400 Children Taken From Polygamists

[Accountable]

Somebody somewhere is reading this thread and is screaming "what about victims' rights?!?!?"

[CARLA]

Exactly ACC this is wrong they have filed no charges against these people so its time to stop and get these children back home to their parents and NOW. If CPS had something it would have been filed by now this is awful I feel so sad for the children. CPS didn't do their homework before raiding this compound and it is now very glaring. :-5

[QUOTE]Somebody somewhere is reading this thread and is screaming "what about victims' rights?!?!?"[/QUOTE]

[valerie]

Jester;878346 wrote: Well ACC I would not have let them take my kids in the first place. They would have had to kill me first.



I got yer back bud I know exactly what your feeling.


Sorry, you and Acc do your kids no good by those actions. You

want them to have either a dead or jailed father? Doesn't make

any sense.

[Accountable]

valerie;878439 wrote: Sorry, you and Acc do your kids no good by those actions. You

want them to have either a dead or jailed father? Doesn't make

any sense.
No argument there, but I'm not sure I could be rational if I were put in such a powerless position with the person (or representative) that did it to me within arm's reach.

[Accountable]

LATEST:



The Supreme Court on Thursday affirmed an appeals court ruling ordering Walther to reverse her decision in April putting all children from the ranch into foster care. The Supreme Court and the appeals court rejected the state's argument that all the children were in immediate danger from what it said was a cycle of sexual abuse of teenage girls at the ranch.



Half the children sent to foster care were no older than 5.

[CARLA]

It look like all the Children will all be going home.

Sect Families Reunite After Judge's Ruling

[QUOTE]By MICHELLE ROBERTS,AP

Posted: 2008-06-02 21:23:03

Filed Under: Nation News

SAN ANGELO, Texas (June 2) - More than 400 children taken from a polygamist sect's ranch two months ago began returning to the arms of their tearful parents Monday, hours after a judge bowed to a state Supreme Court ruling that the seizure was not justified.



Custody Battle Over Sect ChildrenEric Gay, APA Texas judge on Monday ordered the return of roughly 430 children seized from a polygamist sect to their parents. The state's Supreme Court said Texas Child Protective Services had overreached in taking custody of the children. "It's just great day," said Nancy Dockstader, above center.

"It's just great day," said Nancy Dockstader, whose chin quivered and eyes filled with tears as she embraced her 9-year-old daughter, Amy, outside a foster-care center in Gonzales, about 65 miles east of San Antonio. "We're so grateful."

Her daughter and four other children were among the roughly 430 children ordered released after two months in state custody, much of it spent in foster care centers. Because siblings were separated at facilities hundreds of miles apart, it will probably take several days for all the families to be reunited.

Judge Barbara Walther responded to a state Supreme Court ruling last week by signing an order that cleared the children to be released from foster care. Walther allowed parents to begin picking up their children Monday, ending one of the nation's largest child-custody cases.

Dockstader and her husband, James, were headed to Corpus Christi and to Amarillo to pick up their other children. "We'll get the rest of them," said Dockstader, who was clad in a teal prairie dress and clinging to Amy, who wore a matching dress.

Walther's order requires the parents to stay in Texas, to attend parenting classes and to allow the children to be examined as part of any abuse investigation.

But it does not put restrictions on the children's fathers, require that the parents renounce polygamy or force them to leave the Yearning For Zion Ranch run by the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.

Late Monday, elder Willie Jessop said the church won't allow underage girls to marry. Jessop said the new policy will forbid any girl to marry who is not of legal consent age in the state where she lives.

Jessop said the church has been widely misunderstood, but he said the church will not sanction marriages of underage girls and will counsel members against such unions. He insisted marriages within the church have always been consensual.

Child Protective Services removed all the children from the ranch after an April 3 raid prompted by calls to a domestic abuse hot line that purportedly came from a 16-year-old mother who was being abused by her middle-age husband. The calls are now being investigated as a hoax, but authorities contended all the children were at risk because church teachings pushed underage girls into marriage and sex.

The church has denied any children were abused, and members have said they are being persecuted for their religion, which believes polygamy brings glorification in heaven.

Marleigh Meisner, a spokeswoman for the child-protection agency, said authorities still have concerns about the children's safety, and the investigation into possible abuse would continue.

The Supreme Court on Thursday affirmed an appeals court ruling that reversed Walther's decision in April putting all children from the ranch into foster case.

The high court and the appeals court rejected the state's argument that all the children were in immediate danger from what it said was sexual abuse of teenage girls at the ranch.

The Third Court of Appeals ruled 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.

Half the children sent to foster care were no older than 5.

All the children, including any underage mothers, will be allowed to go back to their parents, though it's possible some children's attorneys or child-protection officials could pursue further action in individual cases.

It's not clear how many might return to the ranch right away. Many of the parents have purchased or rented homes in Amarillo, San Antonio and other places around the state.

Rod Parker, a spokesman for the FLDS church, said some of the attorneys have advised parents to stay away from the ranch for now, but most families want to return so the children can continue the education they were getting at the sect's schoolhouse before the raid.

