Polygamy Case Updates

I asked the HG yesterday if her Constitutional law class had discussed this case at all. She said not really, because they mainly focus on cases that have gone to the Supreme Court. However, her professor (who is not remotely a conservative) did comment earlier this week that it looked to her like the government's case was falling apart. That was before the papers were reporting that they may have caught the 'Sarah' who made the false allegations prompting the raid.

It seems to me from my reading that just about everybody except CPS and other state officials have decided the phone call was a hoax- although state official s just may not have been admitting it. I've suspected it was a former FLDS member, but it may have been somebody with a history of false calls to the police, and no involvement with FLDS:

A call from a 16-year old girl, claiming sexual abuse at the Texas Polygamist Compound may have been a prank call from a Colorado Springs woman. 33-year old Rozita Swinton was arrested Wednesday Night by Colorado Springs Police.

According to sources close to the investigation, the F.B.I. began tracing calls from a person named "Sarah" to a Teenage Rescue Mission for girls trying to escape the sect. "Sarah" is the same person who made the call which lead to the raid. Authorities now believe Swinton was behind those fake calls, where 416 children were removed from the compound.

Texas Rangers were in town Wednesday night to interview Swinton, but they have not filed any charges.

I dunno.

So, just where do we stand now on all those allegations of as many as thirty underaged teen mothers, girls as young as 14 being forced to marry ugly old men, and rampant under-aged marriages?
From a news report:

One document details the names, ages, and family relationships of sect members representing more than 30 families. Questioning a Texas Department of Public Safety sergeant who participated in a search of the ranch, attorneys representing the state focused in on 10 women between the ages of 16 and 19 listed as married to older men. Five were listed as having children.
On cross-examination, attorneys from legal aid groups representing FLDS women pressed the sergeant to admit many women were not listed as underage wives. The sergeant testified the list is also unclear on mother-child relationships.
Officials have said they do not know if Sarah is in state custody. Court documents say the girl spoke of becoming the seventh wife of a 50-year-old man named "Dale" and conceiving her first child when she was 15. She described being beaten by her husband, once so badly she needed treatment at a hospital for broken ribs, and said she wanted to leave the ranch.

Emphasis mine. Instead of 20-30 under-aged mothers we have.... ZERO. In the state of Texas it is legal for girls of 16 and older to be married with their parents' consent. Texas raised the age from 14 to 16 in 2005- and legislators admit that they passed this law deliberately to forbid the practices of this religious group. So marriage for 14 year olds was perfectly acceptable to state legislators, just not marriage for 14 y.o. FLDS members. They also strengthened laws against polygamy, making it a felony, also specifically to target FLDS groups (by their own public admission). Furthermore, the laws are so draconian that the only person arrested for polygamy so far is not charged with practicing it, but with teaching it. Freedom of speech, anybody? He's not with the FLDS group, and his trial is in September. His lawyer says the law is badly worded and confusing, and offers two different penalties for precisely the same act.

Edmonds [legislative director for the Texas District and County Attorney's Association] said some of the confusion in the bill stems from the way it was passed. Hilderbran [Harvey Hilderbran, R-Kerrville, the sponsor of the legislation] initially wrote it as a stand-alone bill that directly targeted the Eldorado sect, which began building a retreat in Schleicher County in 2004.

The original bill included language that would prevent new Texas residents from running for office within a year -- a provision aimed at preventing the sect from taking over local government offices and law enforcement agencies as it did in two neighboring cities, Colorado City, Ariz., and Hilldale, Utah.

Hilderbran's bill was never scheduled for a vote in the House, and with the legislative session coming to a close, he took provisions dealing with polygamy and teenage marriage and inserted them into an overhaul of the Department of Child Protective Services that was pending in the Senate.

Changes to the elections code were not included in the final bill, and fears that the group would dominate Eldorado politics did not come to pass.

I may not like it, but it is legal. So none of the ten teenaged wives are so young it would be illegal for them to be married. Five of them are mothers, and of course, it is possible the ages of their children make it clear they were 'married' before the age of 16. We'll have to wait and see. Still, this sounds very different from the impressions given by statements from CPS and other government employees. This is nowhere near 'as many as thirty' married or pregnant teens. Given the accounts of FLDS women and the CPS workers themselves, I think the real problem wasn't that the women would not give their ages, but simply that the CPS workers refused to believe them.

Here we also have a minor female treated at a hospital for broken ribs, and they can't identify her. Given her dress and hairstyle, she would have stood out, so you'd think hospital staff would remember this and could corroborate it. You'd also think they'd have been required by law to report it, given her minor status. Personally, I think that by the time of this testimony, state officials had a pretty good idea that they did not have her in custody because the girl did not even exist.

