Local lawyer, child welfare staff assist in polygamist sect case

McALLEN - Johnathan Ball's career was defending clients in minor civil suits and criminal charges - until he found himself involved in the largest child welfare case in state history.

The 31-year-old McAllen lawyer is representing one of hundreds of children removed from a West Texas polygamist compound earlier this month on allegations that youths there were at risk of being forced into underage marriage.

What he thought would be a single issue case has evolved into an intricate legal conundrum, calling into question whether a parent's beliefs can constitute abuse.

"I knew it was going to be strange," he said last week. "But the whole case has become more complex than I thought it would."

More than 400 children were removed April 8 from the Yearning for Zion compound near San Angelo. Residents at the ranch - run by members of a Mormon splinter organization called the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ Latter Day Saints - marry off underage girls to older men within their group.

State child-welfare authorities raided the property after an anonymous phone caller claiming to be a 16-year-old girl told a family violence shelter she had been beaten and raped by her 49-year-old husband. While recent developments have cast doubt on that original tip, investigators say they have found evidence of physical and sexual abuse at the ranch.

To accommodate the massive legal and investigative effort, several Hidalgo County lawyers like Ball responded to a request for legal aid and took on the hundreds of child custody cases that sprung.

Ball - who works for the Griffith & Garza law firm in McAllen - headed to San Angelo two weeks ago to meet with his 5-year-old client. At the time, Child Protective Services was temporarily holding the children at the San Angelo Coliseum. Entering required a police escort and a brief medical examination, Ball said.

"I think (the compound's former residents) were interested in all these people coming in with files and suits," Ball said.

Dozens of CPS investigators and caseworkers from across the state had convened on the facility to take individual statements from family members. 

While an exact number was not immediately available, several of the child welfare support staff came from Hidalgo County CPS offices, the agency's Corpus Christi-based spokesman John Lennan said.

"They're all trained to the same standards as they would be in Houston, San Antonio or Dallas," he said. "They're doing the same thing there they would do here, so they were able to hit the ground running."

Ball's young client seemed relatively at ease.

"He's a really outgoing kid - very smart," he said. "The whole time he was playing with a Matchbox car. He seemed very comfortable around his mom."

While Ball feels confident that in his particular case the child's best interest would be to place him back with his family, he could face a steep fight drawing individual attention to his case.

A chaotic mass custody hearing last week glommed all the cases together. And after more than 20 hours of testimony, state District Judge Barbara Walther decided to place all the children in state custody, promising individual hearings by June 5.

For Ball and his client, that new hearing date can't come soon enough. For now, his young client is staying in a foster-care facility - its exact location not publicly identified.

"To me, the most important thing is to get in front of a judge with my child and my parents," he said. "From there, everyone has a different opinion."

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Jeremy Roebuck covers courts and general assignments for The Monitor. You can reach him at (956) 683-4437.