Texas high court orders kids returned
AUSTIN, Texas – In a stinging rebuke to the agency charged with protecting youngsters, the Texas Supreme Court on Thursday ruled that Child Protective Services overreached its authority when it seized more than 460 youngsters from a polygamist outpost near Eldorado last month.
The much-awaited ruling chides the agency for failing to pursue less drastic remedies to ensure that the children at the Yearning For Zion Ranch were not being subjected to what state welfare officials described as a culture of sexual abuse that dates back several generations within the Fundamental Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.
“On the record before us, removal of the children was not warranted,” the Texas justices wrote in the ruling. “The Department (CPS) argues without explanation that (returning the children to their families) leaves the Department unable to protect the children’s safety, but the Family Code gives (the state) broad authority to protect children short of separating them from their families and placing them in foster care.”
The ruling gave no firm timetable to begin sending the youngsters home; the Department of Family Protective Services, which oversees CPS, promised to take “take immediate steps to comply” with the court’s ruling.
“Child Protective Services has one purpose in this case – to protect the children,” the agency said in an unsigned statement. “Our goal is to reunite families whenever we can do so and make sure the children will be safe. We will continue to prepare for the prompt and orderly reunification of these children with their families.”
A lawyer for the legal aid organization that led the court challenge to the wholesale roundup of all of the children at the compound, said any foot-dragging on the agency’s part would be unacceptable.
“CPS should be ready now to send these kids back to their mothers,” David Hall, who heads Texas Rio Grande Legal Aid, said at a hastily arranged news conference outside the Supreme Court Building near the Texas Capitol.
Also at the event was Martha Emack, a member of the sect who was visiting her two children at a foster care center in Austin when word of the court’s ruling was announced. She appeared to hold her emotions in check as a crowd of reporters asked for her reaction.
“I’m happy as soon as all the children are back to their mothers and we’re home,” said Emack, the mother of a 1-year-old and a 2-year-old.
Child welfare officials and law enforcement officers moved on the ranch on April 3 after receiving a tip from someone claiming to be a pregnant 16-year-old forced into a marriage with an abusive 50-year-old member of the sect. Officials were unable to identify the tipster even after they removed the children, and now believe they may have been duped.
State District Judge Barbara Walther of San Angelo later awarded the state temporary custody of the children based on testimony that the sect’s culture of polygamy and underage marriage put them in imminent danger of abuse.
The FLDS broke away from the Mormon Church after the latter renounced polygamy in 1890.