The Texas Child Hostage Crisis

[WaTcHeR]

SALT LAKE CITY -- The home of a judge in Texas who ordered the removal of 440 children from a polygamist ranch is under guard after Utah and Arizona authorities warned of "enforcers" from the sect, a newspaper reported Wednesday.

Police assigned to Judge Barbara Walther's San Angelo house were provided dossiers and photos of 16 men and women deemed a threat, the Deseret News reported.

"There are many individuals who are willing to give up their life for the cause, and you can never underestimate what a religious fanatic is capable of," said e-mails obtained from the Washington County sheriff's office in Utah through state public records law.

Rod Parker, a Salt Lake City-based attorney for the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, said law enforcement has nothing to worry about.

"Have they ever seen an act of intimidation or violence against law enforcement from the FLDS community at all, ever?" he told the newspaper. "Before they start spreading those kinds of rumors, they ought to be able to ID an example of them ever doing that in the past."

Willie Jessop, a group member who was a spokesman during the Texas case, agreed.

"Washington County officials do not let the facts get in the way of a good story," Jessop said. "These are the types of paranoid allegations that can hurt a lot of innocent people if they are allowed to go unchecked."

Calls seeking comment from the sheriff's office were not immediately returned Wednesday.

Texas officials removed the children in April because of concerns that they were being abused. The Texas Supreme Court, however, said the children should be returned.

The newspaper reported that law enforcement has been on alert since an FLDS-related Web site published Walther's home address and telephone numbers.

Walther signed the original order to remove all of the FLDS children from the Yearning For Zion Ranch and place them in state custody.

A Web site that talks of a threat to "pay Ms. Walther's home a visit" is not sanctioned by the FLDS Church, Parker said. The site is run by Bill Medvecky, a Fort Myers, Fla., man who has donated to the fund for captive FLDS children, Parker said.

Parker told church leaders the post could be construed as a threat, according to the newspaper. They contacted Medvecky and had him remove the judge's address, he said. But her telephone numbers remain on the site, which describes Walther as the "leader of the Gestapo" and includes a link to a petition to impeach the judge.

Medvecky noted Walther's address is in the phone book.

"They are not confrontational whatsoever. I am," Medvecky told the Deseret News. "They are not me, and they have nothing to do with the site. We support them 100 percent."

The FLDS is concentrated in the border towns of Hildale, Utah, and Colorado City, Ariz.

[WaTcHeR]

First one has to wonder if the governor's mansion in Texas being burn was maybe a payback because Governor Rick Perry refused to step in and put a stop to what the Texas child protective services were doing?

As far as Judge Barbara Walther's home address being published on a site, it was very easy to track her address down on the net as you can see below. It's freely available to the public.

Judge Barbara Walther
5425 Bent Oak Ct.
San Angelo, TX 76904-8726
(325) 944-9958

[WaTcHeR]

A couple from a polygamous West Texas sect won a small victory Monday, even as their custody hearing was put on hold.

Judge Martha Tanner of the 166th District Court granted Lori and Joseph Jessop Sr. a temporary restraining order against the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services, along with the temporary custody they had already gained of their three children.

Meanwhile, lawyers for parents in a separate custody case filed in Bexar County dropped their lawsuit to regain full custody of nine children for two families, saying they'll use a different strategy.

“We do not intend to let it go at this point, and we'll be in the process of seeking review through the district court in San Angelo,” said Gerald Goldstein, representing Rulon Keate and LeLand Keate.

A district court in Bexar County ruled May 23 that the Jessops and Keates, members of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, should be temporarily reunited with their children, 12 in all, after they and about 460 others were taken by the state in a raid in early April.

nvestigators entered the FLDS' Yearning For Zion Ranch on a telephone tip about abuse; that tip has since been discredited as a hoax. While there, they saw what they said were numerous underage girls who were pregnant or had children.

The Texas Supreme Court late last month upheld a 3rd Court of Appeals ruling that the state didn't have enough evidence to order into foster care every child who lived at the YFZ Ranch. But the court allowed restrictions to be placed on the families' living arrangements and the continuing of a criminal investigation into alleged abuse.

The Jessops, by pursuing legal claims in a Bexar County court after one of their children was moved here, have gained more freedom from those restrictions. All three families in the Bexar County cases have maintained that they're monogamous couples.

