Another Monogamous, Adult Couple Pleads for Their Children

Lori Jessop, the EMT technician we've heard about before, has been sleeping at a woman's shelter at night and going to see her 11 month old nursling during the day. The state has yet to tell her where her other two children are. Her husband is living in a different temporary shelter. A social worker told her that when her son has his first birthday next week, the state will celebrate it by kicking his mother out of his life.

Okay, those are my words. What the CPS worker said was something like 'removed from her care.' But it comes out to the same thing.

Attorneys are filing a petition with the presiding judge at 3:30 p.m. seeking an emergency injunction to keep the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services from removing Joseph Steed Jessop Jr. from the care of his mother, Lori Jessop, 25. The petition also demands that Lori and her husband, Joseph Steed Jessop Sr., 27, be told the whereabouts of their other two children, and that the court schedule a hearing to determine whether the state can legally continue to hold the children.

According to the petition, a social worker told Mrs. Jessop that the child would be removed from her care when he turned a year old. All three children are being held without the authority of any court order, according to attorneys.

While CPS keeps saying it's not their fault, nobody would tell them who they were, the Jessops say otherwise:

The couple is monogamous and has lived as a family away from the other residents in separate quarters in a building housing the community's medical facilities and cafeteria. Their children were seized with the others in April and placed in a squalid shelter in San Angelo, where they became ill and had to be hospitalized. Later, Lori was allowed to accompany her infant to San Antonio, where he was placed in a children's home. She has been sleeping in a women's shelter but staying with him during the day where she can nurse him and care for him. The father, Joseph Jessop, is living in temporary quarters in San Antonio, to be near his wife and child.

The couple last saw all their children May 9. They are demanding to know where their two older children are being housed because both children are medically frail. They are concerned for the children's health and safety, given their medical conditions and their recent hospitalizations. They also are concerned that their children have been traumatized by the experience of being abruptly taken from their parents and separated from them at such young ages. They want them psychologically and physically examined to make sure their needs are being met.

The parents produced documents identifying themselves and their children to authorities prior to the children being removed from Eldorado.

The petition asserts the children are being held without a court order, and in this situation, under Texas law, the parents' only remedy is to bring a writ of habeas corpus in the county in which the children are being held.

A writ of habeas corpus is the name of a legal action through which a person can seek relief from unlawful detention of himself or another person. The writ of habeas corpus has historically been an important instrument for the safeguarding of individual freedom against arbitrary state action. Although common in criminal cases, they are much less common in civil cases.