BigHornRam
Well-known member
Figured this case would be good for some interesting opinions! Note that it is in TEXAS.....on a game farm ranch. OK Schmalts......let er rip!
updated 4:56 p.m. MT, Thurs., April. 10, 2008
ELDORADO, Texas - It was no secret that a polygamist sect that built a compound in the West Texas desert believed in marrying off underage girls to older men. And the sheriff had an informant for four years who was feeding him information about life inside the sect.
But authorities say their hands were tied until last week, when they finally obtained the legal grounds to move against the group.
The trigger for the raid was a hushed phone call from a terrified 16-year-old girl to a family-violence shelter who accused her 50-year-old husband of beating and raping her. State troopers put into action the plan they had on the shelf to enter the 1,700-acre compound, and 416 children, most of them girls, were swept into state custody because of suspicions that they were being sexually and physically abused.
On Thursday, state and local law enforcement authorities defended their decision to leave the sect alone for four years after it moved in.
"We are aware that this group is capable of" sexually abusing girls, Sheriff David Doran said. "But there again, this is the United States. We are going to respect them. We're not going to violate their civil rights until we get an outcry."
Fears of trouble from beginning
Doran said it was not until after the raid began that he learned that the sect was, in fact, marrying off underage girls at the compound and had a bed in its soaring limestone temple where the girls were required to immediately consummate their marriages. Also, investigators say a number of teenage girls there are pregnant.
Authorities in Texas suspected there would be trouble ever since members of the renegade Mormon splinter group — the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints — bought an exotic game ranch in Eldorado in 2004 and began building the ranch.
Warren Jeffs, the sect's prophet and spiritual leader at its longtime headquarters in the dusty, side-by-side towns of Hildale, Utah, and Colorado City, Ariz., was charged in 2005 and 2006 with forcing underage girls into marriages there. He was convicted in September in Utah of being an accomplice to rape and is serving up to life in prison.
Doran had been making occasional visits to the Eldorado compound — he even called to tell members of Jeffs' capture in 2006 — but he said he saw nothing to warrant a criminal investigation. Most of those milling around the compound would scatter when he and a Texas Ranger visited, he said.
'This group doesn't openly talk'
"You can only press someone so far without having a criminal investigation going on," the sheriff said. "This group doesn't openly talk and they do not openly answer questions."
Tony Gutierrez / AP
Children "were shuffled around houses" as investigators searched the polygamist compound in Eldorado, Texas, authorities said Thursday.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Doran said he had an informant who was "instrumental in teaching me the group's ways." But he declined to say whether the informant, a former sect member, was in Texas, or Utah or Arizona.
Barry Caver, a Texas Ranger who sometimes went with Doran to the compound, said a general welfare check wouldn't have produced much. "They would allow us on the property to the extent that we could talk to the main three or four people" only, Caver said.
Texas Attorney General Gregg Abbott said that despite other states' investigations into Jeffs and FLDS, Texas authorities had to wait until they had evidence of wrongdoing in this state to act. He said authorities handled the case properly.
"You cannot go in and bust in someone's house if there's not probable cause to do so," Abbott said.
Jonathan Turley, a George Washington University law professor who has written about polygamy, said even Jeffs' conviction was not enough to barge in on the sect in Eldorado.
"You cannot use stale evidence," Turley said. "They would need a contemporary statement or evidence at trial that an individual at the compound is practicing polygamy." What's next for the children in Eldorado?
Introduction
Authorities removed 416 children from a West Texas polygamist compound, in response to a report from a 16-year-old girl who accused her 50-year-old husband of beating and raping her.
The children, and 139 women who voluntarily left the compound near Eldorado, are now housed at two sites in San Angelo, about 40 miles from the ranch and 200 miles west of San Antonio.
The following are questions for Marleigh Meisner, spokeswoman for the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services, and John J. Sampson, a University of Texas law professor who teaches the Children's Rights Clinic, which provides legal representation for abused and neglected children in Travis County. Sampson is not involved in the case.
