New Numbers

There are a total of 463 FLDS children - 250 females, 213 males - in state custody in Texas. Here is a breakdown of that count:
* 0-2: 101, 49 females, 52 males
* 3-5: 99, 46 females, 53 males
* 6-9: 131, 68 females, 63 males
* 10-13: 62, 34 females, 28 males
* 14-17: 42, 27 females, 15 males
* Disputed age: 26 females, now classified as 17 or younger.
* Two boys who turned 18 while in state custody also have voluntarily chosen to stay with younger boys.
Source: Texas Child Protective Service

That last is interesting, isn't it? Since when did CPS let 18 year old males stay in foster care with minor boys?

We're getting a clearer picture of how CPS is determining the ages of these young women (emphasis added):

Child Protective Services spokesman Darrell Azar said 31 of 53 girls ages 14 to 17 have children, are pregnant or both.
"This includes that group of girls that once claimed they were 18 or older," he said. "It was determined they were not adults."
He said some women acknowledged being younger and the age of others was determined by their attorneys or by looking at the women.
"I have seen them myself," he said, "and I don't see any that look like an adult to me."
Azar said he did not know how many girls are pregnant, but said it is a small number. CPS has previously said that three teenagers are pregnant.
Salt Lake attorney Rod Parker, a spokesman for the FLDS, said that of the three, one teenager refused to take a pregnancy test, one is 18 and the other is 17.
He also contends that the state's new count includes 17 adult women who are being classified as minors.
"Beyond that I am unable to verify the information because the Texas Rangers took all the records that might be useful in responding to this," Parker said.

So it is largely by self-identification or the guess of CPS agents based on appearance. I am not staking a firm claim that CPS doesn't have a large number of pregnant minors. I have no way of knowing. But apparently, neither does CPS. If the young women claim to be minors, they get to stay with their children. If CPS will not even acknowledge that possibility, they are working behind blindfolds of their own creation. And as the mother of two daughters in their twenties who don't even look old enough to drive, I have my doubts about Azar's qualifications as an expert on age based on appearance.

Two attorneys representing 48 mothers say this is an 'eyeball test' of dubious merit. Their clients tell them they were basically put in a line-up and CPS agents decided which of the young women looked under 18 and which didn't.
Amanda Chisolm works for Texas RioGrande Legal Aid (TRLA), which is where many of the attorneys representing FLDS members come from, and she says,

"Until we can get numbers of how many of these women dispute the age CPS is attributing to them I wouldn't rely on any of the figures that [the state] gives out,"

In fact, yesterday while we were out and about in the Big City, the Equuschick found she'd not brought a warm enough coat. She bought a child's sweatshirt with hood at a gift shop, and her rain bedraggled, kiddie clothes state, the rest of our party, including two other mothers in our thirties and forties, agreed that she looked about ten years old. She is 23.

TRLA attorney Julie Balovich said one woman now deemed to be a teenager is a 24-year-old woman who is pregnant. FLDS member Willie Jessop contends the state's tally also includes a 28-year-old whom the state has listed as being 17.
"Do we correct it and get out the girls who are overage when the minute they do that, they forfeit their children?" he asked. "CPS has had a very difficult time being accurate with any of the numbers and this number is the most outrageous yet."

According to CPS spokesman Azar, this is just typical disinformation:

"The simple truth is there is a steady flow of misinformation, which is often the case when people who may have abused children, and those who never stepped in to protect them, try to discredit those who move to protect [the children],"

Notice all those weasel words and sly innuendoes- people who 'may' have abused children and those who never stepped in to protect them?! What a slimy thing to say about the lawyers representing these women and/or girls.

Meanwhile, six children are in the hospital, three have been treated and released, and while CPS finally figured out a way to let their mothers visit them in the hospital, other promises are unfulfilled:
Attorneys representing the children still do not have adequate information about the children they are supposed to represent, their ad litums, or the caseworkers assigned to them. Azar says that will get better.
At attorney who has visited two facilities, one holding 17 FLDS children and the other 71, says that staff at both places 'complained about the lack of information and direction from CPS,' and, I know we're all terribly surprised,

"contrary to a courtroom pledge by CPS, sibling groups have been split up. Eight children from one monogamous family have been sent to five different shelters, she said. Another little girl is in a shelter an hour away from the group home where her sisters are, O'Toole said."

Azar says, basically, that it's all the children's fault because they won't answer CPS workers about their names- which brings up the question as to how CPS can so firmly insist that 'all the children are accounted for' as Azar says, and he also complains that they all feel like all the other children are their brothers and sisters. In other words, the children all want to be together. Like they were before they were rescued because of that pervasive climate of abuse and coercion that CPS agent Angie Voss testified about:

During a court hearing two weeks ago, a CPS investigator said the agency had identified one teenager who was pregnant and four others were mothers. She also spoke of a list of 20 minors and young women who conceived their first child between the ages of 13 and 16.
According to that CPS document, one woman was 13 when she conceived a child who was born in 1997; another was 14 when she conceived a child born in 2000.
But the document also lists a woman who was 23 when she gave birth in 2006.

I'm not staking any money on the innocence of every single man at the ranch. I will not be at all shocked to find that some or one of them may be guilty of exactly what CPS is charging them of. The ends, however, do not justify the means. What if, for every child CPS might have 'saved' here, they've traumatized twenty more by ripping them from their loving homes, moving them four or five times in as many weeks, subjected them to bizarre and unfamiliar living conditions, endless hours grilling them trying to get them to admit things they don't believe or trip them up, held them against their will under incredibly totalitarian, authoritarian, and coercive conditions? How many decades will it take, do you think, for these children to ever trust authority figures again? Will they ever?

Up until 2005, Texas thought 14 year olds were old enough to marry with parental permission. So far as I know, just about every state still thinks 14 year olds are old enough to get birth control or have abortions without parental permission.

And whatever we think of FLDS teachings or practices, if we let this go forth without an outcry, without insisting that FLDS members should be treated as innocent until proven guilty, and should not have been subjected to a mass removal of their children based largely on events that happened more than five years ago when they weren't even illegal- then none of us are going to be able to hold onto that constitutional protection of being innocent until proven guilty. That is a right that belongs to all of us, and we should cherish it for all of us.

Grits has more on the how CPS is coming up with their numbers:

So how did we get so rapid an increase of 26 girls who're pregnant or have kids? DFPS spokesman Patrick Crimmins told the Deseret News: "Of those 53, Crimmins said 26 claim to be 18 or older. "But we don't think they are," he said."

Aaaah ... that explains it. I'd bet dollars to donuts every one of those 26 are pregnant or has a kid, since that would make DFPS' numbers add up. From the beginning, the agency seems to take these girls' word when it benefits their case, and label them liars when it suits them. That's probably a sound media strategy, but at the end of the day, in front of a judge, they shouldn't get to have it both ways.

If all of the additional "girls" they're now counting actually told DFPS they're 18 or older, and the agency has no documentary proof besides their suspicions that the women are lying, that puts a little different spin on it than most of the headlines today. Since DFPS has already says it disbelieves birth certificates and other documents found on the ranch during the search, I wonder on what they're basing this belief that the alleged crime victims are liars?

The eyeball test- which my daughters would 'fail,' too, as would many other young women we know. It's the result of good genetics, clean living, and clean faces.