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(AP Photo/Tony Gutierrez)
Carole Mikita and Associated Press reporting
All of the nearly 500 FLDS children have now left the San Angelo Coliseum. The number of children grew Thursday to 462, and all are heading to state foster care.
Friday, Texas Child Protective Services (CPS) said there are dozens of underage girls in that group who have children themselves or are now pregnant.
This is what prosecutors have been building their sexual abuse case on. It is the reason all of the children were taken away from both parents. The authorities in Texas are confident that the case will go forward.
The remaining 260 FLDS children went by bus from the coliseum to foster homes.
Twenty-five of them, discovered Thursday to be underage mothers, plus at least five others found at the ranch, brought a startling statement Friday. Darrell Azar, with Texas CPS, says "We don't know how many there are. I can't give you a firm number, but it is dozens."
Texas Child Protective Services says this is why all of the children were removed from the ranch. Their investigators found evidence of physical and sexual abuse. Azar says, "Based upon what we found when we got to the ranch, not based upon what we had in the original report, we found that there were a number of children that had been sexually abused, and there were other types of abuse.
"And we found there was a systematic process going on in which young girls were being groomed to be wives of middle-aged men and have their children at a very young age, as young as 13 years old. In that environment, there was no way to make those children safe. You have to remember, not only did we have adult men who may have been sexually abusing children, but you had adult women who had not protected them in the past. And in that situation, you can't allow the children to be there at this time."
One FLDS attorney denies all of it, saying there are only two teenage girls who are pregnant, one underage.
FLDS attorney Rod Parker says, "I challenge the conclusion of CPS that every child in that arena is sexually abused or in danger of being sexually abused, based on their own statistics."
At a news conference at their Yearning For Zion Ranch in nearby Eldorado Thursday, mothers described an emotional, rushed scene. "My two oldest were just terrified, and they clung to me saying, `Mother, mother, we want to go with you,"' said Ruth, her voice breaking as she began to cry. She and other FLDS members who spoke Thursday declined to give their last names, fearing it will affect their custody cases.
"There are no words to describe how it was," said Velvet, a mother who was forced to leave her 13-month-old. "We've been staying up nights to watch over the children because we didn't know what would happen."
"This is cruel. This is inhuman. This is un-American," Parker says.
Referring to FLDS Web sites and video, CPS says these public relations campaigns are full of misinformation. Azar says, "I think the vast majority of Texans and Americans understand what's really going on here. Children were in danger, and they were protected."
Each state differs on child protective cases. In Utah, the court has three days to decide whether to put children in foster care or return them to their parents. In Texas, it's three weeks.
The youngsters will be held in foster group homes around the state until individual custody decisions can be made. Each mother will get individual hearings by June 5, state District Judge Barbara Walther has said.
(The Associated Press contributed to this report. Copyright 2008 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)
