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Kidjacked | Jacked Up
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The good caseworkers don't last long. They're driven out by the nature of the work. What's mostly left are those who were abused themselves as children, or those who enjoy the power. -- Corvallis, Oregon family attorney Texas CPS News Archive
Texas News Coverage
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Texas polygamist sect teen who gave birth is adult
by Terri Langford and Lisa Sandberg
Texas Child Protective Services conceded Tuesday that a pregnant teen taken from a polygamists' ranch in West Texas was an adult when she gave birth in San Marcos last month
...casting some doubt on the statistics released by the agency that more than 20 underage girls were pregnant or had given birth. The teenager, 18-year-old Pamela Jeffs, gave birth to a boy on April 29. CPS officials said she was one of 27 girls in a "disputed" minor category who once told CPS they were adults but later indicated they were under 18.
Houston Chronicle
May 14, 2008
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Texas officials drafting plans for FLDS children
by Ben Winslow
Texas child welfare authorities have begun drafting service plans for the children taken from the Fundamentalist LDS Church's YFZ Ranch.
"It's the plan that has to address the permanency," said Mary Walker, a spokeswoman for the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services. "Whether or not children will be unified with their parents or whether or not they will remain in foster care."
Deseret News
May 8, 2008
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CPS files still closed as more queries raised
Need another reason why the Arizona Legislature needs to pry open a few of those lead-lined windows that allow Child Protective Services to protect itself from the prying eyes of outsiders? Two words: Dave Wigton.
For nearly 30 years, Wigton has worked at the agency whose only job is to protect children. Then last week, he was accused of turning a little girl into his own personal sex toy and, as a bonus, sharing kiddie porn with a teenage boy.
The Arizona Republic
May 7, 2008
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Polygamist Sect Newborn Ordered Into State Custody
SAN ANTONIO -- A judge ordered that the baby boy born to a teenager taken from a polygamist sect's ranch in West Texas be placed in state custody, according to documents released Thursday.
Texas District Judge Barbara Walther signed the order Wednesday giving the state custody of the 1-day-old infant born to a teen believed to be 15 or 16 years old.
Fox News
May 2, 2008
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National DNA database gets kickstart from feds
by Bob Unruh
With virtually no fanfare, and equally quiet opposition, President Bush has signed into law a plan that orders the government to take no more than six months to set up a national contingency plan to screen newborns' DNA.
Further, the new law requires that the results of that DNA program, including "information ... research, and data on newborn screening" shall be assembled by a "central clearinghouse" and be made available on the Internet.
World Net Daily
May 1, 2008
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Former FLDS member is sharing her insights on the sect
by Brian West
A former member of the Fundamentalist LDS Church herself, Mackert is making the rounds to talk about her past life as a polygamous wife.
Born and raised in Hildale, Utah, Mackert said she became the sixth of seven wives to a 50-year-old man when she was 17. "He was older than my father," she said.
Deseret News
April 28, 2008
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What Did The FLDS Kids Do To Deserve This?
by Ben Stein
Ben Stein Says Texas Authorities Are Acting Like The Gestapo By Taking Away The Children Of A Mormon Sect
What the heck is going on in Texas with the kids caught up in the polygamy ranch disaster? Look, I am not a fan of polygamy. For one thing, it's all any man can do keeping up with one wife. For another, it's against the law in this country. But the polygamists that have been in the news have been operating for decades. The authorities knew about it, and them. They didn't do a thing about it for all those years!
CBSNews
April 28, 2008
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Class-action child removal
by Vox Day
The Texas kidnapping authorities are so poorly informed that they aren't even certain precisely how many children they stole from their parents. What they first reported as 416 children seized by the state rose to first to 437, and now to 462.
So, while they can't even manage a simple head count, they nevertheless expect Americans to simply trust their assertion that every single parent of those 462 children constituted a "continuing and immediate danger to their safety" despite the fact that the children are far healthier than the norm, not a single parent has actually been arrested and charged with any form of child abuse and the CPS has publicly conceded that there is no evidence that any of the 130 or more children under five have been abused!
