After more than a year of legal wrangling, the massive child protection action taken against Texas members of the Mormon breakaway sect the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints came to a close July 23 when the last of more than 400 children removed from the FLDS’ Eldorado ranch was ordered into permanent custody of her aunt, state District Judge Barbara Walther ruled in San Angelo last week.
The 15-year-old girl was allegedly married to polygamist prophet Warren Jeffs, the now-incarcerated leader of the FLDS, when she was just 12. The girl was the last child remaining in state custody after last year’s raid on the FLDS’ Yearning for Zion ranch just outside Eldorado. State investigators flooded the ranch in April 2008 after receiving a phone “tip” that children were being abused at the ranch. The phone call turned out to be a hoax, but investigators still removed hundreds of children from the ranch. (The 3rd District Court of Appeals later ruled the raid was unwarranted, an opinion the Texas Supreme Court shared, but the damage was already done.)
Under the custody agreement signed last week, the girl is to have no contact with Jeffs, who in 2007 was convicted in Utah on a rape-as-accomplice charge for his role in arranging a polygamous marriage between an underage girl and her older cousin. Jeffs is awaiting trial on similar charges in Arizona, and last year, Texas charged him with bigamy.
“We believe all of these children are safer because of our intervention,” Dept. of Family and Protective Services Commissioner Anne Heiligenstein said in a statement to the Salt Lake Tribune. “The families now know that the state of Texas will not tolerate sexual abuse disguised as ‘spiritual marriage.’ These families also know that if abuse is reported again, we will respond.”
This article appears in July 24 • 2009.