Texas FLDS ad litem: Expect pissed off FLDS teens sassing the judge

This morning I spoke by phone with an attorney ad litem (AAL) who represents several FLDS children in their ongoing dispute with Texas CPS. I’ll call her Millie — not because she’s unwilling to go on the record but because I think it’s good for the country to keep CPS guessing. Millie, an attorney with considerable experience in child protection cases, read my op-ed in last Thursday’s San Angelo Standard-Times and contacted me to say “thanks.” A lengthy conversation ensued.

Millie, by the way, is one of many individuals who have graciously contacted me with additional information about the community and the case. I’m building a file and may write a book. Whatever y’all can add to the story — the nationwide or Texas CPS story — is most welcome! (The photo, above, is of Teresa Jeffs in front of the San Angelo courthouse today. Boy, does she ever look abused! - ht: Brooke Adams)

While she was careful to guard client confidentiality, Millie offered valuable insights. Here are a few:

1.a. The FLDS mothers, as a group, may be the best mothers in America (all due respect, ladies) with the exception of my wife who — really, truly — deserves a big chunk of Mt. Rushmore. The routine while the FLDS kids were still being kept from their mothers — except for brief weekly, closely supervised visitations — was that the AAL and a “courtesy” CASA (more on that later) would observe the mothers, children and caseworkers through a two-way mirror equipped with audio. They could see and hear everything going on in the room.

Millie says she was awestruck by how much the mothers knew about their kids, their level of organization, and how well they addressed each child’s needs. They were so good that during one visit, the CASA next to Millie “bawled” through the entire visit at the injustice of putting such good parents and kids through such abuse. She could hardly bear to watch it.

At the end of one visit, a CPS caseworker burst through the door proclaiming, “Time’s up,” or some such thing. Not surprisingly, the very small boy burst into tears.

1.b. The FLDS teen girls suponaed to testify at the grand jury are not the shy, withdrawn wallflowers portrayed by the media. Millie says, “Supposedly they discovered new evidence, but they haven’t shared it with us. At this point, I wish the media could be there to observe a bunch of outspoken, pissed off, ‘brainwashed’ little girls sassing the judge and the DA. Believe me, these girls are not shy.” I think Teresa Jeffs’ climb-the-tree routine is pretty good corroboration of Millie’s view.

2. There are plots and subplots in this CPS story that no one in the press has picked up on. The press have been, for the most part, AWOL. My theory (this is Kurt talking, not Millie) is that the Bill O’Reillys, Nancy Graces, Foxnews, and Sean Hannitys went chasing low-and-away CPS fast balls — salacious low-hanging fruit — and wimped out on real gumshoe-style news-gathering and analysis. Now they’ve backed themselves into a corner and don’t have the courage to apologize and make it right.

Yes, Sean Hannity, I’m talking about you. You’re a big enough man — Bill O’Reilly isn’t and Nancy Grace is hopeless, but I think you have what it takes — to admit when you’ve done wrong. Now’s the time to show what you’re really made of.

3. A significant number of the ad litems are seriously unhappy (”pissed off” — at the risk of redundancy — might be a better term) with how this case has been handled. Federal civil rights actions based on outrageous and illegal conduct by various authorities will be filed. Millie says she’s never seen anything like this. CPS is routinely high-handed and Millie admits to allowing them to get away with it in other cases where the evidence of abuse was clear and abundant.

This case is the opposite. Millie says she has seen literally no evidence of abuse (unless you count as evidence the five young women currently identified as pregnant underage) and remarked at how, during the now infamous 14-day hearing in San Angelo (download full transcipts of April 17 and April 18 here), Judge Walther allowed totally unauthenticated material into evidence, routinely over-ruling or simply ignoring solid objections to admission of hoakey material offered by CPS. At the same time, CPS has refused requests for simple stuff like an admission that an 18-month-old boy can’t possibly have sexually abused anyone.

She pointed to the so-called “Bishop’s Records” that Walther allowed into evidence over objections that it was “authenticated” by a local sheriff’s deputy who knew nothing of its origin before he broke into a locked safe to grab it.

In retrospect, Millie wonders whether it was so smart, in her prior evidence-rich cases, to let CPS trample over the rules of evidence. For non-attorney readers, the rules of evidence require that documentary evidence be “authenticated” by someone familiar with its creation. For example, only the bishop or the bishop’s clerk could “authenticate” the Bishop’s Records. But nuances like this are lost on Judge Walther.

4. The widely circulated, independent eye-witness accounts of CPS abuse are just the tip of the iceberg. Millie points to widespread invasive or intrusive medical tests and procedures, some coerced and others demanded, that doctors didn’t think necessary and the FLDS victims did not want. In one case involving one of the pregnant mothers, CPS tried to force an M.D. to approve a bone scan in an effort to establish that the mother was really a minor because CPS thought they could show that her pelvis was too narrow for an adult. After CPS lied to both M.D. and patient about what the other was saying, the M.D. ended up telling CPS to get lost unless the patient would agree to the test.

