Officials plan to group FLDS kids in homes

ELDORADO, Texas — Children taken from the Fundamentalist LDS Church's YFZ Ranch could he placed in foster homes in a matter of days.

"To make this transition as smooth as possible, we're going to try to keep these children in groups," Shari Pulliam of the Texas Department of Family Services said Saturday. "We're going to keep the teenage girls and their children together, the siblings together as much as possible."

Child welfare workers said they would also make an effort to be culturally sensitive to the 416 children who come from a fundamentalist background and will end up in foster homes here in the Bible Belt.

"That's why we're going to place in groups, where they'll worship as they're used to," Pulliam said. "We're working to not put them in places that will expose them to mainstream culture too quickly. We're treading lightly and with caution in our placements."

It still won't be home, said attorneys appointed to represent the children in what is turning into the nation's biggest-ever custody battle.

As some attorneys met with their clients being housed in the San Angelo Coliseum on Saturday, other guardians ad litem toured the sprawling YFZ Ranch as the sun baked down on the west Texas prairie.

"We're just having time with our attorneys," an FLDS man told reporters gathered outside the ranch gates. "The attorneys are requesting some private time with their clients."

Susan Hays, a Dallas attorney acting as a guardian ad litem for a little girl taken from the YFZ Ranch, left the ranch impressed.

"These people can build houses. It's an amazing facility, amazing construction," she said Saturday. "These aren't poor kids living in trailers. They're huge buildings, very clean and, frankly, they're a lot better conditions than the children are living in right now inside the coliseum."

Some of the children taken from the YFZ Ranch are being housed in nearby San Angelo, where they are sleeping on cots in what some of the FLDS have said are very cramped conditions. Attorneys have complained that they have had to conduct interviews with their clients in horse barns.

Patricia Deveau, a San Antonio attorney representing a 9-year-old boy, said the YFZ Ranch was a beautiful, self-sustaining community.

"I wanted to meet my child's father and see where he's been living so I can complete my own investigation," she said. "I was impressed with how self-sustaining this community is. I had no idea. It was an education for me."

Hays said it was sad to walk through a huge home that was completely empty.