[Vision2020] Court: Texas Had No Right to Remove Polygamists' Children

[Tom Hansen]

>From CNN at:

http://tinyurl.com/3l24ce

-------------------------------------------------

Court: Texas had no right to remove polygamists' children

SAN ANGELO, Texas (CNN) -- The state of Texas should not have removed the 
more than 460 children it took from a polygamist sect's ranch, an appeals 
court ruled Thursday.

In its ruling, the Texas 3rd District Court of Appeals decided in favor of 
38 women who had appealed the removals, as well as a decision last month 
by a district judge that the children will remain in state custody.

"The existence of the FLDS belief system as described by the department's 
witnesses, by itself, does not put children of FLDS parents in physical 
danger," the three-judge panel said. 

The state's Department of Family and Protective Services "did not present 
any evidence of danger to the physical health or safety of any male 
children or any female children who had not reached puberty," the judges 
ruled. 

According to the ruling, the mothers said the state should have proved 
that the children's health or safety was in danger; that there was "an 
urgent need for protection" that required immediately separating the 
children from their parents; and that the state made "reasonable efforts" 
to avoid removing the children.

Because no such proof was presented, the mothers argued, the District 
Court -- which backed the department's seizure of the children -- "was 
required to return the children to their parents and abused its discretion 
by failing to do so."

"The legislature has required that there be evidence to support a finding 
that there is a danger to the physical health or safety of the children in 
question and that the need for protection is urgent and warrants immediate 
removal," the ruling said. 

It concluded, "Evidence that children raised in this particular 
environment may some day 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 prior to full litigation of the 
issue."

The children were removed last month from the Yearning for Zion (YFZ) 
Ranch in Eldorado, Texas, which is owned by the Fundamentalist Church of 
Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, a Mormon offshoot that practices 
polygamy.

The sect is linked to jailed "prophet" Warren Steed Jeffs. 

Authorities raided the ranch after they received reports of child abuse. 

-------------------------------------------------

Seeya round town, Moscow.

Tom Hansen
Moscow, Idaho


"People who ridicule others while hiding behind anonymous monikers in chat-
room forums are neither brave nor clever." 

- Latah County Sheriff Wayne Rausch (August 21,
2007)

---------------------------------------------
This message was sent by First Step Internet.
           http://www.fsr.com/