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Polygamist Sect Cases Fall

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The Associated Press

Published: September 5, 2008

SAN ANGELO, Texas - Child by child, Texas authorities are acknowledging that many of the children seized during a raid on a polygamist sect's ranch can safely live with their parents or guardians.

Since the April 3 raid on the Yearning for Zion Ranch in Eldorado, 235 children's custody cases have been dropped, meaning fewer than half of the 440 children seized remain bound by a court order to stay in Texas, attend parenting classes or be available for unannounced visits by Child Protective Services.
Agency spokesman Patrick Crimmins said more cases are likely to be dropped.

They're being dropped "as fast as we can because it's a burden on everyone," he said.

He said the dismissals do not mean that abuse never occurred, only that many of the children can safely live with a parent or other relative - something that sect members and lawyers argued early on in the chaotic custody case.

"It most certainly goes back to the idea that the proper way to have conducted this process was to get evidence as to what children, if any, were at risk," said Cynthia Martinez, a spokeswoman for Texas RioGrande Legal Aid, which represented dozens of mothers in the case. "They went through this ordeal, and in the end, CPS found they were a good parent."

The children of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints were the subject of one of the largest custody cases in U.S. history, taken into state custody from their ranch in a tiny west Texas town because child welfare authorities said girls were being forced into underage marriages and boys were being raised to be perpetrators.

Authorities went to the ranch after several calls to a domestic abuse hotline, in which the caller claimed to be an underage wife and mother who was being beaten and raped by her much-older husband. Texas state police are now investigating whether the calls were a hoax.

Once authorities had the children at a San Angelo shelter, they said the sect members refused to cooperate with the investigation, refusing to give last names or identify parents or siblings.

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