Texas Wants 8 Sect Kids Back

(AP)  More than two months after being forced to return children from a polygamist sect to their parents, Texas child welfare authorities want eight of the youngsters put back in foster care.

Individual hearings for the four mothers of the children, ranging in age from 5 to 17, are set to begin Monday.

Child Protective Services has asked Texas District Judge Barbara Walther to return the children to foster care because their mothers allegedly have refused to limit their contact with men accused of being involved in underage marriages.

"We continue to have concerns in particular for these eight children, which is why we have asked the judge to review the case," said CPS spokeswoman Marleigh Meisner.

None of the children currently live at the Yearning For Zion Ranch in Eldorado, where authorities swept roughly 440 children into foster care in April. Officials said the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, which established the ranch, was forcing girls into underage marriages and grooming boys to be adult abusers.

Six weeks after the children were placed in foster care, the Texas Supreme Court forced CPS to return them to their parents, ruling that the agency presented evidence of no more than a handful of teenage girls being abused. Many of the children taken into CPS custody were infants and toddlers.

In the new CPS petitions seeking foster placement for the eight children, the agency detailed alleged underage marriages involving the children's fathers or stepfathers, though only one faces any criminal charges.

Rod Parker, a church spokesman, said that even though the families are getting individual hearings this time, the argument that they shouldn't be allowed to retain custody of their children remains unfair.

The issue, as it was in the earlier case, is "whether the children are in any immediate danger simply because their parents choose to raise them in this religion," he said. "The substance of what they're doing here is fundamentally the same."

Parker also noted that the church issued a statement in June saying it would not bless underage marriages.

The FLDS church believes polygamy brings glory in heaven. It is a breakaway sect of the mainstream Mormon church, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which officially renounced polygamy more than a century ago.

Sect leader Warren Jeffs, already convicted in Utah as an accomplice to rape, awaits trial in Arizona on charges of being an accomplice to sexual contact with a minor - all stemming from alleged underage marriages within the sect.

[wellhell3]

Posted by curious_mind at 11:45 AM : Aug 18, 2008

My 12 year old is certainly not ''getting horizontal'' with a 37 or 58 year old pervert salivating over the next available virgin in his cult compound. Get a freaking clue!

And I fully EXPECT my government deparment whom I pay to look out for children to step in anytime they even hear a WHISPER of abuse against a child! I give them full authority to march across YOUR yard and check it out! Your rights don''t mean KRAP to me if you are abusing yours or anyone elses children!

[rjsparling]

And yet in the state of Iowa, legal age of consent is 16 for *** and medical decisions.

I wonder what makes age 18 a magic number? Why not 21 as in some countries, 12 as in others?

prisonrn makes a thoughtful comment that is unfortuneately not referenced. curious_minds recognized that.

It turns out that there are a handful of States that have no minimum age for marriage, parental permission being the requirement.

Mental (brain) development continues until about age 25.

I submit that 18 became the magic number because that is the age that the government could require compulsory military service of its citizens and ship them to war. The arguement was that if they are old enough to fight they are old enough to do everything else. Another case of the old yellow men in smokey rooms deciding military policy that ripples throughout our lives.

[ybotheratall]

After reading some of the comments here, I wondered if I should say something, but I feel very strongly about this story. It was very sad from the beginning and still is. The very small children suffer because they don''t truly know or understand what is going on here. The law keeps losing out because they people have lots of money from all the welfare they receive on top of their businesses and have the money to show they are "taking care" of their families.

Then, you have these men, claiming to be in loving marriages. Having more than one wife, in the US, is illegal. If you want to practice another lifestyle, then move to a country that allows it. If there are minimum ages to marry, then you must abide by them. I don''t understand what is so hard to understand this. I find the whole thing very sad, thinking that these children and young girls are caught up in this situation.

[curious_mind]

A prior responder says "...and the evidence that it was damaging was overwhelming"

Now we are back to portraying worthless opinions as evidence. Could you direct me to this evidence so it can be assessed? I personally know instances where there have been 12 year olds with the wisdom of the ancients, yet the mothers being mentally worthless. Age has nothing to do with maturity. This evidence is just an attempt to lump everyone together into categories. It was most likely an assemblage of con artists looking for a consensus to identify potential sources of income.
This has nothing to do with FLDS since we don''t know that any kids were "molested" by the folks at the ranch. It does have everything to do with creating an illusion of wrongdoing as a front for ulterior motives.
BTW being a Mormon is not the tag for identifying sexually active young teens. Your own kids are very likely "getting horizontal" despite your Baptist, Catholic, Methodist, etc affiliations. Get a clue folks. The finger pointing should start in your own home instead of condemning your neighbors. Your experts and government leaders are more likely to be the villains that the people they try to crucify.

[jennmarikp]

How about an update on the welfare checks these people receive because they don''t ''''marry'''' officially?

------------------------------------------------------
Posted by OneWorldUSA

Good one . . . I''d like to see an update on that as well!

[gop_forever]

So, are you going to marry off your daughter at 13 years old? You sound like that is what you want... -------------------------------------------------------------------------------Posted by hologram5
==================
I the man is of good christian character I have no worries.

[prisonrn]

And yet in the state of Iowa, legal age of consent is 16 for *** and medical decisions.



I wonder what makes age 18 a magic number? Why not 21 as in some countries, 12 as in others?

Posted by RJSparling at 03:11 AM : Aug 18, 2008


The age of consent is based on the premise that although human bodies can mature rapidly physically, emotional and mental maturity lags far behind. It has been determined that at around age 18 for most and after, people have developed enough mental faculties to make informed decisions about what they are doing and what they want.

Before that age, many people can easily be misled, and they appear to not know what they have really committed to--this has led to horrendous experiences and regret for the children/adults involved--from abuse to long term psychological damage. We did allow early marriage years before, but social and psychological studies done in the 20th century has shown this was not a good idea and the evidence that it was damaging was overwhelming. The government then came up with what they considered to be the time period when people not only understood the ramifications of certain decisions, but lived up (sort of) to the responsibilities that came with them. This led to the idea of 18 as the age of adulthood and in most cases--the age of consent for sexxxx.

[hologram5]

These liberals just want to indoctrinate these good clean christian children into bad dirty feminism.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Posted by GOP_forever at 09:13 AM : Aug 18, 2008


So, are you going to marry off your daughter at 13 years old? You sound like that is what you want...

[bob5ford]

"Freedom of religion does not trump federal or state laws." A quick check of court rulings indicates that in a lot of cases it does. Short of human sacrifice almost everything is protected, from devil worship to killing chickens. That''s why we have a First Amendment.

[gop_forever]

These liberals just want to indoctrinate these good clean christian children into bad dirty feminism.