FLDS not looking too good...

Appeals court axes hearing on FLDS kids' relocation
The Salt Lake Tribune
04/26/2008

SAN ANGELO, Texas - A Texas appellate court has canceled a hearing set for Tuesday that sought to challenge a district judge's decision to send children removed from a polygamous sect's ranch to group and foster homes throughout the state.

The 3rd Court of Appeals said Friday that Tom Green County Judge Barbara Walther's order to move the FLDS children beyond a five-county area met statutory requirements. The Texas RioGrande Legal Aid wanted the higher court to stop the relocations of the children, which were completed Friday.

The court left intact a second petition filed by the legal aid society that argues the judge did not have sufficient evidence or hold proper hearings before deciding to keep the children in custody.

The state's Department of Family and Protective Services have until May 2 to respond to that petition, but has not yet set a hearing date.

Polygamous sect's kids in hospital, moms want answers
By Brooke Adams The Salt Lake Tribune
04/28/2008

At least nine children taken from a polygamous sect's ranch are or have been in the hospital and attorneys for most of the mothers say they have received little or no information about their conditions. Attorneys for Texas Rio-Grande Legal Aid (TRLA) are working to identify the children and the hospitals, and to arrange for the mothers to visit the children.

"We can't seem to get anyone on the phone with authority to make that happen and the mothers don't even know the seriousness of the situation," said Amanda Chisholm, a TRLA attorney.

The legal aid society, which represents 48 mothers, said one 2-year-old child lost a severe amount of weight while staying at the San Angelo Coliseum.

TRLA said the organization was told two days ago that the child was in shock and lethargic, but has received no new information since then about where the child is or regarding her current health situation.

The mother is not being allowed to be with this child or her other nursing children, Chisholm said. "We don't seem to be able to get in touch with anyone who can tell us," she said. Depending on the assigned caseworker, some FLDS mothers are being allowed to see their children and some are not, Chisholm said. Texas Child Protective Services said Friday that one child had been hospitalized because of dehydration.

A CPS spokesman Sunday said he had no information on the children. Texas authorities removed the children from the YFZ Ranch in Eldorado, owned by the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, more than three weeks ago because of allegations of sexual and physical abuse of young girls.

The sect made another appeal to Texas Gov. Rick Perry this weekend for help. In a letter to the governor, FLDS member Willie Jessop said many children "have been left in critical medical conditions, resulting in permanent damage through threats, intimidation and ultimately separating them from their parents."

Jessop writes that even the state's expert witness advised against separating the youngest children from their mothers. He asks for an emergency meeting with Perry.

So far, Perry has declined to meet with the FLDS and has praised Child Protective Services' actions. The agency moved 462 children out of the San Angelo Coliseum last week, sending them to group and foster homes across Texas.

Chisholm said a master list of placements is missing names of two children taken from the ranch and TRLA has so far been unable to determine their location. She also said mothers who were nursing children older than 12 months were told their toddlers would be kept close by so they could continue to nurse or provide breast milk for them.

But some of those toddlers have been moved hundreds of miles away and Texas Child Protective Services has not yet given permission for the mothers to visit them.

"I've been scrambling for the past two days to find out the name of the person I need to call to get permission for my client to enter that facility to nurse her children," said Chisholm, who represents four mothers. "All we've been told is to wait until Monday when they assign caseworkers to individual families."

Some mothers have been unable to confirm where their children have gone and others have learned their children have been split up and sent to different locations. TRLA learned Sunday that a child thought to be in a group home was actually in a hospital.

Some mothers, Chisholm said, "are trying to, sadly, figure out which child needs them more, a child in the hospital or a nursing baby," she said.

Texas: 31 of 53 teen girls from FLDS ranch have been pregnant
By Michelle Roberts

The Associated Press
04/28/2008

SAN ANTONIO -- Texas child welfare officials say that more than half the teenage girls swept into state custody from a polygamist sect's ranch have been pregnant.

Child Protective Services spokesman Darrell Azar says 53 girls between the ages of 14 and 17 were living on the ranch in Eldorado. Of that group, 31 already have children or are pregnant.

State officials took custody of all 463 children at the Yearning For Zion Ranch more than three weeks ago after a raid prompted by calls to a domestic violence hotline.

CPS says there was a pattern of underage girls forced into so-called "spiritual marriages" with much older men at the ranch.

Judge to rule on which of polygamous sect's documents can be evidence
By Lisa RosettaThe Salt Lake Tribune
04/28/2008

SAN ANGELO, Texas - A Dallas appellate judge will begin a private review today of computer hard drives and 1,000 boxes of documents seized from the Yearning for Zion Ranch to determine which may fall under the protections of the clergy-penitent privilege.

The content of the boxes, stacked floor-to-ceiling high in a Texas Department of Public Safety room, includes letters written to FLDS Prophet Warren Jeffs, church membership lists and genealogy charts, medical records and hand-written notations pertaining to ongoing criminal cases. The documents were taken from the ranch, owned by the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, in a raid that began April 3.

Defense lawyers Bob Switzer and John Fahle, both of San Antonio, began going through the papers two weeks ago, Switzer said after a hearing Monday before 51st District Court Judge Barbara Walther.

But the state asked for an independent reviewer to take over the job. Officials were unsatisfied with the pace at which the lawyers were reading the documents - it took Switzer an entire day to read about half of the papers in one box labeled "bishop's records" alone - and were concerned that they may assert privilege in an attempt to exclude evidence from potential criminal cases.

Going through the papers is tedious work, the defense lawyers said, because in some instances only a few sentences on a page are privileged and need to be redacted. Much of the material has no evidentiary value and does not serve the interests of the children, they said.

Walther said Justice Molly Francis, who sits on the Texas Court of Appeals' Fifth District bench, will begin examining the papers today to assess the situation and set up guidelines for going through them.

Meanwhile, FLDS mothers were expected on Monday to visit children being treated at the Shannon West Texas Memorial Hospital here. Cynthia Martinez, a spokeswoman for the Texas Rio Grande Legal Aid Society, said the state's Child Protective Services has set up a supervised visiting schedule for the parents. "We're definitely pleased with that," she said.

FLDS update: Under guard, sect teenager gives birth in Texas
By Brooke Adams

The Salt Lake Tribune
04/29/2008

An FLDS female whose age is in dispute delivered a boy in a San Marcos hospital Tuesday, accompanied by Texas Rangers and CPS workers, an attorney said.

Attorney Rod Parker, an FLDS spokesman, said Pamela Jeffs is 18 - the same age shown for her on a court document prepared by Texas Child Protective Services.

Jeffs is one of 26 females CPS has now classified as minors, an assessment that the FLDS said Monday was erroneous.

"Her husband is 22 and they are a monogamous couple," Parker said. He said Jeffs' husband is not at the hospital with her.

The couple also have a 16-month-old son, who is being held at The Children's Shelter in Austin. Parker said Jeffs is at the Central Texas Medical Center and that he had been told Texas Rangers and CPS workers were with her. "We're not sure what their intention is with respect to that baby," he said. CPS has allowed mothers to remain with infants 12 months old or younger who are in state custody.

Texas authorities have custody of 463 children from the YFZ Ranch, owned by the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. The children are in group homes and shelters throughout Texas. State officials removed the children from the ranch after alleging they were in danger because of the sect promotes underage and polygamous marriages.

Texas official: Evidence of broken bones, possible sexual abuse found in FLDS kids
By Brooke Adams The Salt Lake Tribune
04/30/2008

A Texas official said Wednesday that at least 41 children from the polygamous YFZ Ranch have had broken bones and some young boys may have been sexually abused -- allegations that drew rapid denials from the FLDS sect. Cary Cockerell, commissioner of the Department of Family and Protective Services, told a committee of Texas lawmakers that investigators don't have complete medical information on all the children but that the findings were "cause for concern."

