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Court rules Texas had no right to seize sect children
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Texas seizure of polygamist-sect kids thrown out
Texas had no right to take polygamist sect kids: court

“The ruling in one of the largest custody cases in U.S. history, hammered the state for removing the children and directed state District Judge Barbara Walther to vacate the order. Technically, it applied only to the children of 38 mothers named in the appeal, but the ruling was broad enough to cover nearly every child swept up in the April raid.

The children were taken into custody more than six weeks ago after someone called a hot line claiming to be a pregnant, abused teenage wife. The girl has not been found and authorities are investigating whether the calls were a hoax.

Child welfare officials argued that five girls at the ranch had become pregnant at 15 and 16 and that the sect pushed underage girls into marriage and sex with older men and groomed boys to enter into such unions when they grew up.

But the appeals court said the state acted too hastily in sweeping up all the children and taking them away on the broad beliefs of the renegade Mormon sect.

“Even if one views the FLDS belief system as creating a danger of sexual abuse by grooming boys to be perpetrators of sexual abuse and raising girls to be victims of sexual abuse … there is no evidence that this danger is ‘immediate’ or ‘urgent,'” the court said.”

I hope these children are reunited with their parents soon.
Jenny Hatch