Authors: Sam Brower
CHAPTER 37
Judge Barbara Walther of the Fifty-first District Court of Texas appeared undeterred by the reversal of the appeals courts, or by the complicated legal docket that she would have to navigate on both the civil and criminal sides of the looming behemoth FLDS situation. As a child in the 1950s, she was a victim of polio, which impaired her ability to walk. She still wears a leg brace. Out of earshot, the merciless FLDS apologists insultingly referred to her as “the gimp.” She had been on the bench in West Texas for sixteen years, and there was never any doubt about who was in charge of her courtroom. As the coming months unfolded, Judge Walther would prove more than capable of handling this avalanche of cases.
But Schleicher County had neither the staff nor the resources to undertake such a monumental task of prosecution by itself and asked for state help. Texas attorney general Greg Abbot took charge of investigating the massive amount of evidence surfacing from the YFZ raid. Deputy Attorney General Eric Nichols was appointed lead prosecutor, and at his side would be the highly experienced Angela Goodwin, who was not only a veteran deputy attorney general, but was also a special assistant U.S. attorney.
The difference between the aggressive law enforcement officials and the bureaucrats handling the civil side of the matter was startling. The Texas Department of Public Safety and Attorney General Abbot wanted to put criminals in prison for crimes against children. In contrast, the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services and the CPS flipflopped and seemed just to want to rid themselves of the untidy mess.
The DNA testing ordered by the judge was a prime example. It was logical to positively identify the parents before handing a kid back. There was no other reliable way to establish family relationships within the insular cult. Both mother and father would have to furnish a DNA sample and prove parentage before being allowed custody. A mobile lab was set up to collect the samples free of charge. Beyond the DNA match, a positive form of identification would be required before a child went back under parental custody.
In retrospect, it is difficult to determine who disliked the idea more, the FLDS church or the state's unenthusiastic Family Services Department and the new CPS team. All of them basically ignored or went around the order.
The church found a loophole. Only a handful of men showed up at the mobile lab to try to reclaim their children, and most of them were among those who had been kicked out of the religion but had remained loyal. Church leaders persuaded some of them that this was an opportunity to prove that they were, perhaps, worthy of being reinstated; just convince the authorities that they were the real fathers with ironclad DNA matches. They would promise the state that they would henceforth provide a good home for the very children they had been ordered to abandon earlier at the command of the prophet. Once given custody, the fathers could simply return their children to the abusers. Nothing would change.
Beyond that, the state agency with the responsibility for protecting children was practically releasing them into the wild. Instead of waiting for the DNA tests, the CPS began handing the children over to almost anyone who showed up with an ID and signed for themâmother, father, brother, neighbor, total stranger, or group of strangers.
The CPS's own release manifest would reveal that nearly twenty percent of the children taken in the rescue attempt were released to people other than their parents. More than a dozen names were in a column entitled “Not Listed,” which meant the agency did not know to whom the children had been given.
At least two children were released to Seth Jeffs, the prophet's trusted brother, a courier who trafficked young brides for the prophet and who had also been arrested for soliciting prostitution with another man while on a road trip to deliver money to Warren. Seth Jeffs tried a tactic commonly used by FLDS members to confuse gentiles by giving his middle name, Steed, in place of his true surname of Jeffs, but he was caught in the act. He was a convicted felon on federal probation and had lied to the CPS about his real name, and he got the kids anyway. It was incomprehensible.
The real reason behind the bizarre CPS actions appears to have been costs. The investigation alone had cost thirteen million dollars, and estimates for integrating all of the children into mainstream society had ballooned to somewhere around a billion dollars. Attorneys, expert witnesses, foster-care homes, additional CPS workers, and other required support services would be very expensive and seemed to have no top end.
