Justin Buist

Thanks, JR, for leaving the link in comments.

Texas seizure of polygamist-sect kids thrown out

SAN ANGELO, Texas — In a ruling that could torpedo the case against the West Texas polygamist sect, a state appeals court Thursday said authorities had no right to seize more than 440 children in a raid on the splinter group’s compound last month.

The Third Court of Appeals in Austin said the state failed to show the youngsters were in any immediate danger, the only grounds in Texas law for taking children from their parents without court action.

An anonymous phone call isn’t enough evidence to seize 400 odd children? No shit? Go figure.

I haven’t mentioned the FLDS situation for a couple of reasons.

1) Anytime you mix church compounds, law enforcement raids, and accusations of child molestation together I start thinking “Waco” and then I say stuff I probably shouldn’t.

2) The former church leader has been convicted of crimes against children, so there’s probably some validity to the government’s claims.

So, I held off until now.

Let’s recap real quick: Texas officials get an anonymous tip that there’s some child molestation going on in that there compound. Raid ensues, eventually upwards of 460 children are taken out on buses. Mothers have a hard time getting in touch with their children and the men are just shit out of luck.

Then we find out the anonymous phone call wasn’t from a 16 year old girl in the compound. It’s more likely from a woman in her 40’s off in Colorado that tried the same stunt in Arizona when the FLDS folks setup camp there. Arizona didn’t act on it because apparently that’s really not a good reason to seize children. Ya think?

Today I see this:

On Tuesday, six “girls” were deemed adults, including 27-year-old Leona Allred, whose lawyer insisted CPS knew from the beginning that her client was an adult.

“My client showed them the same documents they showed them from the beginning: a valid Arizona driver’s license and a birth certificate,” Andrea Sloan said.

That’s now 10 of the “children” that have been found to actually be adults. Fine police work there, folks.

Now, from the same article we find this:

One of those girls, now 19, was ruled an adult by the courts but not before she said in a conference call to the court that she could have been no older than 16 when her daughter was born on Aug. 19, 2005.

And in another courtroom, information gleaned from the records of a 17-year-old indicated she had to have been 15 when her first child was born.

OK, that sounds like a pretty awful thing. We’ve got a bunch of girls rounded up because they might be being sexually used by church elders and that right there shows something fishy is going on, right?

Maybe not. Let’s think about this. Check out the US teen pregnancy rates. The latest data from 2002 says that 75 out of 1000 teen girls (15-19) have been pregnant. That’s 7.5%. When you look at the FLDS compound they’ve now got 2 out of 450 children — that’s 4.4% and I’m totally ignoring any teen girls that might have once lived in the compound but later moved on when the became adults. Granted, there might be more teenage pregnancies being discovered in the near future.

I’m just saying, it’s possible that there’s a chance these young pregnancies might be the fruits of a little teenage hanky-panky in barn when nobody was looking. If abstinence only sex-education is a total failure (which I’d bet is the education those kids got) we should be seeing some rather alarming teen pregnancy rates, not half the national average; but that’s not my point. My point is that if there’s systematic sexual abuse of teenage girls going on in that compound we ought to be seeing a higher teen pregnancy rate than the “noise” that exists outside the system where things like birth control and condoms are available.

I think the Texas CPS has managed to blow any credibility they’ve got with the public on this one. I predict a massive failure in their ability to actually prosecute anybody. Maybe they’ll snag a guy or two but that’s about it. To achieve that they’ve rounded up every child from what amounts to a small town and disrupted the lives of everybody in it. I do not find that acceptable and I can’t imagine many Texans are to keen on their antics either.