He said also said the sexual abuse claim was based on interviews with children and journals found at the ranch. Salt Lake City attorney Rod Parker accused the department of putting out "misleading information" to malign the polygamous sect. Parker said some children in the community have brittle bone disease and that Texas Child Protective Services was informed of that.

"That makes some of the children more susceptible to broken bones," Parker said. "The mothers told CPS about that when they were taken in. They've known all along that the reason they might see higher incidence of broken bones was due to this condition. They have no evidence to support the implication it is due to child abuse."

Cockerell shared the information with the Texas Senate Health and Human Services Committee, which met Wednesday morning in Austin. In a document written report submitted to the committee, Cockerell described a "pattern of deception" that began in the first interviews with children and adults at the YFZ Ranch, owned by the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.

Some refused to give or changed their names and refused to answer questions about ages and family relationships. Children were moved from home to home at the ranch to prevent investigators from speaking to them, he said.

The state's investigation also has been complicated by the children's fear of the outside world, he said. While in state shelters, women and children were tagged with identification bracelets but the "women and children removed the bracelets or rubbed the wording off them," the department's report said. Some women initially refused to let the children undergo basic health screenings and many teen girls declined pregnancy tests. Children also were coached to not answer questions, it said.

Texas officials raided the YFZ Ranch on April 3 after a San Angelo shelter said it had been contacted by a caller claiming to be a 16-year-old abused by her polygamous husband. Those calls are being investigated as a possible prank by a Colorado woman. But child welfare officials say they found evidence of a pattern of abuse at the ranch that justified removal of all children.

Newspaper carrier finds woman pinned by dead husband's body

ST. LOUIS, Missouri (AP) -- Newspaper carrier Bruce Pitts knew the elderly couple only by the prayers the wife made for him while he was working at night and in bad weather, but he felt something was wrong when the papers piled up outside their home.

"It was never like them to leave a newspaper in their tube," Pitts said Tuesday. "That wonderful, small voice inside me said, 'This isn't right."'

After his route early Sunday, Pitts went home, napped briefly and, with his wife, returned to Blanche and Fred Roberts' home, just outside Marion, Illinois.

They repeatedly rang the doorbells but got no answer. Pitts then eased open an unlocked side door and saw the couple about two feet inside, 84-year-old Blanche Roberts helpless looking right back at Pitts.

Her right leg was pinned beneath the body of her 77-year-old husband Fred, who apparently had died last Wednesday evening of a heart attack after mowing the lawn.

"The good Lord was with her. She was not scared, wasn't panicking," Pitts said during a telephone interview. "She was conscious, talking. Just peaceful. It was remarkable."

Her only request was for water. She knew her name and her relatives, but described her husband as "sleeping," said Pitts, who delivers the Southern Illinoisan, published in nearby Carbondale, Illinois.

Pitts described Blanche Roberts as frail and petite. Fred Roberts was a "good-sized man," according to Williamson County, Illinois, coroner Mike Burke, though he declined to be specific.
The coroner said Fred Roberts likely died of a heart attack, based on accounts from the Roberts' visitors that day.

"They said he was really beet-red in the face, that he didn't look good," Burke said.
Blanche Roberts was taken to a hospital in nearby Herrin. The hospital on Tuesday wouldn't confirm whether she still was being treated there; Pitts said the couple's relatives told his wife Monday that she was doing fine.

Pitts has delivered on that route for three years but said he never met the Robertses before Sunday. But he thinks fondly of Blanche Roberts, who often tipped him in letters and was known to Pitts and his wife as "The Prayer Lady."

In her missives, "Blanche would say, 'I've been praying for you at night whenever the weather's bad, realizing you're out in it delivering our papers,"' Pitts said. "We'd always say a little prayer back."

Missing woman found; relative arrested

Update: Missing woman found Alive

BY DEB GRUVER AND HURST LAVIANA
The Wichita Eagle

Wichita police arrested a 48-year-old woman Saturday after a missing 89-year-old woman was found just after 3 p.m. at a relative's house in the 3300 block of South Chase, near 31st South and Meridian.

Virginia Judd, who has dementia, and her dog, Ruby, were reported missing from her home in the 6000 block of West School Street, near Sedgwick County Park, at 8:30 a.m. today.

"We're looking at a dependent-person abuse situation," Sgt. Steve Yarberry said. "She was basically left alone."

Yarberry said the arrested woman was Judd's relative, but he would not elaborate. He said police would release no further details this weekend.

A relative who was in Missouri when he heard that Judd was missing returned to Wichita and went to the home on South Chase, police said. The relative saw Judd's dog through a window, broke a window to get inside and found Judd lying on the living room floor.

She was taken to Via Christi Regional Medical Center-St. Joseph Campus for examination.

Search dogs had been out looking for her, and Wichita Fire Department emergency workers used a boat to check a lake behind her house, where Judd lives with her daughter.

Apparently this old woman's granddaughter meant to do her in! Can you believe the world has come to this, when an old woman isn't safe with her own grandchildren? We have plenty room in the jail for her. Throw the key away.

Police search for missing woman, Wichita Kansas

ALERT

The Wichita Eagle
BY DEB GRUVER

Wichita, Kansas, police are searching for an 89-year-old woman with dementia who has been missing since 8:30 a.m. today.

Virginia Judd is 5 feet 2 inches, about 90 pounds and has short white hair, Sgt. Steve Yarberry said. She was last seen wearing a purple jacket and pants, either a wind-type suit or a workout-type suit.

She is possibly not wearing shoes and had a small white fox terrier with black spots named Ruby with her. The dog also is missing.

Judd also walked away from her home in the 6000 block of West School on Friday, Yarberry said.

Search dogs were out looking for her, and Wichita Fire Department emergency workers used a boat to check a lake behind her house, where Judd lives with her daughter.

Rochelle Budd, who said she was the best friend of one of Judd's granddaughters, said Judd and her granddaughter were going to go get donuts earlier today. When the granddaughter looked, "her grandmother was already gone," Budd said.

Budd described Judd as "teensy-weensy" woman who is frail. She said her dementia had "gone to another level" recently.

Steve Hirsch, a neighbor who lives around the corner from Judd's home in Spinnacre Cove near Sedgwick County Park, volunteered to help look for Judd.

He said he'd been out running errands when he got home and noticed police in the area. He said he helped look in some ditches.

By 2 p.m., she was still missing.

Penis theft panic hits city...

Right: African penis gourd.

By Joe Bavier
April 24, 2008

KINSHASA (Reuters) - Police in Congo have arrested 13 suspected sorcerers accused of using black magic to steal or shrink men's penises after a wave of panic and attempted lynchings triggered by the alleged witchcraft.

Reports of so-called penis snatching are not uncommon in West Africa, where belief in traditional religions and witchcraft remains widespread, and where ritual killings to obtain blood or body parts still occur.

Rumors of penis theft began circulating last week in Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of Congo's sprawling capital of some 8 million inhabitants. They quickly dominated radio call-in shows, with listeners advised to beware of fellow passengers in communal taxis wearing gold rings.

Purported victims, 14 of whom were also detained by police, claimed that sorcerers simply touched them to make their genitals shrink or disappear, in what some residents said was an attempt to extort cash with the promise of a cure.

"You just have to be accused of that, and people come after you. We've had a number of attempted lynchings. ... You see them covered in marks after being beaten," Kinshasa's police chief, Jean-Dieudonne Oleko, told Reuters on Tuesday.

Police arrested the accused sorcerers and their victims in an effort to avoid the sort of bloodshed seen in Ghana a decade ago, when 12 suspected penis snatchers were beaten to death by angry mobs. The 27 men have since been released. "I'm tempted to say it's one huge joke," Oleko said.

"But when you try to tell the victims that their penises are still there, they tell you that it's become tiny or that they've become impotent. To that I tell them, 'How do you know if you haven't gone home and tried it'," he said.

