Via The Headmistress, Zookeeper at The Common Room:

AUSTIN, Texas (KXAN) — The Third Court of Appeals has ruled that Child Protective Services did not have the right to remove children from the Yearning for Zion ranch last month.

The ruling comes as a result of a document filed by Texas RioGrande Legal Aid last month. The TRLA is the largest provider of legal aid in Texas, on behalf of 48 FLDS mothers that TRLA is representing in their child custody cases.

I’ve been following the case of the FLDS families whose children, as far as I’m concerned, were kidnapped by the State of Texas and DFPS. Thanks, Headmistress, for keeping me and many other concerned citizens updated on what’s happening with the child custody cases for these families.

In addition to being concerned about the 400+ children of the FLDS families who were forcibly removed from their homes and then separated from their fathers, then mothers, then siblings, and transported all across the state of Texas to children’s homes that were admittedly unprepared to care for them, I’ve been quite concerned about the future ramifications of this raid and power grab by CPS. When analyzing court decisions and law enforcement actions, some people are quite fond of talking about how this or that decision can have a “chilling effect” on the free exercise of some right or privilege, i.e. the arrest and prosecution of child pornographers might have a chilling effect on the exercise of free speech.

Well, I think the Yearning For Zion Raid and Kidnapping of 2008 will have a chilling effect on a lot of things that we as free citizens might not want to have chilled. First of all, the leadership of the FLDS was already somewhat anti-government and privacy-obsessed, having already experienced a similar raid and prosecution in the 1950’s in their community along the Arizona/Utah border. The entire community, Short Creek, was taken into custody, including 236 children. Most of the parents were released when no case of having committed any crime could be made against them, and most of the children were returned . . two years later. (Read more here.) Anyway, FLDS leaders and educators have kept the memory of the Short Creek Raid alive and have basically warned the FLDS flock that the same thing was likely to happen again, that they could expect persecution for their faith. Now, they’ve been confirmed in their image of themselves as a persecuted faithful minority, and they will be much less likely to talk to outsiders, ask for help in coming out of the group, or do or say anything that might be construed to be in any way questioning of FLDS doctrine or teaching. As the Headmistress says, “Imagine somebody is abused and would like to ask for help. Having seen how CPS has acted on the basis of one lying phone call from somebody who doesn’t even know the community, chances are good that some victims of abuse will decide the slash and burn response of CPS and the attempted destruction of their entire community is not worth it, and they will sacrifice themselves on the altar and keep quiet for the sake of their friends and neighbors.”

However, it’s not only the FLDS who are being “chilled.” In the past ten years I have seen and talked to several families who decided not to take a child to the doctor for a minor injury because they were afraid that the doctor would question them about how the injury took place and then report them to CPS. They had valid fears even though none of them had done anything wrong. I have also seen CPS workers abuse the mother of a child who drowned in a tragic backyard swimming pool accident by telling her that she must be an unfit mother and asking her repeatedly if she ever drank alcohol to excess or took drugs because she was so tired from parenting all those children, implying that she was drunk or drugged when her child drowned. I am close to two other cases in which CPS took the word of a disgruntled informant and almost removed children from loving, non-abusive homes where there was absolutely no evidence of physical abuse. The parents in both of those cases had to take parenting classes and become CPS yes-men in order to keep their children in their own homes.

I am saying that this case, in which there may have been a minority of people participating in illegal acts (sex with a minor), will have a chilling effect on the investigation of all possible child abuse cases and will have a chilling effect on law-abiding parents who want to seek medical care for their children. I am hesitant to take my child to a doctor I don’t know for an emergency in which the injury might be misconstrued as child abuse and in which there were no witnesses aside from immediate family. If my child really needed medical care and our family doctor who knows us was unavailable, I would swallow my fears and go in prayer. However, if the decision was borderline/iffy . . .

THe Texas Department of Family and Protective Services has made a mess of this entire situation, and the sooner the children are returned to their homes, the better. Maybe, in another fifty years parents and children in Texas will forget to be afraid of DFPS and look to them to protect children and families. I doubt the FLDS children will ever forget April, 2008.