Those who know how American law works do however know that the courts comments are directed towards CPS as well as the lower courts.
Quote:Really, care to back that up with ANY evidence whatsoever?Those who know how American law works do however know that the courts comments are directed towards CPS as well as the lower courts.
Law professors said that if child-protection authorities wish to retain custody of some children -- such as teenage girls believed to be at the most risk of sexual abuse -- they must make their case child by child.
"Their failure to individualize the children, to look at the 4-year-old boy as being different than the 12-year-old girl, is the thing that both the Court of Appeals and the Supreme Court weren't able to abide," said Charles G. Childress, a clinical law professor at the University of Texas
"a picture speaks a thousand words"
FLDS raid appears to have backfired
As polygamist families from the Yearning for Zion Ranch await the return of their children, officials in Texas face the fallout after trying to crack down.
By Miguel Bustillo and Nicholas Riccardi, Los Angeles Times Staff Writers
May 31, 2008
ELDORADO, TEXAS -- As officials haggled Friday over how to return more than 400 children to their parents, it was becoming increasingly clear that Texas' audacious attempt to rein in the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints had backfired -- and become a lesson in the difficulty of cracking down on the 10,000-member polygamist sect.
"If you want to make any change . . . it has to go case by case, one child at a time," said Ellen Marrus, co-director of the Center for Children, Law and Policy at the University of Houston. "It's going to be very slow."
The children, who have been in foster homes scattered around the state, were set to be reunited with their families beginning Monday. But the deal was complicated when a trial judge late Friday refused to approve it unless dozens of parents filed pledges not to leave Texas -- a process that could take several days.
Legal analysts said that reuniting the FLDS families would make it harder to prove any children were abused. "It's very hard to talk to a child about what's going on in a household," Marrus said, "when they're in that household."
Authorities raided the FLDS compound in April after receiving an anonymous phone call. Although they did not find the caller, who said she was a minor being sexually abused on the compound -- the call appears to have been a hoax -- officials said they discovered evidence that all of the children there were at risk.
But an appellate court last week found that child-welfare officials had overstepped their authority. The Texas Supreme Court agreed, and on Thursday ordered the children released.
Now, activists -- who long have complained that officials looked the other way while the sect practiced "divinely inspired" underage marriage -- are at a loss.
"Who's going to ever touch [the sect] again?" asked Flora Jessop, on the verge of tears Friday morning. She fled a polygamous marriage as a teen. "For something like this to happen, it kind of makes you wonder why you fight for stuff in this country."
State officials said they would seek to remove FLDS children from their parents' custody on an individual basis, as well as pursue possible cases of abuse.
"The child custody issues and other court proceedings do not impact the ongoing criminal investigation," said Jerry Strickland, a spokesman for the Texas attorney general's office. "The evidence collected from the polygamist compound and reviewed by investigators will dictate the direction of this investigation."
And Arizona authorities on Friday issued a warrant to collect DNA from the sect's spiritual leader, Warren Jeffs, who is being held for trial there on sexual-abuse charges. Jeffs is believed to have fathered a child with a 12-year-old girl at the ranch, according to an affidavit. He was convicted last year in Utah of forcing a 14-year-old girl to marry her adult cousin, and received a sentence of up to life in prison.
The Texas raid was not the first time that the government had moved against the sect and been disappointed by the results.
In 1953, Arizona authorities arrested the sect in its entirety -- then about 400 people -- in the hamlet of Short Creek on the Utah state line. They put the 236 children into foster care. Images of sobbing mothers sparked a backlash that contributed to the then-governor's loss in the next election.
Scarred by memories of that raid, officials in Utah and Arizona have preferred to prosecute individual abuse cases against FLDS members in their states.
On Friday, they warned that history may repeat itself.
"For 50 years, [the sect] used the Short Creek raid as reason to keep their people secretive and isolated," Utah Atty. Gen. Mark Shurtleff said in an interview. "We said that was not going to happen again. Well, it has happened again."
FLDS leaders, Shurtleff said, will probably cite the Texas raid "as a reason why they should not trust the government, and instead go to their [religious] leaders first" with complaints of sexual abuse.
The sect -- which broke away from the mainstream Mormon Church long ago -- built its Yearning for Zion Ranch four years ago just outside Eldorado, a dusty western Texas hamlet. Its members attracted attention from locals, who were unnerved by the sight of FLDS women in full-length prairie dresses coming and going at the walled compound.
Many here cheered the raids, but on Friday residents were fuming. "I absolutely don't agree with what they do," Curtis Phillips, 33, said of the FLDS as he worked the register at the town's feed and mercantile store. "But blowing in that ranch like cowboys and taking all those kids -- that was just stupid. That's why people like me don't trust the government."
Curtis Griffin, 45, owner of the local fuel depot, counts many FLDS members as customers. He blamed Sheriff David Doran, who is up for reelection, for mischaracterizing the entire sect as pedophiles.
"I said from the word go, if there's sex with underage girls, nail their butt," said Griffin. "But nail the right people. We're going to wind up with a $30-million bill here in this little county because these people didn't have their ducks in a row."