The Jessops and their lawyers were squaring off against lawyers from the state attorney general's office Monday when the state's lawyer, Frank King, filed a plea arguing that the case should be heard in the West Texas court where it originated.

Tanner ruled that the plea was actually a motion to dismiss and denied it, a move the state was ready for.

After dispatching another lawyer out of the courtroom, King stood to say his office was filing an appeal, putting a stop to the hearing until the 4th Court of Appeals rules on it.

Tanner agreed to the stay, but issued the restraining order, which for now keeps Child Protective Services investigators from continuing their investigation.

“I am not going to allow CPS or any other agency to interfere with parents in this state,” the judge said.

Attorney general's office spokesman Jerry Strickland said, “We respect the court; however, our office will file an amended petition including this issue to be addressed by the 4th Court of Appeals.”

David Perry, a lawyer for the Jessops, argued that the state had already tried to move the case back to West Texas and was denied by the 4th Court in a May 22 ruling.

The FLDS community near Eldorado was started in 2003 by the sect, which broke from mainstream Mormonism generations ago and continued to practice polygamy in towns on the Utah-Arizona border.


http://www.mysanantonio.com/news/metro/ ... 99a1c.html

[WaTcHeR]

Texas taxpayers will pay $14 Millions for the raid on polygamist camp

FORT WORTH, Texas — The cost of the April raid on a polygamist compound in West Texas is expected to top $14 million, about one-third of it in lawyers' fees, according to a published analysis of state records.

The Fort Worth Star-Telegram reviewed more than 400 pages of invoices, e-mails and other state records that it obtained under an open-records law request and published its findings Saturday.

More invoices for overtime, travel and professional services are expected to boost the final tab, the records indicate.

The biggest chunk of spending is expected to stem from court proceedings after the state seized about 460 children from the Yearning For Zion Ranch near Eldorado, which is owned by the polygamist Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.

A state district judge in San Angelo first gave custody of the children to the state child protective services agency, but the Texas Supreme Court later returned the children to their parents.

The state expects to pay nearly $4.5 million in legal fees, including paying for lawyers who represented the state and others appointed by judges to represent the children. The state also expects to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars for expert witnesses, visiting judges and office supplies.

The state attorney general's office has been billed $110,000 for DNA testing of adults and children taken from the ranch in an effort to identify the parents of each child.

Another big chunk of spending, about $2.4 million, went to rent buses and facilities to house the children and some of the mothers after the early April raid, the newspaper reported.

Overtime for state employees, including workers in the state's protective services agencies, was about $1.7 million, and travel another $1.2 million during the first month after the raid.

The Texas Department of Public Safety spent nearly $1.3 million, including $410,000 for overtime pay and about $82,000 for travel.

The Star-Telegram said the records it examined didn't include bills submitted by private charity groups that helped the state and invoices from state employees may still be submitted.

Stephanie Goodman, spokeswoman for the state's Health and Human Services Commission, said the documents released to the newspaper captured "the vast majority of the overtime and the travel." She said state officials were still working with foster-care facilities to cover costs not included in daily rates.

http://www.statesman.com/news/content/g ... _Cost.html

[WaTcHeR]

Hell if I were a Texan, the Governors mansion wouldn't the only thing I would be burning down.

[WaTcHeR]

AN ANGELO -- A teenage member of a polygamous sect says she's never been married and doesn't have a baby. She denies that church elders are influencing her and wants to fire her lawyer. The state can't even prove that her alleged abuse happened in Texas.

Yet the girl is a key player in court cases in West Texas this week as the state's case against members of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints moves into criminal court.

A 16-year-old daughter of jailed FLDS prophet Warren Jeffs is fighting attempts by her attorney, Natalie Malonis, to finalize an emergency restraining order against an FLDS elder. She also denies her lawyer's central claim making her an abuse victim -- that she was spiritually married at 15 to an adult man and had a child at 16.

"Natalie, quit all your lying about everything," the girl said in a letter to Malonis.

Malonis has said she would not fight with her client through the news media.

A grand jury will convene Wednesday in Schleicher County, opening the criminal side of the state's case. State child welfare officials seized more then 400 children from the Yearning For Zion Ranch in Eldorado in April, accusing the sect of widespread sexual abuse of teen girls.

The Texas Supreme Court forced the state to return the children from foster care two months later, saying that the state had overreached in taking all the children from the ranch when only a handful of girls might have been abused.