Some Kinshasa residents accuse a separatist sect from nearby Bas-Congo province of being behind the witchcraft in revenge for a recent government crackdown on its members.

"It's real. Just yesterday here, there was a man who was a victim. We saw. What was left was tiny," said 29-year-old Alain Kalala, who sells phone credits near a Kinshasa police station.
(Editing by Nick Tattersall and Mary Gabriel)

Kansas a longtime haven for chickens

Michael PEARCE
The Wichita Eagle
4/20/2008

Kansas has long been a stronghold for two of four original species of American prairie chickens.

• Greater prairie chickens:
For most of the 20th century it was said the Flint Hills held more of these than all states combined. Loss of habitat has greatly reduced the Flint Hills population but numbers have grown substantially in the Smoky Hills of north-central Kansas over the past 30 years.

• Lesser prairie chickens:
The Dust Bowl drought almost forced these birds into extinction across a range that includes Kansas, Colorado, Oklahoma, Texas and New Mexico.
They recovered, but began to decline again in the 1980s, when huge amounts of sand-sage prairie were put into agricultural crops, heavily Above:booming cocks. grazed or tainted by signs of civilization.

Groups petitioned in some states to have them added to the threatened or endangered species lists. That did not happen.

Only in Kansas are the birds holding their own or improving their range and numbers. Right: booming cocks, mating season.

The CRP, a federal program that pays farmers for long-term plantings of prairie grasses where crops were once raised, is credited for an expansion of the Kansas population from southwest into west-central and northwest Kansas. That could change, parks officials say, if changes in federal policy result in a loss of CRP land.

• Heath hens:
The pilgrims probably ate more of these than wild turkeys at their first Thanksgiving.
The birds were abundant in grasslands from New Hampshire to Virginia until loss of habitat and over-hunting eliminated them from the mainland by 1870.

They thrived on Martha's Vineyard into the 1920s, when inbreeding, disease and a fire during breeding season took their toll. "Booming Bob," the last of the species, danced his last dance on a breeding ground in 1932.

• Attwater's prairie chickens:
These birds numbered around 1 million about a century ago on the coastal prairies of Louisiana and Texas. But lost habitat took a toll. They were one of the first species placed under the Endangered Species Act in the 1960s. Their numbers plummeted to less than 50 in the 1990s.

Texas and federal biologists and conservation groups are working to re-establish habitat and populations on private and public ground. The population now is approaching 300.

LDS Church turns down request to watch over FLDS

SAN ANGELO, Texas - A day after a Texas judge asked the LDS Church to help monitor prayer sessions of women and children of a fundamentalist polygamous group, a church spokesman said doing so would be inappropriate. Scott Trotter, spokesman for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, said that the church has heard about the judge's request only through news reports and therefore has "no clear understanding of what, if anything, we are being invited to do."

In an e-mail statement, Trotter said it would be "erroneous to base any request for assistance from members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints on the basis that our beliefs and practices are close to those of this polygamous group because they are not."

He also acknowledged that such a request would not be fair, either to the polygamous FLDS, which "long ago chose a different path from ours. In fact, many in these isolated communities view us with some hostility as part of the outside world they have rejected."

On Monday, 51st District Judge Barbara Walther agreed to let women and children, who are being kept at the San Angelo Coliseum, hold two prayer sessions a day. Attorneys said that Texas Child Protective Services workers were monitoring and disrupting the sessions and asked that the members of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints be allowed to meet privately.

Gary Banks, representing the state, said there were concerns that the women might discuss the ongoing investigation or coach the children if allowed to meet privately. Walther then suggested that the state ask a member of the local Mormon community to supervise the sessions.

The issue may be moot now, as state authorities began moving the women and children out of the San Angelo Coliseum this afternoon. - Brooke Adam

Judge denies Warren Jeffs a new trial

By Mark Havnes The Salt Lake Tribune
04/24/2008

Posted: 3:54 PM-Fifth District Court Judge James Shumate today denied polygamous sect leader Warren S. Jeffs' motion for a new trial.

Jeffs' legal team claimed his conviction for rape as an accomplice should be thrown out as one juror failed to disclose that she was a rape victim. When defense attorneys learned of the omission, they advocated for jury deliberations to continue with an alternate juror.

"The things we should have done, we didn't do," said defense attorney Richard Wright in court this afternoon.

"Jeffs had the right to a unity of verdict," he said. "The jury that convicted him can't be a conglomoration of jurors." Shumate ruled he didn't think replacing the problem juror had violated state law.

Defense attorney Walter Bugden said the ruling will now be appealed to the Utah Court of Appeals.

Jeffs, 52, is head of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. The sect's Texas ranch was raided April 3 and hundreds of children were removed.

In September, Jeffs was convicted for his role in arranging the marriage of a 14-year-old girl to an older cousin. He's now locked up in Arizona awaiting trial there.

FLDS update: FLDS moms to stay with babies in state care

The judge overseeing the cases of more than 400 FLDS children in state custody said this afternoon adult mothers of infants age 12 months and under should remain with their babies in the state's care.

District Court Juge Barbara Walther made the request of Texas Child Protective Services after receiving an update from the agency on its attempts to place the polygamous sect's children in foster homes or shelters. CPS agreed.

Earlier this week, Walther rejected a temporary restraining order request seeking to keep breastfeeding mothers with their babies.

CPS attorney Gary Banks told Walther this afternoon there are 18 adult mothers with babies 12 months and under. Placements have already been found for 16 of those mothers and their children, he said.

Walther also requested that CPS keep children older than 12 months in proximity to their parents so they can visit frequently. The judge rejected a motion earlier that would have required the agency to keep the children within a five-county radius.

"What this is, is when I take possession of a child, I take personal responsibility for that child, and I'd like to know where these children are," said Walther this afternoon.

Banks said there are 23 adult women with children between the ages of 12 and 24 months. Those women have 28 children collectively. Children between the ages of 3 and 5 will go to foster care settings, said Banks, and some children ages 5 to 18 will go into group settings.

The judge also told Banks she wanted the children to be able to exercise their religion and have access to the clothing they desired while in foster care. Banks said CPS is in the process of setting up educational evaluations for each child.

Banks told her it is urgent the children be placed into foster homes at this point, calling conditions at the San Angelo Coliseum where children are being housed "untenable."

Walther said individual hearings for the children will begin May 18, and urged attorneys representing sect members and those lawyers appointed by the state to represent the interests of the children to refrain from making filings with her at this point.

"We have four to five feet of filings, and it's very hard for me to go through five feet of filings," she said. She said CPS has been stretched "beyond belief" and asked the various parties involved in the case to be patient.

"No one wants to see these children separated from their parents," said Walther. "In a perfect world, that wouldn't happen, but this isn't a perfect world."

Yesterday, 111 children ages 5 and older left the Coliseum for temporary homes located throughout the state, according to CPS spokeswoman Sheri Pulliam. The agency has said siblings under age 5 will be placed together, and attempts will be made to place older siblings together.

Authorities late Tuesday finished taking DNA samples from all the children. The attorney general's office sent 10 technicians on Monday to the Coliseum to take the court-ordered samples as child welfare officials try to sort out the complicated family relationships at the compound. Roughly 500 samples were taken.

Spokeswoman Janece Rolfe said the testing at the Coliseum was completed late Tuesday, but technicians are still taking samples from parents in Eldorado.

The removal of the children is the latest blow to the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.

The April 3 raid of the sect's YFZ Ranch was prompted by calls to a local shelter from someone claiming to be a 16-year-old girl being abused by her FLDS husband.

Texas Rangers have said they are investigating whether the call could have been a hoax perpetrated by a Colorado woman with a history of lying to police there. Court documents released today show one phone number used to place a call to the Texas shelter had been used by Rozita Swinton in the past.