The town also was abuzz over an anticipated mass voter registration by the FLDS. Hours after the court first ruled against the state, two members of the sect walked into the county clerk's office and requested 300 voter registration forms, a potentially tide-turning number in a county with 1,800 voters.
Doran, who has been sheriff here for 12 years, downplayed that. "I'm not worried about it. The citizens have always stood behind me, and if the community feels this is an attempt to take over Schleicher County, I know they'll stand together. Once we begin impaneling some grand juries and the criminal case comes to light, we'll see the tide turn once again."
Texas agency under magnifying glass over raid on polygamist sectPublished Saturday May 31st, 2008
SAN ANGELO, Texas - For nearly two months, Texas child welfare officials had insisted conditions at a polygamist group's ranch were so abusive that none of its members should be allowed to keep their children.
Now, however, one of the of the largest custody cases in U.S. history is unravelling, and some are looking for what went wrong when the state raided the Yearning For Zion Ranch and removed more than 400 children.
Since the state Supreme Court ruled that the Texas Department of Child Protective Services overreached when it swept the children into foster care, agency officials have been unwilling to discuss the case, their strategy or what went wrong.
However, some close to the debacle say the operation was doomed from the start by a series of missteps.
First is the oddity of a religious sect the agency knew little about, exacerbating the inherent perils of balancing parents' rights and child safety. Then there were the abuse allegations, starting with a mysterious telephone call and echoed by disgruntled former members, seemingly accepted at face value.
And an ill-fated 1992 brush with another religious sect - which led to the fiery deaths of 21 children at the Branch Davidian compound near Waco - still lingers on the agency's collective conscience.
"It's difficult to know whether, in fact, they screwed it up," said Linda Spears, vice-president of the Child Welfare League of America, a national collection of nonprofits that aid abused and neglected children. "It's the 20/20 hindsight thing."
Folks in Schleicher County, a dusty patch near the middle of Texas, had been at least curious, if not suspicious, of members of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, a breakaway from the Mormon church whose members believe polygamy earns glorification in heaven.
Members of the group revered leader Warren Jeffs as a prophet. Since the start of the group's Texas ranch, he has been convicted in Utah as an accomplice to rape and is jail in Arizona awaiting trial on separate charges.
Sheriff David Doran cultivated a confidential informant to monitor the group's activities, and former FLDS members recounted abuse and forced marriages to anyone who would listen.
Investigators "listened to a lot of misinformation and allowed themselves to be kind of captivated by these anti-FLDS people," said FLDS spokesman Rod Parker.
When someone purporting to be a pregnant 16-year-old called a domestic abuse hot line claiming her middle-aged husband beat her, authorities went in with Child Protective Services workers on April 3. But the calls may have been a hoax.
"We had no choice but to treat those calls as credible. If we had not treated them as credible and something bad happened, people would be very upset," said Tela Mange, a spokeswoman for the Department of Public Safety, which is still investigating possible sex abuse at the ranch in addition to the origin of the hotline calls.
Children and mothers were taken away from the ranch because CPS workers thought it would be better to interview them at a neutral location, something that wasn't done in the last high-profile brush the agency had with a religious sect, the Branch Davidians.
CPS workers were confused about names, ages, and relationships of the children and adults in the complicated group marriages of the FLDS. The agency said at the time it believed sect members were deliberately misleading investigators about the names, ages and parentage of the children.
Although caseworkers said when they took custody of all the children that the sect was forcing underage girls into marriage and sex and training boys to be adult perpetrators, only a few dozen of the children swept into custody turned out to be teenage girls, and only a handful had children or were pregnant. Of 31 mothers CPS said were minors, at least half turned out to be adults.
David Schenck, a lawyer for some of the mothers, said CPS workers were confronted with a decision when they arrived at the ranch: identify all the men who might be suspected abusers or grab all the children.
"They were interested in taking care of kids, but the problem is they took on more than the evidence is going to support," he said.
Parker called the agency "heavy-handed." A state appeals court essentially agreed, saying the state failed to show that any more than five of the teenage girls were being sexually abused, and had offered no evidence of sexual or physical abuse against the other children. The Texas Supreme Court agreed in a ruling issued Thursday.
Spears, a caseworker-turned-advocate, said that despite the high-profile nature of the FLDS case, the dilemma faced by CPS is little different than in most removal cases.
"At the time you walk in, you have very little information even in the best cases," she said, noting the snap risk assessments caseworkers are often asked to make.
The second-guessing, too, is typical. CPS also was criticized for its handling of the Branch Davidians cult at its ranch compound outside Waco. Allegations of abuse at the Waco ranch had swirled for years, but interviews with children at the compound produced no outcry of abuse and CPS closed its investigation in 1992.
A year later, federal agents raided the fortified compound in a weapons investigation. Fire broke out and the 21 children died.
Spears said agencies worry about making wrong calls and seeing harm come to children. Decision-making often swings in reaction to criticism of previous cases or child deaths.
"It swings back and forth," she said. "There's no exact science being practised here."