Officials called on local churches for donations and assistance in the aftermath of the raid on the FLDS ranch. The mothers and children removed from the ranch were transported in church buses from the local Baptist church, and the local Baptist church is the first place they were sequestered, and it was members of the area churches who brought in food, baby supplies, and other needs (the Baptist minister says CPS ordered them not to 'converse with' the FLDS members). Nevertheless, CPS says it respects the religious culture of the FLDS group:

Freedom to pray as they wish has been paramount to officials' goals.
While in state custody, the women and children have worshipped often, CPS spokeswoman Marleigh Meisner has said. A few days ago the agency brought in an organ to accompany hymns the faithful sing.
"We realize the spiritual component is important to them [the FLDS]," she said. "We want to honor that as best we can. But this is one of many factors in placing children."

"Paramount?" That's not the word I'd use:

A child abuse investigator who led the initial foray into a polygamous sect's west Texas ranch said Thursday that children are not safe there because their parents have a belief system that "turns boys into perpetrators and girls into sexual assault victims."
Angie Voss, a supervisor with Texas Child Protective Services, spent six hours in an unprecedented custody hearing testifying about why the state took 416 children two weeks ago from the YFZ Ranch, owned by the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.
Voss said one minor is pregnant and four have children.
[...]

A reminder- Texas has the highest teen pregnancy rate in the nation- and 24 percent of those teen births are not even the teen's first delivery. Is it reasonable for 60 men to be separated from their 416 children because of, at most, ten members of their community? That ten men out of sixty may be involved is assuming that each of the pregnant or with child teens (ALL of whom can be legally married in the state of Texas) is involved with a different man and he is a member of the community.

Here's some other testimony from the state's side:

Department of Public Safety Sgt. Danny Crawford testified to DPS's discovery of a church bishop's records taken from a safe at the ranch that listed about 38 families, some of them polygamous and some that included wives 16 or 17 years old. But under repeated cross-examination, Crawford acknowledged the records contained no evidence of sexual abuse.

And previously an FLDS woman called Brooke Adams to tell her she recognized a photograph of her younger brother as one of the young men taken from the ranch, a 17 year old married to a young lady of his own age. The two of them have a child together and his wife is expecting another baby, due in August. So his wife would be one of the five young women the state is using to support its case that child brides are forced to marry ugly old men. And if the FLDS woman is telling the truth, that would make this married father one of the 27 male children who have already been taken from their parents' custody and are placed at a "Nondenominational Christian" (not Mormon) boys' ranch.

Voss has also testified favorably about the condition of the children she says are being abused:

Even infants and children in monogamous homes are not safe on the ranch, she said. "It's not about religion. It's about child abuse," Voss said, drawing laughter from many of the 100 or so FLDS members in the audience.
A phalanx of attorneys from across Texas questioned how Voss could justify keeping the kids when she acknowledges they are healthy, loved and likely to be traumatized by the continuing separation.

Voss also says that although the FLDS men were polite and cooperative, allowed her and other CPS investigators onto the ranch to interview their children, brought them the teenaged girls to be interviewed, and provided rooms where the CPS workers could interview girls privately, she 'felt' 'intimidated', and by morning had decided to remove the children. She can name nothing the men did that actually was intimidating, she just 'felt' that way. Good golly, Miss Molly, there's a reason to take away 416 children, based on the vapours of one CPS investigator.
She's also annoyed because the women initially objected and resisted when CPS workers said they were taking the children, but when advised by leader Merril Jessop to cooperate, they did.

"She found it strange that they immediately complied, though some cried as they loaded their children onto school buses."

Does that sound to you like somebody who even understands, let alone respects their religious beliefs? Furthermore, according to testimony:

The women at the ranch were upset and uncooperative at first and said they wouldn’t let the children go. A law enforcement officer then used a speaker phone to have Merrill Jessop, the ranch patriarch, tell the women to cooperate. The women then cooperated, the witness said.

Here's another chilling turn in a long chain of polar ice level chills:

The CPS wants the judge to order the parents to give genetic samples to be compared to the children's', wants the parents evaluated by psychiatrists or psychologists and wants her to place the children in temporary foster care outside the five-county area served by the court.
Voss acknowledged that DNA samples have already been taken from children, without approval of their court-appointed attorneys.

That makes me feel intimidated. Can we arrest Voss on the basis of my feelings?

And given the firepower state investigators brought to the ranch, I think it's obvious who had the most right to feel intimidated.

For more information Grits for Breakfast has a comprehensive listing of other blogs covering the case, as well as the best newspaper reporting coming from the case (it's not a Texas paper).

Here's another chilling fact. Although each man has his own household, a separate abode where the women he considers his wives and their children live with him, ABC reports that the state may seek to have the entire ranch declared a single household. Presumably, this is because the state realizes it has no evidence that every household is abusive, they have only five teens with children or pregnant, after all (and, again, those five teens are all legally able to marry). However, generally if one child is abused by someone in the household, the other children in the household are considered 'at-risk' and can be removed and placed in foster care. If this is what happens, depending on who's in power and whether or not they like your religious beliefs, one day a member of your church or neighborhood may be accused of abuse (by an anonymous and false accusation) and you can ALL get your children removed because the state can redefine 'household.'