All 416 Children Will Remain In State Custody

Updated to add neglected link at Redstate, below.

Mormon Blog Messenger and Advocate has a comprehensive collection of links and excerpts from newspaper reports on the ruling. The judge says they 'may' lose permanent custody if they don't agree to provide a safe environment, but I think it's clear that there's really nothing they can do that will be agreeable to this judge.
The Deseret News reports:

During earlier testimony Friday, a 29-year-old polygamist mother testified today that she would be willing to do anything the court required if she could regain custody of her 7-year-old daughter.

Merilyn Jeffs told the court she would be willing to leave the YFZ Ranch and is capable of supporting herself, if that is what it takes to be reunited with Marva. Under questioning by her attorney, Merilyn Jeffs, who was born in Utah, said she would never allow her daughter to be married until she reached the age of 18.

For herself, she did not marry until age 20 and was “absolutely not” coerced into the union.

I wonder what relation she is to Warren Jeffs? He is the father of at least one of the children in the case.

The Deseret News also reports on the state's expert testimony (this is the expert who gets his info on FLDS from the media):

a leading child trauma psychologist for Texas testified that the situation with 416 FLDS children who have been taken into state custody is a “lose-lose situation.”

Bruce Perry, senior fellow at the Child Trauma Academy, an organization that works in cooperation with a multitude of state government agencies to counsel traumatized children, was one of the state’s chief witnesses today in the custody hearing for the children seized during a raid on the Fundamentalist LDS ranch.

Perry said that if the children who were on the YFZ Ranch were kept in custody there would have to be “exceptional and innovative programmic elements in place.”

Perry also said the FLDS children should remain in custody because they are either victims of sexual assault, potential victims of sexual assault or potential perpetrators.

But under cross-examination, Perry conceded that there is no one-size-fits-all solution. In fact, Perry admitted that “the traditional foster care system would be destructive to these kids.”

So if it's a lose-lose situation, then by what mental gymnastics do we justify the state taking them? Isn't he saying that the state has just added additional trauma to their lives without actually fixing anything? And in spite of the state's own expert saying that traditional foster care would be destructive, that's where they are going:

Marleigh Meisner of Texas Child Protective Services said the children will be placed in foster homes pending hearings, which the judge said will take place before June 5.

Walther wound up two long days of testimony with the ruling. She ordered maternity and paternity testing for each child. On Monday, a mobile lab at the fairgrounds will being taking DNA samples of all the children and mothers there.

Another report says the hearings will being June 5.

I can't find that the mothers who are currently with their children will get any access to cell phones or their attorneys so long as they are with their children.
The judge took away the cell phones from all the women staying with their children at Fort Concho (and now at the Colliseum). She claims it was for 'inappropriate use.' Here's what she considers inappropriate use. Five women from the shelter called reporters. Two pictures of the shelter were sent to reporters via those cell phones. Funny how these isolated, sheltered, suppressed women had approximately 50 cell phones among them and knew how to get in touch with reporters and send them pictures of living conditions.



There's a nice long discussion with links by Cicero over at Redstate. I particularly liked this succinct summing up, as it represents why I am also concerned about this case:

...just because we think a group is distasteful does not mean that all methods should be tolerated in the suppression of that group. We must ever be wary of arming the government with tools and weapons that might someday be turned on us. We can not always assume we or reasonable people will always be in control of the government. I think that this warning should be remembered when considering events in connection with the raid on the FLDS ranch in Texas.

Concern with the behavior of the state should not be mistaken for friendship to the FLDS sect.

As The Local Crank notes:

Unsurprisingly, several aspects of the story that were conveniently linked to the media (such as accusation of wide-spread "child bride" arrangements) are coming up short of supporting evidence. The tragedy here is that the State's ham-handedness, and the flagrant scramble for publicity (by, among others, Greg Abbott, who really needs to stay off television until he learns at least the basics of the Texas Family Code) is liable to torpedo any criminal prosecutions of child abusers in this case.

Somebody asked in one of the comments to one of the posts here at The Common Room: "It's [marriage is] legal at 16 with parental consent. How do you tell the difference between consent and coercion in a cult?"

Honestly, I do not know. What I do know is that you do not decide that coercion exists first, remove 416 children (the majority of whom are not married, and are in fact, years from the possibility) and then refuse to let the girls you say are coerced even speak to their own lawyers. In other words, the way the state of Texas is going about it is not the way to figure it out. In fact, what CPS and the state of Texas are doing looks an awful lot like coercion to me.

Update:

Guest blogger DRJ at Patterico has offered a legal glossary for those unfamiliar with Texas family law.