US: Court to hear sect mothers' plea to see children
A Texas appeals court agreed today to hear arguments that hundreds of children the state took from a polygamist compound should be allowed to see their mothers while the massive custody case is resolved.
The Yearning For Zion Ranch was raided three weeks ago, but many of the mothers were allowed to stay with their children until last Thursday when two buses took the women from the coliseum, where the state had been keeping them and the children, back to the west Texas compound.
One woman last Thursday held up a cardboard sign that read: “SOS; Mothers Separated; Help.”
The women were moved out in preparation for moving the last of 437 children to group homes, shelters and residences over the next few days. Buses had earlier taken 138 of the children away.
The 3rd Court of Appeals today set a hearing for next Tuesday on the motion from dozens of mothers to remain in contact with their children. State officials last week had ordered all mothers away except for those with children under five.
After raiding the ranch, owned by the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, state officials took custody of all children found there, believing they might be victims of physical or sexual abuse. The move sparked one of the biggest child-custody cases in US history, a case complicated by a tangled web of family bonds.
Experts and lawyers fear the children’s transition to foster care may be much harder than it is for other foster children. They will be plunged into a culture radically different from the community where they and their families shunned the outside world as a hostile, contaminating influence.
Many of the children have seen little or no television. They have been essentially home-schooled all their lives. Most were raised on garden-grown vegetables and twice-daily prayers with family. They frolic in long dresses and buttoned-up shirts from another century.
“There’s going to be problems,” said Susan Hays, who represents a toddler in the custody case. “They are a throwback to the 19th century in how they dress and how they behave.”
The state Child Protective Services programme said it chose foster homes where the youngsters can be kept apart from children not from the sect for now.
“We recognise it’s critical that these children not be exposed to mainstream culture too quickly or other things that would hinder their success,” agency spokeswoman Shari Pulliam said. “We just want to protect them from abuse and neglect. We’re not trying to change them.”
Authorities say the FLDS church, a renegade Mormon splinter group, believes in marrying off under-age girls to older men, and that there is evidence of physical and sexual abuse at the ranch.
The individual custody cases could result in a number of possibilities – some children could be placed in permanent foster care; some parents who have left the sect may win custody; some youngsters may be allowed to return to the ranch in Eldorado, Texas; and some may turn 18 before the case is complete and be allowed to choose their own fates.
