Our View on Protecting Children: Texas Custody Case Collapses, Leaving Damage in its Wake

Imagine that state agents raided your home and seized your children along with more than 400 of your neighbors' kids. The reason, you were told, was suspicion of child abuse, but the authorities produced scant evidence involving your child. Imagine further that after a series of hearings, the children were shipped off to foster families while courts sorted matters out.

That is essentially what has transpired in Texas over the past two months, though outrage was minimal and suspicion high because the parents were members of a reclusive polygamist sect.

Court Staff Overwhelmed in YFZ Child Custody Cases

A task force of volunteer lawyers traveled to San Angelo to assist in the YFZ Ranch child protection cases, the Texas Supreme Court press office reported April 18.

The volunteers were in San Angelo for an April 17 custody hearing concerning the 416 children taken from YFZ Ranch, a polygamist settlement owned by the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. The church is not affiliated with The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, or the Mormon Church.

In early April, state agencies entered the ranch near Eldorado in Schleicher County and took the children into custody after an anonymous caller said she had been beaten and sexually abused at the site.

YFZ Ranch Kids to Stay in State Custody

The 416 children removed from the polygamist compound near Eldorado will stay in state custody for now, a judge ruled Friday night following a two-day hearing.

State District Judge Barbara Walther also ordered that the children undergo genetic testing to determine their parents and said the state will send a mobile lab to conduct the tests to the San Angelo Coliseum where the children are being kept.