by Linda Sunkle-Pierucki

Created on: June 07, 2008

As any thinking American could have predicted, the Texas Supreme Court has ruled that the actions of Child Protective Services in seizing the four hundred plus children of the Yearning For Zion Ranch violated the rights of the parents and their children and that the entire proceeding is illegal. It is about time some decisions regarding the constitutionality of this action were called correctly. However, justice will not be served until all of the children are back with their parents in whatever place their parents choose to live.

This case has cost the State of Texas dearly, in terms of the actual action, cost of umpteen child protective workers, foster care and legal action. None of this compares to the cost to the children who were ripped from loving parents and their short lives disrupted likely forever, or to their parents, who have gone through much anguish and mistreatment. This is a pittance compared to what it should eventually cost, as there is every reason to believe most if not all of these parents could and should sue for damages.

The entire fiasco is reminiscent of the Salem Witch Trials in that a group of citizens' charged with upholding the rights of society have sought out and persecuted a small group based on hearsay, innuendo and self-righteous indignation that someone should dare to live differently than they believe they should. Public sentiment has been whipped into a pseudo-moralistic frenzy by way of biased reporting and yellow journalism. I say pseudo-moralistic because many expressing the most outrage have purposely closed their ears to documented fact in favor of dwelling on supposed sex crimes that appear never to have happened. Mainstream media is complicit in this effort and refuses to report facts and testimony in refutation of their chosen stance that the FLDS is a "sex cult".

Luckily, The Texas Supreme Court is not so juvenile and inclined to salacious gossip. That the higher court should rule against official CPS opinion is entirely correct. The only shortfall within the decision is that it did not go far enough: the state of Texas should have been ordered to return all of the children immediately to their rightful guardians as there was no evidence to uphold the removal in the first place. CPS and the judiciary have apparently not learned their lesson in overstepping their Constitutional boundaries, however.

Lawyers for CPS, in an effort to save face and develop some sort of track record for continuing to trample the rights of

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