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New York Times
Busy Day at Court Handling Sects Children
By KIRK JOHNSON and JOHN DOUGHERTY
Published: April 18, 2008
SAN ANGELO, Tex. It took only a few minutes from the judges opening gavel
Thursday morning for an emergency court hearing on the fate of 416 children
taken by the state from a polygamist compound two weeks ago to dissolve into
chaos.
About 100 lawyers, for the children, their families and the state, were
gathered in the main courtroom at Tom Green County Courthouse; another 100
or so were dispatched to the San Angelo city auditorium three blocks away,
and connected to the main courtroom through a video conferencing system.
Court exhibits had to be copied and carried between the locations by clerks.
It took an hour just to enter the first exhibit into the record.
Some lawyers complained heatedly to Judge Barbara Walther that the mass
hearing, radically different from a typically intimate Family Court custody
session, was unfair and benefited the state.
Just as vehemently, Judge Walther denied their objections and said that all
parties would be heard, no matter how long that took.
We have to balance the requirement in the statutes that this hearing must
be held within 14 days, Judge Walther said. Its not a perfect solution. I
wish I could give you a perfect solution. There is not one.
She assured the lawyers for the children and their families, You have not
waived all of your rights.
The children, from infants to 17-year-olds, were removed by the state during
a weeklong raid that began April 3 at the 1,691-acre Yearning for Zion ranch
operated by the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints
outside the small town of Eldorado, about 45 miles from here.
They were taken to a facility at Fort Concho in San Angelo and later many of
the older children were moved to the citys Coliseum, where they continue to
be cared for. At the same time, the mothers of the older children were sent
away, officials said, to allow questioning without interference.
At the hearing, state officials said they had not located the 16-year-old
girl whose phone call to an abuse hot line, they said, prompted the raid. A
state investigator, Angie Voss, testified that at the ranch several girls
had said they knew the caller, who had identified herself as Sarah. But they
were uncooperative under further questioning, Ms. Voss said.
The broad task faced by Judge Walther is to determine whether the children
at the ranch were abused or at risk of abuse. If so, who were they? Was
there a pattern of endangerment and under-age marriages that would make the
communitys culture itself a danger to the children if they were returned to
their parents?
The difficulty of that task is compounded by confusion over how
nontraditional families function, with one child raised by many mothers,
all married to the same man, and a complex tangling of sibling lines.
Before the first recess on Thursday, which occurred 45 minutes after the
start of the hearing, a lawyer for the Texas Division of Child Protective
Services said the agency would seek psychiatric examinations for the
children and genetic testing of both the children and adults. The department
will also try to have the children moved to other parts of the state away
from Eldorado.
Among the first witnesses, Sgt. Danny Crawford of the protective services
division produced documents that he said showed marriages among the sect,
including some that seemed to suggest that the wives had been under 16 when
they wed. Under Texas law, no girl under 16 can legally marry even with her
parents permission.
But under questioning, Sergeant Crawford acknowledged that the documents
simply listed the names of men with their wives and children listed beneath
them. There was no indication what age the wives had been when they married
and no proof of sexual abuse.
The subtext of much of the case is whether individual behavior or group
behavior is under the microscope.
One lawyer, Tom Vick, who is part of a state judicial effort to recruit
volunteers to represent the children, said outside the courtroom that he
thought membership in a polygamist sect was not the issue.
People want to look at this as a religion thing or a polygamy thing, Mr.
Vick said. Its about child abuse.
Legal experts who are closely watching the case say the line is not that
clear.
Several experts said that in a closed community like this one, where some
families might practice under-age marriage while others do not, establishing
harm or risk of harm, key threshold questions for the court, could well mean
putting the culture itself on trial. But the experts said the state could
never acknowledge that in court because it would clearly touch on issues of
religious freedom.
The Fundamentalist Church broke off from the main branch of the Mormon
church decades ago. The main branch, based in Salt Lake City, disavowed
polygamy in 1890.
Putting the culture of the religion on trial is exactly what is going to
happen, said Jane M. Spinak, a professor at Columbia University Law School
and the director of the schools Child Advocacy Clinic. If you can
establish a pattern that occurs in just about every family, then you begin
to say, maybe this is something that can be addressed wholesale, Professor
Spinak said, referring to under-age marriages. But you still need to
establish harm to individual children to remove them from their families.
Rod Parker, a lawyer from Salt Lake City who represents several of the
Fundamentalist Church families and is acting as a spokesman for the church,
said outside court that he thought it would be very difficult for any
individual family to get a fair hearing.
Many, many families out there are being tarred with the alleged problems of
a few families, Mr. Parker said. Every family has to be considered
individually. This is not fair to those families who dont have issues.
Kirk Johnson reported from Denver, and John Dougherty from San Angelo.
Gretel C. Kovach contributed reporting from San Angelo.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/18/us/18raid.html
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