I know this case has nothing to do with murder, but since it is my blog I guess I can post anything I want…lol…
Has anyone been following the case in Texas? You know the one where more than 400 children are in state custody following a raid on a polygamist sect in Texas.
I have not followed this case in detail but there are some things about this case that bother me. Actually there is a lot that bothers me about this case.
This case also helps explain why I don’t have a lot of use for attorneys.
The press reports "I can tell you it that it was certainly enough that a district judge in the state of Texas determined that these children were at risk, and judges in Texas don't take those accusations lightly."
The presiding elder of the polygamist group (Merrill Jessop) responded by complaining about the children's removal.
"There needs to be a public outcry. The hauling off of women and children matches anything in Russia and Germany," Jessop told the Salt Lake City Tribune.
One response was a woman from a polygamist sect in West Texas said the way the state's treating the group's members and their children makes it seem like "someone is trying to hurt" them.
A woman who only identified herself as Paula said she doesn't understand how authorities could take the more than 400 children into protective custody. Some mothers were separated from their children as part of an abuse investigation.
But a state Child Protective Services spokeswoman said it's not the "normal practice to allow parents to accompany the child when an abuse allegation is made."
Authorities swept the children from the ranch more than a week ago amid allegations that underage girls were being forced to marry and bear the children of older men.
CBS reports The dayslong raid on the sprawling compound built by now-jailed polygamist leader Warren Jeffs was sparked by a 16-year-old girl's call to authorities that she was being abused and that girls as young as 14 and 15 were being forced into marriages with much older men.
"Once you go into the compound, you don't ever leave it," said Carolyn Jessop, one of the wives of the alleged leader of the Eldorado complex. Jessop left with her eight children before the sect moved to Texas.
Jessop said the community emphasized self-sufficiency because they believed the apocalypse was near.
The women were not allowed to wear red - the color Jeffs said belonged to Jesus - and were not allowed to cut their hair. They were also kept isolated from the outside world.
They "were born into this," said Jessop, 40. "They have no concept of mainstream society, and their mothers were born into and have no concept of mainstream culture. Their grandmothers were born into it."
Meisner said each child will get an advocate and an attorney but predicted that if they end up permanently separated from their families, the sheltered children would have a tough acclimation to modern life.
Tela Mange, a spokeswoman for the state Department of Public Safety, said the criminal investigation was still under way, and that charges would be filed if investigators determined children were abused.
Still uncertain is the location of the girl whose call initiated the raid. She allegedly had a child at 15, and authorities were looking for documents, family photos or even a family Bible with lists of marriages and children to demonstrate the girl was married to Dale Barlow, 50.
Barlow was sentenced to jail last year after pleading no contest to conspiracy to commit sexual conduct with a minor. He was ordered to register as a sex offender for three years while he is on probation.
The Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, headed by Jeffs after his father's death in 2002, broke away from the Mormon church after the latter disavowed polygamy more than a century ago.
The group is concentrated along the Arizona-Utah line but several enclaves have been built elsewhere, including in Texas. Several years ago it paid $700,000 for the Eldorado property, a former exotic animal ranch, and began building the compound as authorities in Arizona and Utah began increasingly scrutinizing the group.
On Monday, a woman who had once been in a similar sect told The Early Show that women are treated like "breeding machines" in the sects.
"(Polygamy is) a life where, as a female, you really don't think for yourself, you're basically told what to do. You really are just a breeding machine to further the agenda of the male patriarchy," said Laurie Allen to anchor Julie Chen. "This is what I experienced."
Jeffs is jailed in Kingman, Ariz., where he awaits trial for four counts each of incest and sexual conduct with a minor stemming from two arranged marriages between teenage girls and their older male relatives.
In November, he was sentenced to two consecutive sentences of five years to life in prison in Utah for being an accomplice to the rape of a 14-year-old girl who wed her cousin in an arranged marriage in 2001.
Ruth, 31, a mother of four children, left rear, and Velvet, 31, center, a mother of one child who are all in state custody tell reporters during a news conference of how they were separated from their children earlier in the day as they stand outside the Yearning For Zion ranch near Eldorado, Texas, Thursday, April 24, 2008. (AP Photo/Tony Gutierrez)
AUSTIN, Texas (AP) - May 29, 2008 -- In a crushing blow to the state's massive seizure of children from a polygamist sect's ranch, the Texas Supreme Court ruled Thursday that child welfare officials overstepped their authority and the children should go back to their parents.
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.
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.
So what does this blogging community think of this case?
Do we believe everything that the Justice System has done?
Do we believe everything that the police reported?
Do we think it was right to have the high court ordered all the children to be returned?
I just want to get some feed back and see if others are thinking the same things I think about this case.
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