Abuse calls from 'Sarah' convinced others that 'she has lived this'
By Lisa Rosetta
The Salt Lake Tribune
Article Last Updated: 05/31/2008 02:58:44 PM MDT
Police link years of calls to SwintonWoman linked to calls that triggered FLDS raid claims life of abusePosted: 2:57 PM- Sarah Barlow's tearful pleas were convincing: She was a desperate, pregnant 16-year-old mother in need of rescue.
Her calls to a battered women's shelter in Snohomish County, Wash., began on March 22. She started calling the NewBridge Family Shelter in San Angelo, Texas, on March 29. Anti-polygamy activist Flora Jessop in Phoenix says she received her first call from Sarah the next day.
Sarah's pain and the details she offered had the shelter workers and Jessop certain her story was legitimate.
"She has lived [through this kind of abuse]," Jessop says. "I believe she has lived this."
On April 3, Texas Rangers entered the YFZ Ranch in Eldorado, where Sarah claimed her polygamous husband was physically and sexually abusing her. Their unsuccessful search for Sarah triggered the massive raid that swept more than 450 children from the ranch - home to members of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints - into state custody.
The FLDS assert authorities knew before the raid that Sarah's calls to the San Angelo shelter had been made with a cell phone registered in the area of Colorado Springs, Colo.
Had police traced the owner first, the sect argues, they would have linked the phone to Rozita Swinton, a Colorado woman with a history of hoax calls.
Police eventually made the connection, court documents show, discovering the two shelters and Jessop got calls from Sarah via the same phone - one registered to Courtney Swinton, the name of Rozita's younger brother.
But in the meantime, Sarah kept calling.
"Taking all our kids!"
On the day of the raid, Jessop got another call from the voice she had come to recognize as Sarah. But the caller now said she was Laura, Sarah's twin sister. Sarah's sister wives were holding her 8-month-old baby girl, Claire, hostage on the YFZ Ranch so she could not escape, Laura claimed.
Laura was angry, Jessop said, because authorities were supposed to meet Sarah at the gate of the ranch - not raid it.
"And she said, 'Can you hear my dad? He's on the phone, can you hear my dad? ... He's yelling right now, he's yelling: they're taking all of our kids!"
Days later, Sarah told the Washington state shelter she was among the FLDS women and children in state custody in San Angelo. She explained she was using the cell phone of a Colorado cousin. And she dropped in small, accurate details, such as the name of a woman who worked at the San Angelo shelter, which had not been reported by news media, and a rainstorm that hit one night, according to a later Colorado arrest warrant request.
By April 10, the Washington shelter had called officers in Schleicher County, where the ranch is located. That day, a deputy was linked in to a call from Sarah and offered to help her leave the FLDS group in state custody. But when he pressed her to reveal herself, she declined or hung up.
The trail to Colorado
By April 13, Texas Rangers had talked to a Colorado Springs police officer who recognized one of the numbers Sarah used to call the San Angelo shelter as one connected to an earlier investigation.
The next day, a Colorado Springs detective told Texas Rangers about Swinton's history of false abuse reports. The Rangers responded they were headed to Colorado, the warrant request said.
On April 16, police searched Swinton's apartment and arrested her on suspicion of making an unrelated hoax call in Colorado. She posted bond later that day.
Despite reports about Swinton, child welfare officials said they still believed Sarah existed. A spokeswoman for the San Angelo shelter agreed: "She had so much information about what was going on at the compound."
The day after Swinton was released on bail, Jessop got a call from the familiar voice of Sarah. But the caller now said she was "Rose," a friend of Laura, Sarah's sister. But Jessop confronted her.
"I've been talking to you for two weeks now and I have a bunch of lies and tricks that you've played on me," Jessop says on a tape of their conversation, the last they had.
"It wasn't like that," Rose says, sobbing.
"Yeah, it was like that. You told me your name was Laura, her name was Sarah, and that [Sarah's husband] hurt you guys," Jessop said. "OK. That is a lie, a straight up lie. You got a bunch of people getting searched over a bunch of lies, honey. You've got to understand that's not all right."
"It's the truth," Rose said, nearly hysterical. "It's her story."
Woman linked to calls that triggered FLDS raid claims life of abuse
By Lisa Rosetta
The Salt Lake Tribune
Article Last Updated: 05/31/2008 02:54:24 PM MDT
Police link years of calls to SwintonAbuse calls from 'Sarah' convinced others that 'she has lived this'Posted: 2:53 PM- The largest child custody case in U.S. history - discredited last week by the Texas Supreme Court - was prompted by soft-spoken Sarah Barlow's pleas for help.
That Sarah doesn't exist. But the caller may have been a woman who, like the fictitious girl, claims to have endured childhood sexual abuse.
Police have linked the calls that triggered the Yearning for Zion Ranch raid to Rozita Swinton, a 33-year-old Colorado Springs woman who they say has assumed at least nine different personalities since 2005, among them "April," "Dana," "Ericka" and "V."
All are girls who called for help claiming to have been sexually abused - by a father, an uncle or a husband, court records show. Rozita has explained the girls' presence to shelter workers by saying that they are there to "protect" her.
