2 Children Found Living In Bus In Splendora, Tex

2 Children Found Living In Bus In Splendora, Tex
03/8/2012

SPLENDORA, Texas (Associated Press) — Two children who were found living in a stench-filled abandoned school bus near Houston, its windows blocked and the lot around it covered in trash, are in the custody of Texas child welfare workers, officials said Thursday.

A postal worker discovered the children, ages 11 and 5, at the bus in Splendora about 10 a.m. Wednesday, officials said. Their parents are believed to be in prison for embezzling money from Hurricane Ike victims in 2008. The children are not enrolled at local schools.

The bus appeared to have electricity, an air conditioning unit installed in one window and bunk beds inside for the children. But several neighbors told the Houston Chronicle that the children typically looked unkempt and could often be spotted running around at night.

“They always had dirty clothes on (and) no shoes, even in the winter,” said nearby resident Gayla Payne, who said the 11-year-old girl told her daughter that she bathes twice a week.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/03/08/2-children-live-in-bus_n_1333251.html

11 Children Found in Grim Conditions, victim of child sex abuse/MPD on TV

In a Texas Home, 11 Children Found in Grim Conditions

Investigators found 11 children last month in this house in Dayton, Tex. Eight were packed into a single 10-foot-by-10-foot room, some in restraints. By MANNY FERNANDEZ February 22, 2012

DAYTON, Tex. — A 2-year-old girl was tied up in a restraint attached to her bed. Nearby another 2-year-old child, a boy, was restrained to his bed, too. A third child, a blind 5-year-old girl who appeared to be in a daze, was tied up on a filthy mattress. An 11-year-old boy had a black eye and finger marks on his forearms, and one of his teeth had been knocked out….

Eight of the children were found inside a 10-foot-by-10-foot back bedroom. Though it was about 2 p. m., the room was dark because the window was covered with plywood and there was no light fixture, according to the court filing. Three of the eight children in the room were restrained to their beds at the time the authorities visited. One child told the authorities that the children were placed in restraints while they slept at night and sometimes during the day when they were awake, and another child said they were kept in the room for up to three days at a time. The harness-style cloth restraints, tied around the chests of some of the children and attached to their small beds, were so tight that they had only about one or two feet to maneuver. None of the older children attended schools, the court papers said….

The court document states that none of the adults in the home thought there was anything wrong with restraining the children. “All adults in the home were interviewed, in which none of them felt like this was a problem, and stated that they tie the children up for safety,” the legal papers said.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/23/us/in-a-texas-home-11-children-found-in-grim-conditions.html

A victim of child sex abuse shares her story on a TV News program. The abuse in her life led to a multiple personality disorder. deJoly now takes any opportunity to tell her story in hopes that others in similar experience may find healing, as well as teaching healthcare providers in understanding the devastating results of abuse.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qlG_jrAHRN0&feature=youtu.be

http://dejoly.com/

Warren Jeffs, Polygamist Leader, Convicted In Child Sexual Assault Case

Warren Jeffs, Polygamist Leader, Convicted In Child Sexual Assault Case
8/4/11

SAN ANGELO, Texas (AP) — A Texas jury convicted polygamist sect leader Warren Jeffs of child sexual assault Thursday in a case stemming from two young followers he took as brides in what his church calls “spiritual marriages.”

The 55-year-old head of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints stood stone-faced as the verdict was read.

Jeffs, who acted as his own attorney, faces up to life in prison. The jury went immediately into sentencing proceedings. They had deliberated on a verdict for more than three hours.

Prosecutors used DNA evidence to show Jeffs fathered a child with a 15-year-old girl and played an audio recording of what they said was him sexually assaulting a 12-year-old girl. They also played audio recordings in which Jeffs was heard instructing young women on how to please him sexually.

Jeffs has claimed he was the victim of religious persecution. The FLDS, which has at least 10,000 members nationwide, is a radical offshoot of mainstream Mormonism. The church believes polygamy brings exaltation in heaven and that Jeffs is God’s spokesman on earth.

Police had raided the group’s remote West Texas ranch in April 2008, finding women dressed in frontier-style dresses and hairdos from the 19th century as well as seeing underage girls who were clearly pregnant. The call to an abuse hotline that spurred the raid turned out to be a hoax, and more than 400 children who had been placed in protective custody were eventually returned to their families.

But authorities brought charges against several men from the group, with Jeffs by far the highest-profile defendant…..
Jeffs represented himself after firing seven attorneys in the six months leading to the trial. He broke his courtroom silence with an objection marked by a nearly hourlong speech defending polygamy, and twice threatened the judge and the court with warnings of punishment from God.

