Disquiet over forced separation of sect's mothers and children

US:THE CALL to a Texas child protection hotline on March 29th could hardly have been more alarming. The caller said she was a 16-year-old victim of physical and sexual abuse at Yearning for Zion, a ranch run by a polygamous sect.

A few days later, Texas police cordoned off the ranch, searched dormitories, offices and the sect's three-storey temple and, in the biggest child protection operation in US history, took 437 children into state custody.

The Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints has its origins in a breakaway from Mormonism in 1890, when the mainstream church rejected polygamy.

The sect's leader, Warren Jeffs, was arrested in 2006 as an accomplice to rape and the church has been accused of marrying teenage girls to middle-aged men who have multiple wives. Polygamy is illegal in the US and the age of consent in Texas is 17, although 16-year-olds may marry with parental consent.

Investigators said they discovered a number of pregnant teenage girls at the ranch and a court ruled last week that the children should be taken into foster care until further notice.

There were few protests at first, not least because of the sect's reputation for sexually exploiting young girls and driving young men out of the community so that more wives could be available to the elders.

On Thursday, however, as television crews showed dozens of children being driven away from their mothers at a San Angelo stadium, some wondered if the Texas authorities had not perhaps been too heavy-handed.

Dressed in high-necked prairie dresses with their hair swept back, the mothers projected a thoroughly wholesome image as they spoke about the pain of being separated from their children. One woman described how her child was wrenched from her arms and, although children under 13 months were not seized, some mothers said children they were nursing had been taken from them.

The women were told that they could move into a shelter, where they might be allowed to see their children from time to time, or they could return to the ranch, where all access would be denied.

Most women moved to the shelter, but two women who returned to the ranch, Velvet (31) and Ruth (34), later described how their young children were taken from them.

Velvet, who did not give her last name, said she has a 13-month-old daughter, Velvet Rose, who is still breastfeeding. "I don't know where she is. She's never had a bottle before. I need her back," she said.

Ruth said she asked the child protection officials if she could visit her twins who are just older than 12 months and two other children aged two and four.

"But they said no. They said if you go to the shelter, there is a chance you can visit them. But if you go anywhere else, you'll never see them again."

Ruth said her older children were distressed as they were being taken away. "They cried, 'Mother, Mother, don't let them take us. We want to be with you'," she said.

Legal aid lawyers representing sect members acknowledge the need to protect vulnerable teenage girls on the ranch but they argue that there is no justification for removing boys and prepubescent girls from their families.

Stephanie Goodman, a lawyer representing several of the women, said they were not allowed to contact legal counsel before making their decisions of where to go on Thursday.

"I'm sure there are some safety issues here, but there should be some effort made for these women to meet with their attorneys before being made to make this kind of choice," she said.

Public disquiet about the Texas action was fuelled by news that the call that triggered the investigation was probably a hoax because it was traced to the number of a 34-year-old woman with a history of making nuisance calls who had no connection to the sect.

"It doesn't matter whether this began as a hoax or not," said Child Protective Services spokesman Darrell Azar. "It's really what we found that mattered."

The children will be held in foster group homes around Texas until individual custody decisions can be made. Each mother will get individual hearings by June 5th, Azar said.