Rozita has worked full-time for an insurance company for seven years, attends community college part-time for general study courses, and is a practicing Mormon. She is her neighborhood's delegate to the state Democratic convention. And a person diagnosed with dissociative identity disorder who blanks out chunks of time and unplugs from the world around her - like she did the week of the April 3 raid, her roommate Becky Hoerth told Colorado Springs police.
Hoerth, who moved in with Swinton the day after the raid, described
Rozita as quiet, gripped by a mental state that is "not anything you can even break into." It wasn't until a week later that Rozita "started coming around," joining Hoerth for dinner and mountain biking, she said.
"Rozita just disconnects from everything," she told police.
Hoping to rescue Sarah, Texas authorities flowed onto the ranch, then decided to remove more than 450 children from its residents, members of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. The polygamous sect shares historical roots with the Mormon church, which has disavowed its former practice of polygamy.
A troubled childhood
Born in Nashville, Rozita was placed in Tennessee's foster care system at 14. She attended several high schools before graduating from Pearl-Cohn Magnet High School in 1992.
That year, the Tennessee Department of Human Services obtained a restraining order blocking her father, Clarence, from contacting her. Rozita had reported that her father had sexually abused her and she remained afraid of him, the state said.
After turning 19, Swinton lived with a Tennessee woman who was caring for foster children. "One of the counselors working with [Rozita] knew me and called to ask if I would take her in," the woman wrote in her book, After Disclosure, under the pen name Kate Rosemary.
Contacted by The Salt Lake Tribune, Rosemary declined to be interviewed, citing the safety of her current foster children. But in her book, she wrote Rozita, who also rejected interview requests, was "tragically abused" and had been diagnosed with multiple personality disorder.
The company that distributes Rosemary's books also publishes a Westview newspaper. With a recent article about Rozita, it included a photo of her during a trip to El Salvador.
It also quoted "a Nashville source very close" to her as saying Rozita "has flashbacks to a time when she was an abused child and teenager, and to times when she had been locked up and kept hostage."
But Rozita's father, Clarence Swinton, says the allegations of sexual abuse are untrue.
"When she brought this stuff up, she was in a ... state institution, a reformatory for juveniles," he said. "She had run away from home and the state had custody of her. ... I had no contact with her whatsoever."
"Negative and bitter"
Clarence met Rozita's mother during his 12-year stint in a Tennessee prison. He was convicted of first-degree murder in 1965 for shooting the owner of the Outlaw Grocery in Murfreesboro during a robbery.
The robbery was the last in a string of crimes committed by Clarence, then 25, and Robert Winchell, 22, both soldiers stationed at Fort Campbell. Clarence bought a bag of cookies in the store, left, and then returned and opened fire on a customer, who survived, and the store owner, who died three days later.
The pair was sentenced to 99 years, but in 1976 Swinton was granted a clemency hearing before the Board of Pardons and Parole. It recommended commuting his sentence with parole supervision for 15 years.
Clarence said his early parole was not connected to Tennessee Gov. Ray Blanton's cash-for-clemency scandal in the 1970s. "I was not in on that," he laughs. "I was not that blessed. I had nobody doing nothing for me."
He said he earned his way out of prison, first as a counselor among his fellow inmates, and later as a trusty.
It was during the first job that Clarence met Rozita's mother, who was a parole board clerk. As a trusty in the last three years of his sentence, Clarence worked outside the prison. It was then that the couple - who never married - had Rozita, then son Courtney. They stayed together until the children were 8 and 6. Rozita's mother had an older son from another relationship; he would later be gunned down in the Nashville projects.
A year after the couple split, Courtney left his mother to live with Clarence. Rozita, Clarence said, became "negative and bitter and she wanted to come, too."
A chronic runaway, Rozita eventually stayed in three different institutions for juveniles, he said. Her abuse allegations against him were "bald face lie," and state employees, knowing Rozita was not credible, never investigated him, he asserts.
Clarence said after Rozita moved to Colorado Springs - sometime between 1992 and 1996, after she briefly worked as a nanny in Utah - she called him to apologize for "all of the grief she started," he said. "She [said] she saw a movie that led her to do that."
"I didn't lie"
Colorado Springs police appear to have first investigated Rozita for false calls in June 2005 - after a desperate 16-year-old named Jessica told an adoption agency she wanted to abandon her newborn son and kill herself. The agency called police - who traced Jessica's phone number to Rozita.
"I didn't lie," she said during a videotaped interview with a detective, letting out a drawn-out sob. "I called you because I wanted you guys to help me," she explained, wringing her hands.
Rozita said she thought she had been asked to come to the police station to "do a report [on] her dad" - not to be questioned about making a false report and obstructing justice.
The detective walked out. Rozita's sobs intensified. "I just want my baby," she said in a barely audible voice. Rozita later admitted there was no baby to be concerned about, but claimed she bore a daughter by her abusive father.
Rozita was put on probation. But police say she continued to make a blizzard of calls, including one in February 2006 that prompted Colorado Springs police to conduct a door-to-door search for "Jennifer," a young girl claiming to be locked up in a basement.
