Very odd…from Chron.com

Texas child welfare officials acknowledged today that the agency has isolated the children it removed from a polygamist community from any mention of the group’s spiritual leader, who was convicted as an accomplice to rape last year for arranging the marriage of a 14-year-old girl.

The name of Warren Jeffs cannot be uttered, even by family members visiting their children in foster care at facilities around the state, a Child Protective Services attorney confirmed.

And Jeffs’ picture cannot be circulated, even in religious literature, a CPS caseworker confirmed in court today during the first week of custody hearings for children taken from a Fundamentalist Church of Latter Day Saints’ ranch in West Texas.

…

CPS caseworker Daniel Medrano confirmed that children in his care at the Cal Farley Ranch in Amarillo could have access to the Book of Mormon “as long as it doesn’t have Warren Jeffs’ picture or his signature.”

“I’m just following the rules of the department,” he told the court in a case involving Janet Jeffs Nielson, a mother of five.

At a custody case involving a younger brother of Jeffs named Seth Jeffs, a CPS attorney confirmed that family members were barred from mentioning the religious leader in visits with their children.

…

DeLong noted that the agency’s family service plan makes no mention of such restrictions.

“I think they’d be very careful having any abridgement of religious freedom in writing,” she said.

…

Marleigh Meisner, a CPS spokeswoman, clarified later that members of the Jeffs family can discuss Warren Jeffs with their own children. But the agency will not allow Jeffs to be discussed with any of the other children, despite the fact that he is still the church’s recognized leader.

“He is a convicted sex offender and we have an issue with Mr. Jeffs,” Meisner said.

No resident of the Yearning for Zion Ranch has been charged with a sex-related crime. The compound was built at Warren Jeffs’ direction, starting in 2004, and was raided April 3 in response to an anonymous sexual abuse complaint that now is believed to have been a hoax.

In two custody hearings, attorneys complained that copies of the Book of Mormon were taken from the children while they were in foster care.

Meisner said that’s not true.

The state conceded this morning that two more mothers whom CPS had considered minors were actually adults, making five such acknowledgements in all. That resulted in 460 children now in custody, down from a high of 465.

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