Gawd, What A Mess!

I'm glad I don't have to sort out this Texas polygamist case - it's chaos on wheels. But, on balance, today's court decision reprimanding Texas CPS for its haste in seizing the 440 children is probably correct. They exceeded their authority:

The decision in one of the biggest child-custody cases in U.S. history was a humiliating defeat for the state Child Protective Services agency. It was hailed as vindication by members of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, who claimed they were being persecuted for their religious beliefs.

"It's a great day for Texas justice. This was the right decision," said Julie Balovich, a Legal Aid attorney for some of the parents. She was joined by several smiling mothers who declined to comment at a news conference outside the courthouse.

Sect elder Willie Jessop said the parents were elated, but added: "There will be no celebrations until some little children are getting hugs from their parents." He said his faith in the legal system will be restored "when I see the schoolyard full of children."

Every child at the Yearning For Zion Ranch in Eldorado was taken into custody more than six weeks ago after someone called a hot line claiming to be a pregnant, abused teenage wife. The girl has not been found and authorities are investigating whether the calls were a hoax.

Child-protection officials argued that five girls at the ranch had become pregnant at 15 and 16 and that the sect pushed underage girls into marriage and sex with older men and groomed boys to enter into such unions when they grew up.

But the appeals court said the state acted too hastily in sweeping up all the children and taking them away on an emergency basis without going to court first.

"Even if one views the FLDS belief system as creating a danger of sexual abuse by grooming boys to be perpetrators of sexual abuse and raising girls to be victims of sexual abuse ... there is no evidence that this danger is 'immediate' or 'urgent'," the court said.

"Evidence that children raised in this particular environment may someday have their physical health and safety threatened is not evidence that the danger is imminent enough to warrant invoking the extreme measure of immediate removal."

The court said the state failed to show that any more than five of the teenage girls were being sexually abused, and offered no evidence of sexual or physical abuse against the other children. Half the youngsters taken from the ranch were 5 or younger. Only a few dozen are teenage girls.

The court also said the state was wrong to consider the entire ranch as a single household and to seize all the children on the grounds that some parents in the home might be abusers.

On the other hand, the seizure has no doubt completely disrupted the creepy, secretive life of the Texas branch of the FLDS. That disruption may hasten its demise, which would be welcome.

There's no doubt that the generation of the Old West would not have had any such qualms about what the Texas CPS was doing. While doing genealogical work several years ago, I chanced upon the story of a distant relative, Thomas Jefferson Drake, originally from Michigan. Mr. Drake was appointed Associate Justice of the Supreme Court for the Territory of Utah by Abraham Lincoln Feb. 3, 1862. He was reappointed in 1866 by Andrew Johnson. In this crucial Federal position, he had many opportunities to clash with Brigham Young and his followers:

Judge Drake’s rulings were so distasteful to the Mormons that the feeling culminated in about a year after he assumed his duties in an effort to rid the Territory of all Federal Officers. A mass meeting was held and the following day Brigham Young sent his emissaries to wait upon Judge Drake and Governor Waite to notify them that they must leave the territory. The two men had taken a house together, and when the delegation arrived Judge Drake was writing at his desk, and as they served the notice first to the Governor he paid no attention, but kept on writing. When the committee requested Judge Drake to take notice of the resolutions as he was included, the Judge rose from his seat and said: “These are important resolutions and as they are intended to affect me I desire to say a word or two. It is a very grave thing to request a citizen to leave the country. Are you aware of the magnitude and importance of the business you have undertaken? I am an American citizen and have a right to come here and go into any part of the Republic. I have a right to ask Congress to amend the laws or to make new ones. You have no excuse for your conduct towards me. It is mean and contemptible and on your part, Taylor, a foreigner, it is impudence unequalled, and Pratt, a citizen, ought to know better than to trample on the rights of a citizen by the performance of such a dirty enterprise.

“Your resolutions are false and the man that drew them knew it to be so.” (Here Taylor undertook to speak and the Judge told him to be still.) “Besides I understand that Brigham Young yesterday in your mass meeting said I was a fool and a tool of the Governor.” (Taylor with great promptness admitted it was so.) “Then, said the Judge,” go back to Brigham Young, your master, that embodiment of sin, shame, and disgust, and tell him that I neither fear him, love him, nor hate him, but that I utterly despise him. Go tell him whose tools and tricksters you are, that I did not come here by his permission, and I shall not go away by his desire, nor by his direction. I have given no cause of offense to any one. I have not entered a Mormon’s house since I have come here. Your wives and daughters have not been disturbed by me. I have not even looked at your concubines or lewd women” – (here Taylor undertook to say something, but the Judge stopped him and bade him to be silent) – “and if you or the man you serve so faithfully ever attempt to interfere with my lawful business, you will meet with a difficulty you little expect. (Taylor again undertook to speak, but the Judge refused to let him, and said) “Horse thieves and murderers have a right to speak in a court of Justice when arrested, and unless in such a capacity and under such circumstances – don’t you ever speak to me again.” As the committee were leaving Taylor said “They could have their opinion.” “Yes,” said the Judge, “Thieves and murderers can have an opinion.”

In 1869 he became so tired of living in such a “den of iniquity” as he termed the Mormon country, that he came home on a visit. As his health was much broken his friends persuaded him not to go back, so he resigned and remained at his home in Pontiac till his death Apr. 20, 1875.