Sarah Barlow started calling for help in late March, contacting shelters in Washington state and Texas, and anti-polygamy activist Flora Jessop in Phoenix. Convinced the she was abused and in danger at the YFZ Ranch, Texas authorities launched the raid.
As Sarah remained missing, police connected the cell phones used to make the calls to Rozita. On April 16, officers searched her apartment and asked her to come to the Colorado Springs Police Department. Around 10:30 p.m., she was placed under arrest in connection with a false call in Colorado.
Two hours later, a close friend posted her $20,000 bail.
"Person of interest"
Nearly two months later, two Texas appellate courts have said authorities did not have adequate evidence of abuse and the sect's children are headed home.
A spokeswoman for the Texas Rangers repeated Friday that Rozita remains a "person of interest" in connection with the YFZ Ranch calls as they await unspecified test results.
Charged in Colorado with one count of false reporting, Rozita is scheduled to appear in El Paso County District Court for a pre-trial conference Friday - the same day her brother Courtney appears in a Nashville court on charges of possessing and selling cocaine.
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After raid, other polygamists fear they're next
Dennis Wagner
The Arizona Republic
Jun. 1, 2008 12:00 AM
CENTENNIAL PARK - Like many polygamous residents along the Arizona Strip, Marvin Dockstader is adding to his house, more than doubling its size to make room for wives and children.
He admits being nervous about the future.
Authorities in Texas rounded up members of a polygamous sect in April, taking custody of more than 400 children. The Senate majority leader called for federal agents to go after religious groups that practice plural marriages. And, just a mile from Centennial Park in Colorado City-Hildale, prosecutors from Utah and Arizona have been dogging a polygamist group for years. advertisement
While not a member of that sect, Dockstader feels pressure building as politicians talk of conducting anti-bigamy enforcement with Texas-style zeal.
"It's definitely headed that way," he said. "That could be us as easy as them."
But while Dockstader and others in this community of 2,000 harbor such fears, there are two reasons why law enforcement is unlikely to target them:
They belong to a church, The Work of Jesus Christ, that publicly eschews child marriages - a practice that authorities alleged in moving against the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints in Colorado City and Eldorado, Texas.
Polygamy law in Arizona is fuzzy. Arizona's Constitution bans polygamy but lists no punishment.
Arizona's criminal code makes bigamy a crime, but unlike in Utah and Texas, it does not outlaw plural cohabitation.
Because polygamists here are wedded spiritually, rather than with marriage licenses, they are not technically breaking the law. "Arizona's Constitution is very clear, but I can't prosecute based on the constitution," Attorney General Terry Goddard says. "I can only prosecute based on the laws passed by the Legislature."
Arizona's and Utah's enforcement campaigns against the FLDS sect involved other crimes, especially sexual conduct with children. Meanwhile, Goddard has maintained an open diplomacy with the more modern polygamist group in nearby Centennial Park.
A different sect
The Work of Jesus Christ split with the FLDS about 24 years ago in a leadership dispute. Neither is affiliated with the mainstream Mormon Church. Although members of the two fundamentalist groups are mostly kin, family ties are severed.
Folks here own a restaurant on Arizona 389, aptly named the Merry Wives Cafe. They wear contemporary clothes and mix with the outside world. They surf the Internet, watch Dr. Phil on TV and root for the Diamondbacks.
But they share the FLDS faith that men and women are married for eternity and that plural unions are a key to salvation. Some also share a chronic anxiety about being imprisoned for those beliefs. Several declined interviews, and others who gave them expressed those fears.
"The fear is that the law (or a constitutional clause) could be applied at any time," says Mary Batchelor of Salt Lake City, co-author of Voices in Harmony, a book featuring women's perspectives on polygamy. "They (prosecutors) want the law so they can use it when they want or at least hold it over our heads."
Dockstader, a 43-year-old building contractor, is among the few Centennial Park residents willing to be identified in a newspaper story. He won't reveal how many wives live in his house, saying only, "I have one civil marriage."
Like others in his church, Dockstader insists that the typical household in Centennial Park is a sanctuary of unselfish sharing and love, contradicting perceptions that plural marriage is about sex, enslavement or child abuse.
Watching some of his kids bounce on a trampoline in the backyard, Dockstader says recent enforcement efforts typify more than a century of persecution.
"Bigotry and all this animosity, it's really creeping up," he says. "It's hypocritical. America was created by people running from that."
Asked if he believes the attorneys general in Arizona and Utah when they promise not to prosecute polygamy, Dockstader shakes his head. "No. They're not in control."
Who is in control then?
"The mob," he says, referring to a public that hates polygamy.
Historical backdrop
Centennial Park's devotion to polygamy is rooted in Mormon Church founder Joseph Smith's revelation on plural marriage. That 1831 event eventually prompted political and legal battles.
Beginning in the 1860s, Congress adopted a series of federal laws criminalizing polygamy in U.S. territories. The crackdown forced Mormon believers into hiding or jail, erased voting rights and wiped out the church's finances.
