FLDS May 15th

"Individual service plans" for FLDS families are not remotely individual:

The plans, which are supposed to include input from the children, their parents and Texas Child Protective Services on what it will take to reunite a parent with a child, are being filed under a Friday deadline. Individual status hearings for the 464 children in state protective custody are scheduled before five judges in San Angelo on Monday.

Attorneys who have received copies of the plans complain that the only thing individual about them is the case number assigned to each child.

"Normally we have input. Normally we talk to a caseworker. Normally we have input with the parents," said Rene Haas, an attorney representing an FLDS father. "This is not normal."

The Deseret News obtained copies of some of the family service plans from several different sources. Each had identical paragraphs and essentially said the same thing. Texas CPS officials characterize it as a "template" that was leaked, and not the official plans that will be submitted to the courts.

So who leaked them? If it was FLDS or their attorneys, then obviously, this was what was shown to them as a service plan. If it was a 'mole' in the CPS office, then I have some hope for CPS, and I imagine CPS is now scrambling to try to individualize those plans after all.
CPS is supposed to interview parents before writing the service plan:

Cynthia Martinez with the Texas Rio Grande Legal Aid Society, which is representing a group of FLDS mothers, said that for the most part, they have not been interviewed by child welfare workers.

"They've been presented with this plan and that's pretty much been it," she said Wednesday.

Haas said she has made repeated attempts to contact CPS caseworkers to set up an interview with her clients about the family service plans, but has never received a call back. Her client, Joseph Steed Jessop Sr., won a temporary restraining order on Tuesday, blocking CPS from separating his 1-year-old son from the child's mother.

22 year old new mother Louisa Jessop says that CPS saw her birth certificate at the first hearing, and reporters have now also seen it. They have no suggestions for why CPS won't accept it yet- though I think it's most likely because they served her husband papers on the newborn claiming they could take custody of him because he was the 'child of a child.'

Governor Perry thinks that CPS has done a wonderful and professional job:

Perry's spokeswoman Krista Piferrer said the governor has full confidence in the agency. The governor praised CPS officials for promising an internal investigation of concerns raised by Hill Country Community Mental Health-Mental Retardation Center officials when the children from the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints were housed at San Angelo shelters.

"The governor is very proud of the work being done by CPS," Piferrer said. "CPS has handled a very complex situation both professionally and compassionately."

Perry's comments are his first about the FLDS raid in more than a month.

John Kight, chairman of Hill Country MHMR board, said that he has been rebuffed in his attempts to talk to Perry but that he is still trying to arrange a meeting. He said MHMR caregivers reported "appalling behavior" that included flashlights being shined in eyes of mothers at night and CPS caseworkers repeatedly lying to the women.

The governor's aide says that since CPS didn't get the reports before teh media, maybe Kight has his own agenda. Maybe. I am not sure how that makes the reports unreliable.

FLDS 'prophet' Warren Jeffs is in jail as an accessory to rape because in 2001 he performed the marriage ceremony for 14 y.o. Elissa Walls and her 19 year old cousin (who has not yet been tried), and then for telling them to be true to their wedding vows and to have children. Elissa's Mother testified for the defense- that is, on behalf of Warren Jeffs. Some of Elissa's sisters have left FLDS, some are still in. Jeffs is waiting trial for other crimes in Arizona. I do not approve of 14 year olds getting married, in case anybody is wondering. I think she was exploited.
Elissa had written a book and has appeared on Oprah.
I think she still is being exploited. See Brooke Adams review and timeline for why. I wish her well in her new life.

She dedicates her book to several people:
"''To Sheriff David Doran of Schleicher County for his untiring efforts to understand the FLDS people. To Capt. Barry Caver, Sgt. L. Brooks Long, and all the Texas Rangers for taking time to listen and learn about the FLDS.''"
Brooks Long is the ranger whose testimony is in the 2nd affadavit, which Kpb parses for us in a comment at Grits for Breakfast:

On page 6 of the PDF it states; " On April 5, 2008, while conducting a search..." at the "Temple" the "Affiant observed... beds. On one of the beds within the temple, Affiant observed that the bed linens were disturbed as if the bed had been used and Affiant OBSERVED A STRAND OF HAIR believed to have come from the head of a female. Affiant believes the strand of hair belongs to a female because Affiant has seen numerous males residents at the Suspected Place and Premises and all of the males observed by Affiant wear their hair shorter than the strand of hair observed by Affiant."

