Ismael Estrada
AC360° Producer

So how does the state give the kids back?

This morning Judge Barbara Walther asked for all the players to join in court today. A 2pm “conference” to decide how the court will abide by the Texas Supreme Court’s decision to essentially give the FLDS kids back to their families.

The court was packed this afternoon as attorneys, FLDS mothers, and media filled the seats. All waiting to hear how this would all be resolved.

The state drafted up some language on how to return the children, with guidelines. Some of those proposals:
Keep reading

Ismael Estrada and David Mattingly
AC360° Producer and Correspondent

ELDORADO, Texas — Schleicher County, Texas is the kind of small community where everyone knows your name. This tiny town has two traffic lights and gas stations, a few restaurants, a small, local weekly paper and now — possibly hundreds of new voters.

A few years ago, when the FLDS polygamist sect set up camp on their new 1,700-acre property, they told local officials they wanted nothing to do with local government. They say they just wanted to stay to themselves in their secluded YFZ ranch, where they were building massive homes and a temple as more FLDS members moved in.

But their promise to stay out of local government has changed since Texas authorities raided their property on April 3. Keep reading

David Mattingly
360 Correspondent

It looks like payback time in Eldorado. Members of the secluded, polygamist sect felt vindicated yesterday when the Texas Supreme Court agreed state authorities did not have the right to take all 400-plus children into custody. But the FLDS families don’t plan to go home quietly. Come November…they plan to vote.

I spoke at length with sect spokesman Willie Jessop about plans to register five to six hundred FLDS voters. Schleicher County has fewer than 19 hundred registered voters and no candidate is safe.

Sheriff David Doran, one of the leaders of the April raid at the YFZ ranch was the leading county vote-getter four years ago with just 903 votes. He’s in for the re-election campaign of his life.

The County Commissioner from the precinct where you find the FLDS compound should also be worried. He ran unopposed four years ago and got into office with just 154 votes. Just a couple hundred write-in votes could conceivably land a sect member a seat on the county commission.

Jami Floyd
360° Contributor, In Session Anchor

Editor’s Note: Watch Jami Floyd tonight at 10pm on Anderson Cooper 360°

There is a reason two appellate courts in Texas — first a three-court panel of the state court of appeals and now the Texas Supreme Court — have ordered the return of children removed from a polygamist ranch to their mothers: It is the right thing to do.

Not as a matter of sympathy, or morality, or decency, but as a matter of constitutional law.
To be sure, the Texas Supreme Court today did not specifically find the absence of wrongdoing at the ranch — where authorities contend sexual abuse of young girls is routine. Indeed, the court acknowledged the state’s interest in protecting children from harm. But state agents cannot simply storm homes, polygamist or otherwise, to remove children without a showing of abuse. Suspicions are not enough.

It is perhaps difficult for anyone who cares about the children or their mothers (who many believe are brainwashed from birth) to understand.

But for those of us who choose to become lawyers, these are the easy cases. These are the very people our constitution is designed to protect — the least popular among us, lest they be subjected to the tyranny of the majority.

Read more of Jami Floyd’s comment on the In Session blog

David M. Reisner
360° Digital Producer

Bloggers, wanted to update you on some breaking news in the Texas Supreme Court ruling on the FLDS case:

You can view court evidence here.

They look like the girls I see playing in my neighborhood. Young girls. No age was listed with the photos of them kissing FLDS “prophet” Warren Jeffs. The photos were submitted by the state as evidence that girls were in imminent threat of abuse, but what I did not understand is why were these pictures entered into evidence of a family on the YFZ compound? FDLS Spokesman Rod Parker told our crews on the ground that this is a publicity stunt by the CPS, and that all families should stand alone in their custody hearings. After doing some digging I found that not only was this child in the pictures born in 1994, a minor, but an immediate family member of a father currently involved in a custody case. Plus this same little girl was expected to be called as a witness in the custody hearing. Shocking! As the family wanted to gain a reputation of why their infant was not in immediate danger, their defense is this same little girl? Not the best defense in my book.

