I cannnot imagine how the Child Protective Agency begins to remove 400 children. I try to imagine the meetings, the strategies, the shelter to be procured, the professionals needed to interview, the doctors, nurses, the work to keep children and mothers together, the sorting out of mothers and children, the history taking, the work to get to the bottom of the years of sexual abuse, physical abuse and trauma...
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BREAKING NEWS: 401 children removed from Eldorado-area ranch, taken into state custody
By Paul A. Anthony (Contact)
Originally published 12:10 p.m., April 7, 2008
The state's Child Protective Services agency has removed 401 children from the polygamist sect near Eldorado, and officials are now looking for another shelter area, a CPS spokeswoman said.
A judge has told the state CPS it can take all 401 children into custody who have been removed from the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints' YFZ Ranch, said CPS spokeswoman Marleigh Meisner this afternoon. That includes instances where the mothers of the children also have been removed from the ranch, about 3 miles northeast of Eldorado.
Some 133 women also have left the ranch owned by FLDS, a splinter sect that practices a form of plural marriage and is no longer associated with the Mormon Church.
Former ranch residents are being housed at Fort Concho National Historic Landmark, but that site lacks capacity for the total number of people removed from the ranch, Meisner said.
Authorities have arrested one person at the FLDS' Schleicher County compound, but the suspect sought since Thursday remains at-large.
The person arrested faces a misdemeanor charge of interfering with the duties of a public servant, said Lisa Block, an Austin-based spokeswoman for the Texas Department of Public Safety.
The person arrested is not Dale Barlow, the man sought in the arrest warrant that initially gave authorities access to the ranch, Block said.
"There was an arrest made," Block said. "We don't know if it was yesterday or today."
Meanwhile, in San Angelo, no hearings will be held today in the cases of the 18 Schleicher County girls already taken into state custody from the FLDS-owned ranch over the weekend, Tom Green County court administrators said this morning.
Instead, the cases will move straight into 14-day hearings, also known as adversarial hearings. At those, the state's Child Protective Services agency must show why it feels the children removed from the polygamist compound are at risk for further abuse if they return.
State law no longer requires emergency 24-hour hearings after CPS removes a child from parental custody, instead leaving the timing at the discretion of the judge, who in these cases is 51st District Judge Barbara Walther.
"The judge can waive that hearing," said Debbie Brown, executive director of the Children's Advocacy Center of Tom Green County, "and apparently, she's done that."
The advocacy center employs individual advocates who attend to children in CPS cases and works with the courts to assign advocates to each child.
Dozens of CPS caseworkers continue to interview the hundreds of women and children removed from the YFZ Ranch since Friday. The hundreds of women and children are now being housed at Fort Concho after being removed as the result of a CPS raid on the compound Thursday night.
CPS this afternoon is expected to release updated numbers, as well as to clarify the status of the hundreds who have not been taken into state custody.
The interviews could provide the basis for affidavits CPS must file that support its decision to remove the 18 girls from parental custody. Likewise, the interviews could turn up more evidence of alleged abuse and lead to more girls being taken into state custody, Brown said.
"That's what we're waiting for," she said, "how many people would we have in there once the petitions are filed."
Standard-Times staff writer Jayna Boyle contributed to this report.
