Don't believe everything you see on television. Polygamy isn't all sex with Chloe Sevingy, in-ground pools and SUVs.
Authorities in Texas are currently trying to figure out what to do with 416 children—all part of a polygamous sect based in Eldorado—after a 16-year-old child bride claimed she had been beaten and raped by her 50-year-old husband.
Since the raid on the polygamist compound, authorities have bussed the children to a stadium in a near-by town, but now, "quite frankly," are trying to figure out what the hell to do with them:
“Quite frankly, I’m not sure what we’re going to do,” Judge Barbara Walther of State District Court said after a conference that included three to four dozen lawyers either representing or hoping to represent youngsters taken two weeks ago from the ranch in Eldorado that belongs to the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, a breakaway Mormon sect.
Now, many of the 139 mothers who voluntarily left the compound have now been sent away, some back to the ranch if they chose and others to "another safe location."
Sadly, mothers probably left their daughters who were also young mothers (women with children under four were allowed to stay).
The courtroom conference on Monday was held to work out the ground rules for a court hearing starting Thursday on the fate of the children. The state is accusing the sect of physically and sexually abusing the children and wants to strip their parents of custody and place the children in foster care or put them up for adoption...
Texas bar officials said that more than 350 lawyers from across the state had volunteered to represent the children free of charge. The mothers who voluntarily left the sect to be with their children might also hire lawyers, to help them fight for custody.
Betty Balli Torres, executive director of the Texas Access to Justice Foundation, said it was vital that the mothers be represented by lawyers. Otherwise, they could lose their children, she said, in “what we call kind of the death penalty of family law cases."
We're guessing the 60 men responsible for this clusterfuck won't be paying child support if any of the women manage to keep their children.
[New York Times: Court Grapples With Scope of Polygamist Sect Case]