FLDS June 4

Wow. Talk about conspiracy theories- The Dallas News actually has proof- thousands of emails they've obtained under the Freedom of Information Act:

State officials, fearing a violent reaction from members of a West Texas polygamist sect, considered a secret plan to haul hundreds of children and their mothers to Midlothian to be separated, internal e-mails show. But a judge vetoed the plan.

They also worried that mothers would try to make a "run" from the shelter with their children, feared a rampage of infections among the families and fretted about the fear of violence and state resources being overwhelmed by events.

More than 1,500 pages of e-mails between the governor's office and Child Protective Services, obtained by The Dallas Morning News under state freedom of information laws, show top executives working day and night in early April to deal with a raid on the Yearning for Zion ranch that quickly mushroomed into a massive operation. In the first week, more than 1,000 personnel were deployed and costs reached $2.3 million.

It's hot stuff. I hope they give us more. Click on the link to read more.

By Tuesday afternoon:

As of 3 p.m. today, 397 children of the roughly 450 in state custody from a polygamist sect near Eldorado have been released from shelters across the state and returned to the custody of their parents, Child Protective Services spokeswoman Marleigh Meisner said.

Only six of 16 shelters that were housing the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints children still had some in custody as of this afternoon, she said.

I'm not sure where the disputed minors fit in here, nor do I know what the nursing mothers staying at a woman's shelter are able to do about collecting their older children.


Daughter of Sect Leader Gets Additional Protection is the title of this news story. More on the court order keeping his 16 year old daughter in custody and the warrant served for Jeffs' DNA samples, which:

said investigators had evidence that Mr. Jeffs had married four young girls in Texas and Utah, two of whom were 12 years old.

The new court order, filed here in Tom Green County, does not accuse Mr. Jeffs of abusing his daughter, who was released to her mother on Tuesday afternoon. But the order, signed by Judge Barbara Walther, who is overseeing the sect case, bars the girl from having “any contact, in any form,” with Mr. Jeffs and another man, Raymond Jessop.

The girl’s lawyer, Natalie E. Malonis, and another lawyer, Tim Edwards, who represents the girl’s mother, both declined to say anything about who Mr. Jessop is or his relationship to the girl, or how he might be reached for comment.

So the girl has been allowed to go stay with her mother, Annette Jeffs.

Willie Jessop, a spokesman for the F.L.D.S. group, said that to his knowledge there was no credible evidence that accusations of sexual abuse relating to the child in the court order were true. He said the girl’s lawyer was pursuing “an agenda,” and that the girl’s mother had tried to find other counsel.

“What we have in this situation is a very disappointing attorney who is pushing a different agenda than what her client wants,” Mr. Jessop said. He said he did not know exactly what the relationship was between Raymond Jessop and the girl, and he said his information about the accusations had come from the girl’s mother.

This NYTimes reporter seems to be more than a little bit behind the times:

Texas authorities seized more than 460 children from the group’s compound, acting in response to a call to an abuse hot line from someone who said she was 16 and being abused at Yearning for Zion. That 16-year-old has not been found, and Ms. Malonis said on Tuesday that the girl she represents did not make that call.

That girl does not exist, and Brooke Adams, reporter for the Salt Lake Tribune had figured that out before the first week of the raid was over.


Natalie Malonis, the woman appointed Attorney ad litem for three of the FLDS children and serving as co-counsel for one other child, has granted an exclusive interview, which you can read in full here. Here are the excerpts I thought interesting:

CPS has preliminarily concluded that none of the adults living at the compound are the parents of some of the children in custody. I know that CPS is looking at a variety of records and sources to determine those identities and the process was initially obfuscated because some adults and some children would not speak of certain issues and would not identify family relationships. It is my understanding that situation has improved but is not resolved.

We already knew that CPS wasn't listening to FLDS members telling them that not all the children had parents at the ranch, or at the ranch at the time of the raid. There's at least one Canadian girl who is said to have been visiting her grandmother. There's Shannon, who wasn't at the ranch, but when she came to the shelter to see her children, CPS told her they didn't believe her.
In the very first hearing, that 14 day hearing that was a farcical circus, attorneys asked

"whether families that have come forward to say they didn’t live at the ranch can go home.

The CPS supervisor said she doesn’t know of any, and a home would have to be checked out before a child could go to it."

(a reporter's summary of that first day of testimony is here)

Malonis gave this interview Thursday, May 8- or at least that's the date the blog posted it. She worded her replies very carefully, making it seem likely to me that she knew CPS' figures on the under-aged girls were not going to stand up:

Malonis: S.D.: How do you react to news reports saying 31 out of 53 underage girls are in the custody of the State of Texas?

If true, that is a shocking number. Based on testimony and evidence presented at trial, I am not surprised by that number.

S.D.: In your opinion, does that constitute what the state CPS officials call a "pattern of abuse"?

Malonis: I cannot comment on that specifically because it is an ultimate issue in these proceedings. If the number is accurate, intuitively it would appear that it is out of line with the general population.

If, if, if- if true, if accurate... She knows that number is false. She also talks about tales of abandoned boys and carefully uses the same qualifier- 'if true,' that would be troubling.

