Court: Sect Kids Must Be Returned Home
Texas Supreme Court Upholds Lower Court Ruling, Says Welfare Officials Overstepped Their Authority
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Play CBS Video Video Victory For Texas Polygamists Two courts have now ruled that Texas Child Protective Services overstepped their authority by removing approximately 430 children from a polygamous ranch. Hari Sreenivasan reports.
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Dan Jessop and his wife Louisa Bradshaw are surrounded by cameras as they leave the Tom Green County Courthouse, Friday, May 23, 2008 after a custody hearing on their newborn son. The mothers of children taken from a polygamist sect accuse authorities of ignoring the law. (AP/Trent Nelson, Salt Lake Tribune)
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Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints mothers including Esther Jessop Barlow, left, and Monica Sue Jessop, right, each with five children in custody, smile as they leave the Tom Green County courthouse after hearing news of a court ruling in their favor in San Angelo, Texas, Thursday, May 22, 2008. An Austin, Texas, appeals court ruled that the state had no cause to take their children. (AP Photo/LM Otero)
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Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints mothers including Marie Steed, center, and Sarah Marlow, right, smile as they leave the Tom Green county courthouse after a ruling in their favor in San Angelo, Texas, Thursday, May 22, 2008. (AP Photo/L.M. Otero)
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Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints mothers including Esther Jessop Barlow, right, and Monica Sue Jessop, center, each with five children in custody, smile after a bystander told them the news of a court ruling in their favor in San Angelo, Texas, Thursday, May 22, 2008 (AP Photo/L.M. Otero)
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Photo Essay Separation Anxiety Some mothers in polygamist sect separated from children as part of abuse investigation.
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Photo Essay Polygamist Compound Raid Secret calls from alleged abuse victim lead to raid of religious sect's compound.
The high court affirmed a decision by an appellate court last week, saying Child Protective Services failed to show an immediate danger to the more than 400 children swept up from the Yearning For Zion Ranch nearly two months ago.
"On the record before us, removal of the children was not warranted," the justices said in their ruling issued in Austin.
The high court let stand the appellate court's order that Texas District Judge Barbara Walther return the children from foster care to their parents. It's not clear how soon that may happen, but the appellate court ordered her to do it within a reasonable time period.
Read the majority opinion here.
Read the dissenting opinion here.
The ruling shatters one of the largest child-custody cases in U.S. history. State officials said the removals were necessary to end a cycle of sexual abuse at the ranch in which teenage girls were forced to marry and have sex with older men, but parents denied any abuse and said they were being persecuted for their religious beliefs.
Texas child protective services had argued that it removed the children without a court order because there was an urgent need to protect them from what was termed a pervasive culture of physical and sexual abuse, where underage marriage and pregnancy was common, and that the children were all part of one big household and therefore one child at risk, put them all at risk, reports CBS News Correspondent Hari Sreenivasan.
"This is not a slam dunk ruling," says CBS News legal analyst Andrew Cohen. "It allows the state to separate children from sect members it alleges to have harmed children and ensure that the children are not removed from the court's physical jurisdiction. So this still gives Texas some cards to play."
Every child at the ranch run by the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints in the west Texas town of Eldorado was removed; half were 5 or younger.
CPS officials said they were disappointed by the ruling but would take immediate steps to comply.
"We are disappointed, but we understand and respect the court's decision," the agency said in a written statement.
FLDS elder Willie Jessop said 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."
Standing outside the Texas Supreme Court building with attorneys for the families, Martha Emack, mother of a 2-year-old and a 1-year-old, echoed that sentiment.
"I'm happy (when) all the children are back to their mothers and we're home," said Emack, whose children have been staying at an Austin children's shelter.
The case before the court technically only applies to the 124 children of 38 mothers who filed the complaint that prompted the ruling, but it significantly affects nearly all the children since they were removed under identical circumstances.
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.
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.
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.
Under Texas 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.
CPS lawyers had argued that parents could remove their children from state jurisdiction if they regain custody, that DNA tests needed to confirm parentage are still pending and that the lower-court judge had discretion in the case.
The justices said child welfare officials can take numerous actions to protect children short of separating them from their parents and placing them in foster care, and that Walther may still put restrictions on the children and parents to address concerns that they may flee once reunited.
© MMVIII The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Best-selling author Mitch Albom on his first nonfiction work since "Tuesdays with Morrie."





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See all 174 CommentsTexas is full of kooks and the one serving as president is a prime example. The number of wacko religous cults that seek sanctuary in Texas is enormous. Texas has more crazy fanatical cults in its boarders than any other state. You don''t have to come from Waco to be a Wacko in Texas.
This is one common belief the FLDS and al Qaeda share.
Little girl, stay home, bare foot and pregnant
They have broken the law for goodness sake, and it looks like no one is going to bother to do anything about it.. so lets start by me marrying three men eh, I am quite able to keep up with all of them and definetly out run them, and I can become rich from all their wages, and I only have to have three children, one to each man.. sounds good to me..polygamy in reverse.. and as I am tall and am told that I am good looking maybe I could add to that when we need more money for something, sounds more sense than a man having many wives, he cant keep up with the women and make them all happy all the time..
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Michael
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The State of Texas does not have a full time legislature. They convene every two years for 90 days. There is little time to address and upgrade penal code or jurisprudence procedure.
This condition makes Texas a haven for criminal activity that goes unprosecuted. Country governments attempt to overstep their constitutional authority to make up for the shortcomings of the state.
The governors of 47 states in this country have more authority than the governor of Texas.
Texas means tough talk and soft teeth where interstate criminal activity is concerned. They depend too much on Federal laws and courts to keep the career criminals in court.
And what about their mothers, what normal mother would allow anyone to kick their boys out, dont they have a brain to see what is going on, young boys kicked out while old men stay in for the meat..
It is a sad time when people feel that it is ok to have polygamy and abuse children who cant protect themselves..
And I feel that you are spot on, some here would like them to be returned to the same situation as before.. it is a parents job to protect and nurture their children and to let a child be married to some old dude at 16 is just not on let alone be pregnant..
There can be no other explanation other than they are breeding children for s''x. I do however feel that their mothers should have been able to stay with the children but keep them all in a secure place. Having taken them away from their mothers will just have added more trauma to their situation.. Even be it that their mothers obviously dont care about protecting them from old men..
Sorry that you were brought up in this hell..
The men are gone. Get over it. Send these women and children home before they are totally mistreated within the foster parent program.
Marriage is
Man and wife. That is the way I was raised. Of age means 18 and older. I was not raised in the church . Gaye I do know in this nation ye have one spouse only. They can believe as they see fit BUT they broke the law. No church is above the law. They can prove alot today thanks to computers. I pity the females as they ARE told their place and they Will keep mouth shut. The teen boys are tossed in the street. I was a mormon and I was treated like dirt. I was told to shut my mouth. I told them I have a right to speak and I later told them I will not give them money. I walked AND told them ye will lose 2 people. We are ex mormons. Thw old men are child abusers. They are cut off from the real world. I was brain washed and it took years to unlearn alot of things. I had to be deprogrammed and my friend was the one that did.
These people are from a religious sect that has different cultural norms than the mainstream population, just like the Amish and the Quakers have different norms.
I think polygamy should be legal as long as it''s consensual. It isn''t the government''s business what personal relationships people decide to have with one another, including getting married and having children at a young age.
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