first thoughts  Angela Lehman-Rios  

The ongoing story of the children removed from the Texas ranch of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints troubles me.
I disagree wholeheartedly with the sect’s approach to marriage, gender roles and religion. But what is gained by subjecting hundreds of children to the fear and uncertainty that accompanies separation from their parents?
When the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services removed 416 children from the ranch in early April, 139 women chose to come along. At first, the women and children were housed as a group. In the following weeks, the DFPS placed children in licensed foster care facilities throughout the region, making some effort to preserve sibling groups, keep infants with adult mothers, and keep minors with children together with their children.
Further hearings on the matter will happen in May after this issue goes to press. But recent reports from mental health workers who helped care for the women and children suggest that the situation was mishandled.
There was no immediate need to separate children and mothers, the mental health workers reported, and the children did not exhibit typical signs of abuse such as withdrawal and depression.
Instead, the children were “well-socialized and well-behaved” wrote one worker. “Sweet and well-mannered,” wrote another. They “appeared to be healthy and well-nourished.” The mothers were “incredibly loving and patient with the children,” who “obeyed their mothers” the report said.
Yet there’s no denying these children come from a world that—at the very least—shows little respect for marriage laws; a world in which most girls are made to marry and bear children at very young ages, younger than what is considered emotionally healthy by the rest of the country and younger than what may be physically healthy for some girls.
It also seems that their lives at the ranch were limited by the misogynistic, self-aggrandizing visions of church leaders. Without fully realizing it, these children were being raised without the basic freedoms of movement and of thought that most of us take for granted. And that is a kind of maltreatment almost impossible to pin down and prosecute.
Unfortunately, by acting so broadly, the Texas DFPS may have made matters worse.
If the court finds no legal reason for permanently removing the children from the ranch, they will return, 400+ minds made up that the state is a destroyer, not a savior. It will be much less likely that these children will ever consider any kind of life other that the one circumscribed by their church.
I will be reading and watching with interest as the case proceeds. I can only hope that everyone on both sides recognizes the vital importance for children to be around people who love them, to have stability and certainty in their lives. After all, if the state is going to act as heavy-handedly as the church, in the name of the children’s best interests, it better be certain what those best interests are.

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