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Texas Appeals Sect Custody Ruling

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The Associated Press

Published: May 24, 2008

SAN ANGELO, Texas - Child welfare authorities on Friday challenged a Texas appeals court ruling that said their seizure of 468 children from a polygamist sect's ranch was unjustified, but they also agreed to reunite 12 children with their parents while the case moves on.

The agreement narrowly specifies 12 children, some of whose parents had filed a motion with a state district court in San Antonio for their release from state foster care.

Lori Jessop cried when she and her husband, Joseph, were reunited with their daughter and two sons.

"The little boy just grabbed for his daddy," when child-care agency workers handed him over, said their attorney Rene Haas.

Child Protective Services spokesman Patrick Crimmins declined to comment on the agreement.

The agency agreed to allow the parents to live with their children in the San Antonio area under state supervision, said Teresa Kelly, a spokeswoman for Haas. The families cannot return to the Yearning For Zion ranch, where they lived before the raid.

Aside from mothers staying with their infants in foster care, no other parents from the west Texas ranch have been allowed to stay with their children.

The agency's case for removing all children from the ranch was thrown into doubt Thursday when the Third Court of Appeals ordered a lower-court judge to rescind her decision giving the state custody of more than 100 of the children. The ruling was broad enough to cover nearly every child swept up in the April raid on the ranch run by the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.

The agency said in its appeal to the Texas Supreme Court that the appeals court was wrong to say that the vast majority of children at the ranch did not face the sort of extreme danger state law requires for them to be removed without a court order. The agency cited evidence it said showed that the church pushed teenage girls into spiritual marriages with older men.

The state asked to keep the children in foster care while the case is reviewed.

The limited agreement the agency offered covers 12 children who belong to three families.

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