DNA samples taken from polygamists' kids

By MICHELLE ROBERTS
Associated Press Writer

SAN ANGELO, Texas - Using cotton swabs and cameras, lab technicians began taking DNA samples Monday from hundreds of children and mothers - wearing long, pioneer-style dresses - in hopes of sorting out the tangled family relationships within the West Texas polygamist sect.
A judge ordered last week that the genetic material be taken to help determine which children belong to which parents.

Authorities need to figure that out before they begin custody hearings to determine which children may have been abused and need to be permanently removed from the sect compound in Eldorado, and which ones can be safely returned to the fold.

State social workers have complained that over the past few weeks, sect members have offered different names and ages. Also, the children refer to all of their fathers' wives as their "mothers," and all men in the community as "uncles."

The testing went on behind closed doors at the crowded coliseum where the children seized in the raid earlier this month on the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints compound are staying.

The collecting of DNA is likely to take 10 technicians most of the week, and it will be a month or more before the results are available, said Janiece Rolfe, a spokeswoman for the Texas attorney general's office.

Rod Parker, an FLDS attorney, acknowledged that family names within the sect can be confusing, but said: "No one is trying to deceive anyone. ... It's not sinister." Instead, he said that because many of the sect's marriages are not legal, adults and their children may legally have one name but use another within the community.

The April 3 nighttime raid on the 1,700-acre compound probably frightened the children, said Ken Driggs, who has studied the sect extensively. "If somebody had taken the time to approach them in a way that was respectful, they probably would have gotten the information they needed," Driggs said.

The children will be placed in group homes or other quarters until individual custody hearings can be completed by early June. Officials said they will try to keep siblings together when possible, though some polygamous families may have dozens of siblings.

The testing will involve 437 children and possibly hundreds of adults. State authorities revised their count of the children from 416 as they developed better lists and discovered that not all the female members who claimed to be adults were over 18.

The testing will be more far complicated than that of the typical custody or support case.
In a typical custody case, "maternity is already established," Rolfe said, but in this case, researchers will have to determine the identity of both parents.

Each person who submits to a test will be photographed, and the inside of his or her cheek will be swabbed to remove cells for analysis.

The DNA sampling is an enormous undertaking for a state that typically tests only 1,000 children a year.

Some of the adults have ordered by the state of Texas to submit to testing. Others are being asked to do so voluntarily. But how many will do that is unclear.

Parker said he is afraid authorities secretly intend to use the DNA to build criminal cases. But state Child Protective services spokesman Greg Cunningham said: "We're not involved in the criminal investigation. That's not our objective."

Authorities believe the sect forces underage girls into marriages with older men. No one has been arrested, but a warrant has been issued for member Dale Barlow, a convicted sex offender who has said he has not been to the Texas site in years.

Attorneys for the children and the adults have complained that they haven't had enough access to their clients at the coliseum. Texas District Judge Barbara Walther ordered Monday that the women and children in the be allowed to use newly installed phone lines to contact their attorneys.

The judge also asked the attorneys to look for a Mormon volunteer to help watch over twice-daily prayers after attorneys for the women who remain with young children at the coliseum complained they weren't given enough freedom to hold their usual prayer service. CPS has said it has no intention of infringing on their religious rights but wants to be sure the women aren't conspiring to tamper with witnesses in the custody case.

"The way our clients pray is sacred to them, but it becomes less sacred when they feel people from the department are monitoring them," said Andrea Sloan, a lawyer for some of the women.
Walther suggested that volunteers from the mainline Mormon church - of which FLDS is a renegade sect - might be able to provide monitoring without undermining the sacredness of the services.

The attorneys for the mothers and children agreed to look for someone at a local stake who would be willing to help.

Canoeist missing in Kansas River

Associated Press

EUDORA, Kan. - Searchers plan to continue looking in the Kansas River Monday morning where a man has been missing since his canoe flipped over during a weekend outing with friends.

Authorities say 26-year-old Shaun Shaw of De Soto, Kan., was canoeing with two friends near Eudora Saturday when his canoe overturned at around 6 p.m. His companions ran to a nearby home to summon help.
By Sunday afternoon, Douglas County sheriff's deputies said it appeared the operation had become a recovery instead of a rescue. Searchers walked the shoreline while rescuers in helicopters and boats also tried to find the canoeist.

Shaw disappeared in eight to 10 feet of water about 1 mile from the Johnson and Leavenworth county lines.

Tracing the Polygamists' Family Tree

Texas social workers will begin conducting DNA tests today to identify the 416 children taken into custody from the fundamentalist Mormon ranch near Eldorado since April 3. A district court judge granted the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services (TDFPS) permission to test the children last Friday, as the agency's custody workers continued to struggle with the serious, complicated task of determining which children belong to whom — a task further clouded by the fact that children and mothers gave evasive, shifting answers during interviews.

Genetic testing could be completed in as little as a few days, according to Howard Coleman, CEO of Genelex, a Seattle-based commercial genetics lab, which is not involved with the Texas case. It could take several weeks longer, however, to construct a family tree from the results. Once they are traced, however, the children's origins may offer a fascinating look at the family structure of the secretive polygamist sect, as well as insight into the emergence of a tragic birth defect that has plagued the community.

At the heart of the identity problem are the group's commitment to "celestial marriage" — polygamy — and its custom of allowing first cousins to marry. "Your family tree shouldn't be a wreath," says Randy Mankin, editor of the El Dorado Success newspaper, which unearthed the sect's Utah roots four years ago, when its first members, posing as businessmen, arrived in Eldorado under the pretense of building a hunting and game preserve. But the legal notices published in Mankin's paper listing the custody suits brought by the state against the Fundamentalist Church of the Latter Day Saints of Jesus Christ (FLDS) illustrate just how circular relationships are. Four surnames dominate the list: Jeffs (relatives of Warren Jeffs, the sect's imprisoned leader and "prophet"), Jessop, Barlow and Steed.

In the 1930s, two families, the Jessops and the Barlows, settled the area around Hildale, Utah, along the border with Arizona, where they founded the FDLS — and began handing down to their descendants a recessive gene for a severe form of mental retardation called Fumarase Deficiency. The birth defect has become increasingly prevalent within the FLDS community since 1990 when it was first identified by Dr. Theodore Tarby, an Arizona pediatric neurologist, now retired but formerly with the Children's Rehabilitative Services in Phoenix. He saw his first case when an FLDS mother brought her severely retarded son to see him. Tarby asked the mother whether any of her other children had problems, and she mentioned a daughter with cerebral palsy — testing proved that she, too, had Fumarase Deficiency syndrome.

The birth defect — an enzyme deficiency — causes severe mental retardation, epilepsy and disfigurement of features. "The retardation is in the severe range — an IQ around 25," Dr. Tarby says. Afflicted children are missing portions of their brain, often cannot sit or stand, and suffer grand mal seizures and encephalitis. Language skills are nonexistent or minimal. "I remember one little girl has a fascination with coins and the only word she could say was 'money,'" the doctor said. Families whose children are affected often avail themselves of state-funded medical care, consistent with the FLDS philosophy of seeking government aid — despite their suspicion of government — which they call "bleeding the Beast."

Until 1990 Tarby says he knew of only 13 cases of Fumarase Deficiency worldwide. Since, it has taken hold in the FLDS community because of intermarriage. "If you have two parents with the gene," Tarby says, "you are going to have a one-in-four chance of having a child afflicted with it." Depending on the severity of the disorder, children may die in childhood or may survive into early adulthood; if a person who has developed the disorder goes on to have a child, his or her chances of passing it on are one in two. But diagnosing the condition is difficult and requires extremely careful testing, the doctor says. His research, published in 2006, identified 20 cases within the Hildale-Colorado City enclave. "I would expect there are going to be Fumarase Deficiency cases there in Texas," he said.

