State agency defends actions at polygamist ranch

State agency defends actions at polygamist ranch


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AUSTIN, Texas (AP) -- A spokesman for a polygamist sect raided by authorities last year faced tough questioning Tuesday from Texas lawmakers as he blasted child welfare officials for insisting they did the right thing in the year-ago raid that put 439 children in foster care.

The House Human Services Committee held the hearing to ask the Department of Family and Protective Services, sect members, lawyers and others involved the raid last April -- one of the largest custody cases in U.S. history -- what lessons were learned. The committee is also considering a bill that would expand the statute of limitations on bigamy and toughen the penalties for failing to report child abuse.

"Did you tolerate the underage marriage of girls to adult men at the ranch?" committee chairman Rep. Patrick Rose asked in a pointed exchange with Willie Jessop, a spokesman for the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.

Jessop paused, stammered and then said he doesn't live at the ranch and didn't know what happened there.

"It's inappropriate for me to speculate about what I don't know," said Jessop, who lawmakers put under oath as he stumbled on the underage marriage question.

"I don't believe that you don't know," responded Rose, D-Dripping Springs.

DFPS Commissioner Anne Heiligenstein, who took over the agency after the raid, said she believes the agency made the best decisions it could considering the circumstances, despite the Texas Supreme Court ruling ordering the children be returned to their parents.

"We will respond again if that's what we need to do," she said. "We did the right thing."

Heiligenstein pointed to the agency's investigation that found nearly 30 percent of the girls ages 12-17 were abused and that more than 200 children, mostly siblings, were exposed to underage marriages of girls.

Only one of the children taken from the Yearning For Zion Ranch remains in foster care. Heiligenstein said the agency is seeking permanent custody of that 14-year-old who was allegedly married to jailed FLDS prophet Warren Jeffs when she was 12.

Jessop criticized the agency's contention that it had done the right thing. "We can't afford to have that happen again," he said, citing the mass removal of children and mothers.

In their questioning, lawmakers on the panel were clearly skeptical about Jessop's defense of the community and his insistence that underage marriages had not been sanctioned by the church in years. The FLDS, which believes polygamy brings glorification in heaven, is a breakaway sect of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which renounced polygamy more than a century ago.

Church member Zavenda Jessop had planned to testify but changed her mind. "It appears that the committee does not plan to protect us in any way so we've chosen not to testify," she said softly.

Rep. Harvey Hilderbran, R-Kerrville, told the committee he doesn't believe the agency had all the right tools to handle a case as large as that of the ranch.

He introduced a bill to increase penalties for those who fail to report child abuse, increase penalties for failing to properly report births to state vital records officials and lengthen the statute of limitations on bigamy. The committee planned no immediate action on the bill.

"This isn't about the YFZ, but it is about taking the lessons we learned from that experience," said Hilderbran, who represents the rural West Texas county where the FLDS members live. "The safety of the children, no matter the situation, is paramount."

Jeffs, convicted in Utah as an accomplice to rape, awaits trial in Arizona on similar charges. He and 11 other FLDS men also face charges in Texas, ranging from sexual assault of a child to failure to report child abuse.

(Copyright 2009 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)

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