3 families reunite in polygamist case
SAN ANGELO, Texas (AP) - May 23, 2008 The agreement narrowly specifies 12 children, some of whose
parents had filed a motion with a state district court in San
Antonio for their release from state foster care.
Lori Jessop cried when she and her husband, Joseph, were
reunited with their daughter and two sons.
"The little boy just grabbed for his daddy," when CPS workers
handed him over, said their attorney Rene Haas.
Child Protective Services spokesman Patrick Crimmins declined to
comment on the agreement.
CPS agreed to allow the parents to live with their children in
the San Antonio area under state supervision, said Teresa Kelly, a
spokeswoman for Haas. The families cannot return to the Yearning
For Zion ranch, where they lived before the raid.
Aside from mothers staying with their infants in foster care, no
other parents from the west Texas ranch have been allowed to stay
with their children.
CPS's case for removing all children from the ranch was thrown
into doubt Thursday when the Third Court of Appeals ordered a
lower-court judge to rescind her decision giving the state custody
of more than 100 of the children. The ruling was broad enough to
cover nearly every child swept up in the April raid on the ranch
run by the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day
Saints.
CPS said in its appeal to the Texas Supreme Court that the
appeals court was wrong to say that the vast majority of children
at the ranch did not face the sort of extreme danger state law
requires for them to be removed without a court order. The agency
cited evidence it said showed that the church pushed teenage girls
into spiritual marriages with older men.
"This case is about adult men commanding sex from underage
children; about women knowingly condoning and allowing sexual abuse
of underage children; about the need for the department to take
action under difficult, time-sensitive and unprecedented
circumstances," the state agency said in its appeal.
The state asked to keep the children in foster care while the
case is reviewed.
The limited agreement CPS offered covers 12 children who belong
to three families.
Lori and Joseph Jessop had been scheduled to appear in Bexar
County district court on their motion to release their three
children - ages 4, 2 and 1 - but CPS offered the agreement instead,
Kelly said.
Similar agreements in the near future are unlikely; the couple
filed their motion in a different court than the other families.
State officials said in their Supreme Court filing that it would
be impossible to return all children covered in Thursday's ruling
because they have not determined which children belong to which
parents, and DNA tests were incomplete. The appeals court ruling
technically applies only to the 38 mothers who filed the complaint.
In justifying their removal of the children from the ranch,
Child Protective Services cited as "documented" sexual abuse a
statement from a girl who said she knew a 16-year-old who is
married with a 5-month-old baby; and the statement from another
girl that "Uncle Merrill" decides who and when she will marry.
The state also cited five underage pregnant girls.
Authorities also said the appeals court overstepped in its
ruling because a lower court had discretion to rule in the custody
case.
Attorneys for the parents whose case is under high-court
consideration urged the justices to reject the state's appeal,
saying their children "are being subjected to continuing,
irreparable harm every day that they are separated from their
parents."
Rod Parker, a spokesman for the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus
Christ of Latter Day Saints, said the appeal was no surprise
"although one would hope that at some point they would realize the
futility."
The parents were prepared for an extended legal battle, he said.
"They're hopeful to get on with their lives, but in reality,
they understand," he said.
The agency accused parents of being uncooperative and not
providing proper identification - though in dozens of individual
custody hearings this week, parents provided state-issued birth
certificates. Other sect members mistakenly believed to be minors
also provided drivers' licenses as proof of their age.
The Third Court of Appeals said the state acted hastily.
"Even if one views the FLDS belief system as creating a danger
of sexual abuse by grooming boys to be perpetrators of sexual abuse
and raising girls to be victims of sexual abuse ... there is no
evidence that this danger is 'immediate' or 'urgent,"' the court
said.
"Evidence that children raised in this particular environment
may someday have their physical health and safety threatened is not
evidence that the danger is imminent enough to warrant invoking the
extreme measure of immediate removal," the court said.
The children were taken into custody more than six weeks ago
after someone called a hot line claiming to be a pregnant, abused
teenage wife. The girl has not been found and authorities are
investigating whether the calls were a hoax.
Five judges in San Angelo, about 40 miles north of Eldorado, had
been holding hearings on what the parents must do to regain custody
when the appeals decision was issued. Those hearings were suspended
after Thursday's ruling.
The custody case has been chaotic from the beginning. During the
first round of hearings, held two weeks after the April 3 raid,
hundreds of lawyers crammed into a courtroom and nearby auditorium,
queuing up to voice objections or ask questions on behalf of the
mothers, who were dressed in trademark prairie dresses and braided
hair.
The state conceded this week that at least 15 of the 31 mothers
being held in foster care as minors were actually adults; one is
27.
The state has struggled for weeks to establish the identities of
the children and sort out their tangled family relationships. The
youngsters are in foster homes all over the state, with some
brothers or sisters separated by as much as 600 miles.
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Associated Press writer Jim Vertuno contributed to this report
from Austin.