Judge says state gets sect girl, 14
Posted on Wednesday, August 20, 2008
SAN ANGELO, Texas — A 14-year-old girl purportedly married to jailed polygamist sect leader Warren Jeffs with her parents’ blessing at age 12 was ordered back into foster care Tuesday by a Texas judge.
District Judge Barbara Walther said “uncontroverted evidence of the underage marriage” existed and the girl’s mother, Barbara Jessop, refused to guarantee the girl’s safety. The girl, shown in photographs submitted to the court kissing Jeffs, must immediately enter foster care.
Her 11-year-old brother, whom Texas child-welfare authorities also wanted placed in foster care, will be allowed to stay with his mother but will have to undergo psychological evaluation in the next month.
The girl’s case marked the first in which Child Protective Services returned to foster care a child who lived at the Yearning For Zion Ranch in Eldorado before the April raid that resulted in 440 children being placed in foster care for six weeks. The Texas Supreme Court later struck down that earlier placement, saying the state failed to show any more than a handful of teenage girls might have been abused.
The children were returned to their parents in June. Since then, the child-welfare agency has asked for custody of seven children, including the 14-year-old girl and her brother. It sought the dismissal of cases concerning 76 children, including nine who have turned 18. The rest of the cases remain under investigation.
Lawyers reached settlements Tuesday before hearings were held on the other children whom the state had sought to return to foster care. The five girls in those cases can stay with their mothers, provided the women restrict contact with men accused of being involved in underage marriages and comply with other, more routine custody-related court orders.
The agreements technically put the children in state custody, but the state has agreed to let them stay with their mothers as long as they comply with the agreements.
In the case of the 14-year-old, Walther said she felt she had to place the girl in foster care because Jessop “was unable to provide assurances that she’d be able to protect the child in the future.” On Monday, Jessop refused to answer roughly 50 questions asked by attorneys for Child Protective Services, including what constituted abuse, the names of her children and her relationship with their father.
Her attorney, Gonzalo Rios, said she was exercising her right against self-incrimination because of the continuing criminal investigation. Two of her husband’s sons have been indicted on charges of sexual assault of a child, as has Jeffs.
Jessop is married to Fredrick “Merril” Jessop, who according to court documents blessed several underage marriages. He did not attend the hearing and has not provided a court-ordered DNA sample.
Sect spokesman Willie Jessop said no marriages have been conducted for two years, and the church has said it will refuse to bless any unions involving underage girls.
The sect believes polygamy brings glory in heaven. It is a breakaway sect of the mainstream Mormon church, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which renounced polygamy more than a century ago.
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