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	Judge Orders DNA Testing on Children By Michelle Roberts The Expositor April 19, 2008 http://www.brantfordexpositor.ca/ArticleDisplay.aspx?e=992873 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." 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 indoctdamnation, 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.
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