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Sect’s children must enter foster care, judge rules

Marie, right, a mother of three boys, and other members of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints wait outside the county courthouse in San Angelo, Texas, on Friday. Associated Press (Associated Press / The Spokesman-Review)
Jenny Jarvie and Deedee Correll Los Angeles Times
Marie, right, a mother of three boys, and other members of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints wait outside the county courthouse in San Angelo, Texas, on Friday. Associated Press (Associated Press / The Spokesman-Review)

SAN ANGELO, Texas – A judge ruled Friday evening that 416 children seized by authorities during a raid on a polygamous sect’s compound are at risk of sexual abuse if they stay with the group and must be placed into foster care.

Texas District Judge Barbara L. Walther’s ruling came after a chaotic, two-day hearing that featured several hundred attorneys and two buildings filled with witnesses, reporters and members of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, or FLDS, a breakaway Mormon sect that believes in divinely inspired, underage polygamous marriage.

Walther ordered sect members to provide DNA samples for maternity and paternity tests. State witnesses testified earlier Friday that more than 20 of the children involved appeared to have been born to underage mothers. And authorities have said that it has been difficult to sort out family ties because the children have given vague answers since being taken into custody.

Before the ruling, evidence surfaced that the phone call that sparked the April 3 raid on the FLDS compound outside Eldorado might have been a hoax. Authorities stormed the compound after receiving what they said was a call for help from a 16-year-old girl who said her husband was abusing her. Authorities did not find the girl or her husband, but they removed 416 other children after discovering what they said was evidence they may have been subjected to abuse.

On Wednesday night, police in Colorado Springs, Colo., arrested Rozita Swinton, 33, for allegedly making false reports to authorities.

Flora Jessop, a former sect member who now helps girls who say they were abused, told ABC News on Thursday night that she received calls from a person claiming to be the 16-year-old in question. Jessop said she recorded those calls and that authorities had traced them to Colorado Springs.

Experts said that even if the initial call to Texas authorities was fraudulent, it would have no impact on the fate of the hundreds of children now in state custody.

“The legal question is not whether the information the police rely on is correct, but whether they were reasonable in believing that they had cause to enter” the compound, said Sandra Guerra Thompson, a law professor at the University of Houston.