State officials will not release any medical information about the 416 children in their custody, but one mother, giving her name simply as Sally on CNN's Larry King Live, described her son as "handicapped" and needing hourly care. "One of the mothers raised concerns about her child who had Down Syndrome," TDFPS spokesman Greg Cunningham told TIME in an e-mail. "That child has had a medical evaluation and has had one-on-one care." Cunningham says that the children in custody at the Pavilion, part of the city's civic center complex, have one caregiver for every three children. A small number of older boys have been moved to the Cal Farley Boy's Ranch in Amarillo, a privately funded home for needy children.

The FLDS community, by and large, rejects the idea that Fumarase Deficiency is caused by genes, according to Tarby. "They have their mythology about the condition. They think it's something in the water, or something in the air," he says. Before Tarby retired in 2007, FLDS leaders invited him to address the community about the disorder and how to prevent it. He told them that prevention would involve barring marriages between people with the recessive gene, or asking those couples to forgo children. He suggested that families discontinue having children once the disorder presents itself, or test for the gene during pregnancy and selectively abort pregnancies with the deficiency. All were approaches rejected by the FLDS. "It's not something they are willing to do," Tarby says.

Child welfare worker describes FLDS ranch as 'scary environment'

Right: Merrill Jessop and extended family

She and the caseworkers were then led into the school house, where they requested to talk with young women. She said soon after, the men on the compound began escorting young girls into individual classrooms. There were 15 girls in all.

When questioned by the state's attorney about the presence of men at the ranch, Vause said they were "everywhere. There were men standing at the doors, in the stairwells, in the schoolhouse," she testified.

She said the girls filed in and appeared polite and respectful, but she was nevertheless concerned.

"It was a very scary environment — intimidating. I was afraid. I saw men all over. It felt like the schoolhouse was surrounded," she said, "It was a fearful kind of environment."

Six hours after being on the ranch and talking to a variety of girls, Vause said the decision was made to remove some of the children from the complex. During interviews with young women there, she and others learned that "there's no age too young to be spiritually united."

She said she also learned from the girls that the marriages were dictated by the prophet and that they should have as many babies as they could.

Vause also said she began to realize there were more children at the ranch than authorities initially believed. In the morning on April 4, officials decided to bus many of the children to a civic center four miles away in Eldorado. At that time, she said the situation at the ranch was becoming really tense.

"I heard a report that a tank was coming on the property. Things were getting more scary to me. It was a situation of a very huge magnitude with so many law enforcement officers around," she testified. The case workers wanted to interview the children in an environment that didn't seem "so scary and dangerous."

Vause then went on to describe a crowd of mothers standing with their children who were uncooperative and did not wish to leave. It was then, Vause said, that Schleicher County Sheriff David Doran held up a cell phone and through the speaker, "Merril Jessop told the ladies they needed to cooperate and they just stopped" resisting.

When the state's attorney asked Vause how many in the crowd changed modes from being resistant to cooperative, she said it was about 30 or so. Jessop is the leader and bishop at the ranch.

As the children were being bused to the civic center, authorities began to conduct house-to-house searches looking for additional children. That continued until nightfall. When asked why the search was halted, Vause said it was decided it wasn't safe.

"It had been reported that there were men in trees with night vision, that there were men videotaping me and the children, and it appeared there were men posted at every entrance. It's hard to describe," she said, pausing. "It was a feeling of being very unsafe."

Vause said in questioning the initial girls at the school, investigators learned "that there were Sarahs at the ranch and some of these girls they were talking about were underage with children."

When the state asked how many "Sarahs" were identified, Vause said there were five and three of those could have been the Sarah they were seeking.

"We learned that a few of the girls know of the Sarah we were looking for and that she'd been seen last week and she had a baby," Vause said.

The supervisor's testimony was abruptly interrupted Thursday afternoon after several attorneys representing children and their mothers objected, claiming the information she was relaying could be construed as hearsay.

The state argued for allowing the testimony, saying it falls under a hearsay exception rule that allows certain statements to be accepted in court. It was at that point that Judge Barbara Walther granted a short recess to allow attorneys on both sides to huddle, designate a spokesperson, and articulate one large argument.

Vause later testified that records they expected to find during the raid were missing, including school attendance logs. She said many of the children could not or would not identify biological relationships, adding that the FLDS children "don't think that way" and said they would describe having a father of the house and several mothers.

The supervisor also noted that the children's names and ages changed, even from the time they took the short bus ride to the time they arrived at the civic center.

The custody cases being considered Thursday have been segregated into three separate blocks. The first block represents approximately 100 or so children, while the largest group of children in the second block. The third block represents 16 children. It's unclear how each group was separated.

Prior to Vause's testimony, Thursday's hearing had included arguments about nearly every other legal issue except custody of the 416 children who were removed from the Fundamentalist LDS Church ranch earlier this month and placed into state custody.

The authenticity of records, unlawful search and seizure, questions of venue, and of course, freedom of religion issues and other issues were all being raised Thursday.

Walther, who described herself as a "simple country judge," tried to juggle objections from many of the more than 350 attorneys representing all areas of Texas who are present to handle the monumental case. Every mother has legal representation as do the children.

One attorney who said he represented some of the members of the FLDS faith, described the hearing as an attack on the church. When the judge tried to explain it was about the reported activity of its members, he replied, "The church is the people."

An attorney for the state said, "This is not a case against the church. It is about child sex abuse — a pattern of sexual assault."

One issue argued extensively Thursday was the admissibility of documents that Texas Department of Public Safety Sgt. Danny Crawford was prepared to testify he had seized from the YFZ Ranch during a search on April 5. He said the documents, which were labeled Exhibit No. 4, were discovered in a safe in an office of one of the buildings at the ranch.

But several attorneys launched objections asserting that the documents are protected under a clergy-parishioner religious privilege. Called a "bishop's record," prosecutors said the documents contain a list of names and ages, including indications of underage pregnant girls.

Attorney Amy Hennington also argued that attorneys needed more time to review them. Another attorney cited objections to the documents' admissibility under the Fourth Amendment, saying they were procured by an unlawful search and seizure. He also raised concerns over the 14th Amendment, asserting due process claims.

The judge clearly began to express her frustration at the flurry of Constitutional issues being raised and said Thursday's hearing was simply designed to determine the custody status of the children.

"I don't intend to rule on anyone's religious practices. ... I am not passing (judgment) on anyone's religious beliefs," Walther said, adding that the hearing was about the "taking of the children.
"It is about whether or not there's sufficient information to justify the state's intrusion into these folks' lives. The real issue is whether these children can be returned to their parents."

Walther, who said she was inclined to "conditionally" accept the bishop's records as evidence, pointed out that attorneys are more than welcome to file their objections to the court in writing. She said she did not want to discourage any of the issues raised by attorneys, but urged everyone involved to stick to the issue at hand. The other issues would be addressed in the future, she said.

"I will admit that normal doesn't seem to apply to this case," she said.

In the midst of an atmosphere that at one point bordered on jovial, one attorney requested a transfer of venue, saying it would be impossible to fairly handle the case in San Angelo, where Walther presides.

"This is not before a jury. Are you saying I'm going to be negatively impacted by the media? Is that really what you want to say, sir? Be careful," the judge warned. The attorney immediately withdrew his motion.

The first objections of the day came just minutes after the first case was introduced when Ellen Griffith, an attorney representing the Department of Family and Protective Services, said she wanted genetic samples collected from each child and each parent in her case, a psychiatric exam and counseling for the children, and that the children be placed outside the five-county area that is within the jurisdiction of this court.

Griffith's requests were immediately met with opposition from the guardian ad litem attorney who had objected to the format.

"Your objections are a bit premature," Walther said. "It's not the appropriate time for any lawyer to be saying they've been denied any right."

The judge said, by law, the hearing has to be held within 14 days of the children being taken into custody.

"It is not a perfect solution. ... You will be able to represent your clients individually. ... This is wasting time," Walther said.

The judge went on to say she fully understands that every lawyer will make an objection, but added "let's just see how this works. ... I admit it's not going to be perfect."

