FLDS custody hearings start today in Texas

SAN ANGELO, Texas — The first court hearings begin today to decide if the parents of hundreds of children taken in the raid on the Fundamentalist LDS Church's YFZ Ranch will get their children back or be permanently separated.

Status hearings will be held for each family, which will be given family service plans that outline the allegations of abuse and offer recommendations on what it will take for reunification.

"There will be discussion regarding what the agency and parents are trying to do together in an attempt to have the children safely returned to the parents' care at some point," said Marleigh Meisner, a spokeswoman for the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services.

Five judges will work all day to wade through the hundreds of cases, grouped together by mother. Clerks have cleared the courthouse docket for the next three weeks to focus solely on what has been declared the nation's largest-ever child custody case.

The hearings are not expected to immediately reunite the children with their parents.

"The issue ... will not be visited at these hearings," said Cynthia Martinez with the Texas Rio Grande Legal Aid Society, which is representing dozens of FLDS mothers.

Some of the children on today's docket were reportedly fathered by FLDS leader Warren Jeffs.

Family plans

Numerous family service plans obtained by the Deseret News are essentially identical, from the allegations of abuse to the requirements for the parents to be reunited with their children.

"Interviews with underage girls at the ranch revealed a pattern of underage girls being 'spiritually united' with adult men and having children with these men," the plans say. "The department's investigation has found an apparent practice of training young girls to submit to this behavior and training young boys that when they become adults it is appropriate for them to become perpetrators, which conduct constitutes sexual and mental and emotional abuse."

CPS claims a large number of girls, ages 14-17, have children, are pregnant or both. Several children have or have had suspicious broken bones, and CPS said there are indications of possible sexual abuse of young boys.

Lawyers for FLDS parents have objected to the blanket declarations of abuse on the YFZ Ranch.