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The October 2008 issue of the ABA Journal contains an interesting article giving the observations and impressions of several of the attorneys who represented the FLDS mothers and the children following the April raid on the YFZ community. 

 

Brief reference is made to the three-hour orientation session in family law provided for the attorneys by the State Bar of Texas shortly after the raid. It is clear from what is stated that the attorneys were subjected to what amounts to little more than a state-sponsored brainwashing session, intended to prejudice their minds against the FLDS people and to rig the results of the 14-day hearing in Judge Walther’s court. 

 

 

Susan L. Hays, one of the attorneys ad litem, reported that at the orientation “horrible abuse was alleged without specifics.” During the 14-day hearing, only about 100 of the attorneys were present in the courtroom. Others listened to a video monitor set up in the San Angelo City Auditorium across the street. “We were anxious to hear what the deal was,” Hays said. “We were waiting the whole day for the other shoe to drop, and it didn’t come. I knew something wasn’t right because I wasn’t learning much.”   The ABA Journal observed that “there were many questions, as the lawyers began to suspect that state claims were not supported by evidence.” 

 

As the attorneys became better acquainted with the mothers and children, they began to realize that the information they had been given about the FLDS people during their orientation session did not match the reality of what they were observing. 

 

“[M]any attorneys ad litem say that when they got to know their clients’ mothers, the women seemed like great parents. Most forbade junk food and television in their homes, and their children were noticeably well-behaved. Children separated from their families constantly asked to be returned to the compound—their home.”

 

 

Julie M. Balovich, an attorney representing only adult women, said that she had “no concerns about the safety of the FLDS children.” 

 

“‘I’m a feminist, and I was apprehensive about what I was going to be defending,’ she says. ‘The second I met my clients, I wasn’t worried. They are very independent women who are very assertive and very capable of explaining what they love about their lifestyle.’”

 

Hays noted that the mothers were very tolerant of the cultural differences exhibited by their attorneys. 

 

“‘Here are these very pious people—who do not smoke, they don’t drink, they do not cuss—and you’ve got a bunch of lawyers representing them who hang out in bars and cuss like sailors. And they’re fine with that,’ says Hays, adding that her client’s mother was surprised that Hays had never married or had children.”

 

“Hays has spent much time talking to the child’s mother. ‘That was helpful to me because I learned a lot about how she thinks and it made me comfortable with her as a mother…’”

 

The environment at the ranch also received favorable comments by Hays.

 

“When the state returned her children, the mother opted to settle at a San Antonio duplex rather than return to the ranch. By July they had moved back.

 

“‘Five kids in a duplex on a busy road where the kids can’t play didn’t last long,’ says Hays, who was impressed with the ranch. The multiple-story log structures, where many members live in a somewhat communal style, reminded her of condominiums in Aspen, Colo.”

 

Attorneys found that the children themselves didn’t match the stereotyped descriptions they had been given.

 

 

“‘There were also allegations that the children didn’t know how to play, and that’s just BS,’ Hays says. ‘The children are quite playful. They just don’t have unnecessary things.’”

 

“‘The service plan for my client [stated] that the children are taught not to respect women and fear outsiders. That was not my experience talking to anyone,’ Hays says.”

 

With the recent news coverage of the story of 17-year-old Teresa Jeffs and her attempts to fire her court-appointed attorney Natalie Malonis because her attorney is treating her as a child who is not capable of deciding what is in her own best interest, it is interesting to note what the ABA article says about the obligation of attorneys ad litem to advocate for their clients.

 

“The Texas Family Code holds that normally developed children who have the maturity to understand and form attorney-client relationships—many attorneys consider children over age 4 to fit that description—have the right to tell their attorney who they want to live with; it’s the attorney’s job to advocate for that. For children younger than that, the attorney ad litem decides what is in his or her client’s best interest.”

 

The awareness and maturity level of the FLDS children is indicated in the comments made by Mary Noel Golder, another of the attorneys ad litem.

 

“Golder represents nine FLDS children who range in age from 3 to 10. A tenth turned out to be 20 years old and was dropped from the cases. All of Golder’s clients told her—repeatedly—that they wanted to go home. One 8-year-old questioned why she was taken from her family.

 

“Golder told her that her household included some people who were married, even though they were too young to be.

 

“‘Well, my mother’s not too young, so why am I here?’ the girl asked.

 

“‘This one,’ Golder says, ‘I don’t worry about.’”

 

The article also gives evidence of some of the ways in which the civil rights of the FLDS people were violated by the CPS. “Hays and other attorneys ad litem believe the state trampled on the rights of FLDS members in a variety of ways.” One very glaring violation was denying the women and children access to their attorneys.

 

“Lawyers from Texas RioGrande Legal Aid were already in San Angelo. When they arrived, however, they had no FLDS clients because they were denied access.

 

“Staying four to a room at a Howard Johnson hotel, the legal aid lawyers stayed up all night preparing a lawsuit, which was faxed the next morning to Gary L. Banks, managing attorney of the San Angelo office of the Department of Family and Protective Services. Within 30 minutes access was granted.

 

“Banks did not respond to repeated requests for an interview from the ABA Journal.”

 

Mention is made of the well-documented cases of adult women classified as minors. A previous quotation refers to Mary Golder’s finding that one of the children she was to represent was a woman 20 years old. The article also relates the incident of Susan Hays’ going online to obtain a birth certificate for her client’s mother, a woman in her 30s, originally classified as a minor.

 

There are also incidents given of the separation of siblings when the children were placed in foster-care facilities throughout the state. Considering how widespread this practice was, it is hard to believe that such separations were not purposeful.

 

“The judge instructed that siblings be kept together, and Hays says a CPS lawyer told her that direction would be followed. It wasn’t.

 

“‘I regret taking him at his word,’ she says. ‘They knew my client belonged with her siblings, but they separated them anyway.’”

 

“Hays’ 2-year-old client was sent to College Station, an east Texas town that is the home of Texas A&M University. The older siblings were placed 260 miles away in Abilene, and the girl’s mother went to the San Antonio shelter with her 6-month-old son.”

 

Bit by bit the evidence accumulates to show the complete lack of justification for the state actions against the FLDS people in the YFZ raid and its aftermath.