During a mid-afternoon lunch break, FLDS member William Jessop was surrounded by a hoard of media. He spoke briefly and when asked if he had a message to the state of Texas, he said, "Wake up. Wake up. Wake up." Asked if the state was wrong to conduct the raid and take the children, he simply replied, "Yes."

Several lawyers representing the children apparently had filed many motions today in an attempt to stop the hearing.

Not long into the proceedings, the court hearing came to an abrupt stop, after attorneys attending at City Hall requested to review documents submitted in the pending case. That proved problematic, however, because the courthouse is located about a block away.

The judge stepped down from the bench while waiting for the paperwork to arrive and to be reviewed.

Dozens of attorneys, media members and polygamist wives in long flowing dresses moved into the downtown courthouse and City Hall auditorium this morning for what is expected to be at least a day-long hearing on the fate of the FLDS children.

A variety of police cars, huge satellite TV trucks from a number of media outlets and a host of other visitors have been crammed into this west Texas town for what is said to be the nation's largest ever child custody case.

Because of the crowds, the hearing before Walther also is being teleconferenced in the expansive auditorium of City Hall, a four-story building constructed in 1928.

Security demands are such that public safety officials from all disciplines — including fire marshals and a narcotics detective who was working front-door security — are being tapped to make sure things go smoothly.

Outside the courthouse on the sidewalk was Mary Batchelor, executive director of Principle Voices. The Utah-based organization has worked closely with Attorney General Mark Shurtleff in setting up the so-called "safety net," which seeks to bridge the gap between polygamists and state bureaucracies. She said today that her group was shocked by the April 3 raid at the YFZ Ranch in Eldorado, Texas, and that it was reminiscent of similar raids that occurred in Utah in the 1930s , '40s and '50s.

Those raids, she said, also were prompted by allegations of child abuse, claims that were later proven to be unsubstantiated.

"We ask that people not rush to judgment," Batchelor said. While not officially affiliated with the FLDS religion, Batchelor said she is here to support the families. "Our hearts go out to the mothers. We'd like to see reunification if possible," she said.

Richard, one of the polygamist fathers who has a 3-month-old child in state custody in the San Angelo Coliseum, tried to enter the courthouse today but finally gave up because the lines were so long.

"We don't trust the judicial system to give us justice and fairness. We trust in God," he said.
The father said he hoped to be able to witness the court hearing in the overflow at City Hall.
The three-day raid on the FLDS Church's YFZ Ranch two weeks ago was based on allegations from phone calls to a family shelter hotline from a 16-year-old girl named Sarah who said she was married to a 49-year-old man. The caller said she was pregnant and was being physically and sexually abused by the man, who she said had six other wives.

If the judge gives the state permanent custody of the children, the child services agency will begin looking for foster homes in a case that has already stretched the legal resources of San Angelo and the state's child welfare system.

State officials contend the children were being physically and sexually abused or were in imminent danger of such abuse.

FLDS members say the state is persecuting them for their faith and that their 1,700-acre Yearning for Zion Ranch, with its large limestone temple and log cabin-style houses, is simply a home isolated from a hostile and sinful world.

They deny children were abused.

Child welfare worker describes FLDS ranch as 'scary environment'

umm, um, I want to have his children...how 'bout you? I was reading articles from before the state of Texas entered the YFZ compound. This one really has some ew factors so I thought I'd post it again, if I ever did.



By Amy Joi O'Donoghue and Nancy Perkins
Deseret News
April 17, 2008


SAN ANGELO, Texas — A child protective services supervisor took the stand this afternoon providing details for the first time about her encounter with FLDS members on the night of the raid.

Angie Vause testified she was escorted onto the YFZ Ranch in nearby Eldorado the night of April 3 by law enforcement officers. She was accompanied by a dozen case workers investigating complaints initially lodged by a 16-year-old girl named Sarah.

The girl had called a domestic violence hotline a few days earlier saying she was spiritually married to an older man who beat her, forced her to have sex, and held her at the ranch against her will. The caller said she had an 8-month-old baby and was several weeks pregnant with her second child. Vause said investigators hoped to find her among what they believed were about 150 people on the ranch.

In reality, there were more than 600 people there.

The supervisor testified that two men willingly let them inside after they had passed what she described as a guard tower several stories high with stairs leading to the top. She said there were men stationed at the tower.

She said she asked if there were any girls named Sarah living at the ranch. "They shook their heads and said there were no Sarahs living at the ranch," Vause said.

She and the caseworkers were then led into the school house, where they requested to talk with young women. She said soon after, the men on the compound began escorting young girls into individual classrooms. There were 15 girls in all.

When questioned by the state's attorney about the presence of men at the ranch, Vause said they were "everywhere. There were men standing at the doors, in the stairwells, in the schoolhouse," she testified.

She said the girls filed in and appeared polite and respectful, but she was nevertheless concerned.

"It was a very scary environment — intimidating. I was afraid. I saw men all over. It felt like the schoolhouse was surrounded," she said, "It was a fearful kind of environment."

Six hours after being on the ranch and talking to a variety of girls, Vause said the decision was made to remove some of the children from the complex. During interviews with young women there, she and others learned that "there's no age too young to be spiritually united."

She said she also learned from the girls that the marriages were dictated by the prophet and that they should have as many babies as they could.

Vause also said she began to realize there were more children at the ranch than authorities initially believed. In the morning on April 4, officials decided to bus many of the children to a civic center four miles away in Eldorado. At that time, she said the situation at the ranch was becoming really tense.

"I heard a report that a tank was coming on the property. Things were getting more scary to me. It was a situation of a very huge magnitude with so many law enforcement officers around," she testified. The case workers wanted to interview the children in an environment that didn't seem "so scary and dangerous."

Vause then went on to describe a crowd of mothers standing with their children who were uncooperative and did not wish to leave. It was then, Vause said, that Schleicher County Sheriff David Doran held up a cell phone and through the speaker, "Merril Jessop told the ladies they needed to cooperate and they just stopped" resisting.

When the state's attorney asked Vause how many in the crowd changed modes from being resistant to cooperative, she said it was about 30 or so. Jessop is the leader and bishop at the ranch.

As the children were being bused to the civic center, authorities began to conduct house-to-house searches looking for additional children. That continued until nightfall. When asked why the search was halted, Vause said it was decided it wasn't safe.

"It had been reported that there were men in trees with night vision, that there were men videotaping me and the children, and it appeared there were men posted at every entrance. It's hard to describe," she said, pausing. "It was a feeling of being very unsafe."

Vause said in questioning the initial girls at the school, investigators learned "that there were Sarahs at the ranch and some of these girls they were talking about were underage with children."

When the state asked how many "Sarahs" were identified, Vause said there were five and three of those could have been the Sarah they were seeking.

"We learned that a few of the girls know of the Sarah we were looking for and that she'd been seen last week and she had a baby," Vause said.

The supervisor's testimony was abruptly interrupted Thursday afternoon after several attorneys representing children and their mothers objected, claiming the information she was relaying could be construed as hearsay.

The state argued for allowing the testimony, saying it falls under a hearsay exception rule that allows certain statements to be accepted in court. It was at that point that Judge Barbara Walther granted a short recess to allow attorneys on both sides to huddle, designate a spokesperson, and articulate one large argument.

Vause later testified that records they expected to find during the raid were missing, including school attendance logs. She said many of the children could not or would not identify biological relationships, adding that the FLDS children "don't think that way" and said they would describe having a father of the house and several mothers.

The supervisor also noted that the children's names and ages changed, even from the time they took the short bus ride to the time they arrived at the civic center.

...Prior to Vause's testimony, Thursday's hearing had included arguments about nearly every other legal issue except custody of the 416 children who were removed from the Fundamentalist LDS Church ranch earlier this month and placed into state custody.

The authenticity of records, unlawful search and seizure, questions of venue, and of course, freedom of religion issues and other issues were all being raised Thursday.

