CPS on Tuesday's hearing
A cloak of silence that has surrounded the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services lifted briefly after a custody hearing for the 2-week-old infant of Louisa and Dan Jessop was put on hold.
The department has issued this statement:
''We are pleased that the baby shall remain in the state's care.
''Investigators have been able to go through more of the documents found at the ranch and that means CPS has even more evidence detailing family relationships, including marriages of underage girls. It is clearer than ever that children were at risk of sexual abuse at the ranch.
''We were prepared to present that evidence to the court [Tuesday]. We do not know if the parents or the FLDS agreed to a quick solution in this case in order to avoid the public disclosure of that evidence.''
The department has issued this statement:
''We are pleased that the baby shall remain in the state's care.
''Investigators have been able to go through more of the documents found at the ranch and that means CPS has even more evidence detailing family relationships, including marriages of underage girls. It is clearer than ever that children were at risk of sexual abuse at the ranch.
''We were prepared to present that evidence to the court [Tuesday]. We do not know if the parents or the FLDS agreed to a quick solution in this case in order to avoid the public disclosure of that evidence.''
20 Comments:
Where is this "evidence" that they keep talking about? They really need to show it sooner, rather then later, because the court of public opinion doesn't seem too happy with CPS at the moment.
Actually, the court of public opinion that matters seems to be firmly in support of CPS. This weekend, 80% of the letters to the editor of the Dallas Morning News on the subject were in support of the actions taken by CPS to protect the innocent children from the sexual abuse that was going on at the ranch.
Here in Austin, according to a KXAN report, over 50% of people said they should go home, and 10% said they were unsure on what to do. So in the court of public opinion in Austin, CPS is losing.
They are pleased the baby will remain in state care? They may still have their finger in the pie but if I read that righ the baby is in the possession of and being cared for by its mother along with her other two children.
Whoever at CPS came up with that quote is a "spin-meister".
CPS lost ground on this one no matter how they spin it.
"Understanding the system" means understanding a typical custody battle between divorcees; the squalid squabbling, fingerpointing and insinuations. The real shame is that in so many of these custody fights the children's best interest is forgotten; it's about who 'gets over' on who. That's what CPS deals with in their day-to-day ops, and apparently the behavior has rubbed off, because that's exactly how CPS is behaving now.
In case nobody noticed, CPS should never be "pleased" to keep a child away from parents. NEVER. Under very horrible circumstances they can be pleased to have good fosters for the child.
But the mass-storage facilities these children are currently warehoused in by the state of Texas are a wretched excuse for any caring framework. CPS should be ashamed.
The KXAN poll is the accurate reading of public sentiment in Texas.
Letters to editors are written by more activist types, not your 'man on the street' types that a public opinion poll far more accurately measures.
The support seems to be holding up solid as well because in the first week of the raid a well known Texas radio station was reporting that 55% of Texans were against the raid based on polling results that they were getting at one of their websites they told listeners to vote at on the Internet.
And that's just the GENERAL TEXAS public. The Internet, attracting more anti-government libertarian types on average, is skewed MUCH MORE towards the anti-Texas position than the general public. In Texas and around the USA on the Internet.
Regarding my last paragraph above, that's demonstrated most aptly at the various Texas-based media sites on the web. They are overwhelmingly anti-Texas, especially over the past two weeks as the CPS case fell apart before everyone's eyes.
Tx,
Letter writers to the Dallas Morning News doesn’t strike me as the best proxy available for state wide Texan popular opinion, but then again, maybe I’m just not Texan enough. I don’t know how KXAN arrived at their numbers either, but I suspect they would really have to go out of their way to come up with a survey methodology less representative than the one you keep quoting.
Now let’s just assume, for a second, you really cared about protecting a two week old child from sexual abuse, and not simply wining legal arguments and showing off how tough you Texans are. What we should then look to minimize, would be the probability of this child being sexually abused at any given time throughout childhood, right?