What's the next legal step?
Meisner: April 17, a full adversarial hearing, 10 a.m., in the Tom Green County Courthouse. At that point we will make a recommendation to a judge. There will be attorneys appointed or even perhaps have already have been appointed to represent the children.
For each child individually or as a group?
Meisner: Normally, it's each child individually but the judge is making a decision how she's going to do that.
Sampson: You have X number of mothers and Y children and Z number of fathers, presumed fathers, alleged fathers, unknown fathers. All of the fathers are entitled to service. All mothers are entitled to service. All children are entitled to representation.
What if the judge decides not to grant custody?
Meisner: This is all to do with temporary custody. If the judge decided the children needed to be returned, then the children will be returned. It's ultimately always the judge's decision.
Sampson: State officials have already made something of a case to the judge when they convinced the judge we need an order not to investigate but to take possession of the children.
This kind of gets into speculation because since this is unprecedented... Since there's smoke here, we suspect fire. And so the court is almost always going to say: 'Yes I realize the statute says the parent should walk out with the child unless it would be dangerous. I've already had a preliminary determination that there's a danger to the child and we've had a hearing there's a danger to the child, and I find there's a continuing danger to the child so naturally the state is going to be continued in the foreseeable future.'
How long is that?
Sampson: "Foreseeable future" is supposed to be one year. You can get an extension for six months, then the case needs to be decided. Each case is an individual case, however many children there are. I read in the paper there's a whole lot of problems in identification. That does not help the parents get the children back when the children are not identified.
Is it possible 139 women could be separated from their kids?
Meisner: That's a decision that's to be made later and it's a decision that's not been made yet.
Sampson: The reluctance of a parent to cooperate doesn't facilitate the parents' situation. The only time a parent has a chance of prevailing is when they make a case. Now they have a presumption when they make a case that parents have a right to have and raise children, but that presumption is subject to trumping if there is a serious danger to the physical or emotional well-being of the child.
If the judge says the state can't continue temporary custody, will the women be free to go?
Meisner: They've been free to go always. They came because they asked to come. They've stayed with us but are free at any time to leave. They are here on their own choice.
Have any departed?
Meisner: To my knowledge, none have left.
Where would they go?
Meisner: I have no idea.
How much interest have you received from the public regarding foster care or adoption?
Have a lot of people come forward saying: Hey, we'd like to foster these children or we'd like to adopt these children? Yes. However, it's way too soon to be looking at adoption issues. These children are still in temporary care of the state of Texas. What we are doing is to try to find the best temporary accommodations for these children to keep them safe, to make sure that all their medical and emotional needs are being met. And when we go to court on the 17th, a judge will give us further direction as to what needs to happen with these children's lives.
If the women are free to go, is it reasonable to assume they'd be able to function in the real world outside the compound?
Meisner: I don't think I can address that.
Sampson: Some people obviously were coerced. The mothers followed their children but they didn't report the child abuse. Those who had reason to believe there was child abuse, and that's also criminal, and to that extent everybody in the whole commune could allegedly be charged with various crimes, including not reporting child abuse.
So just because they're free to go now doesn't absolve them of any future charges?
That is correct. That's for sure... It's an incredible precedent-setting situation, particularly since the last big raid like this was 50 years ago. And that all collapsed legally. The law is a lot more complicated now, and the rights of parents are significantly more protected.
The man alleged to be the 16-year-old girl's husband, Dale Barlow, is a registered sex offender who pleaded no contest to having sex with a minor in Arizona.
"I do not know this girl that they keep asking about," he told Utah's Deseret Morning News on Wednesday. "And I have not been to Texas since I was a young man back in 1977."
Officials still have not identified the 16-year-old girl among the children and the 139 women being held at two sites in Texas.