Grand jury proceedings are secret, and the Attorney General's Office, which is handling the prosecution, has declined to comment. But a court filing shows that the girl was subpoenaed to appear Wednesday before the grand jury.

Schleicher County Clerk Peggy Williams could not say what case the grand jury would be considering. But the sparsely populated county calls grand juries only about twice a year, and non-FLDS cases were handled several weeks ago.

It's not clear what, or whether, criminal indictments of FLDS members may result.

Leaders of the FLDS church have consistently denied that there was any abuse and vowed this month not to sanction underage marriages.

Under Texas law, a girl younger than 17 cannot generally consent to sex with an adult. Bigamy, which is generally considered a crime of fraud, is also illegal in Texas, although FLDS plural marriages were not sanctioned by the state.

Any criminal prosecution on sex charges is likely to be difficult. The state does have DNA material collected from most YFZ ranch residents to help them sort out family groups after the April 3 raid, and FLDS officials fear that the evidence could be used against them in a criminal case.

"I thought from the beginning there was a secondary reason they wanted it," FLDS spokesman Rod Parker said.

Texas Child Protective Services said it would turn over the DNA test results to criminal prosecutors if it were subpoeanaed by a grand jury or ordered by a court to do so.

And the case has jurisdictional problems -- without the cooperation of the sect's teen girls, prosecutors will be unable to determine what state any alleged abuse occurred in. The sect has homes in Texas, Arizona and Utah and elsewhere.

Jeffs' 16-year-old daughter disputes her lawyer's contention that she is an underage wife and mother and is trying to fire Malonis for making such claims.

Malonis, who has said her accusations against the FLDS come from the state, said the girl was being influenced by FLDS leaders. She got an emergency restraining order Friday keeping FLDS elder Willie Jessop from having access to the girl, saying Jessop was influencing the teen and encouraging her to be uncooperative.

A hearing finalizing that order, which requires the girl's mother to keep Jessop away from the girl, was scheduled for Tuesday.

A call and e-mail to Jessop were not returned immediately.

Parker said he was not sure whether the girl would be cooperative in her grand jury testimony or whether other FLDS children had been subpoenaed to appear.

"If they're going to be asked to testify against their parents, that's a real dilemma," he said. "I don't know if they're going to be that cooperative."

The FLDS is a breakaway sect of the mainstream Mormon church, which renounced polygamy more than a century ago. Historically, FLDS members lived along the Arizona-Utah line, where authorities had not sought criminal charges in decades until allegations of underage marriages -- and willing witnesses -- surfaced several years ago.

Still, just a handful of criminal cases have been prosecuted in the sect estimated to have 6,000 members. Jeffs, the leader who is revered as a prophet, was convicted in Utah of rape as an accomplice for his role in the marriage of a 14-year-old and her 19-year-old cousin. He is jailed awaiting trial on Arizona charges related to marriages involving young girls.

Texas authorities took DNA samples from him as part of an investigation involving girls at the ranch.

[WaTcHeR]

Texas CPS Commissioner Carey Cockerell Is Abandoning Ship


AUSTIN – State protective services commissioner Carey Cockerell said Friday that he will retire on Aug. 31.

A spokesman said the departure wasn't forced and isn't the result of Child Protective Services' much criticized removal of hundreds of children from a polygamist sect's West Texas ranch this spring.

Mr. Cockerell, who wasn't available for an interview, began considering retirement late last year, according to a Department of Family and Protective Services news release.

The former Tarrant County official, 61, was tapped 3 ½ years ago to oversee big changes in how Texas responds to child and elder abuse.

Mr. Cockerell has led CPS, Adult Protective Services and Child Care Licensing in stormy times.

During his tenure, the beating deaths of three North Texas foster children raised questions about state oversight of private child-placing agencies. A 4-year-old boy's heat-exposure death in a Pleasant Grove day care center's van brought to light regulatory failures, including that the center had no qualified director.

Mr. Cockerell's biggest challenge, though, was CPS' removal in April of more than 440 children from the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints' Yearning for Zion ranch near Eldorado.

It was the largest child protection action in U.S. history.

CPS justified the removals by saying it found evidence of underage marriages and perhaps other child abuse at the ranch. However, two state appellate courts said the agency offered only sketchy evidence and exceeded legal bounds. The Texas Supreme Court made a trial judge order the children released from foster care facilities this month.

