State requests foster care for 8 FLDS children
(CNN) — Texas child welfare officials on Tuesday asked a court to order foster care for eight children at a polygamous compound, saying their mothers have refused to limit the children’s contact with men suspected of being involved in underage marriages.
Child Protective Services officials also asked the court to end cases for 32 children after finding no evidence that their families engaged in underage marriages.
The agency has been investigating the Yearning for Zion Ranch in Eldorado since April, when it raided the compound and seized more than 400 children on allegations of physical and sexual abuse.
The ranch is run by members of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which separated from the mainstream Mormon church in the 1890s over the practice of polygamy.
In June, the Texas Supreme Court ordered the children returned, saying the state had no right to remove them because it did not prove the children faced imminent danger of abuse on the ranch.
Since then, the mothers of girls ages 10 to 17 have been asked by Child Protective Services to sign safety plans to protect their children from sexual abuse, officials said.
For children who lived in a home with a man who married underage girls or agreed to an arranged marriage of an underage daughter, the safety plans include a requirement to keep the children away from that man, officials said in a statement Tuesday.