World Net Daily
April 28, 2008
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Why Aren't the LDS Defending the FLDS ?
by Carter Braxton
Why hasn't a veritable Mormon revolt erupted over the continued detainment of FLDS children in Texas? Is persecution of unpopular religious sects now acceptable to LDS society?
The latest news on the Texas FLDS case is that a nursing 2-year old has been hospitalized after being forcefully seperated from her mother for several days. And two other young FLDS boys cannot even be accounted for.
Nolan Chart
April 27, 2008
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FLDS Raid - A Dangerous Legal Precedent
by Joel Skousen
I waited a week to comment on the Texas case, separating 437 children from their FLDS parents, to see if any substantive evidence of abuse would emerge. It hasn't.
Even if it had, those could have been handled individually. But no, Texas plans instead to make every member of the group pay the supreme price: to strip away their beloved children. This case is about group punishment. In spite of a search warrant tainted by a false witness (the "Sarah" who doesn't exist), no actual specific evidence of abuse, or any unwilling participants in this polygamous compound, a self-righteous Texas judge had decreed that all 400 + children will not be returned to the custody of their parents.
Rense
April 26, 2008
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Sweep of Polygamist Sect Kids Raises Legal Questions
The state of Texas made a damning accusation when it rounded up 462 children at a polygamous sect's ranch: The adults are forcing teenage girls into marriage and sex, creating a culture so poisonous that none should be allowed to keep their children.
But the broad sweep - from nursing infants to teenagers - is raising constitutional questions, even in a state where authorities have wide latitude for taking a family's children. The move has the appearance of "a class-action child removal," said Jessica Dixon, director of the child advocacy center at Southern Methodist University's law school in Dallas.
Fox News
April 25, 2008
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'Sarah' may be Colorado woman
The telephoned pleas for help that triggered a raid on an alleged polygamist ranch in Texas have been linked to a woman with a history of false accusations.
Rozita Swinton, 33, of Colorado Springs has been named a "person of interest" by authorities in Texas, the Deseret Morning News reported. Documents unsealed Wednesday said that calls purportedly from a teenager named "Sarah" had been made on a prepaid cell phone Swinton had used previously.
United Press International
April 24, 2008
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Sect challenges legality of search warrant, raid
Authorities knew that reports of alleged abuse at a polygamist sect's Texas ranch were questionable before they raided the compound, attorneys for the ranch's families said in court documents Thursday.
The attorneys are arguing that search warrants were wrongly issued in the case. A state official responded that the initial reports don't matter at this point, because "we found children being abused." It also asks the judge to issue an order restricting the publication of documents and records seized from the ranch.
CNN
April 24, 2008
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They're coming for your kids!
by Ilana Mercer
Imagine: One day you're frolicking in the open air on a large compound, doing your daily chores and feasting on hearty homegrown fare; the next you're gagging on a diet of T&A courtesy of MTV and fast-food compliments of your fat foster mom.
As the makeshift mom hollers at you to swallow your zombifying meds - the Texas foster care system is notorious for pumping its charges full of psychotropic drugs - her flaccid live-in lover eyes you lustily. As I write, many of the kids kidnapped by Texas rangers from the Yearning for Zion ranch are being scattered across the state to far-flung group homes and shelters.
World Net Daily
April 24, 2008
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Who will save women of Zion sect?
by Antonia Zerbisia
Bad enough that the women of the Yearning for Zion "ranch" in Eldorado, Texas, had been turned into zombie baby incubators, or at least that's how they come across on TV.
Now they're being victimized yet again as the legal system works to permanently separate them from their youngest children, including nursing newborns.
The Toronto Star
April 23, 2008
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'Failure to Protect' - From the Diocese of Fairbanks
by Richard Wexter
There was a story on NPR yesterday about rampant sexual abuse in isolated compounds, perpetrated by religious leaders.
Although there were relatively few offenders, the number of victims is staggering. The "compounds" are Native Alaskan villages. The abusers were priests and lay volunteers supervised by the Roman Catholic Diocese of Fairbanks in the 1960s.
NCCPR Child Welfare Blog
April 22, 2008
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Sect hearings are a logistical scramble
by Jenny Jarvie
Attorney Donna Broom had no idea what to expect when she threw her bags in her green Chevy Tahoe on Wednesday and set off on an eight-hour drive from Houston to San Angelo.