So, let’s assume the child in question is female, and follow her from now until she turns 17. For convenience, let’s spit her childhood into three 5 year age cohorts, followed by a final 2 year one. And let’s see what the numbers available have to say about how abuse risks differ between the two alternatives available to us, the YFZ ranch, and the Texas foster care system.
First, 0 – 5 cohort: Alternative one, the ranch. See any evidence of abuse of 0 to 5’s? Me neither. Not even the kind of unsubstantiated allegations you Texans seem so fond of passing off as evidence.
Then alternative 2; the Texas foster care system. Again, any known incidences of abuse? Oops! I don’t have accurate numbers, but there certainly seem to be enough cases out there to suggest the probability of abuse is non zero. If I’m wrong, please correct me.
So, assuming I’m not wrong about abuse incidences in state care, minimizing the probability of our little girl being sexually abused will, at least for the first five years of her life, require us to choose the ranch over the foster care system as a place for her to stay. Don’t you agree?
Now, let’s move on to the next cohort, 5 – 10. Same conclusion, right?
And the next, 10-15. More of the same.
And then, finally, we have the 15-17’s. Here, finally, there may be some evidence of abuse, assuming it’s defined as someone below 17 having sex with someone above 19, even at the ranch. So, maybe, when our little girl reaches 15, the ranch is no longer the safest place to stay out of the two alternatives. Or, maybe it is. For now, I simply don’t have enough data.
Until then, there is simply no numbers available indicating we are decreasing the girl’s risk of being sexually abused by removing her from her parents and putting her in a Texas foster care facility. In fact, available data suggests we are doing the exact opposite. And the same goes for all the other female children who have been removed.
And, for the males, a similar analysis appears even more lopsided. What you kind and caring Texans are supposedly ‘rescuing’ them from, is the fate of becoming sexual predators what, 20, 30, 35, 50 years from now? Until then, there are no data indicating living at the ranch poses any risk to them at all. While, again, there is ample evidence of risks associated with living in Texas foster care facilities.
So, even disregarding the undeniable abusiveness inherent in ripping young children away from their mothers and families, scattering them hither and yonder without even their siblings nearby, and making it as hard as possible for them to see the parents they so obviously long for; and assuming all you cared about was minimizing P(sexual abuse), you still, based on all proven and verified data available so far, would logically prefer the ranch over the Texas foster care system as a place to host the children, at least until way into their teens. Only for girls at least above 14 (and for ‘boys’ in their 20’s and above) do the numbers even leave room for debate.
That is if your concerns were actually about the children. If all you care about is simply winning internet arguments and slandering parents who by all accounts are decent fellow Texans, you can, of course, continue to spout off any nonsense you want.
Well TexasMom, since we all know that the liberal, er, progressive view of Austinites match the rest of Texas (NOT), that would seem to end the argument.
Unless they did a state-wide poll, it just covers Travis County and the surrounding area.
Bluesman,
I live in Williamson county which is the home of conservatism. Austin may be liberal err progressive, but we are your average conservative Texans and KXAN takes in a lot of us.
TBM
Was that 80% of the letters published?
...by the newspaper that has been CPS fans from the start.
Why am I thinking it was something like 4 of 5 published?
Maybe because TBM plays games with the words often?
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Regina:
First, if the act was passed (which I can't find a record of in either the U.S. Code or the Congressional Record), it doesn't mean that it will be held to be Constitutional. The Violence Against Women Act had similar language, but was deemed unconstitutional by the Supreme Court. The Federal Government may not exceed its limitations of the Constitution, regardless of the intent.
Second, if it was enacted (instead of just being proposed as it appears), it will be challenged, probably the first time that someone tries to file suit against a state employee under the provisions of the act.
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rericson,
your premise that the FLDS needs *any* change, even incremental change, is scientifically erroneous.
The only change that is needed is for America to learn from the FLDS and adopt many of their practices.
In the 1953 Short Creek raid, the entire community was tested for STDs.
Not a single person had a STD.
This is the only sizable community in the world that has ever been so tested and found lacking even a single case of STD.
Nature itself is the best judge of whether a community's practices are moral or not.