In the wake of the 3rd Court's ruling, She gave another, later interview to the same blogger, and it turns out she must have known those numbers were false- one of her clients was one of the disputed minors the state had to admit was actually an adult:

S.D.: Being you were the attorney ad litem for one of the young ladies that was deemed to be an adult, originally there were a number of people where the ages was "disputed", why were the ages disputed and what was required to prove their actual ages?

Natalie Malonis: I think the reason the ages were disputed in the first instance is because CPS felt like it could not rely on information provided by the parents and children. So, even if there existed some kind of evidence of age, CPS would not take the evidence at face value. Ultimately CPS stated that they would rely on birth certificates and drivers licenses to establish age if those documents could be otherwise verified. I have seen reports that CPS verified the documents by making calls to vital statistic offices to verify information.

S.D.: Why was it so difficult for CPS and the children and/or parents to establish the ages of those girls?

Natalie Malonis: I think the only reason was lack of trust flowing in both directions.

Sheriff Doran is up for reelection so it's no wonder he's calling for criminal indictments. Bigamy is now a felony offense in Texas, so charging the polygamous FLDS parents would take a few more voters out of the pool.



Doran gives another interview here:
I haven't read it all yet, but this doesn't quite jive with what he said in an earlier interview.

Doran: All I can say — and you know any law enforcement officer's not going to uncover their confidential informant — confidential informant is plural. This is a person, or persons, that I have relied on the last four years to educate me on this group. A person that, if something came up, I can call this person, run it by 'em and they're going to be in the know of what this means, or who this is, or what's going on in this particular situation. This confidential informant did not lead up to this raid. This confidential informant had no part of that. During the search warrants, this person — persons, actually — was called upon to clarify some things, evidences that were uncovered and bring in some of the FLDS teachings that would match these particular evidences that were uncovered.

He absolves himself from all responsibility. He was only following orders.

Schleicher County Sheriff David Doran was one of the few outsiders whom the FLDS would initially allow onto the YFZ Ranch, and he cultivated a relationship with them. That relationship has been severely strained in the aftermath of the raid on the YFZ Ranch.

"I did not have the power to step in and stop this," Doran said. "The state of Texas had an investigation. They had a call, an outcry of a child they had to investigate and we are there to support that type of investigation. Where there is crimes that are being committed, and outcries being made, we're going to go in and investigate it."

In a lengthy and frank interview with the Deseret News on Tuesday, Doran spoke about the raid on the YFZ Ranch and what happens next.

"We will still attempt to cultivate that relationship the best that we can," he said. "I know there's a distrust there. I didn't bring that distrust on. I didn't change my way."

But he still thinks Sarah could be real- or at least, he claims to think that:

Even today, Doran remains unsure if Sarah really exists or is a hoax.

And this would be hilarious of we weren't talking about the real lives and hearts of real little children who have been brutally traumatized by CPS' and Doran's blundering:

This deal with Child Protective Services...the thing is there were victims that were definitely found on the ranch and they were removed. The ones that are being returned, that was Child Protective Services' goal from the get-go is to find out who were the victims when they were removed.

We had to destroy the children to save a few. Well, one. Maybe. We don't know yet. Because so far, all but one are being returned.
And CPS isn't doing this because they've separated the abused children from the non-abused, they're doing it very reluctantly under the authority of two higher courts who smacked their hands and told them to go get them some evidence.

'It's not my fault, it's not my fault, I was only following orders:

Of course, I can't comment on what Child Protective Services should or should not do. I do know what CPS was up against when they were out there. They were the ones conducting the interviews. They were the ones making the determinations and giving those results over to the district judge which caused the mass removal of the children. We were there to provide security for Child Protective Services as far as law enforcement went.

He's just the hired help.

Deseret News: There was such a huge response with sheriffs from numerous counties, an armored personnel carrier, snipers. Was there ever a contingency plan in place for the eventuality of going out on the ranch? You can't just call all those resources in overnight.

Doran: Yeah, you can. When the call came in, the plan was formulated immediately how to logistically go in there and do it in the most calm and low-profile manner that we could. What's being portrayed is an armored personnel carrier, snipers, SWAT teams. In all actuality, all those were called in in case we needed them. They were never used for the initial entry when we, myself, two Texas Rangers, a handful of officers went to the gate that night with Child Protective Services and served a search warrant.

Immediately? It was four or five days later.

Deseret News: When did it get to be more of a law enforcement investigation?

Doran: Child Protective Services conducted interviews all through the night, I mean through the full night and up to the day. Law enforcement started getting involved and stepping it up and brought the perimeter in, just to a staging area — never at an entry deal — by noon the next day. A new plan was formulated.

Even then, because not all of the children that were requested to be brought forward was brought forward to Child Protective Services. They were not satisfied that these people were fully cooperating like they requested they do. So it was requested to do a residential to residential search.

Anybody up for a bet that the 'not all the children that were requested to be brought forward was brought forward' is all about the fictional Sarah?

