FLDS teen refuses to say where baby is

SAN ANGELO, Texas — A teenage member of a polygamist sect refused Tuesday to tell a judge where her baby is so authorities can collect a DNA sample and determine whether she was illegally married off to an adult.

The girl repeatedly refused at a court hearing to answer the judge and attorneys for Texas Child Protective Services about the infant's whereabouts.

"She is living out of state. ... I just don't want anyone to know where she is," said the 17-year-old, who was wearing a dark blue prairie dress and her hair braided back, the typical style of female members of the Fundamentalist LDS Church.

The hearing was halted as attorneys for both sides met in the judge's chambers Tuesday afternoon to decide what to do next.

State officials believe the girl was married to an FLDS man when she was 14, attorney John Dolezal said in the Nov. 14 motion requesting a court order. In Texas, someone under the age of 17 generally cannot consent to sex with an adult.

The motion says the girl gave birth June 14, less than two weeks after she and the other 438 children taken from the sect's Yearning For Zion Ranch in Eldorado were returned from foster care to their parents. CPS collected DNA from all the children swept from the ranch in April, but the baby was born after the teen mother was returned to her parents.

The Texas Supreme Court ruled in May that the state had overreached in placing all the children in foster care when it could show no more than a handful of teenage girls had been abused. The children were returned in early June, and only one, a teenage girl whose mother wouldn't cooperate with child welfare authorities, has been returned to foster care.

All but 36 of the children's cases have been dropped from court oversight.

Twelve FLDS men have now been indicted on charges related to underage marriages and bigamy.

The FLDS church is a breakaway sect of the The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which renounced polygamy more than a century ago.