From the Salt Lake Tribune:
In its unanimous nine-page decision, the three-judge panel said the Department of Family and Protective Services Court of appeals ruling case was legally and factually insufficient and 51st District Judge Barbara Walther acted improperly when she ordered about 450 children to stay in state custody.
The court said the state failed in a mass April 17-18 hearing to prove any of its key claims that the sect’s beliefs, communal households or underage marriages put every child in the community “in urgent” danger.
“There is simply no evidence specific to [the mothers’] children at all except that they exist, they were taken into custody at the Yearning for Zion Ranch, and they are living with people who share a ‘pervasive belief system’ that condones underage marriage and underage pregnancy,” the court said.
This is a story that disturbed me intensly when it happened over a month ago. The State of Texas Child Protective Services accompanied by armed SWAT teams raided the Yearning for Zion ranch and took over 400 children into custody.
This did nothing to ease my personal fear of the State of Texas and the people who love it (Present President included).
Years ago I saw a segment on 60 Minutes or 20/20 about a family in Texas of Middle Eastern ethnicity (who knows it’s Texas they may have been Greek or Italian). Anyway, they lived in a small town and they were different (which in Texas means NOT CHRISTIAN). Apparently the children were taken away from the parents because while at a public elementary school sporting event the older boy was in the father, carrying his daughter who was about 4-years-old at the time was seen to pat her butt. The children were taken away by Texas authorities and the parents were accused of sexual abuse and it took them two years to get their kids back. Unpleasant things stick in the mind and this story stuck in my mind and flashed across the television screen in my brain ruining occasions when I noticed my own daughters yummy butt which fit in my hand like a piece of fruit AND THE THOUGHT AND ACTION AT THE CORE OF MY BEING WAS MY BABY IS SO SMALL AND BEAUTIFUL NOW, YET SO MUCH BIGGER THAN SHE WAS, IN SUCH A SHORT TIME SHE WILL NO LONGER BE THIS SWEET SIZE. Nope, no sexual feelings. None. Oh wait, I was a nursing mother that’s something they object to in Texas, That was the thing that upset me the most.
Nursing toddlers and walking babies (under 12 months could stay with their mothers over 12 months and one day–straight to foster care) Several of these children under 2, who had never been away from their mothers ended up in hospitals suffering from dehydration and shock after being taken away from their homes and weaned at gunpoint. No kidding. My child would have ended up in the hospital. I was generally a very attentive parent, but once when when she was about 14 months old, we were going on a trip and the clock was ticking I put her in her crib and left her alone because I had to finish the packing and everything I needed to do before we left for the airport. She never fell asleep. She screamed for hours until I picked her up to carry her out the door because the car service had arrived. She would have been one to cry to the point of dehydration. The parenting books I looked at all address separation anxiety and how long separations must be worked up to over time and filled with love and other familiar adults (like grandparents).
Even if the danger of sexual abuse the Texas authorities were concerned about existed, they could have addressed it by taking all the girls over 10 or 12 into custody. These are large children, they read and write and speak English fluently, posess the ability to debate even…
I can’t bend my mind around the thought processes of Texas authorities who decided the best way to protect these toddlers from marrying too young and becoming pregnant teenagers was to send in SWAT teams and wean them at gunpoint.