DNA testing wrapped up on sect kids
SAN ANGELO, Texas (AP) - April 23, 2008 Roughly 500 samples were taken at the San Angelo Coliseum where
authorities have been holding the children. The state attorney
general's office sent 10 technicians on Monday to begin taking
court-ordered samples as child welfare officials try to sort out
the complicated family relationships at the compound.
Spokeswoman Janece Rolfe said the testing at the coliseum was
completed late Tuesday, but technicians are still taking samples
from parents in Eldorado.
Child Protective Services moved 114 children from the coliseum
on Tuesday to foster facilities. They've declined to say when the
other children might be moved, but a half dozen buses arrived at
the coliseum on Wednesday morning.
The children eagerly waved and smiled at television cameras,
even as attorneys for the children complained they weren't warned
their clients would be moved so quickly.
A hearing was scheduled for Wednesday afternoon for lawyers
representing the children to air concerns about how the children
will be cared for in foster homes.
The remaining 300 children were expected to be moved on
Thursday, said Guy Choate, a state bar official who has been
coordinating the attorneys brought from all over the state to
represent the children.
State District Judge Barbara Walther signed the order Tuesday
allowing the state to begin moving the children into temporary
foster care while the state completes DNA testing and develops
individual custody and treatment plans.
Technicians began testing children on Monday. The state added a
testing site closer to the ranch, in the Eldorado courthouse
square, on Tuesday.
Women in prairie dresses and men with shirts buttoned to their
necks trickled into a stone building flanked by deputies to offer
DNA samples. Results will likely take a month or more.
Arriving in pickup trucks and sport utility vehicles a few at a
time, the parents came to allow technicians in lab coats to swab
inside their mouths as they fight to regain custody of their
children.
Their lawyers said many believe the testing is invasive and
unnecessary.
"We've told them to cooperate, but there are a lot of people
who are reluctant," said Cynthia Martinez, a spokeswoman for the
Legal Aid attorneys who represent dozens of mothers. "There's a
perception there that the state will be using it to separate them"
rather than reunite them with their children.
David Williams, a former member of the Fundamentalist Church of
Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, arrived from Nevada to give a
DNA sample.
Clutching photos of his boys, ages 5, 7 and 9, Williams looked
at his feet as he said his children were "taken hostage by the
state."
"I have been an honorable American and father and I have
carefully sheltered my children from the sins of this generation,"
Williams said. He denied the children living at the ranch were
abused.
Susan Hays, an attorney for a toddler in state custody, said
many of the fathers are reluctant and some may have left the state,
fearing that the tests are really designed to help prosecutors make
criminal abuse cases.
The state won the right to put the children in foster care on
suspicion that FLDS members pushed underage girls into marriage and
sex and that all the children raised in the church are in danger of
being victims or becoming predators.
The children have been removed from the Yearning For Zion Ranch,
the renegade Mormon sect's compound in Eldorado; they stayed at
historic Fort Concho in San Angelo before being moved to the larger
coliseum last week.
CPS spokesman Darrell Azar said child welfare officials want to
move the children to a more homelike setting.
"They need to be out of the limelight," he said. "Children
can't get into a normal routine in a shelter."
CPS said in its placement plan - attached to Walther's order -
that it will try to place mothers under 18 with their children and
to keep sibling groups together. Some of the families may have
dozens of siblings.
Boys ages 8 and older will likely be placed in a setting similar
to that where dozens of teen boys were taken last week, a Boys
Ranch near Amarillo in the Texas Panhandle some 250 miles from
Eldorado.
The CPS document lists facilities all around Texas - as far as
Houston, about 500 miles away - where the children may be placed in
what is one of the largest custody cases in U.S. history.
Walther ordered that the children taken from the compound be
given DNA tests after child welfare officials complained they
couldn't identify the children and parents. The judge ordered any
known or suspected parents to also get tested.
All the children are supposed to get individual hearings before
June 5 to help determine whether their parents may be able to take
steps to regain custody or they'll stay in state custody.
FLDS spokesman Rod Parker said at a news conference Tuesday in
Salt Lake City that Texas doesn't know how to handle sect children,
and that efforts to keep them from being moved have been ignored.
"These people are not equipped to handle these children," said
Parker. "They don't know anything about these children."
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Associated Press Writer Jennifer Dobner in Salt Lake City
contributed to this report.