In a landmark 1879 case known as Reynolds vs. United States, the Supreme Court upheld felony statutes against bigamy. Congress later passed the Edmunds Act and other laws designed to crush plural marriages. The campaign largely succeeded in 1890 when the main Mormon Church adopted a decree against polygamy. Arizona and Utah became states but only after agreeing to the special provision in their constitutions.
Not all Mormons embraced monogamy. Splinter sects maintained a doctrine of "celestial unions," and one such group moved to Short Creek, an isolated town where residents could dodge state laws by hopscotching from Arizona to Utah and back.
After years of sporadic enforcement, in 1953, more than 100 peace officers and National Guard soldiers descended on the community, taking children from parents. Twenty-three men were sentenced to probation for conspiracy, but public sentiment turned against authorities and destroyed the political career of Arizona Gov. Howard Pyle.
Over the next half century, Short Creek (now Colorado City and Hildale) was largely ignored by outsiders but suffered internal conflicts. A schism in the mid-1980s led to the rival sects.
Texas justice
When Texas authorities in April raided the FLDS' new refuge, the YFZ Ranch in Texas, they reported that 60 percent of the sect's teenage girls had babies or were pregnant.
CPS workers took custody of about 440 minors, claiming every child was in imminent danger because of a widespread practice of forcing underage girls to become brides. Last week, the Texas Supreme Court ruled that the roundup was improper. The case has refueled a national debate on polygamy and the law. On one hand, government officials have a duty to prevent crime and protect endangered children. On the other, the U.S. Constitution and Supreme Court rulings guarantee religious freedom, privacy and due process.
Many critics of polygamy say the practice leads to a host of ills, including child sexual abuse, oppression of women and welfare fraud.
"Polygamy is inherently wrong and bad," says Flora Jessop, a Phoenix child-protection advocate who was raised in Colorado City. "There's emotional and psychological abuse that occurs no matter how you live it. You get a bunch of women, and it turns into catfights and abuse of each other's children because of jealousy.
"And the guys are corrupted by power. . . . They have the god syndrome."
In a recent paper on the psychological impact of polygamy, Larry Beall, clinical director at the Trauma Awareness & Treatment Center in Utah, concluded that women and children are "profoundly impacted" by a subculture of paternalism, secrecy, abuse and isolation. Rates of anxiety, depression and low self-esteem are high among survivors of "polygamous cults," Beall wrote.
Centennial Park residents say the exact opposite is true in their community.
They claim to have well- adjusted families with higher education rates than the rest of the nation. They say homes with more wives and kids wind up with more love and greater responsibility. And they insist that anti-bigamy laws are promulgated by public fear based on ignorance.
Attorneys representing FLDS members also say that anti-polygamy prejudice has been used to twist the law.
Tucson lawyer Michael Piccarreta, who represents FLDS leader Warren Jeffs, says the government created a convoluted legal theory in prosecuting his client, who was convicted in Utah. The state charged him with "rape as an accomplice" for performing marriages between children and polygamous men.
"There's a huge state bias against this sect," Piccarreta says. "It appears they will use whatever method they can to stamp it out."
Utah's dilemma
In 2004, Goddard persuaded Arizona lawmakers to pass a statute criminalizing the conduct of a married adult who takes on a minor as a plural spouse via a religious union. He did not press for a law closing the Arizona loophole that insulates adult polygamists.
But Utah has just such a statute, broadly defining bigamy to include cohabitation with purported, multiple spouses. So polygamy is a felony. But Utah Attorney General Mark Shurtleff has generally ruled out prosecutions because he has an estimated 40,000 state residents living in plural-marriage families.
"The problem is, how do we put every single polygamist in jail, and then what do we do with tens of thousands of kids?" Shurtleff told CNN. "I don't have the resources to get involved in that. I want to focus on the most serious crimes being committed in the name of religion."
Earlier this month, Goddard and Shurtleff took part in a public meeting on plural marriages in St. George, Utah, the site of Warren Jeffs' trial. More than two dozen polygamists, most of them from Centennial Park, politely exchanged views with prosecutors.
But Dockstader says he remains worried and has considered resorting to an old Mormon tradition: migration to a refuge safe from anti-polygamy laws. "The thought occurs," he says. "But where is safe?"
SAN ANGELO, Texas (CNN) -- A polygamist sect under fire over allegations of underage marriage will now allow women to wed only when they are old enough to give consent under state law, a spokesman said Monday.
The legal age in Texas to marry without parental consent is 18.
"The church is clarifying its policy on marriage," said Willie Jessop, a spokesman for the Fundamental Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
He told reporters the church would advise FLDS families "neither request nor consent" to the marriage of underage girls, though he stopped short of saying the church ever violated the law.
"In the FLDS church, all marriages are consensual. The church insists on appropriate consent," he said.
The change in policy comes after a Texas judge issued an order Monday allowing parents of hundreds of children seized from a polygamist sect to begin picking up their kids.
With one exception, Judge Barbara Walther told the Department of Family and Protective Services to allow parents to pick up the 440 children starting 10 a.m. Monday.
