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On December 22, 2008, the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services issued its final report on the YFZ Ranch raid and its aftermath, continuing the same practice we have seen them use from the first of justifying their illegal and inhumane actions in this raid by resorting to half-truths and distortions. 

 

Predictably the report is the biggest news in weeks in the FLDS case, with the Austin American Statesman announcing the shocking finding that “of the 439 children removed from the yearning for Zion ranch in West Texas earlier this year, 275 were abused or neglected” and KSG.com proclaiming that “nearly two-thirds of the families living at the FLDS ranch in Texas, had children that were abused or neglected.

 

The report bases its conclusions on the supposed finding that twelve of the YFZ girls were married between the ages of 12 and 15 and that seven of these girls gave birth to children. These statistics alone are somewhat misleading. We know of the well-publicized “spiritual marriage” of Marianne Jessop at age 12, although this “marriage” if ever performed was never consummated and amounts in essence to a betrothal. The CPS report claims that the twelve girls are currently from 14 to 18 years of age and that the earliest marriage took place in 2004 and the most recent in July of 2006. It is unclear how many of these marriages may have taken place in Texas and if they did how many were performed after Texas raised the legal age for marriage. The report also makes no mention of the ages at which these girls gave birth to their children, which may have been years after the marriage ceremony. It is unlikely that any children were born to the younger girls, or the report would undoubtedly have capitalized on this fact. It is highly probable, however, that one of these girls is the elusive “Sarah” whose hoax call triggered the raid.

 

For CPS to label these twelve girls as “victims of sexual abuse” is a flagrant misuse of language in order to arouse prejudice. None of these girls have ever been subjected to force or abuse of any kind at the Ranch, nor are they in any danger of being abandoned on the streets as unwed mothers, of making a furtive visit to an abortion clinic, or of struggling to support themselves and one or more children as single mothers. Instead, any girl married in the FLDS culture has the security of a kind and loving husband who will stay with her for life and support her and her children in a secure and stable family structure where she will experience happiness and fulfillment. The gracious and well-adjusted mothers and children from the YFZ Ranch are not the product of abusive relationships by any stretch of the imagination, nor do they exist in isolation from husbands and fathers who provide love, training, and support.

 

Taking the twelve married girls that they claim to have found, CPS next proceeds to inflate the number of supposed “victims” in the YFZ community by alleging that any child exposed to the pernicious example of these underage marriages is also a victim of abuse. They conclude that “262 other children were subjected to neglect under Texas law” because parents “failed to remove their child from a situation in which the child would be exposed to sexual abuse committed against another child within their families or households.” If this standard were applied universally in society, considering the current prevalence of teenage sexual activity and pregnancy, it is almost certain that the level of abuse and neglect would be higher than the 62 percent CPS claims to have found at the YFZ Ranch. A much more significant number than the 262 children CPS asserts were abused or neglected is the 424 children (96 percent) they have “now determined to be safe in their households to the point that there is not a need for court oversight.” CPS may claim that they have assisted many of the parents of these children to reform their lives through the required parenting classes, but the instructors of these classes recognized that their FLDS “students” already possessed superior parenting skills and frequently remarked that they should be teaching the classes. 

 

Having said this much in regard to the major “findings” in the report, it would be well to consider a few of the additional statements that gloss over the very real abuse that took place at the hands of CPS. The report states that “Space was provided at the shelter operations so that women could meet with their attorneys and attorneys ad litem could visit the children.” When the mothers at the Pavilion were permitted to talk to their attorneys, CPS workers stood just the other side of the curtained partitions monitoring their conversations. (See Marie Musser, Day by Day Events of the YFZ Ranch Raid, 10 April 2008) Mothers as old as 37 were denied access to an attorney because CPS ignored their valid ID and claimed they looked underage. One 22-year-old woman with a valid driver’s license to prove her age was denied access to her regular attorney and assigned an ad litem. When the ad litem visited her and found that she was an adult, she told her she did not qualify for an ad litem and would have to obtain an attorney from Legal Aid or elsewhere. The woman was without an attorney until April 23, almost a week after the 14-day hearings. With their cell phones confiscated, mothers at the Coliseum were provided cubicles where they could call their attorneys, but a CPS worker always dialed the number and waited just outside the cubicle during the call, which was limited to 15 minutes, hardly time for a meaningful discussion.

 

The report notes that on April 18 the District Court “ordered DNA collection for paternity and maternity testing” and ignores the fact that DNA samples already had been collected from many of the men on the Ranch in direct violation of the April 6 search warrant, where a request for DNA testing was crossed off on the warrant and the change initialed by Judge Walther.

 

The report also attempts to stress the compassion and selflessness of staff and volunteers who “worked around the clock to care for the children, with some spending nights huddled in blankets outside to give the families more space and privacy.” Could this generous care possibly refer to the same shelters where mothers and children were treated like prisoners of war; where the lights were left on 24 hours a day; where CPS workers roamed among the captives day and night, shining flashlights in the faces of those who had the audacity to fall asleep for a few minutes and parking their chairs within two feet of a mother’s head; where a trip to the restroom meant being escorted by a CPS worker, who waited just outside the stall to escort the person back; where pens, fingernail clippers, staplers, paper scissors, and even the needles used by a 13-year-old diabetic girl were confiscated because they might be used as weapons; where mothers and children shivered at night on hard canvas cots with only two thin blankets and a plastic pillow with no case; where practically every child became sick from exposure and stress? There were many generous volunteers, whom the FLDS people gratefully remember, but the MHMR workers, who were among the most helpful, are not even mentioned in the CPS report as being among the support team, probably because they were highly critical of the CPS abuses they observed and documented the same in their letters.

 

The level of abuse among the FLDS children is definitely higher than 62 percent, but that is not because they were abused by their parents, but by the state.