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No Comments [ Add Comment ]Sept. trial set for polygamist sect custody case
SAN ANGELO, Texas -- A jury trial will be held in September to determine whether a 14-year-old allegedly married to jailed polygamist sect leader Warren Jeffs should permanently remain in state custody.
Texas District Judge Barbara Walther on Thursday ordered a Sept. 28 trial for the parents of the girl, who was shown in photos and church records as marrying the leader of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints when she was 12, the San Angelo Standard-Times reported in online editions.
Texas child welfare authorities have asked to keep the girl, in foster care since August, permanently in their care. They argue her mother, Barbara Jessop, refused to guarantee the girl's safety.
Her father was indicted for allegedly performing the marriage between the girl and Jeffs, who was convicted as an accomplice to rape in Utah and awaits trial on other charges related to underage marriages in Arizona and Texas.
The trial on the 14-year-old's custody will be held in San Angelo after attorneys waived a constitutional requirement that the trial take place in Schleicher County, which has a historic courthouse without air conditioning.
The girl is the only one of 439 children taken from the Yearning For Zion Ranch in April to return to foster care. The children, part of one of the largest custody cases in U.S. history, were in state custody for about two months before the state Supreme Court ruled Texas authorities had overreached.
The FLDS is a breakaway sect of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which renounced polygamy more than a century ago.
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