What about the teenage girls that had the babies? Did they ever find out who the fathers were? Are they going to keep an eye on these children to make sure they are not being taken as a wife at the ripe old age of 14?

Oh boy...wow

unproven grounds of physical and sexual abuse? the fact that minor teenage girls were pregnant when they were seized and then gave birth afterwards, isn't proof enough?

I have to agree that this will only make the polygamists case stronger and we've now taken a few steps back from being able to help them.

cine was faster than me lol

Wow. I can't wait to see Nancy Grace's rage on TV tonight.

Bye everyone, I have to get my day started. Have a good day!

Right, because being forced to have babies at 14 totally doesn't constitute abuse in any way...

bye Kim!

I'm sure we haven't heard the last of this.

I don't know which is more frightening: The fact that these children were returned to their abusive compound or that the Texas Supreme Court is now more conservative than Texas law enforcement.

this is just beyond stupid and odd.. Abuse is written all over their faces.

I don't get your comment Racc.

Well, usually law enforcement is the more conservative of the two, except, apparently, when it comes to adhering to children's safety over the rights of ... frankly, I have no idea whose rights they are protecting. Maybe they see children as actual property.

plain and simple, cps overstepped their bounds. a bed and some pregnant teens (some of whom were actually adults)do not constitute abuse. i know that the sensationlization of this story has everyone up in arms. "oh my god the kids are pregnant" "oh my god abuse abuse abuse" but the fact is that if there were actual evidence of abuse, neither court would of returned those kids. the original call was hoax and no arrests were even made in that case. put it this way what if it were you? what if someone made a crank call about your home and cps came rushing in, saw some things that were "suspicious" and took your kids away? no warrant, no due process, nothing. when you look at it logically, there is really no legal reason to keep those kids away from their parents.

Well I'm gonna pull a Clinton and say it depends on what you think "abuse" is...

Flutter sounds right - law enforcement came in too quickly without solid enough evidence, setting everyone up for this. They bragged at one point that there was a mole in the compound, talked about the desperate phone call from a girl they never produced. I don't doubt that the compound is a troubled place, but now it's going to be worse and far more difficult to build a case.

Wow, I'm really surprised that the polygamists won. I don't really have anything against polygamists, that's their deal, but come on... Pregnant 14 year olds? Isn't that enough evidence?

I feel bad for the kids. I also feel bad for the women. They've all obviously been brain washed. I watched them on Larry King a couple of weeks ago and they were just so odd. I don't know. This is sad.

I am glad that the children are being returned to their families.

Personally, I don't condone the underage pregnancies. However, the solution to that isn't separating children from their mothers, in many cases, without cause.

The perfect example is the 22 year old who had her baby in custody and they took it from her. I haven't had a baby before, but seeing what my sister and friends feel about their children, I can only begin to imagine how completely devastating that must have been for mother and child alike.

Interesting I was under the understanding that CPS only needed strong evidence and not proof to remove children from a possibly abusive situation. But if no proof was ultimately found than the court was right in returning the children. I think both CPS and the Judiciary did their jobs.

they needed evidence that the kids were in immediate danger since their only evidence was an abused 16 year old that never materialized and the only things on sight were pregnant 14 year olds (most of whom ended up being at 16 if not adults all together) and a bed, those things didnt constitute the "immediate danger". believe me, the courts generally side with cps in these cases, if they say there isnt any evidence then there really isnt any evidence.

If it were me having recieved the call and finding minors who were pregnant on site I would want to know who the dady is. I also would have just removed the pregnant minors not the whole kit and kabudal.

I believe they jumped the gun on removing all children from the compound based on a call from a teenager alleging abuse, which last I heard had never come forward to substantiate the claim. There was no evidence that the babies and toddlers were being harmed. They need their parents, not to be house in some foster home. I don't agree with abuse and I hope law enforcement and the State of Texas will continue their investigation. I heard on NPR this morning that the Supreme Court suggested a better first step might have been to remove the men from the compound by issuing restraining orders rather than uprooting the children.

i agree with both roarman and hypnotic, its kind of beyond me why they chose to remove the children and not the men. generally in suspected sexual abuse cases, the men are asked to leave the home until the investigation is finished. the fact that they removed the children instead shows me that this had less to do with sexual abuse and more to do with a disagreement in the polygamous lifestyle.

