Sophie's Choice And Identification Difficulties

Brooke Adams points out another area where what the state is putting these people through is exactly the sort of malfeasance the state is accusing FLDS of perpetrating:

The state has given the young women one of those ''false choices'' that psychiatrist Bruce Perry talked about during his testimony. If they say they are under 18, they will get to stay with their children in foster care. If they say they are older, they are going to be sent back to the ranch after the state gets DNA samples from their children.

What would you do? IF your young child, perhaps a nursing baby, was going to be sent into foster care and you could go with your baby if only you told the state you were under 18, and you knew the state would believe you, what would you choose? I would believe my first and foremost obligation was to my nursing infant.

And while the state has conveyed the impression that it doesn't know how old these people are, or their names or dates of births because they don't tell or they don't know, and it sounds like there is precious little official documentation, that isn't really accurate, and if we'd thought about it, we'd have known better.

After all, another frequent accusation against FLDS members in Colorado City is that they commit Welfare Fraud, getting Welfare benefits for their women and children as 'single mothers' when they are, in the sects eyes, 'married.' Since their marriages are not legal, that doesn't make sense to me, but I would guess the specific problem is actually that they refuse to identify fathers so that the state can collect child support. That's neither here nor there at the moment. The point is they can't get Welfare benefits if they are as free from legal identification as the state has implied:

During the hearing, attorneys for parents and children said they had certified birth certificates, social security numbers, Texas drivers licenses and even tax returns that could be used to validate names and ages.

But Voss said the documents would not be acceptable, suggesting some certificates might be forged.

And Judge Barbara Walther agreed.

''How do you know, in today's world of identity theft, a birth certificate is proof of who they are?” the judge asked.

Attorney Stephanie Goodman asked Voss whether a certified birth certificate would be acceptable proof for her client.

''I can’t say that it wouldn’t be,'' Voss said. But she also could not say it would be.

Instead, Texas will use DNA samples to link mothers and fathers to their children. One unknown: Who is footing that tab?

I am not sure how they will sort out the age issue.

While Texas won't accept birth certificates as proof of parentage or age, they were good enough for prosecutions in Arizona.

Arizona authorities relied on birth certificates to convict a handful of FLDS men for sexual misconduct with underage girls. The birth certificates were used as absolute proof in establishing how old the girls were when they had children.

The issue here is not that they may have as many as fifty under-aged girls with children, as Voss claimed in court. The issue is that she has decided, based entirely on her judgment of their appearance, that they must be younger than their birth certificates or they claim.