State Child Protective Services officials said 127 women and children left the San Angelo Coliseum where they had been temporarily housed after a raid on the sect's YFZ Ranch earlier this month.
Darrell Azar, spokesman for the Texas Children Protective Services, gave this count:
- 63 children were moved from the coliseum into foster care.
- 64 women also left the coliseum, 17 of them are mothers with babies under the age of 12 months. Those 17 women went into a care facility where they could be with their babies.
- 47 women were separated from their children. Of that 47, 40 went to a separate location and only seven returned home.
- 260 children remain at the coliseum and will be moved out in coming days.
- 111 children were removed Tuesday.
Azar said the women and children who were separated became very distressed and tearful. He said workers waited 45 minutes, then began to move them out. The children's ages were not given.
Texas RioGrande Legal Aid, who represents some FLDS members, said mothers were told to gather together inside the coliseum at 9 a.m. but were not told why. Once there, CPS said children 13 months or older were being removed from them. One mother had her 13-month-old daughter literally taken out of her hands, the legal aid society said.
Two women who returned to the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints ranch, Velvet, 31, and Ruth, 34, later gave tearful accounts of how their young children were taken from them in what they described as a "cold" manner.
Velvet, who did not give a last name, said she has a 13-month-old daughter, Velvet Rose, who is still breast feeding.
"I don't know where she is," Velvet said fighting back tears. "She's never had a bottle before. I need her back."
Ruth, who provided no last name, said she has twins who are just older than 12 months, as well as two other children ages 2 and 4.
She said she tried to explain to CPS workers that Judge Barbara Walther had said that women with children between the ages of 12 and 24 months should be able to visit them frequently for breast feeding and other nuturing.
"But they said, no. They said if you go to the shelter, there is a chance you can visit them. But if you go anywhere else, you'll never see them again."
Ruth said, as her older children were being taken away, "They cried 'Mother, Mother, don't let them take us.' We want to be with you."
As the first group of buses pulled away from the coliseum at 10:30 a.m., a woman on a bus held out a sign that read, "SOS. Mothers separated. Help."
Another yelled out, "We're being kidnapped."
Azar, the CPS spokesman, said separating mothers from children is always a difficult thing. "But this was in the best interest of the children."
Allegations that the women were threatened with not being able to see their children again if they went back to the ranch are untrue, Azar said.
In addition, he said CPS had identified 25 minor females who had represented themselves as adults. How that information changes the tally of who are children and who are adults is up in the air.
Asked if investigators had found Sarah, the girl who made the telephone call to a crisis hot line that triggered the raid on April 3, Azar said he had no information on that. However, he added, "Once we got out to the ranch, we found a number of young ladies who were in the same condition as Sarah."
As to reports that at least one distress call came from a cell phone used by a Colorado Springs, Colo., woman with a history of making hoax calls, Azar said, "It doesn't matter whether this began as a hoax or not" because of what investigators found on the ranch.
But there remain many questions about the phone calls and the legitimacy of the raid, said Rod Parker ,an attorney for the FLDS.
"There was ample time for them to investigate those phone calls before they came in with their tanks and machine guns," he said. "To come in here with an uncorroborated story and take all the children is abhorrent and unbelievable."
Stephanie Goodman, an attorney representing several of the FLDS women, said they were not allowed to contact legal counsel before making their decisions of where to go today. That is in violation of their constitutional rights, she said.
"I'm sure there are some safety issues here, but there should be some effort made for these women to meet with their attorneys before being made to make this kind of choice."