"When you're dealing with a culture like this, they're taught from very early on that they don't answer questions to the point," Doran said. "All of that is certainly being sorted out right now."
updated 4:56 p.m. MT, Thurs., April. 10, 2008
ELDORADO, Texas - It was no secret that a polygamist sect that built a compound in the West Texas desert believed in marrying off underage girls to older men. And the sheriff had an informant for four years who was feeding him information about life inside the sect.
But authorities say their hands were tied until last week, when they finally obtained the legal grounds to move against the group.
The trigger for the raid was a hushed phone call from a terrified 16-year-old girl to a family-violence shelter who accused her 50-year-old husband of beating and raping her. State troopers put into action the plan they had on the shelf to enter the 1,700-acre compound, and 416 children, most of them girls, were swept into state custody because of suspicions that they were being sexually and physically abused.
On Thursday, state and local law enforcement authorities defended their decision to leave the sect alone for four years after it moved in.
"We are aware that this group is capable of" sexually abusing girls, Sheriff David Doran said. "But there again, this is the United States. We are going to respect them. We're not going to violate their civil rights until we get an outcry."
Fears of trouble from beginning
Doran said it was not until after the raid began that he learned that the sect was, in fact, marrying off underage girls at the compound and had a bed in its soaring limestone temple where the girls were required to immediately consummate their marriages. Also, investigators say a number of teenage girls there are pregnant.
Authorities in Texas suspected there would be trouble ever since members of the renegade Mormon splinter group — the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints — bought an exotic game ranch in Eldorado in 2004 and began building the ranch.
Warren Jeffs, the sect's prophet and spiritual leader at its longtime headquarters in the dusty, side-by-side towns of Hildale, Utah, and Colorado City, Ariz., was charged in 2005 and 2006 with forcing underage girls into marriages there. He was convicted in September in Utah of being an accomplice to rape and is serving up to life in prison.
Doran had been making occasional visits to the Eldorado compound — he even called to tell members of Jeffs' capture in 2006 — but he said he saw nothing to warrant a criminal investigation. Most of those milling around the compound would scatter when he and a Texas Ranger visited, he said.
'This group doesn't openly talk'
"You can only press someone so far without having a criminal investigation going on," the sheriff said. "This group doesn't openly talk and they do not openly answer questions."
Tony Gutierrez / AP
Children "were shuffled around houses" as investigators searched the polygamist compound in Eldorado, Texas, authorities said Thursday.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Doran said he had an informant who was "instrumental in teaching me the group's ways." But he declined to say whether the informant, a former sect member, was in Texas, or Utah or Arizona.
Barry Caver, a Texas Ranger who sometimes went with Doran to the compound, said a general welfare check wouldn't have produced much. "They would allow us on the property to the extent that we could talk to the main three or four people" only, Caver said.
Texas Attorney General Gregg Abbott said that despite other states' investigations into Jeffs and FLDS, Texas authorities had to wait until they had evidence of wrongdoing in this state to act. He said authorities handled the case properly.
"You cannot go in and bust in someone's house if there's not probable cause to do so," Abbott said.
Jonathan Turley, a George Washington University law professor who has written about polygamy, said even Jeffs' conviction was not enough to barge in on the sect in Eldorado.
"You cannot use stale evidence," Turley said. "They would need a contemporary statement or evidence at trial that an individual at the compound is practicing polygamy." What's next for the children in Eldorado?
Introduction
Authorities removed 416 children from a West Texas polygamist compound, in response to a report from a 16-year-old girl who accused her 50-year-old husband of beating and raping her.
The children, and 139 women who voluntarily left the compound near Eldorado, are now housed at two sites in San Angelo, about 40 miles from the ranch and 200 miles west of San Antonio.
The following are questions for Marleigh Meisner, spokeswoman for the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services, and John J. Sampson, a University of Texas law professor who teaches the Children's Rights Clinic, which provides legal representation for abused and neglected children in Travis County. Sampson is not involved in the case.
