Emancipation Bill Could Help 'Lost' Youth
 
The Associated Press
KUTV Channel 2
 
Teenagers who want at age 16 to be emancipated from their parents will be able to do so under a bill advanced unanimously Thursday by the House Health and Human Services Committee.

Sponsored by Rep. Roz McGee, D-Salt Lake City, the bill would set up a legal procedure for emancipation, something that currently doesn't exist in Utah law. It would also and set the criteria under which minors would have to prove they could take care of themselves.

"We do find a fair number of youth in the homeless population that because of their circumstances are either no longer welcome or may have fled from their homes that are in need of services, but they cannot access them," said McGee. "They may have stayed in school, they may have jobs and be managing fairly well on their own ... but their legal status is fuzzy."

The bill, which now moves to the full House for consideration, will clear that up, she said. If it passes, Utah would be the 25th state to offer emancipation. Between 12 and 15 children are expected to seek emancipation each year, according to research collected by McGee.

The bill could do a lot to help young men from Hildale, Utah, who have become known as the "Lost Boys" after being kicked out of Hildale, where leaders of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints control the community, Attorney General Mark Shurtleff said.

In recent years about 400 teenage boys between the ages of 13 and 17 have been kicked out of Hildale because the church, which practices polygamy, is eliminating the "competition" for wives, Shurtleff said.

"They are truly lost in every sense of the word," Shurtleff said, noting that most have never lived outside the southern Utah border town. "They have no ability to succeed."

And without their parents, the boys have had no ability to enroll in school, open bank accounts, get a driver's license or obtain medical care or most social services. They don't qualify legally for foster care because currently the courts require a parent to participate in a relinquishment of rights.

"And that brings scrutiny on the parents, and the boys say they don't want us to do that," Shurtleff said, because that could bring consequences upon their families from FLDS church leaders.

The bill would also close a gap for other kids with tumultuous family situations, where the level of abuse or neglect isn't extreme enough for the state to step in.

What the bill won't do is allow every "16-year-old mad at her parents to leave home," said Rep. Lorie Fowlke, R-Orem, an attorney who practices family law. Over 12 years practicing law, Fowlke said she'd only once been asked to figure out how to help a young person achieve emancipation.

"It's very difficult when there is no statutory framework," she said.
 
KUTV.com
Originally published January 19, 2006
 
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