Department spokesman Patrick Crimmins said Mr. Cockerell is departing for personal reasons. The release said Mr. Cockerell will soon be a grandfather and wants to spend more time with family.

The release announcing Mr. Cockerell's departure didn't mention the FLDS case, instead stressing the Legislature's cash infusions, which let the department hire thousands of new employees.

It said Mr. Cockerell guided the effort, which led to significantly lower caseloads for elderly-abuse and child-abuse investigators, a near doubling of inspections of child care facilities and a 27 percent increase in adoptions of children in CPS care.

"I'm proud of the improvements we made," Mr. Cockerell was quoted as saying.

A Dallas child welfare advocate, though, said many problems persist at CPS.

Madeline McClure, executive director of the Texas Association for the Protection of Children, said Mr. Cockerell "inherited a highly dysfunctional system and worked hard to make it less dysfunctional. However, his successor has a lot of work ahead before we can actually call the system 'functional.' "

She cited high staff turnover and a need for more state funding of child-abuse prevention.

Mr. Cockerell, after 10 years at the Texas Youth Commission, was director of Tarrant County Juvenile Services from 1984 to the fall of 2004.

http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent ... 76bd4.html

[WaTcHeR]

<object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/fZovDsSoNyQ&hl=en"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/fZovDsSoNyQ&hl=en" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="425" height="344"></embed></object>

[WaTcHeR]

<object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/hcgwHa1GPF0&hl=en"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/hcgwHa1GPF0&hl=en" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="425" height="344"></embed></object>

[WaTcHeR]

<object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/8NTVgPvMqw4&hl=en"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/8NTVgPvMqw4&hl=en" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="425" height="344"></embed></object>

[WaTcHeR]

ELDORADO, Texas — A Texas grand jury Tuesday indicted polygamist sect leader Warren Jeffs and four of his followers on charges of felony sexual assault of a child. Another was indicted for failing to report child abuse.

Attorney General Greg Abbott said the five men are charged with one count of sexually assaulting girls under the age of 17. One of them, but not Jeffs, faces an additional charge of bigamy.

Abbott said a sixth member of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints is charged with three counts of failure to report child abuse.

Jeffs, already convicted of being accomplice to rape in Utah and awaiting trial in Arizona on other charges related to underage marriages, is accused of assaulting a girl in Texas in January 2005, according to the indictment issued Tuesday.

"Our investigation in this matter is not concluded. This is an ongoing investigation that we intend to continue," said Abbott, whose office is acting as the special prosecutor in the case.

The grand jury in this tiny western Texas ranching community will continue consideration of other possible criminal charges on Aug. 21, according to a source who spoke on the condition of anonymity because proceedings of the panel are secret by law.

The identities of the Jeffs' followers who were indicted in addition to him were not released Tuesday because the indictments remain sealed until authorities can arrest the men.

"There will be an aggressive effort to apprehend them," Abbott said when asked whether he was concerned the men may have fled Texas.

FLDS members have historically lived around the Arizona-Utah line and bought the Yearning For Zion Ranch in Eldorado about five years ago.

Calls to spokesmen for the church were not immediately returned Tuesday.

The indictments follow an ill-fated child custody case in which more than 400 children were placed in foster care. The Texas Supreme Court ruled child welfare authorities overstepped in taking all the children from their parents even though many were infants and toddlers and the state failed to show any more than handful of teenage girls were abused or at risk.

The criminal charges came during the panel's second meeting on the case; it met in June without taking any action.

Abbott spent Tuesday in the small community building where the grand jury was meeting near the courthouse. Women and girls in prairie dresses, including a 16-year-old daughter of Jeffs, were escorted in and out, while lawyers and FLDS members crowded a bench in front of the courthouse.

Grand jury proceedings are supposed to be secret, but documents released as part of the separate child custody case involving the FLDS children have revealed some of the evidence collected by law enforcement during the weeklong raid that began April 3.

Among the hundreds of boxes of photos, documents and family Bibles, investigators found photos of Jeffs in intimate embraces and kissing several apparently underage girls.

A journal entry purportedly from Jeffs attached to a report by a child advocate indicates he married his daughter to a 34-year-old man the day after she turned 15. The girl turns 17 on Saturday and has denied being married, though the child advocate report indicates intimate notes between the girl and man were also found in the raid.

