Polygamists: Authorities Prepare For the Worst in Texas

Debra,

Is "clear and convincing evidence" the appropriate standard for child protection cases? Specifically, wouldn't the Texas Family Code have a less strict standard for the state to step in when children may be in danger?

wandeljw wrote:

Debra,

Is "clear and convincing evidence" the appropriate standard for child protection cases? Specifically, wouldn't the Texas Family Code have a less strict standard for the state to step in when children may be in danger?

Some states use the clear and convincing evidence standard and some states use the preponderance of the evidence standard with respect to child dependency proceedings; some states mix and match standards depending on the circumstances, i.e., whether the state is seeking to place a child in a residential treatment facility where the child's liberty will be greatly diminished. ALL states must use the clear and convincing standard as a matter of constitutional law with respect to parental rights termination proceedings. Santosky v. Kramer, 455
U.S. 745 (1982) (due process requires that the parent/child relationship can only be severed upon clear and convincing evidence).

My understanding is that the FLDS children are in "protective" custody and there has not been any severing of parent/child relationships.

wandeljw wrote:

My understanding is that the FLDS children are in "protective" custody and there has not been any severing of parent/child relationships.

What an odd thing to say! Tell me how you think this works in practice, wandeljw. How do you take a child into protective custody without severing its relationship with its parents?

wandeljw wrote:

My understanding is that the FLDS children are in "protective" custody and there has not been any severing of parent/child relationships.

What an odd thing to say! Tell me how you think this works in practice, wandeljw. How do you take a child into protective custody without severing its relationship with its parents?

Religious experts: Texas polygamist sect skilled at misleading authorities

11:40 PM CDT on Saturday, May 24, 2008
By EMILY RAMSHAW and ROBERT T. GARRETT / The Dallas Morning News
[email protected]; [email protected]

AUSTIN - Child welfare officials were up against a culture of secrecy, unlimited resources and sect members well-schooled in the art of misleading authorities as they tried to build their case for removing hundreds of children from a West Texas polygamist enclave, religious experts and former adherents say.

Thursday's appeals court decision that many if not all of the children removed from the Yearning For Zion ranch last month must be returned to their parents highlights how difficult it is to build a child welfare case against a fundamentalist religious group, sect investigators say - particularly without a vocal victim.

The 450 children remain in state custody while the Texas Supreme Court decides whether to take up the case. But the legal challenge has kindled quiet debate over whether Texas authorities should deal with polygamist groups as states such as Utah and Arizona have done: trying to win cooperation rather than raiding communities and prosecuting members en masse.

"These are people who have been taught from the cradle that outsiders are bad, that government is evil, until they fear us more than they fear their abusers," said Utah Attorney General Mark Shurtleff.

Added Arizona Attorney General Terry Goddard: "Step by step, we've tried to make sure that people ... understood what the rules were, understood what we were going to prosecute and that we weren't going to condemn them just for their lifestyle."


'No reliable evidence'

Leaders of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints vehemently deny misleading state officials. Lying is not part of their culture, they say - privacy is.

"The record's clearly going to show what the deceptions were and who lied to whom," said sect leader Willie Jessop, referring to state investigators.

CPS officials, citing the ongoing legal battle, declined to discuss specifics of the case. But in a filing to the Texas Supreme Court on Friday, lawyers for Texas' Department of Family and Protective Services said collecting evidence was extraordinarily difficult. Girls routinely switched their names and identified themselves as mothers of other women's children. Some didn't even come forward to claim their own kin.

"Based on both the children's and women's repeated deceptions, lies, and misinformation, the trial court had no reliable evidence" on the identities of the children or their parents, the state's attorneys wrote. The appellate court's ruling last week centered on a general lack of evidence.


For her, lying was duty

This comes as no surprise to Mary Mackert, a former FLDS member who, as a child in a polygamous family, was taught that her behavior could determine whether her father ended up in jail. She is in Texas because of her interest in the children.

Her mother rehearsed lies with her children: When her father spent the night at his other wives' houses? "Daddy's a traveling salesman." Why didn't the family attend the mainstream Mormon church? "Daddy's a Catholic."

By the time Ms. Mackert, from Utah, was married herself - at 17, to a 50-year-old - lying was second nature. When her husband was in public with her, he would ask their children to "come to Grandpa." When Ms. Mackert took the rent check to the landlord, she referred to her husband as her father.

