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	Breaking News: Judge Divides FLDS Child Cases By Paul A.Anthony San Angelo Standard-Times July 25, 2008 http://gosanangelo.com/news/2008/jul/25/breaking-news-judge-divides-flds-child-cases/ Nearly four months after the largest child-custody case in U.S. history commenced, Texas 51st District Judge Barbara Walther has broken it up, leaving 234 separate cases involving the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. Walther split Case No. 2902 - which included more than 300 children - into 110 cases grouped by mother, and Case 2903, which included more than 30 children, into nine cases, also grouped by mother. They join 115 cases filed separately by the state's Child Protective Services agency, which removed nearly 440 children from the sect's Schleicher County compound in early April. "This is something we've known all along needs to be done," said Tom Green County District Court clerk Vicki Vines. "Nobody had a good enough grasp on it (until now). Everybody's got it a little more under control." According to the motions requesting the division, filed by CPS, court-ordered DNA tests "and other documents" have sufficiently confirmed the relationship between the children in the cases and their biological mothers, allowing the court to move forward with splitting the massive case. The state seized 438 children and mountains of evidence from the sect's YFZ Ranch in a weeklong raid that began April 3, alleging a "pervasive pattern and practice" of forced marriage and sexual abuse. A pair of appellate courts later reversed Walther's decision to place all the children in state custody and ordered them returned to their parents, with restrictions, but investigations by CPS and law enforcement into the sect continued. A Schleicher County grand jury Tuesday indicted six sect members, including leader Warren Jeffs on sex abuse-related charges, and is scheduled to meet again next month. CPS requested the division "to make a very large and very complex case easier to manage for the court, for our agency, and for all the other parties," CPS spokesman Patrick Crimmins said in a statement. The agency initially filed 119 individual cases and the two mass petitions, Crimmins said, which covered 467 suspected children. As some were found to be adults and two children were born in state custody, the number fluctuated to the current number of 440 and the individual petitions dropped to 115, he said. Those individual petitions join the newly divided 119 cases to create the total of 234, Crimmins said. "The new alignment of the cases, in sibling groups according to the mother, has been one of our consistent goals, and it is the standard practice in CPS cases," he said. "This was not possible at the outset of this case due to the lack of reliable information at the time the children were removed."
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