DNA tests to solve riddle of sect children

More than 400 children taken from a religious sect's headquarters will undergo DNA testing this week to discover who their parents are and if any sexual abuse took place.

Officials plan to begin taking samples today in San Angelo, Texas where the children have been housed since police raided the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints two weeks ago.

The tests were ordered by a judge after investigators complained sect members continually changed their names, possibly lied about their ages and sometimes had difficulty naming their relatives.

Three members of the sect said in an interview on CBS's 'Early Show' today that they would cooperate in DNA testing if it would help them get the children back.

"Whatever we need to do to get them back in their peaceful homes," a man identified as "Rulan" said.

State prosecutors say that the FLDS church encourages underage marriages and births, subjecting children to sexual abuse or the imminent risk of abuse. "Rulan" said sect members are reconsidering whether girls under 18 should have sex with adult men.

"Many of us perhaps were not even aware of such a law," he said. "And we do reconsider, yes. We teach our children to abide the law."

When the DNA sampling is completed, state officials will begin to relocate some of the 416 children and will separate the children younger than four years from adult mothers.

Officials say family relationships in the sect can be confusing to outsiders because the children of more than one wife live in the same household.

The children identify all the women in the house as their mothers, and if a father leaves the community, children and mothers are reassigned to another man.

The custody case is one of the nation's largest and most complicated. The decision to take the children into care capped two days of testimony that sometimes became disorderly as hundreds of lawyers for children and parents competed to defend their clients in two rooms linked by a video feed.

The children, including 130 children younger than four and two dozen adolescent boys, will receive individual hearings before June 5.