Walther, who described herself as a "simple country judge," (lol, that's our first clue, she won't be bullied...) tried to juggle objections from many of the more than 350 attorneys representing all areas of Texas who are present to handle the monumental case. Every mother has legal representation as do the children.

One attorney who said he represented some of the members of the FLDS faith, described the hearing as an attack on the church. When the judge tried to explain it was about the reported activity of its members, he replied, "The church is the people."

An attorney for the state said, "This is not a case against the church. It is about child sex abuse — a pattern of sexual assault."

One issue argued extensively Thursday was the admissibility of documents that Texas Department of Public Safety Sgt. Danny Crawford was prepared to testify he had seized from the YFZ Ranch during a search on April 5. He said the documents, which were labeled Exhibit No. 4, were discovered in a safe in an office of one of the buildings at the ranch.

But several attorneys launched objections asserting that the documents are protected under a clergy-parishioner religious privilege. Called a "bishop's record," prosecutors said the documents contain a list of names and ages, including indications of underage pregnant girls.

Attorney Amy Hennington also argued that attorneys needed more time to review them.


Another attorney cited objections to the documents' admissibility under the Fourth Amendment, saying they were procured by an unlawful search and seizure. He also raised concerns over the 14th Amendment, asserting due process claims.

The judge clearly began to express her frustration at the flurry of Constitutional issues being raised and said Thursday's hearing was simply designed to determine the custody status of the children.

"I don't intend to rule on anyone's religious practices. ... I am not passing (judgment) on anyone's religious beliefs," Walther said, adding that the hearing was about the "taking of the children.

"It is about whether or not there's sufficient information to justify the state's intrusion into these folks' lives. The real issue is whether these children can be returned to their parents."

Walther, who said she was inclined to "conditionally" accept the bishop's records as evidence, pointed out that attorneys are more than welcome to file their objections to the court in writing.


She said she did not want to discourage any of the issues raised by attorneys, but urged everyone involved to stick to the issue at hand. The other issues would be addressed in the future, she said.

"I will admit that normal doesn't seem to apply to this case," she said.

In the midst of an atmosphere that at one point bordered on jovial, one attorney requested a transfer of venue, saying it would be impossible to fairly handle the case in San Angelo, where Walther presides.

"This is not before a jury. Are you saying I'm going to be negatively impacted by the media? Is that really what you want to say, sir? Be careful," the judge warned. The attorney immediately withdrew his motion.

The first objections of the day came just minutes after the first case was introduced when Ellen Griffith, an attorney representing the Department of Family and Protective Services, said she wanted genetic samples collected from each child and each parent in her case, a psychiatric exam and counseling for the children, and that the children be placed outside the five-county area that is within the jurisdiction of this court.

Griffith's requests were immediately met with opposition from the guardian ad litem attorney who had objected to the format. "Your objections are a bit premature," Walther said. "It's not the appropriate time for any lawyer to be saying they've been denied any right."

The judge said, by law, the hearing has to be held within 14 days of the children being taken into custody. "It is not a perfect solution. ... You will be able to represent your clients individually. ... This is wasting time," Walther said.

The judge went on to say she fully understands that every lawyer will make an objection, but added "let's just see how this works. ... I admit it's not going to be perfect."

During a mid-afternoon lunch break, FLDS member William Jessop was surrounded by a hoard of media. He spoke briefly and when asked if he had a message to the state of Texas, he said, "Wake up. Wake up. Wake up." Asked if the state was wrong to conduct the raid and take the children, he simply replied, "Yes."

Several lawyers representing the children apparently had filed many motions today in an attempt to stop the hearing. Not long into the proceedings, the court hearing came to an abrupt stop, after attorneys attending at City Hall requested to review documents submitted in the pending case.


That proved problematic, however, because the courthouse is located about a block away.
The judge stepped down from the bench while waiting for the paperwork to arrive and to be reviewed.

Dozens of attorneys, media members and polygamist wives in long flowing dresses moved into the downtown courthouse and City Hall auditorium this morning for what is expected to be at least a day-long hearing on the fate of the FLDS children.

A variety of police cars, huge satellite TV trucks from a number of media outlets and a host of other visitors have been crammed into this west Texas town for what is said to be the nation's largest ever child custody case.

Because of the crowds, the hearing before Walther also is being teleconferenced in the expansive auditorium of City Hall, a four-story building constructed in 1928.

Security demands are such that public safety officials from all disciplines — including fire marshals and a narcotics detective who was working front-door security — are being tapped to make sure things go smoothly.

Outside the courthouse on the sidewalk was Mary Batchelor, executive director of Principle Voices. The Utah-based organization has worked closely with Attorney General Mark Shurtleff in setting up the so-called "safety net," which seeks to bridge the gap between polygamists and state bureaucracies. She said today that her group was shocked by the April 3 raid at the YFZ Ranch in Eldorado, Texas, and that it was reminiscent of similar raids that occurred in Utah in the 1930s , '40s and '50s.

Those raids, she said, also were prompted by allegations of child abuse, claims that were later proven to be unsubstantiated.


"We ask that people not rush to judgment," Batchelor said. While not officially affiliated with the FLDS religion, Batchelor said she is here to support the families. "Our hearts go out to the mothers. We'd like to see reunification if possible," she said.

Richard, one of the polygamist fathers who has a 3-month-old child in state custody in the San Angelo Coliseum, tried to enter the courthouse today but finally gave up because the lines were so long.

"We don't trust the judicial system to give us justice and fairness. We trust in God," he said.
The father said he hoped to be able to witness the court hearing in the overflow at City Hall.
The three-day raid on the FLDS Church's YFZ Ranch two weeks ago was based on allegations from phone calls to a family shelter hotline from a 16-year-old girl named Sarah who said she was married to a 49-year-old man. The caller said she was pregnant and was being physically and sexually abused by the man, who she said had six other wives.

If the judge gives the state permanent custody of the children, the child services agency will begin looking for foster homes in a case that has already stretched the legal resources of San Angelo and the state's child welfare system.

State officials contend the children were being physically and sexually abused or were in imminent danger of such abuse.

FLDS members say the state is persecuting them for their faith and that their 1,700-acre Yearning for Zion Ranch, with its large limestone temple and log cabin-style houses, is simply a home isolated from a hostile and sinful world.

They deny children were abused.

Drew Peterson's ex-wife's estate is ordered reopened

By Erika Slife Tribune reporter
1:52 PM CDT, April 17, 2008

A Will County judge Thursday ordered the reopening of Kathleen Savio's estate in response to her family's request, paving the way for a wrongful death lawsuit against her ex-husband, Drew Peterson.

Judge Carmen Goodman also ruled that Peterson's uncle, James P. Carroll, will be removed as executor of Savio's estate, and that her father, Henry, and her sister, Anna Doman, be named the new executors.

Attorney Joel Brodsky, who represented Peterson and Carroll, said he planned to appeal the ruling. John Q. Kelly, one of the attorneys for the Savio family, said the wrongful death lawsuit would likely be filed within a couple of weeks.

Peterson, 54, a former Bolingbrook police sergeant, is a suspect in the Oct. 28 disappearance of his fourth wife, Stacy, then 23. Stacy's disappearance directed renewed attention to Savio's death, which occurred in March 2004, just weeks before her divorce settlement with Peterson was to be finalized.

Savio's death was initially ruled an accident by a coroner's jury. She had been found dead in an empty bathtub in her Bolingbrook home, her hair soaked with blood from a small gash on the back of her head. An autopsy determined the cause of death was drowning, and the medical examiner speculated that Savio -- who had numerous bruises on her body -- may have fallen in the tub and hit her head.

After Illinois State Police Special Agent Herbert Hardy testified at a Will County coroner's inquest that there did not appear to be anything criminal about Savio's death, the coroner's jury ruled it an accident. But from the time of her death, Savio's siblings have voiced their suspicions that Peterson was responsible.

