Let me say from the outset my belief that if a crime has been committed, then the individual perverts should be hunted down, strung up by their small berries, and gutted like the rotten fish that they are. But this broad, 'round up the usual suspects', concentration camp sweep is not the way things should be done in this nation. We seem to have a short memory. I'm just glad that, finally, someone remembered the fourth & fifth amendments to the U.S. constitution.
The 3rd Court of Appeals in Austin, in response to motions from 41 sect mothers, ruled that Child Protective Services did not present enough evidence at an April hearing to show that the children were in immediate danger of abuse, which would have justified keeping them in state custody. The court said Judge Barbara Walther abused her discretion in failing to return the children to their families.
The 3rd Court of Appeals in Austin gave Walther 10 days to comply and release from state custody the children, who are scattered across the state in temporary foster homes.
Texas Child Protective Services claimed that 450+ children were at risk of abuse at the cult's West Texas compound which was raided back in early April, 2008. The 3rd Court of Appeals found that the polygamist sect's belief system, by itself, did not place the children in danger of abuse.
"Evidence that children raised in this particular environment may someday have their physical health and safety threatened is not evidence that the danger is imminent enough to warrant invoking the extreme measure of immediate removal," the court said.
The court said the state failed to show that any more than five of the teenage girls were being sexually abused, and offered no evidence of sexual or physical abuse against the other children. Half the youngsters taken from the ranch were 5 or younger. Only a few dozen are teenage girls.
The court also said the state was wrong to consider the entire ranch as a single household and to seize all the children because some parents in the home might be abusers.
Heck, if that criteria was allowed to stand, troopers could invade most any housing project or gub'mint school in the nation!
I've said it before, once all this smoke clears, the state will have only one, maybe two solid cases that will result in a guilty verdict against the perverts.
Plus, there's some very loud concerns being raised by mental health professionals about the methods employed by Texas' child protective services in this case.
"I have worked in Domestic Violence/Sexual Abuse programming for over 20 years and have never seen women and children treated this poorly, not to mention their civil rights being disregarded in this manner," one wrote.
Until now, those concerns have fallen on deaf ears.
TY Chris Stigall
