Well at least the Texas Supreme Court got something right in ordering the Judge to return the children. Just like the Texas Appeals Court told the judge to do. CPS workers across the country have way to much power and they need to be curtailed. Yes polygamy is illegal under the law, yes child molesters should be castrated and hung along major highways but there was NO PROOF, and certainly no proof beyound a reasonable doubt that this was going on. The authorities in Texas blew this whole case apart where if they would have proceeded methodically they could have made a case that would have stood up on appeal. I had always questioned how they could take all the children, sorta like coming into your small town and saying, Pete 5 streets over is a child molester so for the children's safety we are going to remove all of them from this town. And for bigger towns, the anology would be an apartment complex that has one of those low life scums living in it. Now we wait for the other shoe to drop when the parents of the kids make the town pay for all the psychological trauma allegedly inflicted on the kids, and themselves by the actions of the town in illegally removing them. Bunch of real brainiacs down there. Must be where Bush got his "smarts".
‘About-Face’
What happens now that a Texas appeals court has said the state had no right to remove 468 children from the compound of a polygamous sect?
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Talk about a reversal of fortune. A Texas appeals court on Thursday threw out the legal justification for the removal of 468 children from the Yearning for Zion compound in Eldorado, Texas, setting the stage for a possible return to their parents of many of the children from the polygamous sect. Saying that the lower court "abused its discretion in failing to return the children" during a mid-April hearing, the Third District Court of Appeals wrote that state child-welfare officials had failed to justify the mass removal with solid evidence that the children had been in the immediate danger Texas law requires before state officials can order an emergency separation from parents.
The three-judge panel dismantled the arguments that state Department of Family and Protective Services used to justify the mass removal of the children of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (FLDS), which broke away from the mainstream Mormon church after it banned polygamy in 1890. The emergency removal had come on the theory that all the children were in immediate danger--the only legal justification for emergency removal under Texas law--because of the sect's alleged practice of marrying off and impregnating underage girls. The practice still didn't rise of the level of urgent danger, the court found. "Even if one views the FLDS belief system as creating a danger of sexual abuse by grooming boys to be perpetrators of sexual abuse and raising girls to be victims of sexual abuse as [child-protection officials] contend, there is no evidence that this danger is 'immediate' or 'urgent' … with respect to every child," the court said. The teen girls' situation wasn't so dire as the state had argued, either. The court found that 15 of the 20 girls the state had initially claimed had gotten pregnant between 13 and 17 had actually been older. And the court rejected the idea that the compound amounted to a single "household" so that sexual abuse by one family presented an immediate danger to children in all of the ranch's estimated 200 families.
Thursday's ruling applied to the children of 38 FLDS mothers who'd gone to court. But their children--and those of others who may join the case--won't be going home immediately. The appeals court gave the lower-court judge 10 days to release the children. But it could take longer. Child-protection officials on Friday appealed the case to the Texas Supreme Court, asking to retain custody of the children as long as legal doubts remain about their safety on the ranch.
American Civil Liberties Union of Texas legal director Lisa Graybill has monitored the case since the emergency removal started six weeks ago. Though the ACLU is not directly involved in the case, Graybill has spoken out to criticize state child-protection officials for ignoring the parents' rights. Speaking by phone with NEWSWEEK's Andrew Murr, she called the decision "a fairly clear rebuke" of the lower-court decision. Excerpts:
NEWSWEEK: What did the court say?
Lisa Graybill: The Third District Court of Appeals, based in Austin, said basically that the state had not demonstrated it had an adequate basis in fact or law for removing the children of those 38 mothers and taking them into state custody.
It is a remarkable decision. It is an about-face. It is very welcome in the sense that the court of appeals has reminded the district court and the families and the public that due process of law requires evidence. And equal protection means that that law applies to everybody. As important as the goal of securing the safety of all the children in the state, the appellate court has reminded us due process demands a more careful and thorough view of the evidence than some families received at the hands of the district.
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