Texas governor Rick Perry was in France on a week-long European economic junket when word came of the Texas Supreme Court's decision to reverse the Walther ruling. Perry responded with a strong endorsement of the sweep of the YFZ Ranch. “I am substantially less interested in these fine legal lines that we're discussing than I am about these children's welfare.” That was great to hear. “I still think that the State of Texas has an obligation to young women who are forced into marriage and underage sexâto protect them. That's my bottom line,” the governor stated. He warned the FLDS that he would not tolerate the sexual abuse of children in his state. “If you are going to conduct yourself that way, we are going to prosecute you. If you don't want to be prosecuted for those activities, then maybe Texas is not the place you need to consider calling home.”
Governor Perry issued that statement on June 6, after which he flew from France to Sweden. Willie Jessop called the governor's remarks “shocking and outrageous” and added, “Mr. Perry ought to get his facts straight.”
Little more was heard from the governor concerning the FLDS.
The Department of Family and Protective Services decided to bring aboard its own version of a special prosecutor and on July 21 hired Charles Childress, whose reputation in Texas as a leading family-law expert was beyond reproach. As a professor and consultant, Charlie had been instrumental in writing many child-protection and family laws. If he could straighten things out, then perhaps the TDFPS and its overwhelmed CPS division could ride his coattails back to respectability.
Charlie was semiretired and lived in Austin, meaning he would have to commute to San Angelo, and he did not really want the job. But old friends pressured him, and Charlie took the assignment because he thought he could do some good. What he found boggled the veteran attorney's conscience. He later summed it up for journalist Katy Vine of
Texas Monthly
magazine, “Going up to the governor, none of them had any idea what was going on. They had no clue.”
In contrast, the attorney general's office knew exactly where it was going, and after sifting through the mountains of materials seized at the ranch, a grand jury was empaneled in Schleicher County in July to hear the findings. For the first time, regular Texansâthe citizens of the county and the neighbors of the FLDSâwere given the opportunity to see behind the false fronts of piety and godliness. After deputy attorneys general Nichols and Goodwin presented abundant proof of abuse, the grand jury dropped a heavy hammer.
Warren Jeffs and four other FLDS men were indicted with first-degree felony counts for sexual assault of a child. Raymond Merril Jessop (age thirty-six), his brother Merril Leroy Jessop (age thirty-three), Michael George Emack (age fifty-seven), and Allen Eugene Keate (age fifty-six), all surrendered and were jailed. Jeffs remained locked up in Arizona. It was a clear message that the Texans were not being taken in by the expensive FLDS lawyers or the public-relations spin doctors.
Within two months, the grand jury handed down indictments on another three FLDS men on similar charges: Abram Harker Jeffs (age thirty-seven); Lehi Barlow Jeffs, also known as Lehi Barlow Allred (age twenty-nine); and Keith William Dutson (age twenty-three). That brought the total to eight men indicted on criminal charges so far, based in part upon evidence gathered at the YFZ compound. Ironically, it was the identical number that Arizona grand jurors had handed down in separate cases earlier.
No matter the success of law enforcement in going after the perpetrators of abuse, Texas CPS and its parent agency still wanted out. By the middle of August, they were dumping cases posthaste. In agency terminology, it was called “non-suiting,” which was doublespeak for no further investigation required. According to a department official, the non-suits “could be because the children are in a protected environment or are over eighteen. It could be that we found no abuse or neglect.”
The standard could not have been set much lower. A parent or guardian and the child had to take a brief parenting and victim awareness course, and then sign a paper promising to keep the children safe. That was it. CPS still had not even determined the true parents through the DNA tests. It was like rescuing a kid from the home of heroin addicts who have been selling their child for sex, then having Mom and Dad attend a seminar and promise not to do it again before sending the boy or girl right back into the dope and sex mill.
The drama of a teenager named Teresa Steed illustrated how out-of-whack the process had become. At fourteen, Teresa had been assigned as an underage plural “wife” to Nathan Carter Jessop, yet another son of the influential Bishop Merril Jessop. She became pregnant at fifteen and was about seven months along when she was taken into protective custody during the YFZ rescue attempt. During that time she had turned sixteen. She gave birth within days of leaving state custody. When CPS started sending children back to their abusers without regard to the potential consequences, Teresa Steed became a stumbling block.