In November, after Stacy was reported missing, State's Atty. James Glasgow filed a petition to exhume Savio's remains for a second autopsy, saying the circumstances of her death appeared to have been staged to conceal a homicide. In February, Glasgow announced that the new autopsy had determined her death was a homicide.

Peterson has not been charged in either case and maintains he is innocent.Although Savio and Peterson were officially divorced at the time of her death, the court had yet to approve a division of assets. When Savio died, her sons, under Peterson's guardianship, received $1 million from a life-insurance payment, according to court records. Peterson later received the proceeds from other life insurance policies, the profits from the sale of a bar they owned in Montgomery and profits on the sale of their home, all valued at more than $600,000, the records showed.

The Savio family has said it is not seeking money from the estate, but simply wants Savio's two sons, now teenagers, to receive the money they are entitled to.

Anti-polygamy activist blames Utah-Arizona inaction for Texas raid

SAN ANGELO, Texas -

Flora Jessop wishes she was wrong.

She wishes authorities hadn't found dozens of young girls at a polygamous sect's ranch in West Texas who were already mothers or pregnant. That rumors of abuse were unfounded. That no one had to experience the upheaval that now has beset members of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.

But she also wishes someone - Utah and Arizona authorities, specifically - had acted long before now to stop the sect's practice of arranging marriages between young girls and older men.

"Do I wish it on them? Absolutely not," said Jessop, who lives in Arizona. "But if a child is being hurt, the authorities need to be there for the children. They deserve the right to be free from abuse, just like their parents."

Utah and Arizona authorities have said they will not prosecute polygamous relationships that involve adults - a position taken because such prosecutions would likely fail on constitutional grounds. But the two states have attacked the sect's practice of underage marriages with some success.

Most notably, Utah prosecuted sect leader Warren S. Jeffs last fall for conducting an arranged marriage between a 14-year-old girl and her 19-year-old cousin. He received two consecutive five-to-life terms and is now awaiting prosecution in Arizona on similar
charges.

Utah authorities also crippled the sect's home base in Hildale, Utah, and Colorado City, Ariz., by seizing its communal property trust in 2005. That trust remains under court oversight.
Jessop has always maintained the states have not done enough, however. Jessop, who left the sect when she was 16, has spent the past decade helping other teens and women leave the FLDS church.

She won't say whether she knows the teen involved in this case, but Jessop told The Salt Lake Tribune on Friday that authorities had identified the wrong man as her husband. She also said the girl's husband had broken her ribs - something revealed in an affidavit released by Texas authorities on Tuesday.

Jessop has called the massive investigation the girl's call triggered a "colossal mistake" because it smacks of the 1953 Short Creek Raid, in which Arizona authorities took approximately 263 women and children into custody in an effort to stamp out polygamy.

She said the women and children who have been rounded up and sent to Fort Concho or the Wells Fargo Pavilion are unlikely to share the sort of information sought by authorities - names of fathers, dates of births, ages.

"First of all, they are all terrified they are going to hell if they talk to anybody," she said. "They've been taught their entire lives not to reveal who their mother is, who their father is. It's part of the culture of secrecy. And secrecy breeds isolation."

She believes many of the children at the ranch were sent there by parents in other states and claims they were taken from those families and given to "more worthy" ones. The 16-year-old girl whose call to a family shelter triggered the investigation said as much in her phone calls for help to an unnamed family shelter in Texas.

Jessop said one girl told her "The men own the babies, not the mothers."
Texas authorities said Tuesday during a press conference that many of the children do not appear to have parents there.

Jessop also said that one way young teens were enticed to stay at the ranch was their infants were given to other plural wives - women who shared a common husband - to raise. "If they spread the children out to other women," she said, "the mothers are not going to leave."

Will FLDS kids overload Texas' foster care system?

By Julia Lyon and Brooke Adams
The Salt Lake Tribune

Texas' already beleaguered foster care system faces a daunting challenge in handling the influx of up to 419 children seized from the polygamous FLDS community's isolated Eldorado ranch, social service advocates say.

The children's arrival will overwhelm an already burdened system, charges Richard Wexler, the executive director of National Coalition for Child Protection Reform, which monitors child welfare systems nationwide.

''Texas is particularly unprepared to cope with something like this," he said. "Texas happens to be in the middle of a huge foster care panic."

On Tuesday, Texas officials moved about 170 FLDS children from overcrowded Fort Concho into a nearby event center. Child placement agencies across the state were preparing to place the children into foster care.

All told, the Texas Child Protective Services said it had removed a total of 419 children, accompanied by 139 mothers, from the ranch owned by the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. Most are staying at the historic fort, and others are now at the Wells Fargo Pavilion, both in San Angelo, Texas.

Agencies have been alerted that only girls are in need of foster care, which puzzled Irene Clements, the president of the Texas Foster Family Association.

"That's kind of the question we all have," she said. "These young girls have babies - some of them are going to be boys."

The Texas Legislature reformed the state's foster care system after a series of highly publicized abuses in 2004. Still, serious problems remain, according to a September 2007 report prepared for Texas Appleseed, a nonprofit public interest group that researches social service issues.

CPS is ill-prepared to deal with all of the children in its care, the report found. "The statistics are shocking," the report stated. "Since January 2007, nearly 500 children have spent at least one night in a state office building" due to the shortage of foster families.

Inadequate funding and growing caseloads mean "the children in Texas' foster care system will suffer," the report concluded.

Clements acknowledged: "We're already having somewhat of a capacity crisis in the state."
In fiscal year 2007, Texas provided foster care or other living arrangements to about 33,000 children. But in Tom Green County, where San Angelo is located, only 286 children were provided foster care.

Even the Houston/Dallas area, which has the most resources available, ends up sending children to other counties for care, said Johana Scot, director of the Parent Guidance Center in Austin. The center assists parents whose children have been removed.

"San Angelo doesn't have the capacity for [this]," Scot said. "If they do end up going into foster care, they'll be all over Texas. It will be a mess."

Because San Angelo is isolated in west Texas, fewer resources are immediately available - such as lawyers, judges and mental health professionals, said Scott McCown, executive director of the Center for Public Policy Priorities, an Austin-based think tank.

The challenge reminds him of the state's work marshalling resources for Hurricane Katrina evacuees, he said. CPS, in fact, has enacted a "disaster plan, so to speak," said spokeswoman Marleigh Meisner. She said a work force of 700 people from across the state is being deployed.

Texas law says the state has up to 14 days after an emergency removal to hold a hearing. Indigent parents are appointed an attorney. A legal representative will also be appointed for each child.

A child can remain in foster care in Texas for up to a year, with a one-time six-month extension, at which point the state's options include terminating parental rights. Prior to the 14th day hearing, CPS doesn't "have to tell anyone anything," Scot said.

In an affidavit released Tuesday, CPS officials alleged the sect has a widespread practice of expecting young teenage girls to bear children with older men. CPS believes every child on the ranch who had not been abused was at risk of abuse, Meisner said.

But Wexler questioned the state's treatment of the women and children. "By virtue of what has happened to them, these people are victims, not perpetrators," Wexler said. "They should not be treated like detainees at Guantanamo."

The state has alerted placement organizations that there is a potential need for families for several hundred girls, said Clements, who also works for Lutheran Social Services of the South, the largest child placement agency in Texas.

Her agency has contacted families to gauge their interest and availability, and reaction has been mixed, she said. Some families have wondered how the children will fit into a normal family after being sheltered in such a different environment.

Scot said Texas law urges placements with relatives, if possible. "It is bad enough for regular kids they take, but that would be totally detrimental to these children to remove them from their mothers," she said.

Back at Fort Concho on Tuesday, reporters called out to boys walking on the grassy parade field, asking if they were being treated well. One youth shook his head, indicating no.
But as reporters moved closer to the fence, a CPS worker called the boys back and appeared to scold an older boy.

Officers then approached the media and told them to move across the street.