Cracks in the cults wall of deception

Houston Chronicle:

A woman from a West Texas polygamist sect will be allowed to remain with all three of her children, not just her nursing infant, Child Protective Services said Thursday — the first sign the agency may be softening its approach in the massive custody case.

Agency attorney Michael Shulman said temporary housing will be sought so Louisa Bradshaw Jessop can remain with her three young children. Until now, only mothers and their nursing infants have been kept together, leaving the vast majority of the sect's 465 children scattered across the state.

"I just knew that the Heavenly Father would see us through," a relieved Jessop, who gave birth in Austin earlier this week to a boy, said by telephone Thursday.

The Jessop children will not be released from state protective custody while investigators seek to determine whether underage girls at the Yearning for Zion Ranch, which is outside Eldorado and is run by followers of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, were married to older men and sexually abused.

But in yet another concession, Shulman said his agency was now convinced that Jessop was not in fact a minor, but age 22. He said agency workers, facing "a wall of deception," were presented with the first concrete evidence of Jessop's age, a Utah birth certificate, only last week.

"We were constrained in getting accurate information," Shulman said Thursday at a hearing in Austin on the Jessop custody issue.

It was the second admission this week by an agency official acknowledging that a pregnant female once considered in a "disputed age" category was now deemed to be an adult.

While pleased by CPS' decision that allows her to remain with her kids, Louisa Jessop had hoped for more. Her husband, Daniel Jessop, went to court in Travis County on Thursday seeking emergency relief for his children from last month's order, signed by state District Judge Barbara Walther in San Angelo, which placed all the sect's children in the state's care.

But Travis County Judge Darlene Byrne lashed out at Jessop's attorney, Patricia Matassarin, for bringing the case to the wrong court.

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The story did not provide the age of Jessop's children. Nor does it explain why the cult attempted to be deceptive about her age and that of others. I think that deception will have an impact on their credibility at later hearings. It is clear that the Travis County Judge was not going to let the Jessops engage in forum shopping to turn around a result they did not like.