A state appellate court has ruled that child welfare officials had no right to seize more than 400 children living at a polygamist sect's ranch.
The Third Court of Appeals in Austin ruled that the grounds for removing the children were "legally and factually insufficient" under Texas law. They did not immediately order the return of the children.
Child welfare officials removed the children on the grounds that the sect pushed underage girls into marriage and sex and trained boys to become future perpetrators.
The appellate court ruled the chaotic hearing held last month did not demonstrate the children were in any immediate danger, the only measure of taking children from their homes without court proceedings.
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And round and round it goes. While the sect may have been a place of questionable ethics the state of Texas had no business doing as they did. Being different is not a cause for such abuse by those supposedly in authority. I say supposedly because the people are the authority and not those claiming to be their representatives something that is very confused in the minds of some.
Something akin to a third of the children taken were victims of some type of abuse and two thirds were not according to the official transcripts of the proceedings thus far.
The question is why were cases of those third not thoroughly investigated and those found responsible arrested and prosecuted as the individual cases they are in lieu of a 'cattle round-up' corralling everyone on the basis of innuendo, false allegations and fear of differences?!
I am not trying to defend the guilty nor the innocent here ... I think it is none of my business what adults do in the religion until it affects me directly - if they want to marry multiple times while still married to all others before it is fine by me, I do not have to do that nor am I frightened by others doing that.
Raising their children is also not any concern of mine until it actually harms the children or affects me directly (something which it will never do but the harming of a child does ... under any circumstances). Which is why I question the total lack of investigation by Texas authorities. Traumatizing a child as they have done (over 400 times no less), is just as harmful as any abuse at home and more so to a child who has not been abused at home.
There was a case locally about twenty years ago where a young child of four would scream bloody murder whenever his was around his grandfather ... who turned out was molesting the child. had the authorities then, reacted as have the Texas authorities have now, it would have not come out that the child's mother (the grandfather's daughter) was molesting her own child as well. The child would have been left with his mother, who would have continued to molest the child had the authorities 'jumped' on the first suspicion without investigating the case.
Now in his early twenties the child is a happy individual who has nothing to do with his grandfather and mother. Both of whom are in the last years of their prison terms for the abuse of the child.
How many of the sect's children will be happy individuals twenty years from now?
