FLDS GRAND JURY TAKES NO ACTION, YET
Houston Criminal Defense Attorney Discusses Latest Developments in FLDS case and the Beginnings of a Grand Jury Investigation
A West Texas grand jury sitting in Schleicher County heard testimony from a few of the dozens of witnesses subpoenaed to testify concerning allegations made by the Attorney General’s Office that members of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints forces underage girls into “spiritual marriages.”
The grand jury probe stems from the April 2008 military-styled raid on the Yearning for Zion Ranch in Eldorado during which the State’s Child Protective Services and law enforcement authorities, including the Texas Rangers, forcefully seized custody of the 467 children – two-thirds of whom were five years of age or younger – and placed them in state foster care. CPS officials immediately began issuing irresponsible public statements and leaking erroneous information to the media that dozens of the teenage girls had been impregnated through forced spiritual marriages, had been subjected to other forms sexual abuse, and that other children had been subjected to physical abuse.
During hearings conducted in mid-April before San Angelo County District Court Judge Barbara Walhter, CPS paraded into court with a number of witnesses carrying volumes of documents who could not substantiate a single incident of either sexual or physical abuse. That a state agency would conduct itself in such an incompetent manner was disturbing enough but that a state court judge would permit its court to be turned into a carnival venue for such a spectacle was nothing short of astonishing.
Two courts of review - the Third Circuit Court of Appeals and the Texas Supreme Court – agreed. They reversed Judge Walhter’s ruling that upheld CPS’ decision to place the children in state foster care. The two appellate courts in May ordered the FLDS children returned to their parents. The decisions were not only a rebuke of CPS’ handling of the case but they were also a reasonable, rational reinforcement of the natural parent-child relationship so honored in the State of Texas throughout its storied history. (more…)
