Young Girl Pulled From Polygamist-Sect Gives Birth To Baby Boy
One of the hundreds of young polygamist-sect members that was taken into custody was admittied to the maternity ward on Tuesday and gave birth to a healthy baby boy. Outside the room was being watched by state troopers, child welfare officials, and other members of the sect. “The boy is healthy and the mother is doing well,” Patrick Crimmins, spokesman for the state Child Protective Services, said of the noontime birth at Central Texas Medical Center.
The mother is “younger than 18,” Crimmins said, and will remain with her new son in a nearby foster-care facility until a formal custody hearing will determine the pair’s fate sometime before June 5. Crimmins declined to give any other details about the girl or where she and the baby would stay.
The girl’s mother was present for the birth, but Crimmins said he didn’t know who alerted her that her daughter was in labor. Rod Parker, a spokesman for the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, a renegade Mormon sect, contends the girl is 18. State officials have the girl on a list of minors taken into state custody.
Two armed state troopers and at least one person wearing the shirt of a Department of Family and Protective Services worker stood outside the maternity ward. A woman wearing the FLDS’s trademark pastel prairie dress and upswept braided hair sat calmly in the nearby waiting room. All declined to comment, as did a woman who said she was the girl’s attorney.