She also says that during visitations, caseworkers would busy themselves trying to “prove” — by looking in kids noses and other similarly intrusive procedures — that the visiting mother was not, in fact, the mother of the children being visited.

5. Good ‘ol boy politics permeate the proceedings. Example: The “coordinating AAL” — who attended an exclusive Sunday afternoon negotiating session with CPS without notifying the majority of the childrens’ AALs — is a close personal friend of . . . (drumroll) Judge Walther. Any wonder that the agreement gave Judge Walther and CPS so much power that neither the Supreme Court nor Third Court of Appeals had offered?

6. Currently, Judge Walther has been granting the state’s motions to quash discovery requested by the AALs. The AALs want access to the “evidence” that the state collected during and after their infamous April raid. The state says it’s “too burdened” by the massive amounts of evidence they seized to respond right now. When they finally started responding, it was with generic files they created that have nothing to do with the specific children except the labels they stuck on them. For example, denying a request for admission that there was no evidence an 18 month old boy had sexually abused anyone or been sexually abused or groomed to abuse.

7. Millie doesn’t know what to make of Natalie Malonis. She wonders how the court can justify allowing an AAL like Malonis to substitute her judgment for that of Teresa Jeffs “without going through the steps of proving the client isn’t competent,” especially when Teresa has a guardian ad litem appointed to represent Teresa’s interests.

8. Millie debunks the myth of missing teen boys. Says the boys she’s talked with all confirm that older FLDS teen boys leave to learn trades, to have a good time that they are denied in the community, or are kicked out for violating rules. Some return later, but some don’t. Fewer girls leave because it isn’t their primary role, in FLDS society, to earn the $$ to pay for the family. The girls learn how to be crackerjack Moms and do a brilliant job of it, by all accounts.

9. Millie says the idea that CPS couldn’t tell whose kids are whose is a falsehood. On the name-confusion thing, Millie thinks the allegations of “misleading” multiple names are the product of official ignorance about a completely benign aspect of FLDS temple culture. The FLDS meant to confuse no one with the multiple names and, most likely, if authorities hadn’t broken into that safe, there’d be no confusion at all.

10. Millie thinks CPS really did underestimate the number of children at the Ranch. This, again, was because of their failure to properly study their target. The Ranch has a temple. Lots of FLDS from outside of Texas visit, some for extended periods, to attend the temple. Hence, far more people were on the site the night of the raid than just the permanent residents.

11. Flora Jessop is an anomaly. Whatever she experienced was something outside the core FLDS experience. She has had an enormous amount of influence over this entire debacle. Millie believes Flora is David Doran’s informant. Raises, anew, questions about Doran’s competence and sincerity.

12. While CPS is routinely high-handed and arrogant, this case is full of anomalies. One is that it features two kinds of Court Appointed Special Advocates (CASAs). One variety is the full, legally appointed thing as in the head CASA in San Angelo. The other variety is a thing called a “courtesy CASA,” not legally appointed but filling a sort of intelligence-gathering role for the head CASA who “instructed” the couresty CASAs not to talk with AALs and “not to interact with the children.”

Millie found this to be just weird. The whole purpose of a CASA is to help these poor kids get through the agony of separation from their families. Yet these CASAs were told to coldly watch the kids and do nothing but take notes and inform the head CASA in San Angelo! If an AAL said something like, “Child A needs shoes. Would you please get some for her?” the CASA would respond, “I’ve been instructed not to interact with the children.”

She hastens to add that some of the CASAs were active and some expressed concerns about the children. CASAs are normally good and helpful. Millie did have a phone conversation with two different CASAs who had met with girls and had hoped to be able to get more involved.

13. No FLDS in Texas have ever applied for welfare. This myth was debunked during a recent meeting of the Texas Senate Finance Committee. The FLDS appear to have a unique, complete economic system that interacts with the outside community but avoids over-reliance on it. It’s hard for outsiders to imagine it working, but somehow it does.

This story is a tragedy for a number of reasons. First and foremost, the real conservatives of San Angelo (as opposed to the counterfeits like Judge Walther) have permanently hurt a group of people who could have been great political allies if San Angelenos had only been willing to learn first before assuming the worst.

As Steve Covey says, “Seek first to understand.” These FLDS — despite rants by Flora Jessop and Nancy Grace — are solid, down-to-earth people. Polygamy is not the lurid, Gloucester-style sex romp Bill O’Reilly loves to roll around in on his show.

Second, the big press are missing the big story. It’s lurking in the shadows, waiting for a young, hungry enterprising investigative reporter. The MSM could be earning big ad dollars and serving their country at the same time by exposing the real motivations behind this raid. Instead, they horse around showing off unauthenticated photos of Warren Jeffs purportedly kissing teens. For now, the news is that the news is making no news. Stupid. Really stupid.

Note: This article was updated at about 6:30 p.m. EDT to correct a few factual details originally misreported.