State Completes DNA Testing for Polygamist Sect Kids
All children have had DNA testing and will be placed in foster homes.
April 23, 2008— -- Texas officials have finished DNA testing on more than 400 children taken from a polygamist community, opening the way for the children to be sent to foster homes, officials said today.
The court-ordered testing began Monday at the San Angelo Coliseum, with the purpose of helping to untangle the complicated family tree within the sprawling West Texas polygamist compound.
More than 100 of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints children were moved into temporary foster homes Tuesday, according to the state Child Protective Services. By the end of the week, the rest of the 337 children will likely be placed in temporary foster homes scattered across the state — and be introduced to a social system they may not understand.
No children are going to be moved until after a court hearing this afternoon, in which Judge Barbara Walther will consider a request by some of the mothers to keep nursing children with their mothers.
Walther on Tuesday signed an order saying the children, who were taken from the sect's Yearning for Zion ranch more than two weeks ago, should be immediately placed in temporary foster homes.
Walther's order said officials would attempt to place siblings together and said underage mothers will be placed with their children.
"Based on the specialized needs of this population, information has already been shared about their background and culture with the facilities where they have been placed," the order said.
But those children will face a dramatic adjustment in their new homes, scattered across 10 cities from Amarillo to the Gulf Coast. "All of the staff are trained on how to be culturally sensitive and respectful of the children's needs and different beliefs," said Sherry Loyd of the St. PJ's children's home.
Many of the childrens' lawyers and advocates are outraged. "They are being treated like they are a herd of cattle, that each of them believes the same, that their families are the same and that their interests are identical and they are not," said Polly O'Tooley, one of the lawyers for the children.
Walther ordered DNA tests last week for all 437 children and their parents after state child protection officials, and some lawyers, complained that the children often gave multiple names and may have lied about their ages.
Last week, about two dozen teenage boys were placed in temporary foster care at a boy's ranch about 400 miles away from their home. That ranch has been cited four times in the past year by the state department of Family and Protective Services for violations such as failing to report an injury in a timely manner, according to the department's Web site.
Child welfare officials have said that the children should remain in state custody because they would be at risk of physical or sexual abuse if they are returned to their parents at the Yearning for Zion Ranch.
State prosecutors have argued that the church encourages underage marriages and births, subjecting children to sexual abuse or the imminent risk of abuse, charges that church leaders deny.
A child protective services supervisor, Angie Voss, testified last week that children from the sect reported that no age was too young to get married and that they would get married whenever the church's "prophet" told them to.