A family waits at a San Antonio, Texas, courthouse last week for a reunion with a seized child

Members of a polygamist sect whose children were removed by Texas authorities could flee the state if a lower court ruling stands, according to lawyers for the state.

If sect members were to flee, they also would leave the courts’ jurisdiction, attorneys for the state Child Protection Services said in court filings Tuesday to the Texas Supreme Court.

The case involves 38 mothers from the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, a Mormon offshoot that practices polygamy, and their 124 children.

In a ruling last week, the Texas 3rd District Court of Appeals said the state had no right to remove those children in April from the Yearning For Zion ranch near Eldorado, Texas. Although that ruling applied only to those 124 children, attorneys said the reasoning could apply to all the youths removed during the raid — about 460. (Up to 20 of those later were found in court to be adults.)

Read full story…

Carolyn Jessop is a former FLDS Member and Co-Author of Escape

Carolyn Jessop
Former FLDS Member

I was shocked when I heard the news of the Texas Appellate Court ruling this afternoon.
Waves of horror washed over me at first as I thought that the children might have to be immediately returned. But that’s not going to happen. This ruling will be appealed. It’s not a knockout punch, but the FLDS obviously gained some ground today.

If those children go back to the complete, unsupervised control of the FLDS at the Yearning for Zion Ranch it would be like throwing gasoline on a fire that’s already burning out of control. It would send a message that the FLDS can get away with any level of crime which would reinforce what society, through its inaction over the years, has reinforced for a very long time. The pattern in the FLDS is, from my experience, that once its leaders can get away with one level of crime they move on to the next.

I know from my conversations with those close to this case that Texas authorities feel they have found a system of abuse within the Eldorado compound. Remember the dozens of babies that were left unattended in a nursery? Or the news this week that 100 kids didn’t match up with any parents in the compound? There will be more information about the physical and sexual abuse of these children when criminal charges are filed. A lot of evidence was taken out in the raid that investigators are still piecing together.

Keep reading

Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints mothers smile as they leave the Tom Green County courthouse after hearing news of a court ruling in their favor.

Jeffrey Toobin
CNN Sr. Legal Analyst

The Third District Court of Appeals, in Austin, today ruled that the children seized last month at the FLDS ranch must be returned to their mothers. The decision made a lot of sense to me. The nine-page opinion is very much worth reading here.

To me, the key passage in the opinion is this one:

“Removing children from their homes and parents on an emergency basis before fully litigating the issue of whether the parents should continue to have custody of the children is an extreme measure. It is, unfortunately, sometimes necessary for the protection of the children involved. However, it is a step that the legislature has provided may be taken only when the circumstances indicate a danger to the physical health and welfare of the children and the need for protection of the children is so urgent that immediate removal of the children from the home is necessary.”

The question is whether the Texas authorities put forth enough evidence to justify the ‘extreme’ step of taking the children away from their mothers. The court focused a great deal on the claim by Texas that the ‘pervasive belief system’ of the FLDS put the children in danger­ that males were raised to be perpetrators of sexual abuse and females were trained to be victims.

Keep reading

You can read the court's ruling on the legality of removing of 400+ children from a polygamist compound here.

David M. Reisner
360° Digital Producer

This is just crossing the wires:

An Appeals court has ruled that the state of Texas should not have removed the more than 400 children it took from a polygamist sect’s ranch

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 ruling stated:

“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,”

“Evidence that children raised in this particular environment may someday have their physical health and safety threatened is not evidence that the danger is imminent enough to warrant invoking the extreme easure of immediate removal prior to full litigation of the issue.”

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

From our Ed Lavandera:

“This ruling out of Austin goes on to say the family and protective services division (the agency in charge of removing the children from the compound) did not prove the children were in danger and they needed to be removed from their homes.”

“You can imagine what the reaction is going to be in the coming ours from those involved with the sect and those who live in the compound… “

“State officials are also saying they still need more time to investigate and they are still in that process. “

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