Committee Considers FLDS Raid

OPEN IMAGE GALLERY

Construction in 2005 on the temple at the FLDS compound (by Photo courtesty of the Eldorado Success)

The Texas House Human Services Committee today will hear invited testimony related to the state's response last spring to allegations of abuse inside the West Texas compound of the Mormon breakaway sect the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

The sect, led by imprisoned polygamist prophet Warren Jeffs, moved to Texas in 2003, where it has built a large compound, included the sect's first-ever temple, outside the town of Eldorado. Last year investigators with the state's Child Protective Services, and dozens of law enforcement officers with the Dept. of Public Safety and the Schleicher Co. Sheriff's Office raided the FLDS compound, claiming they'd received a call from a 16-year-old woman who said she lived on the compound and had been married off against her will as the seventh wife of a 50-year-old man.

With just that "evidence" in hand, officials took more than 400 children from the so-called Yearning for Zion ranch. Officials never found the teenager and quickly officials learned that the call was likely a hoax.

The state still claimed it was right to have taken the children. The courts, however, disagreed. Texas' Third Court of Appeals ruled that CPS did not provide specific evidence to suggest so many children on the ranch were facing imminent danger to their health or physical safety. Since then, all but one child (the alleged child bride of sect prophet Jeffs) has been returned to the custody of parents.

Although the raid (and its aftermath) was a public relations fiasco for child protection officials, they have publicly said they did everything right -- and, it seems, would do the same again. How that flies in committee should be interesting to see.

The Human Services Committee meets today at 10:30a in room E2.016.