Whoever her client was, she had one question: Would she be able to get him or her a fair hearing in a room full of hundreds of attorneys representing more than 500 children, mothers and fathers?
Los Angeles Times
April 20, 2008
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Moms, children from Texas sect to be parted
SAN ANGELO, Texas - Adult mothers who have been allowed to stay with their young children since they were taken from a polygamous sect will be separated from them after DNA sampling is completed next week, a child-welfare official said Saturday.
State District Judge Barbara Walther late Friday ordered that parents and children of the Yearning For Zion Ranch submit DNA samples to help sort out family relationships that have confounded authorities since 416 children were taken into state custody two weeks ago.
Northwest Herald
April 20, 2008
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Canadian children in polygamy battle
by Michelle Roberts
The attorney general for British Columbia said yesterday he was alerted by officials in Ottawa that some children taken from a Texas polygamist compound of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints are Canadians.
The confirmation came hours after Angie Voss, of Texas Child Protection Services, testified at a custody hearing for 416 children - seized in a raid earlier this month based in allegations of physical and sexual abuse - that some of the children before the court are Canadians.
The Toronto Star
April 19, 2008
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Witness: Teens at ranch said any age OK to marry
A child protection supervisor testified Thursday that she encountered several pregnant teen girls at a polygamist ranch who believed it was acceptable to be "spiritually united" with a man at any age.
State attorneys requested DNA samples to match children to their parents as well as a psychiatric evaluation of the children, a request that immediately prompted numerous objections. Another attorney called the procedure a violation of due process for the children.
CNN
April 18, 2008
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Eldorado Yearning For Zion women experience the most feared words ever spoken: 'Your children are ours,' CPS
by Gary Naler
"The death penalty of family law cases." This is how the events unfolding for 416 children and their now-separated mothers were described as the State of Texas and Child Protective Services (CPS) mount their largest single attack ever.
After being forcibly removed from their homes at gunpoint and then through deceit and lies separated from their children, these crying and now-untrusting mothers deprived of any parting contact with their children were given the choice-go to a women's shelter or go back to your homes. "Your children are ours," said CPS.
News Release Wire
April 17, 2008
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400 Children Taken From Polygamist Sect
More than 400 children, mostly girls in pioneer dresses, were swept into state custody from a polygamist sect in what authorities described Monday as the largest child-welfare operation in Texas history.
The dayslong raid on the sprawling compound built by now-jailed polygamist leader Warren Jeffs was sparked by a 16-year-old girl's call to authorities that she was being abused and that girls as young as 14 and 15 were being forced into marriages with much older men.
CBS News (TX)
April 7, 2008
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Texas polygamist compound sealed off by troopers
by Miguel Bustillo
State troopers sealed off a polygamist compound in a remote stretch of Texas on Friday, and child welfare officials removed 52 girls after a complaint that a 16-year-old had been physically and sexually abused, authorities said.
The investigation at the YFZ Ranch, a walled-off complex just outside the town of Eldorado that is anchored by a towering white temple, came as welcome news to local officials, who had complained for years about the religious sect hunkered there.
Los Angeles Times (TX)
April 5, 2008
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Legally Kidnapped: How much are your kids worth?
State and federally funded CPS agencies are seizing children from non-abusive homes in the absence of evidence or realistic cause to believe that the child is in danger of harm, and in gross violation of their own protocols...
Children failed by the system have died while in the protective custody of the State, in the care of CPS and in foster care. Each child in your family has a 1 in 25 chance of being the subject of a child abuse/neglect investigation this year. The chance of getting a flat tire on the family car is 1 in 70 (including Firestones).
Legally Kidnapped Blog (TX)
March 5, 2008
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Autopsy: Baby Was Murdered Before Being Thrown Onto Texas Roadside
GALVESTON, Texas - An autopsy has found that a 3-month-old baby boy was murdered before being thrown onto a Galveston roadside, still strapped into his car seat.
The infant's death was ruled a homicide by blunt force head trauma, said John Florence, chief investigator for the Galveston County Medical Examiner's Office.
Fox News (TX)
January 31, 2008
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