In addition to discussions of the girl's marriage, the Jeffs journal entry also indicates he blessed marriages of two other underage sect member to himself and another member.

FLDS leaders have consistently denied there was any abuse at the ranch and vowed not to sanction underage marriages.

Under Texas law, a girl younger than 17 cannot generally consent to sex with an adult. Bigamy is also illegal in Texas, and although FLDS plural marriages were not licensed by the state, the law contains a provision outlawing the act of "purporting to marry" more than one person.

The FLDS, which believes polygamy brings glory in heaven, is a breakaway sect of the mainstream Mormon church, which officially renounced polygamy more than a century ago.



http://www.statesman.com/news/content/g ... treat.html

[WaTcHeR]

SAN ANGELO, Texas -- Law enforcement officers denied Friday they used fake calls to a domestic abuse hot line as a pretext to raid a polygamist sect's ranch or that they prepared to rummage through the entire complex before a search warrant was issued.

Texas Ranger Brooks Long and Schleicher County Sheriff David Doran both testified in the third day of a hearing on whether evidence gathered in the raid should be excluded from the trials of 10 men from the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. The men face charges including sexual assault of a child and bigamy stemming from the raid last April.

Attorneys for the defendants, all of the sect men charged except jailed leader Warren Jeffs and a member only facing a misdemeanor charge, have accused law enforcement of failing to check the veracity of the hot line calls because the state wanted an excuse to rummage through the ranch.

"They totally believed this was going on and that this girl was in danger," Long said.

He and Doran also denied allegations by the FLDS lawyers that they had planned for a giant raid even though the initial search warrant only gave them authority to look for the girl, her baby and her husband.

The hearing continued into the evening Friday, and it was unclear how long it would take to complete.

[WaTcHeR]

SAN ANGELO — A Texas judge ruled on Friday that prosecutors could use thousands of documents seized during a weeklong raid of a polygamist sect's West Texas ranch in upcoming criminal trials even though search warrants were prompted by faked reports of abuse.

Attorneys for sect men charged after the April 2008 raid had sought to have the documents — including family photos, records of multiple marriages and journal entries by jailed sect leader Warren Jeffs — kept out of their trials because they were obtained using search warrants that relied on false reports to a domestic abuse hotline.

The defendants argued law enforcement officials were looking for an excuse to raid the Yearning For Zion Ranch and did little to check the reports before rummaging through the ranch's homes and other buildings. Prosecutors disputed that claim, saying law enforcement officials believed the reports were real at the time of the search.

District Judge Barbara Walther heard four days of testimony on the issue in May but didn't issue a ruling until Friday.

A dozen men from the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints have been indicted on charges including sexual assault of a child, bigamy and presiding over an unlawful ceremony. The first trial starts Oct. 26 in Eldorado, the tiny community where the ranch sits about 40 miles south of San Angelo.

FLDS spokesman Willie Jessop said he was disappointed but not surprised by the ruling. The defendants will use the argument for the basis of an appeal if convicted, he said.

“I have no doubt this thing will be ruled illegal in the long run,” he said of the search.

The documents are not the only evidence in the case, but could be a substantial part of the Texas attorney general's prosecutions. Jeffs' narratives seized from the ranch detail many of his instructions to sect members and daily activities at the ranch, including an allegation against the first sect man to face trial, Raymond Jessop.

The 38-year-old pleaded not guilty to sexual assault of a child during a pre-trial hearing on Friday.

Prosecutors accuse him of sexually assaulting a teen who was allegedly one of nine wives. In 2004, the then-16-year-old girl was in child labor for three days but was not taken to the hospital because of fears about possible criminal prosecution, according to Jeffs' writings.

Raymond Jessop also has been indicted on a bigamy charge, but prosecutors decided to pursue that charge separately.

Jeffs, previously convicted in Utah as an accomplice to rape, faces charges in Texas of sexual assault of a child and bigamy but will first be tried in Arizona on charges related to arranging underage marriages there.

The FLDS, historically centered on the Utah-Arizona state line, bought its West Texas ranch 6 years ago. The sect, which believes polygamy brings glorification in heaven, is a breakaway of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The Mormon church renounced polygamy more than a century ago.


http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/lif ... 49564.html

[WaTcHeR]

Judge Barbara Walther the Nazi Ass Bitch, hopefully will get it in the end.