Thirteen children and six mothers had left the Austin, Children's Shelter by 6 p.m., the shelter's executive director and CPS officials told CNN affiliate KXAN.
The exception involved a 16-year-old girl who the girl's attorney said was an "identified victim of sexual abuse."
The attorney said the child's release might cause her to come into contact with her alleged sexual abuser.
"The court has now signed an order applying to all children," the motion said. "But there are no restrictions or provisions which take into account the immediate risk of her alleged perpetrator having access."
The logistics of retrieving the remaining children may not be so simple, though, since some parents have children at different facilities across the state.
Under the judge's order, the Department of Family and Protective Services will still have the right to visit and interview the children.
These unannounced visits could entail medical, psychological and psychiatric examinations, and the parents must not intervene. Also under the order, the parents must attend and complete parenting classes. The families must remain in the state of Texas and notify the department within 48 hours of any trips more than 100 miles from their homes.
The ranch is run by the the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, a Mormon offshoot that practices polygamy.
The FLDS is not affiliated with the mainstream Mormon church, which renounced polygamy more than a century ago.
The state of Texas maintained it removed the children because interviews at the ranch uncovered a "pervasive pattern" of sexual abuse through forced marriages between underage girls and older men. The state alleged that young boys on the ranch were groomed to be perpetrators because of those beliefs.
FLDS members deny any sexual abuse occurred and say they are being persecuted because of their religion.
In May, the 3rd District Court of Appeals ruled that officials erred in removing the children from the ranch, effectively overturning Walther's ruling that the children remain in state custody.
The state Supreme Court agreed with the appellate decision last week. See a timeline of the FLDS case »
DFPS spokeswoman Marleigh Meisner said her department supports Walther's order, which "allows for our investigation to continue."
"Our goal is always to try to reunite families," Meisner said. "We hope they can be safe there."
The children are being housed at seven facilities across the state, near Amarillo, Houston, Austin, San Antonio, Abilene, Fort Worth and Corpus Christi.
"The kids have been terrorized and put in the custody of the state for weeks and weeks," FLDS spokesman Willie Jessop said Friday after a hearing to determine how to return the children.
"Every effort has been made to bring relief," Jessop said. "It doesn't need to be a problem to go pick up the kids. It doesn't need to be any more difficult than picking them up after school."
Also on Monday British Columbia's attorney general ordered an investigation into alleged misconduct at a Canadian community believed to be a polygamous sect with possible connections to FLDS.
Attorney General Wally Opal called for a special prosecutor to look into allegations of misconduct in the community in Bountiful, British Columbia.
Two earlier prosecutors concluded it would be difficult to pursue criminal charges, with one recently saying it would be unfair to do so, according to Opal's office.
No legal action followed the investigations because of questions about whether polygamy is illegal in Canada.
It was not clear if Bountiful's community had any connections to the FLDS or any other polygamous group in the United States
FLDS Kids Leave Midland
By Sarah Snyder
NewsWest 9
Seven of the 15 girls brought to the High Sky Children's Ranch in Midland are on their way back to Eldorado. The remaining 8 will leave Tuesday morning.
"They're very excited about coming home," Kathleen Jessop, a mother and FLDS member, said.
It's been a day of excitement for families of the FLDS compound.
"The girls all made special dresses and sang to our board of directors," Jackie Carter with High Sky Children's Ranch, said. "They have beautiful voices like angels, and they're very good at baking and cooking and gardening, and they played in the water, and we just had a really nice time with them."
Last week, the Texas Supreme Court ruled CPS overstepped it's authority in removing all the children from the ranch, and on Monday, they were able to go home. Kathleen Jessop has two daughters staying at High Sky. She said, "We're very thankful that CPS will give the children back. They're very excited about coming."
Parents began arriving around 11:00 Monday morning to sign paperwork. About an hour later, the girls came outside with their bags, and took group pictures with the High Sky staff.
"It's been a wonderful experience, a learning experience, and I think all of us here at High Sky learned quite a bit and a lot of insight, so I'm a little sad today," Carter said.
Kathleen Jessop says this experience will make FLDS members stronger.
"It's an experience that every mother in America should ask herself how she would feel to have to go through that experience then they would appreciate how we have felt," Jessop said.
Families separated by raid on sect are reunited
SAN ANGELO, Texas -- More than 400 children taken from a polygamist sect's ranch two months ago began returning to the arms of their tearful parents Monday, hours after a judge bowed to a state Supreme Court ruling that the seizure was not justified.
"It's just great day," said Nancy Dockstader, whose chin quivered and eyes filled with tears as she embraced her 9-year-old daughter, Amy, outside a foster-care center in Gonzales, about 65 miles east of San Antonio. "We're so grateful."
Her daughter and four other children were among the roughly 440 children ordered released after two months in state custody, much of it spent in foster care centers. Because siblings were separated at facilities hundreds of miles apart, it will probably take several days for all the families to be reunited.
On Monday, 129 children were returned to their parents. A church leader also committed that any future marriages would only involve sect members who were of legal age.
Judge Barbara Walther responded to a state Supreme Court ruling last week by signing an order that cleared the children to be released from foster care. Walther allowed parents to pick up their children, ending one of the nation's largest child-custody cases.