The Affidavit then provides a multitude of third-hand+ hearsay that paints quite a narrative about under 16 YO's married, pregnant and/or having children (including one in which a girl under 16 YO that has 4 children!), before telling of Sheriff Doran's secret informant;

"Affiant has been advised by Schleicher County Sheriff Doran that Sheriff Doran has worked with residents at the Suspected Place and Premises over the past four years, Sheriff Doran advised Affiant that he has learned from the residents at the Suspected Place and Premises that the residents all belong to the religious group the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (hereafter referred to as FLDS). On April 6, 2008, Sheriff Doran advised Affiant that, over the past four years, Sheriff Doran has worked with a confidential informant who is a former member of the FLDS; that the confidential informant has provided Sheriff Doran with information regarding the FLDS on more than twenty occasions over the past several years and, that on each occasion, the informant was proven to be reliable, true and correct; that the confidential informant has continued to provide Sheriff Doran reliable information as recently as April 5, 2008; that, on April 5, 2008, the confidential informant advised Sheriff Doran of the following: that the adult male FLDS church members over the age of seventeen engage in the practice of marrying multiple wives, at the time of the marriage, the bride is often under the age of sixteen years; and that the temple at the Suspected Place and Premises contains an area where there is a bed where males over the age of seventeen engage in sexual activity with children under the age of seventeen."

Now, the answer to question 1 is an easy YES, the Affiant, Leslie Brooks Long, told all that beds were observed. I searched up a few more details to include here.

- The Affidavit was sworn to at 10:12 PM, on Sunday, April 6, 2008;

- The Temple was searched late on Saturday, April 5, 2008;

- Sheriff Doran now evidently how less knowledge than Long told of in the Affidavit (INTERVIEW below);

INTERVIEW
Mankin: " It’s been reported that a bed was found on the top floor of the temple and there have been implications that it might have been used for consummating marriages moments after the ceremony.

Doran: " I wouldn’t know about that.

Mankin: " Actually, I heard a couple of reports that there were two beds found. Is that accurate?

Doran: " I’d say that was an accurate statement.


So Long tells of what Doran tells of what the informant told was a bed that overaged men used to "engage in sexual activity" with underage teens, but in the interview Doran denies knowledge of such. Maybe skating off by qualifying that knowledge being limited to SEX only, not including any on whether marriages were consummated there. Knowing many may find out he'd talked with Dale Barlow PRIOR to executing the initial SW, he might have been thinking his idea of violating civil rights AFTER finding probable cause could have been stretched too far in this case, so it was best to avoid some topics.

Back to question 2, the "sourcing" is a given when classified in any negative manner. So many layers of hearsay leading up to multiple suppositions that the suspicion of what that bed may be used for was a novel in itself before the warrant was signed off on by Walthers.

As for whether or not Long "possibly lied", it looks like quite a trail for any one to believe the Affidavit was written in "good faith", but I doubt anything will ever come of it even if there was evidence Long purposefully lied. We do need to remember this is the second search warrant, so if the first passes the smell test, this one will fly through with no problems.


An interesting point I came across on page 8 is where Long mentions a document (Bishop's Record?) that details a man married to "over twenty wives" and then stating "...with no record of divorce or death of a spouse". Walthers has told all there are boxes and boxes of records, with the CPS attorney noting greater than "100,000" documents in the recent Response to TRLA's Writ.

How the he!! could anyone know whether or not there are such records on April 6th? Sounds like this Affiant knows more about ALL those documents than that attorney.

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An Austen Judge has ruled 'invalid' the restraining order another judge granted preventing CPS from moving 22 Year old Louisa Jessop and her days old infant.=(
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4:54: good news and bad- Judge agrees Louisa Jessop is an adult, but even though CPS swiped her newborn on the basis that he was the 'child of a child,' and he isn't, CPS gets to keep him. But Louisa gets to stay with all three of her children:

Lawyers for the state conceded in court Thursday that the woman from the polygamist sect who gave birth this week while in the state's custody is not a minor and said she is free to return to her home in West Texas or remain with her three children -- including the newborn -- under protective care.

The acknowledgement came during a hearing in a Travis County courtroom where the woman's husband was seeking to have his family reunited with him at the YFZ (Yearning For Zion) Ranch near San Angelo, where last month Child Protective Services officials took more than 400 children into custody on grounds that they were in imminent danger of abuse.

State District Judge Darlene Byrne ruled that her court had no jurisdiction in the matter because a judge in San Angelo had already ruled that the state could keep custody of the children while the investigation into conditions at the West Texas compound continues.

If this statement from Daddy Dan, who is 24 years old, doesn't put a lump in your throat, you are made of ice and I do not want to know:

He said he is relieved that his children are being kept together with their mother, and he vowed to continue to seek the full reunification of their family.

"They are my children, and I know that if they are with my wife they will remember me and she will teach them as we've always tried to teach them,” Dan Jessop said after the hearing. "We know that eventually, we'll be back together."

The heart of her husband trusts in her, and she does him good and not evil all the days of her life.