"You didn't think of it as lying. It's your duty and your responsibility to protect those who are living the principle," Ms. Mackert said. "They're going to lie to protect their prophet, and the head of their family. They'll do anything under the banner of religion."

That includes draining their resources, said Sam Brower, a Utah-based polygamist investigator and expert on the FLDS sect.

Mr. Brower said that the sect's legal strategy is simply to outlast opponents - and that it has the money to do it, thanks to various successful businesses the church owns. He said the sect has brought in virtually every high-powered attorney it's ever used to tackle the West Texas case.

Religious leaders also make investigators' work harder by shuttling people across state lines, Mr. Brower said. Often, he said, people of interest simply "disappear" - making something as simple as serving a subpoena incredibly costly. When investigators get too close, Mr. Brower said, sect leaders order entire families to turn in their photo albums, birth certificates and other records to be hidden or destroyed.

"It's like dealing with the mob, only worse," Mr. Brower said. "Part of their culture is to create confusion."


The wrong approach?

Mr. Jessop called such statements "outrageous and barbaric." He said investigators have never cared to hear sect members' side of the story - relying on rumors and former adherents with agendas to guide them.

"There has been such a blatant disregard for the truth," he said. "Everything's about sensation. There have been no boundaries."

For many sect members, the Yearning For Zion case brings up painful memories of the 1953 raids on Short Creek - a now-renamed town on the Utah-Arizona border where more than 300 FLDS women and children were sent into foster care.

They hope the West Texas case will play out like Short Creek did: After a public backlash that brought down an Arizona governor, families were eventually reunited.

If it does, experts say, Texas officials can learn from Utah and Arizona, where officials have emphasized selective prosecution for child and domestic abuse, not targeting polygamy itself or going after entire communities.

The two states created a safety committee made up of sect members, social workers and law enforcement officials, with monthly meetings that rotate among cities with significant polygamist populations.

Mr. Goddard, the Arizona attorney general, said authorities in both states have worked closely since 2003, creating a hotline for abused youths to call and preventing FLDS leader Warren Jeffs from using the sect's trust fund and local police and government jobs "to coerce" followers to toe the line.

"In the past, we were afraid to seek help and to go to the police because we were afraid that they would charge us," said Heidi Foster, a Salt Lake City mother of 12 who has been in a polygamous marriage and now helps run a support group for fundamentalist Mormon women.

Texas' approach drives sect women "further underground," she said. "They're going to be more likely to try and handle it themselves and not seek help."


Imminent danger cited

Texas officials have portrayed their case as simply too urgent. The sect's pervasive belief in marrying off underage girls put every child there in imminent danger, they argued. A trial judge agreed, but the appellate court did not.

Mr. Jessop said if sect members are ever allowed to return to the ranch, it would be a long time until they trust the government.

While some kind of "cooperative" community policing model might work, he doesn't foresee sect members changing their lifestyle.

"The belief of the people is that religion is not the problem, bias against religion is the problem," Mr. Jessop said. "It's a little bit like asking a Christian to give up Christianity to get their children back."

Thanks wandeljw and dys. It appears that my understanding of the word "severance" was incorrect. But just to make sure: In standard American usage, must a separation be permanent to become a severance?

Thomas wrote:

wandeljw wrote:

My understanding is that the FLDS children are in "protective" custody and there has not been any severing of parent/child relationships.

What an odd thing to say! Tell me how you think this works in practice, wandeljw. How do you take a child into protective custody without severing its relationship with its parents?

well, in the US there is a major difference between termination of parental rights and protective custody with essentially 2 different legal processes involved. federal Permanency Planning law requires every child placed out of the home under child protection rules be under the jurisdiction of the courts and there must be a plan for either returning the child to the biological parent (s) or finding a permanent family/home for the child within 6 months. While, of course, it is VERY tramatic for both the children and the parents the primary function of child protection is to ensure the safety and welfare of children which is often arbitrary and capricious activity with no clear cut legal proceedings but most often "judgement" calls by the courts and the state.

Part of the problem is the common use of the word "cult".

This word has no meaning other than "new religion that I don't like".

I have seen the silly attempts to give criteria of cult... but none of them have any use to say anything useful about the wildly disparate groups to which this disparaging term has been applied. These groups have ranged from suicide pacts to business methods to presidential candidates.

Vague disparaging terms like "cult" aren't helpful for a reasonable discusion.