What's America's record?
* fornicate like animals
* are infested with STDs to the point that now MORE than 1/4 of all
teenage girls have STDs
* have 50% of your marriages end up in divorce
* have 37% of your babies out of wedlock and thus with no permanent
father present
* have MURDERED 31,000,000+ million babies
* have our malls and public schools increasingly cleared out (w/
bodybags) by sin-addled teens?
* and have created the most coarse sex and violent DEGRADED CULTure
known to man?
Puh-lease, rericson, America needs to be bowing down and WORSHIPPING FLDS in reverence to their Godly and Scriptural ways compared to our Lucifer-led society and its RESULTS outlined above.
Regarding TexasBluesMan, I hired an attorney many years ago that was a former Chief of Police. He explained to me that cops and criminals have the EXACT SAME MINDSET and world view and are simply CRIMINALS that got on the safe side of the GUN in order to protect themselves and keep themselves out of jail.
TBM is a criminal.
He's a cop.
By the way, I hired the attorney to get me off for too many speeding tickets when I was young and doing a ton of appointment-oriented driving for my job.
Regarding the anticipated claims that I am FLDS or LDS, I am not, nor ever have I been.
I am the grandson of a Pentecostal preacher and I'm a Scriptural Scholar.
So I guess, John Lester, you are saying that the answer to STDs is to wear really long hot underwear, even in summer, live in a society that imprisons women and makes sex slaves of little girls, and throw in a healthy dose of incest with Cousin Merrill and Uncle Rulon and Daddy Warren.
The result will be, instead of coping with STDs, the FLDS society will be coping with birth defects, genetic diseases, child molestation, child rape, welfare fraud, and little boys being raised by agencies that pick them up off the street, where the parents have tossed them.
You failed.
You failed because only answered one item in the long laundry list of social ills.
You further failed because of you silly and flippant 'arguments.'
You further failed because many of your arguments have actually been proven to be false. For example:
* imprisons women and makes sex slaves of little girls
FACT. the 3rd Circuit and now today the ACLU says 'NO EVIDENCE' of that. Apparently they haven't received your shipment of Carolyn's sensationalistic-for-profit fairy tale called 'Escape.'
* and throw in a healthy dose of incest with Cousin Merrill and Uncle Rulon and Daddy Warren
FACT. the 3rd Circuit and now today the ACLU says 'NO EVIDENCE' of that. Apparently they haven't received your shipment of Carolyn's sensationalistic-for-profit fairy tale called 'Escape.' By the way, if you're referring to first cousin marriages, which are practiced in the FLDS, that's legal in 20 states in the USA, including California and New York. And it's not prohibited in the Bible either in the long list of 'who you cannot do' without committing incest.
* birth defects, genetic diseases, and little boys being raised by agencies that pick them up off the street, where the parents have tossed them.
FACT. the 3rd Circuit and now today the ACLU says 'NO EVIDENCE' of that. Apparently they haven't received your shipment of Carolyn's sensationalistic-for-profit fairy tale called 'Escape.'
* welfare fraud
FACT. A Texas state official several weeks ago publicly testified and it was carried in all of the online media and the print newspapers that not even 1 person at the YFZ ranch had even applied for welfare, much less was receiving welfare, much less was receiving welfare fraudulently.
Now, which are you? grossly misinformed or a perjurer?
The 3rd Appeals decision related to a group of women and children. Small, in relation to the 10,000+ FLDS and not even all of the women and children taken from the ranch in TX.
Carolyn isn't the only one who notes welfare fraud, regarding the FLDS. Whether they've yet begun practicing in TX or not. AZ has been battling it for a long time. The AG has made numerous statements released the figures.
The FLDS lifestyle hasn't only been outlined by Carolyn and Flora. Brooke listed a number of books today. You should try reading one, johnlester.
Hey Blues, now that SCOT has bench slapped you for the second time in 7 days,
HOW DOES IT FEEL
to be exposed for the stupid redneck cop that you so obviously are?
*smirk*
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