Flutterpie is right. They had no right to take the kids. That is why the Texas government ruled the way they did. It is CPS that screwed up. This has nothing to do with being Liberal or Conservative.

It doesn't matter now, these people will get their kids back and flee and it will be all over.

Way to go Texas...

they should have removed the men from the compound. and questioned the women and children. it is the men who have created this bogus religion which allows them to have multiple underage wives and 'protect' the wives and girls from the outside world. sick

I just want to repeat that the existence of pregnant teenagers does not constitute evidence of a crime. If a minor impregnates a minor, no crime has been committed. It has to be proved that an adult impregnated a minor for there to be a crime. And, oh come on, we all KNOW that's what happened is not acceptable evidence in a court of law.

Furthermore, even if it has been proved that adults are preying on 14 year olds, that does not constitute imminent danger for two year olds. There is no legally valid reason to forcibly separate a nursing infant or even a ten year old from their mother because they live in a household where 14 year olds may be raped.

If they had any evidence at all, they would have been able to arrest and remove the offending men. Now that they've completely overstepped their bounds, it is going to be that much harder for the government to protect the children going forward.

CPS completely screwed this up and failed these kids and frankly I'm surprised that so many people are okay with that. Furthermore, if it is the case that the government was so agro in the face of zero evidence simply because they did not like the religion and lifestyle of these people, that should be very scary to a free society.

Since I haven't typed enough yet I want to add one more thing.

Furthermore, if it is the case that the government was so agro in the face of zero evidence simply because they did not like the religion and lifestyle of these people, that should be very scary to a free society.

Expanding on this...say that instead of fundamentalist LDS, this was a group of Muslims living in a compound. Say that instead of a fake call from an underage girl saying she'd been raped and others had too, the government received a fake call from an underage boy saying that he was being forced to train for and carry out terrorist acts. Say the government stormed the compound and forcibly removed all the children and sequestered the women. Say that instead of tenuous evidence like pregnant teenagers that could have been impregnated by adults they found tenuous evidence like legal guns that could be used to carry out terrorist acts. Would everybody still be ok with the government's actions? Or would some start to question whether the government really acted within these people's rights and whether or not the government was acting on it's own biases?

I read the Carolyn Jessop book "No Escape" and am currently reading "Stolen Innocence" the book by the girl who put Warren Jeffs in jail. I think there must be a lot that was sensationalized to sell books but even if a faction of the horrors writen in these books are true, than when the sect that was in Arizon under Jeffs control it was a horrible, abusive and horrific place to live. However, not much of the abuse depicted in the books are things that could be proved in a court of law. It is a lot of mind control and emotional abuse. A lot of the physical abuse the children endured was from their fathers' other wives and not the child's actual parents. Their are also accounts of sexual abuse done to the children by other children. Mostly older brothers.

That being said, I don't think the state of Texas had any right to remove the kids from the compound because there was no proof. There was only suspicion and since the FDLS can hide behind the guise of freedom of religion, you have to be careful. This is a also a society that teaches their members to fear the outside world from a young age. This will help them keep members. Now CNN is reporting that the FDLS compound members a registering hundreds of members to vote so that they can write sect members' names in on the ballots. Their will be enough of them to take control over the county since it is such a sparsly populated area.

Texas has created a mess. If there is abuse, how will they ever get the kids out now?

Kastarte, nice summation.

kasarte-the judge is doing everything possible to ensure that the kids do not get lost in the system. she wants to them to be unable to leave the state until the investigation is over and she wants cps to be able to pop by whenever they want. while i was againist the kids being taken, i do think that they child abuse investigation should continue. it concerns me though becuase

whoops because cps can prolong this thing for an indefinite amount of time, just because they disagree with their religion.