Walther's order does not end a separate criminal investigation. Texas authorities last week collected DNA from jailed FLDS prophet Warren Jeffs as part of investigation into underage sex with girls, ages 12 to 15. He has been convicted in Utah as an accomplice to rape and is jail in Arizona awaiting trial on separate charges.

The FLDS is a breakaway sect of the Mormon church, which renounced polygamy more than a century ago.

Associated Press writers Elizabeth White in Gonzales, Linda Ball in Fort Worth and Betsy Blaney in Amarillo contributed to this report.[/QUOTE]

[Bryn Mawr]

JAB;881925 wrote: The children may be going home but it looks like the criminal probe continues.

http://www.cnn.com/2008/CRIME/06/04/fld ... index.html


They've got to justify themselfs somehow and, if you dig deep enough, you can find *something* illegal in any community.

If they had no evidence before this started that would stand up in court well enough to get them a search warrant then they should not be in there now I would have thought.

If they had any decent evidence now they'd be shouting about it already so you have to guess that they're just searching for whatever they can turn up.

[Accountable]

Bryn Mawr;881955 wrote: They've got to justify themselfs somehow and, if you dig deep enough, you can find *something* illegal in any community.



If they had no evidence before this started that would stand up in court well enough to get them a search warrant then they should not be in there now I would have thought.



If they had any decent evidence now they'd be shouting about it already so you have to guess that they're just searching for whatever they can turn up.
Yup. It's straight-up religious persecution. They "knew" how "those people" are, so they figured they could play fast & loose with the facts early on, "knowing" that they'd find plenty of evidence once they got in. Hell, they probably had it as part of their plan that the uneducated, abused children would welcome them as heroes and dance in the street.



Even several FG members hold extreme bigotry against this group. They've gone elsewhere so they could discuss it unopposed without any pesky facts getting in the way.

[gmc]

Child Protective Services removed all the children from the ranch after an April 3 raid prompted by calls to a domestic abuse hot line that purportedly came from a 16-year-old mother who was being abused by her middle-age husband. The calls are now being investigated as a hoax, but authorities contended all the children were at risk because church teachings pushed underage girls into marriage and sex.


If a law enforcement agency gets a call from a girl being forced in to marriage with an older man even if it later turns out to be hoax do they not have a duty to take the initial call seriously?

For a child brought up in a sect like that it must be very hard to walk away from or resist pressure to conform when told to marry-where would they go? Forced marriage doesn't mean only physical force.

The children were allowed to leave foster care after a judge bowed to a Texas Supreme Court ruling last week that the state overreached by taking all the children even though evidence of sexual abuse was limited to five teenage girls. Half the children taken from the ranch were no older than 5.


So of you have evidence of abuse you leave the other children in the care of the perpetrators because they are not old enough and are therefore safe?

[gmc]

Scrat;882013 wrote: GMC you are quite correct but we cannot involve ourselves with every nutter and group of nutters out there. Who knows what these people really do, they choose to cut themselves off to a large extent from us. On the other hand we have people like the Amish, how are they so different?

This would be a hard call either way you look at it. Maybe we should follow the lead of the old SU and prohibit the formation of religious organizations and keep religion a purely personal matter. I doubt that would work any better though.


My understanding is that the Amish make their teenagers live away from the community for a while in the real world to be sure that they understand what they give up, apart from that my knowledge of religious cults in the US consists of that there seem to be a lot of them and some are really weird, and on occasion armed and dangerous.

Seems to be protecting the children would be the main priority, but expecting children to give evidence against a parent abusing them is a bit of a hard one to be sure the evidence is credible with.

[RedGlitter]

A CNN news video with interesting DNA results:

http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/crime/ ... n.flds.cnn

[Accountable]

In the bigots' rush to condemn polygamy they may have let a pedophile get away.

[Bryn Mawr]

gmc;881998 wrote: If a law enforcement agency gets a call from a girl being forced in to marriage with an older man even if it later turns out to be hoax do they not have a duty to take the initial call seriously?

For a child brought up in a sect like that it must be very hard to walk away from or resist pressure to conform when told to marry-where would they go? Forced marriage doesn't mean only physical force.



So of you have evidence of abuse you leave the other children in the care of the perpetrators because they are not old enough and are therefore safe?


Ignoring the possibility that the call was made on behalf of the CPS in the first place, if they had received a call about domestic violence coming from a normal village of 400+ families then do you consider it likely that they would have taken every child in the village into custody? To have done so in this case, without strong evidence to back up their decision, reeks of religious discrimination.

[Accountable]

My thoughts exactly, Bryn.

[Accountable]

20/20 last night pointed out that all the news agencies tried to make this a case about polygamy, when it really was a case investigating child abuse. Accuracy in journalism ... What a thought, eh?

[Accountable]

The latest atrocity

Texas authorities have asked a judge to return eight children from a polygamous sect to foster care after their mothers refused to sign safety plans limiting contact with men involved in underage marriages.

...



In the new legal action, CPS alleges the children's parents refuse to agree to measures to protect them.

That's like "sign here, promising you won't beat your children anymore." They're not refusing to protect their kids, they're refusing to sign the damned paper.



GOD I hate bigotry. :mad:

[Daniyal]

Ques; Who Pay For All Those Lawyer's ?