Sect Hearing in Texas Descends Into Disorder
By Associated Press | April 18, 2008
SAN ANGELO, Texas — A court hearing to decide the fate of the 416 children swept up in a raid on a West Texas polygamist sect descended into disorder yesterday, with hundreds of lawyers in two packed buildings shouting objections and Judge Barbara Walther struggling to maintain order.
At issue was an attempt by the state of Texas to strip the parents of custody and place the children in foster homes because of evidence they were being physically and sexually abused by the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, a renegade Mormon splinter group suspected of forcing underage girls into marriage with older men. The case is one of the biggest child-custody hearings in American history.