(Edit: the original was more harsh sounding then I intended.)

FLDS sect case hits CPS staff in wallet
By JOHN MORITZStar-Telegram staff writer

AUSTIN -- The strain of handling the huge child custody case involving a polygamous sect in West Texas is trickling down through the ranks of Child Protective Services caseworkers who are pinching pennies while waiting for the state to repay them for overdue travel expenses.

Officials from the Texas Department of Family Protective Services say the agency is struggling to reduce a growing backlog in reimbursement requests for out-of-pocket expenses from caseworkers in the field who say the skyrocketing price of gasoline is hampering their ability to do their jobs.

Darrell Azar, a spokesman for the agency that oversees Child Protective Services and Adult Protective Services, blamed the backlog in part on the ongoing operations at the West Texas polygamist ranch where more than 460 children have been taken into state custody. But he also said the agency will soon hire an additional auditor and as many as eight temporary employees to process the avalanche of expense reports being filed not only from the West Texas operations but also from caseworkers statewide.

"We are behind, there's no doubt," Azar said last week. "But plans are in place to speed up reimbursements."

Azar said the agency has heard "anecdotal complaints" from CPS workers that they are having to dig deeper into their own pockets as they drive hundreds of miles a week checking up on youngsters in foster care or on parents at risk of losing custody of their children. The agency normally processes reimbursement within two to three weeks after they are submitted, but the backlog has extended the time by a couple of weeks, he said.

'I'm out of gas'

But a longtime CPS worker in the Dallas-Fort Worth region said any delay inflicts almost immediate pain on employees.

"We're being told that we might have to wait another 30 days for our expense checks. With the price of gas at about $4 a gallon, we're hurting," said the worker, who asked that her name not be used out of concern that it might jeopardize her job. "I typically drive about 300 miles a week. My credit card is maxed out, and I'm out of gas."

Mike Gross, vice president of the Texas State Employees Union, said his office has fielded complaints about slow reimbursements and the state's policy of calculating mileage based on the shortest possible route to and from each destination workers must visit. The effect of the policy, he said, is that workers often use bypasses and beltways to avoid congestion and save time, even if the routes are a few miles longer.

"They're having to eat those extra miles," Gross said.

Azar said his department can do little about the policy, which has been in place for several years and applies to all state agencies. CPS workers are reimbursed at 50.5 cents per mile, the maximum under federal standards, he added.

Mounting costs

Operations resulting from the April 3 raid on the compound near Eldorado operated by the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints are threatening to blow a hole in the state budget. Preliminary costs for employee overtime, travel and lodging for the first few weeks show expenditures topping $5.5 million. That figure is expected to rise dramatically as more invoices are submitted from the field.

The cost of providing foster care for the children in custody plus support services is expected to run at least $1.7 million per month for as long as the youngsters remain wards of the state. The cost of legal representation for the children has not been fully calculated but is expected to go well into the millions.

The CPS worker in North Texas, who is not part of the Eldorado operations, said she and many of her co-workers fear that as attention is focused on the children from the compound, the day-to-day needs of the rest of the work force might be overlooked.

The slow pace of reimbursements, she said, affects not only her professional life, but also her personal life.

"I'm having to make choices between buying gas for the car so I can make my visits or buying medicines for" her medical condition, she said. "I'm fixing to go to [a charity] to get my meds. It's that bad."

Azar said the agency is sympathetic to such reports and is working to minimize any hardships.

"I think most of this goes back to the price of gas, which affects just about everybody, including state employees," he said. "I think that what's happening is that, as gas prices go up, our employees file their expense reports faster and faster. And that results in the backlogs. Add in the huge amount of invoices coming in from Eldorado, and the backlogs just get bigger. That's why we're adding staff and trying to speed things up."

[email protected]
John Moritz reports from the Star-Telegram's Austin Bureau. 512-476-4294

The court has spoken, so the law apparently says that the taking of the kids was unwarranted, and it may well have been, however, that doesn't mean these people are innocent, nor that they were targeted purely because they are different.

the state claims that bringing up children in a culture that promotes early marriage and childbearing is abuse....

Perhaps large cities with high crime statistics could then, on the basis of "pervasive hopelessness," remove ALL children en masse from parents who live in the "hood" based on a generalized fear that these children, if raised in their neighborhood communities, may become violent gang members, drug dealers, pregnant teens addicted to crack, victims of violent crime, and the like.