Children in FLDS Compund are "Not Safe at This Time"
 Testimony continues in San Angelo
 
By Jim Forsyth
WOAI NewsRadio 1200 - San Antonio, Texas
Warren Jeffs

An investigator for Texas Child Protective Services told a judge in San Angelo today that 'specific men' in the polygamist compound raided by state police two weeks ago are ‘suspected perpetrators of child abuse’ and Angie Voss testified that the 416 children who were removed from the sprawling Yearning for Zion Ranch should not be returned to their homes on the ranch.

"I don’t believe the children are safe at this time," Voss said. There is a culture of young girls becoming pregnant by much older men."

Tom Green County State District Judge Barbara Walther’s courtroom was not the scene of chaos on the second day of what is believed to be the largest single child custody hearing in American history as it was on day one, as fewer attorneys and fewer reporters jammed the courthouse and an overflow room set up two blocks away.

Lawyers for CPS rested their case at mid afternoon, after questioning child psychiatrist Dr. Bruce Perry, who is an expert on children in traumatic situations. One of the cases he handed was the Branch Davidian compound near Waco, where more than eighty people, including several children, died in a fire fifteen years ago tomorrow. He testified that the ‘authoritarian culture’ which exists in communities like the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints compound near El Dorado is bad for young girls and young boys.

"As they grow up, there is a high probability that the boys on the ranch will become sexual abusers down the road," Perry testified.

Perry said, however, that the mothers 'appear to be loving,' and the conditions at the YFZ ranch appear to be 'healthy.'

Lawyers for the church and the parents questioned Dr. John Walsh, who described himself as an expert on the FLDS church. He said ‘spiritual marriage’ between older men and young girls is not a tenant of the breakaway Mormon faith, but is a product of imprisoned church leader Warren Jeffs.

"The church generally expels members who engage in extramarital sex," Walsh said.

Walsh said underage marriage is not common in the FLDS, which does not have a tenet calling for older men to marry underaged girls.

Walther had indicated that she wanted to conclude testimony at 4 this afternoon, but proceedings are continuing into the evening for the second straight day.

Lawyers for the mothers say they are frustrated by the proceedings.

"It is difficult to get to the facts of the case when I don’t have the typical documentation you would have on the family," said Susan Hays, one of the lawyers, who says she represents several children and mothers. "I don’t have access to a father. I don’t have access to any type of records that may exist. I think CPS has them, I don’t know yet. I just hope we can get to some kind of resolution which will make these children save and happy."

The children are now living on cots or in baby cribs in the San Angelo Convention Center.

Flora Jessop, a former member of the FLDS who now leads a group which counsels women and children who want to break away from the sect told reporters the children are trained to be compliant.

"I have had some of the children say to me, ‘you say you care, but you really don’t, because you don’t hit me’."
 
radio.woai.com
Originally published Friday, April 18, 2008
 
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