afternoon.

The high court affirmed a decision by an appeals court last week and said CPS failed to show an immediate danger to nearly all the children swept up from the ranch.

"On the record before us, removal of the children was not warranted," the justices said in their ruling issued in Austin.

The Texas high court let stand the appeals court's order that Texas District Judge Barbara Walther return the children from foster care to their parents within a reasonable time period.

Walther ruled last month that the children should be placed in foster care after a chaotic custody hearing involving hundreds of lawyers representing the individual children and parents.

FLDS elder Willie Jessop said Thursday that parents were excited about the court's decision but would remain apprehensive until they get their children back.

"We're just looking forward to when little children can be in the arms of their parents," he said. "Until you have your children in your hands, there's no relief. But we have hope."

The Third Court of Appeals in Austin ruled last week that the state failed to show that any more than five of the teenage girls were being sexually abused, and had offered no evidence of sexual or physical abuse against the other children.

The FLDS, which teaches that polygamy brings glorification in heaven, is a breakaway sect of the Mormon church, which renounced polygamy more than a century ago.

Texas officials claimed at one point that there were 31 teenage girls at the ranch who were pregnant or had been pregnant, but later conceded that about half of those mothers, if not more, were adults. One was 27.

Roughly 430 children from the ranch are in foster care after two births, numerous reclassifications of adult women initially held as minors and a handful of agreements allowing parents to keep custody while the Supreme Court considered the case.

Under state law, children can be taken from their parents if there's a danger to their physical safety, an urgent need for protection and if officials made a reasonable effort to keep the children in their homes. The high court agreed with the appellate court that the seizures fell short of that standard.

The justices said child welfare officials could take numerous actions to protect children short of separating them from their parents and placing them in foster care, and that Walther could put restrictions on the children and parents to address concerns that they may flee once reunited.

Texas authorities, meanwhile, collected DNA swabs Thursday from sect leader Warren Jeffs in an ongoing criminal investigation separate from the custody dispute.

A search warrant for the DNA alleges that Jeffs had "spiritual" marriages with four girls, ages 12 to 15.

Jeffs, who is revered as a prophet, is serving a prison sentence for a Utah conviction of being accomplice to rape in the marriage of a 14-year-old girl to a 19-year-old sect member. He awaits trial in Arizona on similar charges.

[Associated Press writer Michelle Roberts is based in AP's Dallas Bureau. Her AP colleague Jim Vertuno in Austin contributed to this report.]

Copyright &3169; 2008, The Associated Press

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