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Y'all should read the rest of that interview, and then read this one (I posted excerpts of it before). It's a great exercise in comparing and contrasting. I'll share a few points later. (Okay, it's later):

In the Deseret News Interview, he said he wasn't visiting the ranch for four years with any idea about preparing for something like this and he maintained neutrality. In the interview he gave in April:
Doran: There was no one reason, but I’d say that my main goal was to develop an open dialog and a level of understanding. I wanted to be able to talk with them in case something happened.

Mankin: You mean something like what happened last week?

Doran: Yeah...that’s right.

Mankin: You also made a few trips out west didn’t you?

Doran: Yes, but before that Sheriff Kirk Smith of Washington County, Utah came here to brief me and bring us up to speed on his dealings with the FLDS community in Hildale, Utah and Colorado City, Arizona.
He went 6 times.

Now he says it's all a CPS thing and he's just the hired help. Then:

Doran: The request from CPS was our probable cause, but we combined that with information that myself and others have gathered over the past four years. All of that went on the affidavit requesting a warrant.

In this interview he implies the informants were informed, current- and he says he had more than one. In April:
Doran: Absolutely not! You saw the affidavit. You know it said the informant was a former member of the FLDS. You and I both know that they don’t allow former members at the YFZ.

Mankin: Let me get this straight then...when the warrant was issued, the informant had never been at the YFZ Ranch?

Doran: That’s correct! To get a warrant, it takes a complaint from a victim or first hand knowledge of a crime. The informant provided an abundance of good information, but none of it was based on first hand knowledge and therefore it wasn’t enough to go to a judge with and seek a warrant.

Now he says they got all this together on the spur of the moment- no advance plan. In April:
Let’s just say that law enforcement was and is prepared to answer a cry for help at the YFZ Ranch.

Now he says that the girls (plural) they asked for were not produced, ergo, FLDS were not cooperative. IN April:
We asked to see the girl who called for help, but they wouldn’t produce her.

Well, no.
She didn't exist.



Here's a Larry King interview with FLDS parents Zavenda and Edson, reunited with several of their children. You can see pictures of them at the SLTrib website.

Here's a Collier's article from the 1950s- by Edson's father, about his experience in the Short Creek Raid.
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ALL the YFZ children are now with their parents. CPS was claiming that they had 100 'unclaimed' children in the days before the SCoT appeal. I knew that was more CPS bogusness (is that a word?) because two of the children were 'Sarah' and her equally mythical baby. As of today, all the children have been picked up:

Also released: 26 mothers whose ages the state disputed, leading DFPS to treat them as minors while in custody. Those women were among 31 females the state claimed were underage mothers, a tally that turned out to include one 14-year-old who had never been married or had a child.
Crimmins said once the state compiles address lists of the families it will re-allocate caseworkers to monitor them.
The department will likely scrap the specialized parenting classes it planned to make parents take. The order signed by 51st District Judge Barbara Walther on Monday requires only that they take "standard" classes, he said.
Crimmins also said that the "first use" the department will make of DNA reports is to determine family relationships. Then, it will see if the 599 or so reports "can be used in the [abuse] investigation."

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Just for fun, Sheriff Doran sounds pretty dim. In fact, Sheriff D. comes across as several french fries short of a Happy Meal, and slightly underdone at that.

Here's some excerpts from Sheriff D's interview at the Deseret News that illustrate what I'm talking about [My snark in brackets. I restrained myself]:

"Where there is crimes that are being committed, and outcries being made

The ones that are being returned, that was Child Protective Services' goal from the get-go is to find out who were the victims

not all of the children that were requested to be brought forward was brought forward to Child Protective Services.

I didn't cultivate this relationship over four years for this plan to unfold the way I did. I'm not the mastermind behind it, we were simply cooperating with Child Protective Services. It's in our lap.

The second search warrant was by the Texas Rangers based on evidence that was located on the property during the initial assistance with Child Protective Services. That's when further evidence of crimes were seen in plain sight by law enforcement.[the man sounds like a caricature of Barney Fife]

That is very incorrect information. That is information that's being put out there that is not accurate.

Upon initially approaching the gate with the Rangers, a phone call was made by the FLDS at the gate and they produced their phone to me

[this next one is my favorite]:
A dialogue was made between myself and this gentleman that proclaimed to be Dale Evans Barlow. That still left in question, the victim Sarah.

["A dialogue was made?" Shudder.]

even for the fact that we were on the property and still looking for the victim

confidential informant is plural. This is a person, or persons, that I have relied on the last four years to educate me on this group. A person that, if something came up, I can call this person, run it by 'em and they're going to be in the know of what this means

This confidential informant did not lead up to this raid. This confidential informant had no part of that. During the search warrants, this person — persons, actually — was called upon to clarify some things, evidences that were uncovered and bring in some of the FLDS teachings that would match these particular evidences that were uncovered.

[This is my second favorite]:
If there was no problem, there wouldn't be a lot of victims coming away from that culture doing outcries.

[Doing outcries? It sounds like some kind of freaky ritual]

The second search warrant was produced because there was obvious evidence in plain sight of crimes, that's acting on the second scope of the search."

Do you think he noticed that by his reasoning, all of FLDS' statements about CPS misbehaviour must be true- because if it wasn't, 'there wouldn't be a lot of victims ...doing outcries?'