FLDS mother gives birth in state custody

Another child has been born to a woman taken into Texas custody in the raid on the Fundamentalist LDS Church's YFZ Ranch.

The 22-year-old woman gave birth to a baby boy about noon Monday.

"There was a birth," said Texas Department of Family and Protective Services spokeswoman Marleigh Meisner. "That's all I can tell you for now."

Rod Parker, a Salt Lake City attorney who is acting as a spokesman for the FLDS Church, said Child Protective Services workers are filing legal motions to take the child into state custody, even moving the mother from the shelter where she has been staying in Austin — to a shelter in San Antonio.

"This has become an issue of winning at all costs for them," he said.

The birth of this child brings the number of FLDS children in state protective custody to 465. There are a number of young women the FLDS insists are adults, but Texas Child Protective Services workers say are minors.

On April 29, another FLDS mother in state custody, Pamela Jeffs, gave birth to a baby boy in San Marcos, Texas. That child was placed in state protective custody with his mother. Parker said Jeffs is 18, but CPS officials believe she is underage.

Last month's raid on the YFZ Ranch was prompted by a phone call from someone claiming to be a 16-year-old "Sarah," who said she was pregnant and in an abusive marriage to an older man. When child welfare workers responded to the Eldorado ranch with law enforcement, they said they found evidence of other abuse.

That prompted a judge to order the removal of all of the children from the YFZ Ranch. They have since been placed in foster care facilities scattered across Texas. Hearings on the status of those children are scheduled to begin next week.

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E-mail: bwinslow@desnews.com