….Eleven other FLDS men were charged with crimes including sexual assault and bigamy. All seven of those who have been prosecuted were convicted, receiving prison sentences of between six and 75 years.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/08/04/warren-jeffs-polygamist-leader-convicted_n_918915.html

Texas Town Braces For Polygamist Leader Warren Jeffs’ Trial

Texas Town Braces For Polygamist Leader Warren Jeffs’ Trial

(WATCH)  WILL WEISSERT   07/25/11 SAN ANGELO, Texas

The first hint of polygamist sect leader Warren Jeffs’ defense strategy came Monday when his attorney said his right to freedom of religion was trampled by Texas prosecutors, who claim he sexually assaulted two underage girls after manipulating them into “spiritual marriages.”

Jury selection began Monday in the case of the 55-year-old ecclesiastical head of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, an offshoot of mainstream Mormonism that believes polygamy brings exaltation in heaven. The church’s 10,000 members see Jeffs as a prophet who speaks for God on Earth….

Jeffs is accused of sexual assaulting two girls, one younger than 17 and one younger than 14. The charges against him include aggravated sexual assault of a child, which is punishable by up to 99 years to life in prison.

He faces a separate trial for bigamy in October.

The charges stem from an April 2008 police raid on a church compound known as Yearning For Zion outside the town of Eldorado, about 45 miles south of the West Texas oil and gas town of San Angelo. Authorities who believed girls were being forced into polygamous marriages removed more than 400 children living at the compound, and TV images of women wearing frontier-style dresses and 19th century hairdos were shown across the country.

The original call to a Texas domestic abuse hotline that sparked the raid turned out to be a hoax. Most of the children seized from the compound have since been returned to their families, but the evidence collected proved enough to charge Jeffs and 11 other church men with crimes including sexual assault and bigamy.

Seven church members have been convicted and received prison sentences of between 6 and 75 years.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/07/25/warren-jeffs-polygamist-trial_n_908442.html

Abuses Found Mexican Institutions for Disabled, Warren Jeffs Texas bigamy case

Abuses Found at Mexican Institutions for Disabled
By RANDAL C. ARCHIBOLD November 30, 2010
MEXICO CITY — Ten years ago, a human rights group released a scathing, groundbreaking report on abusive, decrepit conditions in Mexican institutions for the mentally and physically disabled, moving the country to promise change and to take the lead in writing international agreements to protect the disabled. But in a new report released Tuesday, the group, Disability Rights International, working with a Mexican human rights organization, said a yearlong investigation revealed “atrocious and abusive conditions” that included lobotomies performed without consent, children missing from orphanages, widespread filth and squalor, and a lack of medical care….

At orphanages, the team found that children were unaccounted for and interviewed residents who had said they had grown up in the facilities, though officials had no record of the names they came in with or arrival date.

Human rights officials and unnamed government officials told them there was no registry or tracking system for children placed in public or private institutions, leaving them prey to human traffickers.
“Due to a failure to provide oversight, children have literally disappeared from institutions,” the report said. “Some of these children may have been subject to sex trafficking and forced labor.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/01/world/americas/01mexico.htm

Abandoned & Disappeared: Mexico’s Segregation and Abuse of Children and Adults with Disabilities – A report, by Disability Rights International and the Comisión Méxicana de Defensa y Promoción de los Derechos Humanos, on the state of the Mexican mental health care system.
http://documents.nytimes.com/abuses-found-at-mexican-institutions-for-the-disabled

Warren Jeffs returned to Texas to face bigamy case
By PAUL J. WEBER AP Dec. 1, 2010
SAN ANGELO, Texas — Polygamist sect leader Warren Jeffs has been extradited from Utah to Texas to face trial on bigamy and sexual assault charges, the Texas Attorney General’s Office said Wednesday. Jeffs, who is being held without bail in Texas, is set to make a court appearance Wednesday morning in San Angelo. Texas authorities have charged the ecclesiastical head of the Fundamentalist church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints with felony bigamy, aggravated sexual assault and assault.

Attorney General’s Office spokesman Jerry Strickland said the 54-year-old Jeffs arrived Tuesday night at a West Texas jail, but declined to specify where he is being held. Jeffs’ Southern Utah-based church practices polygamy in arranged marriages that have involved underage girls….

Jeffs’ Texas charges stem from evidence gathered during a raid on the Yearning for Zion Ranch near Eldorado in April 2008.  Jeffs had been held at the Utah State Prison after his arrest, prosecution and conviction on two charges of rape as an accomplice for his role in the 2001 marriage of an underage follower — then 14 — to her 19-year-old cousin.  In July, the Utah Supreme overturned the 2007 convictions. Prosecutors there have yet to decide whether they’ll retry Jeffs.
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/life/religion/new/7318902.html