US state wants polygamy sect children back in care

Texas child welfare chiefs have asked a judge to put eight children from a polygamist sect’s ranch back into foster care because their mothers refuse to limit their contact with men accused of being involved in underage marriages.

Child Protective Services (CPS) filed petitions asking Texas District Judge Barbara Walther to place the six girls and two boys belonging to four different mothers back in foster care.

The children, aged between five and 17, would be allowed to remain with their mothers until a hearing on September 25, said CPS spokeswoman Marleigh Meisner. None currently lives at the Yearning For Zion Ranch in Eldorado.

CPS filed petitions alleging involvement in underage marriages by the children’s fathers or stepfathers, submitting sect marriage documents, notes from suspected underage brides, photos and journal entries from Warren Jeffs, the jailed leader of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.

Two of the girls are daughters of Lloyd Hammon Barlow, a doctor indicted last month on three counts of failing to report child abuse, according to court filings.

Five other sect members, including Jeffs, were charged with sexual assault last month, but their children are not among those in the CPS petitions. The other six children are related, by blood or marriage, to men who are not under indictment but are accused by child welfare authorities of participating in or blessing underage marriages.

An FLDS spokesman did not immediately respond to a call seeking comment.

CPS has continued its investigation of the 440 children taken from the Eldorado ranch since the Texas Supreme Court ruled in May that the children should not have been swept into foster care under a blanket petition and hearing. The court said evidence showed no more than a handful of girls were abused or were at risk of abuse.

Judge Walther had initially ordered all the children taken from the FLDS parents placed in foster care after CPS argued the girls were being forced into underage marriages and sex, and the boys were being groomed to be adult perpetrators.

An appeal court and the state Supreme Court rejected the reasoning, but the rulings did not preclude CPS from continuing individual investigations or requiring the parents to undergo parenting classes, which Judge Walther ordered.

CPS asked mothers of girls aged 10-17 to sign safety plans to protect children from sexual abuse. For children who lived in a home with a man who married underage girls or agreed to an arranged marriage of an underage daughter, the plans included a requirement to keep the children away from the man.

In addition to filing for custody of the eight children, CPS requested that cases involving 32 other children be dropped after it found no evidence of underage marriages or the families agreed to take appropriate actions to protect the children. The remaining 400 cases are still under investigation.

Jeffs, already convicted in Utah as an accomplice to rape, awaits trial in Arizona on charges of being an accomplice to sexual contact with a minor – all stemming from alleged underage marriages within the sect.

Under Texas law, a girl younger than 17 cannot generally consent to sex with an adult.

The state’s bigamy statute applies to legal marriages and to couples who purport to marry, a lower standard adopted in part to target unions like the spiritual marriages practised by FLDS members.

The FLDS, which believes polygamy brings glory in heaven, is a breakaway sect of the mainstream Mormon church, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which officially renounced polygamy more than a century ago and has sought to distance itself from the FLDS.