Source: dallasnews.com
Nearly nine months since state authorities raided the Yearning for Zion polygamist ranch and took hundreds of children into temporary custody, the families upended by the largest-ever U.S. child welfare case cling to their culture.Some members of the Utah-based Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints hunker down in suburban subdivisions across Texas, struggling to maintain piety and an austere lifestyle in the face of influences they consider immoral. Others have moved back to the ranch, trying to restore sanctity and self-sufficiency to their once-thriving community.
Members of the breakaway Mormon sect say the state jumped to conclusions based on religious bigotry, sweeping into their sacred temple and snatching healthy, happy children based on a hoax call and bad information from their critics. Child Protective Services says it was required by law to check out the initial tip – purportedly a distraught sect teenager’s plea for help to a women’s shelter, though now suspected of being from a Colorado woman with a history of filing false police reports.
CPS officials say once they began to interview girls at the ranch, caseworkers grew alarmed over possibly widespread child sexual abuse, involving girls pressured into “spiritual” marriages with older men. Agency leaders defend the mass removal as necessary so caseworkers could investigate their suspicions. State courts ultimately ruled, though, that CPS removed too many children without enough proof each was at risk of abuse, especially those who hadn’t reached puberty.
Last week, CPS capped its nine-month investigation with a report saying a dozen girls younger than 16 were “spiritually united” to adult men in the past four years. Of the 12, seven gave birth, CPS said. And nearly two-thirds of sect families investigated had children who were abused or neglected, mostly through inappropriate exposure to underage marriages.
Separately, a dozen men from the sect – including prophet Warren Jeffs – have been indicted on charges such as sexual assault of a child and felony bigamy. None has gone to trial.
Sect parents, though deeply affected, hardly call the shots in what has become a protracted legal and public relations battle between their church and Texas. Some say living at the ranch is still too risky. Others, confident that CPS can’t convince the public that the sect’s youth should be foster children, have urged all sect members to return.
Technorati Tags: Yearning for Zion, FLDS
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