Why The Texas Supreme Court’s Ruling Regarding the FLDS Mothers Is Significantly More Protective of the Children Involved than the Media Have Painted It To Be

by Marci Hamilton for findlaw

Recently, the Texas Supreme Court affirmed the state’s Third Circuit appellate court’s ruling that Child Protective Services (CPS) lacked adequate evidence to justify taking all of the children from the FLDS’s Yearning for Zion compound. However, as I will explain, there are significant differences between the two rulings, which bode well for the endangered children of the FLDS.

The Texas Supreme Court Affirms that CPS Has Ongoing Jurisdiction

The lower appellate court’s decision might have been interpreted as divesting CPS of any ongoing involvement, for the court did not make it clear what role it thought either CPS or Judge Walther might play in the future. Accordingly, that decision was misread by some as a complete vindication of the parents and as an order to return the children to the compound as soon as possible. That is certainly how the public relations people for the FLDS played it. Indeed, they tried to go further and convince the news media that the decision showed that there never was any abuse in the first place. They were wrong.

The Texas Supreme Court made it clear that CPS’s investigation of abuse was far from over. Indeed, it made a point of listing the means by which the district court could further protect the children, even as they were permitted to return to the compound. The court pointed out that the Texas Family Code permitted the court “broad authority” to prohibit the removal of the children from a designated geographical area, to direct the removal of an alleged perpetrator from a child’s home, and to issue orders assisting CPS in its investigation. Then the court pointedly stated that the “Code prohibits interference with an investigation, and a person who relocates a residence or conceals a child with the intent to interfere with an investigation commits an offense.” Finally, the decision ended with the blunt statement that the appellate decision below “did not conclude the [CPS] proceedings.” CPS then followed up in the lower court with a number of suggested conditions for release that would further the ends of preventing relocation or concealment. (Judge Walther subsequently approved an agreement between the parties consistent with the limitations approved in the Supreme Court’s opinion. The parents may not take their children out of Texas, must keep the court informed of each child’s location, and may not interfere with further investigation, among other requirements.)

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Marci Hamilton gives us an op-ed about the shocking statistics of child abuse and progress being made in her home state of Pennsylvania.

No one wants to think about child sex abuse if they don’t have to. I can think of a thousand things I wold rather think about. But once good people learn the truth about such abuse, it is impossible to put out of mind.

Experts indicate that 20% of boys and 25% of girls are sexually abused – with only 10% ever going to the authorities. The suffering of victims is extraordinary, and typically leads to addictions, lifelong difficulties with personal relationships, broken families, and suicide.

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They are not very convincing, actually. Marci Hamilton takes a scathing look at how ridiculous some of them sound, especially to the victims of childhood sexual abuse.

Marci Hamilton

As the second half of Justice Denied: What America Must Do to Protect Its Children (Cambridge 2008) documents, there are powerful lobbies opposed to giving survivors of childhood sexual abuse their day in court. The most powerful are the insurance lobby and the hierarchy of the Roman Catholic Church.

I work with many survivors of child sex abuse, who find the opposition’s arguments very painful. It is worth a moment to look at the arguments against Statutes of Limitations [SOL] reform from their eyes. (There are other arguments, including ones I have made, out there, but I want to focus for today on the survivors themselves.)

Here are three standard arguments made against SOL reform and the survivors’ response.

Opposition: In Colorado, some legislators were persuaded that SOL reform is a bad idea, because fewer people will serve on nonprofit boards due to increased liability for child abuse.

The survivors: Wait a minute—did you just say that the needs of voluntary board members of nonprofits are more important than justice for sex abuse survivors? And more important than identifying perpetrators to the public to protect children in the future? This is the sort of priority-setting that makes survivors feel almost as alienated as they feel when they learn that the SOL for their claims expired before they got to court.

Opposition: SOL reform will “bankrupt” the Roman Catholic Church.

From the Church’s survivors: So the current wealth of the Church – illustrated by the enormous and elaborate cathedral recently built in Los Angeles (which has been dubbed Taj Mahony after Los Angeles Cardinal Roger Mahony) – is more important than bringing healing to the thousands of survivors of clergy abuse? From the incest survivors: What does the protection of your wealth have to do with me?

Opposition: SOL reform is all about obtaining money for greedy trial lawyers.

The survivors: Can you even see me over here? I’m the one bringing suit. I’m the one who needs vindication and my day in court. If it weren’t for the trial lawyers, who took these cases for years when the law was solidly against us, I would have no voice today.

If the opponents to SOL reform could hear how their arguments sound to the victims of child sex abuse, they might just come to understand how frivolous those arguments are when compared to the needs of sex abuse survivors.

I’m not saying they will – just suggesting they should.

Marci Hamilton is a top expert in US church-state relations. She is also involved in another passionate fight — the abolishing of Statues of Limitations for victims of childhood sexual abuse — laws which wind up protecting some of the most dangerous offenders.

She’ll be keeping us up to speed on important developments and decisions on Wednesdays.

A Crawford County, PA, prosecutor took the first steps toward charging a priest pedophile this week and then abruptly withdrew the charge. Why? Certainly not because of a failure of proof. The victim’s claims were credible, and the victim was very supportive of the prosecution. The reason was that the statute of limitations had run.

The prosecutor first filed the charges in light of a recent Pennsylvania law that had extended the date a survivor of child sexual abuse could file charges to age 50. The victim was under 50 and, therefore, the thought was that his criminal charges could be the basis for prosecution.

Unfortunately, the new Pennsylvania law did not and could not make it possible for him to file charges, because the statute of limitations on these crimes had expired long before the extension to age 50. And once a criminal statute of limitations runs, no amount of lawmaking will revive the claim, according to the United States Supreme Court in Stogner v. California.

So now what does this survivor do?

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