Court Rejects Seizure Of Tex. Sect's Children

In San Angelo, Tex., members of a Mormon sect react to an appeals court ruling on children seized from their ranch. (By Brian Connelly -- San Angelo Standard-times Via Associated Press)

Later, though, authorities said the calls may have come from a woman in Colorado who had no connection to the ranch and had a history of making similar false claims.

Child-protection officials said after the raid that it did not matter whether the calls were a hoax. They said they found damning evidence of sexual abuse, including underage mothers, on the ranch.

In addition, they said the compound is dangerous simply because of the group's beliefs. The group, part of a decades-old sect whose members consider themselves fundamentalist Mormons though they are not affiliated with the mainstream Mormon church, believes that girls can marry and bear children after puberty. The state argued that these beliefs are so corrosive, for both girls and boys, that children should not be left behind to learn them.

In yesterday's ruling, however, the Third Court of Appeals rejected those arguments.

"There is no evidence that [the mothers] have allowed or are going to allow any of their minor female children to be subjected to any sexual or physical abuse," the judges wrote. "There is simply no evidence specific to [the mothers'] children at all except that they exist, they were taken into custody at the Yearning For Zion ranch, and they are living with people who share a 'pervasive belief system' that condones underage marriage and underage pregnancy."

Yesterday's ruling is not final. The Texas Supreme Court could delay its enforcement or overturn it. But at the very least, said Charles Childress, a clinical law professor at the University of Texas's Children's Rights Clinic, it could require the state to separate the ranch's children into individual abuse cases, with individual burdens of proof.

Attorneys for other children said they believe the ruling creates a precedent that will help win their clients' release. Mary Noel Golder, a San Angelo lawyer who is a legal guardian for 10 children, said she spoke to one of them by phone yesterday.

"Of course, they're very happy," she said. They "want to go home."

But Flora Jessop, executive director of the Phoenix-based Child Protection Project, which helps children who have left polygamist groups, said it would be a bad idea to return the children to the sect, no matter what legal logic dictates.

"If they go back into this, the kids are going to be left in a situation [in which] they have no rights, they have no voice, they have no choice," she said.