To the Texas Rangers, her situation was an out-and-out criminal act that could not be ignored, swept under the table, or “non-suited.” The rangers wanted to interview the girl and obtain the baby's DNA to establish paternity. CPS would not cooperate and refused to reveal Teresa's location. Nathan Jessop, the suspected father, was nowhere to be found.
A summons was issued for Teresa and the baby to appear before Judge Walther. Teresa showed up but did not bring the child, and when Walther asked where the infant was, the girl replied, “I'm not telling you.” Walther sternly warned her lawyers to resolve the problem and meet the court's requirements. A peculiar sweetheart deal was brokered between CPS and Willie Jessop, who was not a relative, lawyer, social worker, or officer of the courtâand whose involvement was irresponsible at bestâin which the baby would be presented at a special private meeting with CPS workers. The Texas Rangers were not invited and were not even permitted to know where the meeting would take place.
The rangers found the secret meeting place anyway and served a warrant to take a DNA sample from the baby that Teresa had brought to the rendezvous. The tests proved conclusively that the infant was not hers. The FLDS had played the inept CPS by swapping babies so as not to implicate the father. The obstinate Teresa Steed, who took part in the charade, then also vanished; as of this writing, a warrant for her arrest is still in force. To the best of my knowledge the perpetrator of the crime, Nathan Carter Jessop, has not been taken to task, due to lack of evidence.
In October, I had begun a three-day drive home from Texas when I received a call from Charlie Childress, who by then was in the thick of the fight. As he went through Warren Jeffs's descriptions and church records, he had been completely undone by the extent of the abuse as a systemic problem.
My name had come up for Childress as he reached out for people who could help bring him up to speed on the complicated FLDS lifestyle. He wanted my views on a proposed budget, and the names of experts he could bring in as cultural translators. Childress believed the only hope for the FLDS children was to take a hard line, just as the lawmen were doing by going after the perpetrators. But his higher-ups wanted an impossible guarantee of victory if any trials were held in years to come. As any good attorney would do, Charlie refused to make such an impossible promise.
I spoke to him again later that night about witness availability and organizing the needed budget, and I headed out again the next morning for Utah, somewhat upbeat that perhaps the game was not over after all. Childress had the sound of a man who wanted to take it all the way. By the time I turned into my driveway the following day, I received another call. Charlie Childress had submitted his plan to the bosses, handed them the budget, outlined his plan, and had been rebuffed. They had pulled the rug out from under him. Within a week, he submitted his resignation, retired again, and was gone. We never spoke again.
Childress was replaced by his deputy, Jeff Schmidt, another excellent attorney, who replowed the same barren fields that Charlie had just tilled, and with the same result. I talked with Jeff frequently and gave him the same information; he talked to the same victims and witnesses, read the same reports and records, and came to the same conclusions. CPS again applied pressure. Schmidt also refused to budge.
“Sam, when I took the job I made a commitment to the CPS mission to protect children from abuse, neglect, and exploitation,” he told me. “I just can't do what they are now asking me to do. I just can't do it.”
The Texas bureaucracy, not just the FLDS, had now become a foe, and there was only so much that any of us could do. Schmidt continued to disagree with his supervisors. He said a disk containing vital evidence came up missing from his desk. Schmidt also said a formal complaint to his superiors about his treatment was dismissed as quickly as it was filed. He was left with two stark options: do as he was told, or get out. He transferred to the section dealing with elder affairs.
Apparently, the people in charge of CPS had lost focus on the stated purpose of their agency: to protect children. Instead, it seemed that they were trying to save their own reputations and careers, and a lot of money. Some Texas legislators were now openly complaining that the price was too high.
A final line of defense was the Court Appointed Special Advocates, known as CASAs, trained volunteers who are assigned to work with attorneys and protect any child caught up in the system. CASAs act as third-party advocates to monitor a situation until the children are completely safe. They don't care about politics or the media; they protect their charges fiercely, and heaven help anyone who gets in their way.