Dockstader and her husband, James, were headed to Corpus Christi and to Amarillo to pick up their other children. "We'll get the rest of them," said Dockstader, who was clad in a teal prairie dress and clinging to Amy, who wore a matching dress.
Walther's order requires the parents to stay in Texas, to attend parenting classes and to allow the children to be examined as part of any abuse investigation.
But it does not put restrictions on the children's fathers, require that the parents renounce polygamy or force them to leave the Yearning For Zion Ranch run by the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.
Late Monday, elder Willie Jessop said the church won't allow underage girls to marry. Jessop said the policy, which he called a clarification, will forbid any girl to marry who is not of legal consent age in the state where she lives.
"The church insists on appropriate consent, including that of the woman and the man, in all circumstances," he said, reading from a statement at the ranch in Eldorado. "The church will counsel families that they neither request nor consent to any underage marriages. This policy will apply churchwide."
Jessop said the church has been widely misunderstood and insisted marriages within the church have always been consensual.
He would not say whether marriages of underage minors had taken place in the past but said the sect as a whole should not be punished for the misdeeds of a few.
Child Protective Services removed all the children from the ranch after an April 3 raid prompted by calls to a domestic abuse hot line that purportedly came from a 16-year-old mother who was being abused by her middle-age husband. The calls are now being investigated as a hoax, but authorities contended all the children were at risk because church teachings pushed underage girls into marriage and sex.
The church has denied any children were abused, and members have said they are being persecuted for their religion, which believes polygamy brings glorification in heaven.
Marleigh Meisner, a spokeswoman for the child-protection agency, said authorities still have concerns about the children's safety, and the investigation into possible abuse would continue.
The Supreme Court on Thursday affirmed an appeals court ruling that reversed Walther's decision in April putting all children from the ranch into foster case.
The high court and the appeals court rejected the state's argument that all the children were in immediate danger from what it said was sexual abuse of teenage girls at the ranch.
The Third Court of Appeals ruled that the state failed to show that any more than five of the teenage girls were being sexually abused, and had offered no evidence of sexual or physical abuse against the other children.
Half the children sent to foster care were no older than 5.
All the children, including any underage mothers, will be allowed to go back to their parents, though it's possible some children's attorneys or child-protection officials could pursue further action in individual cases.
It's not clear how many might return to the ranch right away. Many of the parents have purchased or rented homes in Amarillo, San Antonio and other places around the state.
On Monday afternoon, no residents were seen out on the ranch grounds.
"Just about everyone with a vehicle wants to go see some little children," said Jessop, who said he wasn't sure when families might return to the 1,700-acre ranch with large houses, a school and gleaming temple.
Walther's order does not end a separate criminal investigation. Texas authorities last week collected DNA from jailed FLDS prophet Warren Jeffs as part of investigation into underage sex with girls, ages 12 to 15. He has been convicted in Utah as an accomplice to rape and is jail in Arizona awaiting trial on separate charges.
Jessop, who said the state violated sect members' constitutional rights, would not rule out possible civil litigation.
The FLDS is a breakaway sect of the Mormon church, which renounced polygamy more than a century ago.
Free at last: Courts end broad-brush injustice against FLDS children
Tribune Editorial
Article Last Updated: 06/02/2008 06:10:48 PM MDT
Two months after Texas officials raided a ranch and removed 468 children from their homes, a court, at the direction of the Texas Supreme Court, has ended this injustice, ordering that the children be reunited with their parents. Many of the children, whose parents belong to the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, had been forced into foster care and scattered across the vast Lone Star State.
Two Texas appeals courts, including the state's Supreme Court, recognized that tearing these kids from their families was unwarranted without specific evidence of child abuse.
From the beginning, state Department of Family and Protective Services officials have argued that the culture of the polygamous FLDS sect is abusive, subjecting under-age girls to arranged marriages with older men and a lifetime of sexual servitude. They have argued that the culture raises girls to be victims of sexual abuse and raises young men to be abusers.
There may be truth in that. But under the law in the United States, a culture cannot be indicted. Only the specific people who commit specific crimes against specific victims can be. Thank goodness.
So far, the evidence that Texas officials have presented has not been convincing enough or particular enough to justify removing all of this community's children from their parents.
That is not to say that foster care may not be
warranted in certain instances. But that's the whole point. Officials must meet the burden of proof in individual cases.
Granted, that's sometimes a difficult proposition in secretive polygamous communities. But the standards of justice cannot be relaxed just because the practice of polygamy is distasteful or considered wrong by most Americans.
Judge Barbara Walther, who issued the original order in April granting the department temporary conservatorship of the children, was not lenient when she vacated that order. Under her latest order, the FLDS parents must not interfere with the state's ongoing investigation, must make their homes open for unannounced visits and their children available for interviews and examinations. They cannot remove their children from the state and must notify authorities if a child is to travel more than 100 miles.
But at least the children can return to their parents. If individual children should be removed from their parents' custody because of abuse, the state will have to meet the law's burden of proof. That's as it should be.
