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New York Times
April 25, 2008
Court to Hear Challenge on Sect Children
By DAN FROSCH
SAN ANTONIO A Texas appeals court agreed on Thursday to hear arguments
over the legality of placing hundreds of children taken from a polygamous
sects West Texas compound into foster care without granting their families
individual hearings.
The response from the Third Court of Appeals in Austin was to a request from
Texas RioGrande Legal Aid lawyers who are representing 48 mothers in the
tangled child welfare case that each family be permitted to respond to abuse
accusations before their children were fully absorbed into the states
foster care system. The appeals court will hear the legal aid groups
arguments on Tuesday.
Last Friday, Judge Barbara Walther of State District Court in San Angelo
ordered the 437 children taken in a raid on the sects Yearning For Zion
ranch in Eldorado to be placed in foster care while an investigation is
conducted into whether the sect, the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ
of Latter-day Saints, or F.L.D.S., allows under-age girls to marry.
These families have the right to have their voices heard in the legal
process, a Texas RioGrande Legal Aid lawyer, Robert Doggett, said in a
statement. The idea that these children can be taken away without giving
their families the opportunity to address allegations and fight to stay
together is absurd.
After the raid, which began on April 3, all but some of the older children
and many mothers were housed together at the San Angelo Coliseum, 45 miles
north of Eldorado.
But on Thursday, 17 mothers accompanied their infants from the Coliseum to a
shelter at an undisclosed location in Texas, said Darrell Azar, a spokesman
for the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services. Forty other
women who were offered the option of returning to the ranch chose to go to a
womens shelter, Mr. Azar said, and seven women left with their lawyers or
returned to the ranch. He said the state was making arrangements to place
women at shelters near their children.
Mr. Azar also said that 25 more young women who had been considered adults
were reclassified on Thursday as children, bringing the number of children
taken from the ranch to 462.
Undeterred by the sects efforts to stop the foster placements, officials
from protective services have continued to send the children to various
group homes for children and emergency shelters throughout the state.
A total of 201 children had been placed in foster care across the state as
of Thursday afternoon, Mr. Azar said. In Eldorado, parents of the F.L.D.S.
children continued to filter into a county building to submit DNA samples,
said Janece Rolfe, a spokeswoman for the Texas attorney generals office. So
far, 80 men and women have submitted DNA in the hope of being reunited with
their children, Ms. Rolfe said.
The DNA samples, taken through cheek swabs, will be matched against samples
taken from the children at the San Angelo Coliseum.
The goal of the DNA testing, to establish lines of parentage, is likely to
be complicated by interrelated blood lines within the sect, genetic experts
said. David Einum, laboratory director at a Salt Lake City company that does
family testing, said even when family lines are established, genetic testing
cannot shed light on the central question in the states investigation: the
age of mothers when they gave birth.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/25/us/25raid.html
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