Alleged child bride to move

SAN ANGELO, Texas — An alleged child bride of jailed polygamist sect leader Warren Jeffs will be allowed to leave foster care and live with a distant relative, a judge ruled Thursday.

Texas District Judge Barbara Walther agreed to allow the 14-year-old girl — the only child from the Yearning For Zion Ranch remaining in foster care — to move in with the relative next week. Although some of the records in the case are sealed, the relative does not live at the ranch or in nearby San Angelo, said Child Protective Services spokesman Patrick Crimmins.

"CPS is comfortable with the placement, and the judge obviously was comfortable with it because she approved it," he said.

The agency will continue to oversee her case and monitor visits with her mother until a Sept. 9 hearing, where the girl could be permanently placed with the relative.

The girl, allegedly married to Jeffs shortly after her 12th birthday, was placed back in foster care last August.

She had been among the 439 children returned to their parents in June after the Texas Supreme Court ruled that the state's decision to sweep all the Fundamentalist LDS children into foster care was overly broad.

Walther, however, ordered the girl back into foster care after her mother, Barbara Jessop, refused to guarantee the girl's safety during a tense court hearing.

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