What's the next legal step?
Meisner: April 17, a full adversarial hearing, 10 a.m., in the Tom Green County Courthouse. At that point we will make a recommendation to a judge. There will be attorneys appointed or even perhaps have already have been appointed to represent the children.
For each child individually or as a group?
Meisner: Normally, it's each child individually but the judge is making a decision how she's going to do that.
Sampson: You have X number of mothers and Y children and Z number of fathers, presumed fathers, alleged fathers, unknown fathers. All of the fathers are entitled to service. All mothers are entitled to service. All children are entitled to representation.
What if the judge decides not to grant custody?
Meisner: This is all to do with temporary custody. If the judge decided the children needed to be returned, then the children will be returned. It's ultimately always the judge's decision.
Sampson: State officials have already made something of a case to the judge when they convinced the judge we need an order not to investigate but to take possession of the children.
This kind of gets into speculation because since this is unprecedented... Since there's smoke here, we suspect fire. And so the court is almost always going to say: 'Yes I realize the statute says the parent should walk out with the child unless it would be dangerous. I've already had a preliminary determination that there's a danger to the child and we've had a hearing there's a danger to the child, and I find there's a continuing danger to the child so naturally the state is going to be continued in the foreseeable future.'
How long is that?
Sampson: "Foreseeable future" is supposed to be one year. You can get an extension for six months, then the case needs to be decided. Each case is an individual case, however many children there are. I read in the paper there's a whole lot of problems in identification. That does not help the parents get the children back when the children are not identified.
Is it possible 139 women could be separated from their kids?
Meisner: That's a decision that's to be made later and it's a decision that's not been made yet.
Sampson: The reluctance of a parent to cooperate doesn't facilitate the parents' situation. The only time a parent has a chance of prevailing is when they make a case. Now they have a presumption when they make a case that parents have a right to have and raise children, but that presumption is subject to trumping if there is a serious danger to the physical or emotional well-being of the child.
If the judge says the state can't continue temporary custody, will the women be free to go?
Meisner: They've been free to go always. They came because they asked to come. They've stayed with us but are free at any time to leave. They are here on their own choice.
Have any departed?
Meisner: To my knowledge, none have left.
Where would they go?
Meisner: I have no idea.
How much interest have you received from the public regarding foster care or adoption?
Have a lot of people come forward saying: Hey, we'd like to foster these children or we'd like to adopt these children? Yes. However, it's way too soon to be looking at adoption issues. These children are still in temporary care of the state of Texas. What we are doing is to try to find the best temporary accommodations for these children to keep them safe, to make sure that all their medical and emotional needs are being met. And when we go to court on the 17th, a judge will give us further direction as to what needs to happen with these children's lives.
If the women are free to go, is it reasonable to assume they'd be able to function in the real world outside the compound?
Meisner: I don't think I can address that.
Sampson: Some people obviously were coerced. The mothers followed their children but they didn't report the child abuse. Those who had reason to believe there was child abuse, and that's also criminal, and to that extent everybody in the whole commune could allegedly be charged with various crimes, including not reporting child abuse.
So just because they're free to go now doesn't absolve them of any future charges?
That is correct. That's for sure... It's an incredible precedent-setting situation, particularly since the last big raid like this was 50 years ago. And that all collapsed legally. The law is a lot more complicated now, and the rights of parents are significantly more protected.
The man alleged to be the 16-year-old girl's husband, Dale Barlow, is a registered sex offender who pleaded no contest to having sex with a minor in Arizona.
"I do not know this girl that they keep asking about," he told Utah's Deseret Morning News on Wednesday. "And I have not been to Texas since I was a young man back in 1977."
Officials still have not identified the 16-year-old girl among the children and the 139 women being held at two sites in Texas.
"When you're dealing with a culture like this, they're taught from very early on that they don't answer questions to the point," Doran said. "All of that is certainly being sorted out right now."