http://ca.news.yahoo.com/s/capress/0...gamist_retreat
Some of the children seized from Texas polygamist compound are Canadians
1 hour, 58 minutes ago
By Michelle Roberts, The Associated Press
SAN ANGELO, Texas - The attorney general for British Columbia said Friday he was alerted by officials in Ottawa that some of the children taken from a polygamist compound inhabited by members of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints are Canadians.
The confirmation came hours after Angie Voss of Texas Child Protection Services testified at a custody hearing for 416 children, seized in a raid earlier this month because of evidence of physical and sexual abuse, that some of the children before the court are Canadians.
State District Judge Barbara Walther, meanwhile, ruled that the children will stay in state custody.
She also ordered that all children and parents be given genetic testing. Child welfare officials have said they've had difficulty determining how the children and parents are related because of evasive or changing answers.
In Vancouver, Attorney General Wally Oppal said he had been alerted about some Canadians.
"I received the same report from Ottawa so it seems that that is accurate," said Oppal.
He said the Justice Department or External Affairs called "indicating that there are Canadians."
"What that means is that External Affairs would get involved in something like that."
But Foreign Affairs in Ottawa did not confirmin what Oppal said he was told by federal officials privately.
"To date no confirmation has been received on the citizenship status of the children," said Eugenie Cormier-Lessonde, a department spokeswoman.
Canadian consular officials have been in contact with Texas officials, she said.
Oppal said "this has been an issue for quite some time in that it has been said that at Bountiful there are said to be some Americans there as well."
"It sort of adds another dimension to the problem here. That is, that people move in and out of these communities and it's sometimes difficult to find out who's where and what."
Bountiful, located in southeastern B.C., is home to a polygamist compound.
Oppal said the call from Ottawa was "giving us a heads up because they know that we're involved in that same issue here.
Earlier in San Angelo, Voss testified that some of the children are Canadian citizens, although the New York Times reported that she did not say how many, or their age or sex.
Girls in the west Texas polygamous sect enter into underage marriages without resistance because they are ruthlessly indoctrinated from birth to believe disobedience will lead to their damnation, experts for the state testified Friday.
The renegade Mormon sect's belief system "is abusive. The culture is very authoritarian," said Dr. Bruce Perry, a psychiatrist and an authority on children in cults.
But under questioning from defence lawyers the state's experts acknowledged that the sect mothers are loving parents and that there were no signs of abuse among younger girls and any of the boys.
A witness for the parents who was presented by defence lawyers as an expert on the FLDS disputed the state's contention that a bed in the retreat's gleaming white temple was never used to consummate the marriages of underage girls to much older men.
Instead, John Walsh testified, it is used for naps during the sect's long worship services.
"There is no sexual activity in the temple," Walsh said.
Lawyers for the children and the parents appeared to be trying to show in cross-examination that their children were fine and that the state was trying to tear families apart on the mere possibility that the girls might be abused when they reach puberty several years from now.
Only a few of the children are teenage girls. Roughly a third are younger than four and more than two dozen are teenage boys. But about 20 women or more gave birth when they were minors, some as young as 13, authorities say.
The judge controlled the hundreds of lawyers with a steelier hand Friday than she did the day before.
Under cross-examination, Voss conceded there have been no allegations of abuse against babies, prepubescent girls or any boys.
But her agency, Child Protective Services, contends that the teachings of the FLDS - to marry shortly after puberty, have as many children as possible and obey their fathers or their prophet, imprisoned leader Warren Jeffs - amount to abuse.
"This is a population of women who appear to have a problem making a decision on their own," Voss said.
In response, the FLDS women, dressed in long, pioneer-style dresses with their hair swept up in braids, groaned in chorus with their dark-suited lawyers.
Walsh disputed that young girls have no say in who they marry.
"Basically, they're into match-making," he said of the sect, adding that girls who have refused matches have not been expelled.
"I believe the girls are given a real choice. Girls have successfully said, 'No, this is not a good match for me,' and they remained in good standing," he said.
Jeffs is in prison for being an accomplice to rape. He was convicted in Utah last year of forcing a 14-year-old into marrying an older man. W
-With files from The Canadian Press.
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