Estimated read time: 6-7 minutes
This archived news story is available only for your personal, non-commercial use. Information in the story may be outdated or superseded by additional information. Reading or replaying the story in its archived form does not constitute a republication of the story.
KSL Team Coverage and AP reportingIt was a day of drama in Texas as state officials began moving the first of more than 400 children belonging to the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints to new homes. The move to put the children in group homes across the state triggered an angry response from an FLDS spokesman, but a court battle fizzled.
Rod Parker, an FLDS spokesman and attorney, said, "This was done without prior notice to their attorneys or to their family members."
Some of the FLDS children at the center of the conflict were loaded onto buses Tuesday, headed to foster homes, some hundreds of miles away. Texas authorities put the San Angelo Coliseum on lockdown so they could move the children to foster care.
Those developments came as the parents of those children submitted to DNA testing in an effort to untangle each person's family tree.
By the end of the day Tuesday, we're told 114 of those children were loaded onto buses, most going to Presbyterian or Baptist group homes. It's an unprecedented move in the largest child custody case in U.S. history. No mothers were separated from their children Tuesday. State officials sent away only older children whose mothers were not at the coliseum.
Authorities plan to put the children in group foster homes in cities as widely separated as Amarillo and Houston, Abilene and Austin. The state believes they're at risk of abuse if they return to the only homes they know in the FLDS compound at the YFZ ranch.
As the buses loaded with FLDS children as young as five rolled out of the San Angelo Coliseum Tuesday, activity there came to a grinding halt. The Coliseum exits were sealed, traffic was stopped, and attorneys were cut off from clients.
Parker says, "Today, when the children were loaded on buses, their attorneys who were visiting them at the time were held in custody by CPS." It's another round of what Parker calls an unfair fight. "The Child Protective Services of Texas is afraid of due process. They would lose in a fair fight in this case. That is why you're seeing them move so quickly, and that is why you're seeing them move unilaterally."
Some FLDS parents were also on the move Tuesday. Fathers and mothers were giving DNA samples. State authorities have already collected DNA samples from most of the children. And those children who haven't yet, remain at the Coliseum and are expected to be moved into foster care by Thursday.
Parents and FLDS supporters are furious over what they are calling religious persecution. "They're acting on inaccurate information. It appears fully injustice to me," said David Williams, a former FLDS member.
The move is unacceptable, says Parker, who says attorneys filed two temporary restraining orders with the judge to stop the transfer of children. "Those motions were ignored by the court," he says.
Parker expects the children placed in group homes will be cut off completely from their parents -- no conversations, no visitation. "To essentially tell these FLDS people that they are not allowed to have children, that they are not allowed to have families, is simply unheard of. I don't have the vocabulary to describe those kinds of events because they're not supposed to happen in this country," Parker said.
It's happening, nonetheless, because Texas authorities contend there has been years of abuse happening behind the walls of the FLDS community.
Parker says he believes the state must have a separate hearing for each child by June 5. FLDS lawyers are hoping to get the cases moved out of Judge Barbara Walthers court and into either another state court or a federal court. It's a developing story that we will certainly continue to follow.
Meanwhile, officials are trying to identify the parents of the 437 children. The DNA testing of ranch residents was taking place in the courthouse square as a handful of deputies in cowboy hats stood guard.
A man identified as Williams came on his own from his home in Nevada, hoping to take custody of his sons. Williams said he doesn't pay attention to the news and only heard his three sons were in state custody from a friend.
Clutching a Book of Mormon and photos of the boys ages 5, 7 and 9, Williams looked at his feet as he said his children were "taken hostage by the state."
"I have been an honorable American and father, and I have carefully sheltered my children from the sins of this generation," Williams said. He declined to describe the mother of the boys as his wife and declined to offer details of why or when he left the sect.
A judge ordered last week that the DNA be taken to help determine the parentage of the children, many of whom were unable to describe their lineage. Some of the adults have been ordered by the state to submit to testing; others are being asked to do so voluntarily.
"I don't really see why I would have to. I have legal documents for all my children," one FLDS father said.
Some parents who came to give DNA samples also came to deliver a message--if not to authorities, then to the public. "We have nothing to hide," and FLDS father said.
Parker, said he is afraid authorities secretly intend to use the DNA to build criminal cases against members of the group. But Child Protective Services spokesman Greg Cunningham said: "We're not involved in the criminal investigation. That's not our objective."
Ten lab technicians hired by the state spent Monday collecting samples at the San Angelo coliseum and fairgrounds, serving as a shelter for the children who were removed from their Eldorado compound during an April 3 raid.
Some of those technicians were to be sent to Eldorado Tuesday to collect samples from the possible parents. Family relationships are immensely tangled within the sect, where multiple mothers live in the same household and children refer to all men in the community as "uncles."
Authorities say they need to figure that out before they begin custody hearings to determine which children may have been abused and need to be permanently removed from the sect compound, and which ones can be safely returned to the fold. For now, they're all in state custody because child welfare officials believe sexual abuse has occurred or could occur imminently because of the teachings of the sect.
State social workers have complained that sect members have offered different names and ages and had difficulty identifying their mothers.
Parker acknowledged that family names within the sect can be confusing, but said: "No one is trying to deceive anyone... It's not sinister." Instead, he said that because many of the sect's marriages are not legal, adults and their children may legally have one name but use another within the community.
The collecting of DNA is likely to take most of the week, and it will be a month or more before the results are available, said Janiece Rolfe, a spokeswoman for the Texas Attorney General's Office.
E-mail: jhollenhorst@ksl.com
E-mail: lprichard@ksl.com
(The Associated Press contributed to this report. Copyright 2008 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)
