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Guilty Moms in Texas Cult? 04/21/08 12:30 PM
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Once it's clear who the parents of these children are, what should happen to their mothers?
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A Texas judge has ordered the 416 children removed from the polygamous sect in Texas to remain in state custody, and, along with their parents, to undergo DNA testing to determine both paternity and maternity, according to the
Christian Science Monitor.
The tests will help the court sort out a tangled web of familial relations and reveal not only who the real dads are, but the real moms as well. This could be needed, experts say, because a younger child in the sect may consider more than one of the so-called "sister-wives" to be his or her mom.
According to some legal experts, once moms are identified, there's a possibility they, along with the dads, could be charged as complicit to statutory rape, if they were found to willingly turn over their underage daughters, some who may have been as young as 12 or 13, for "spiritual marriages."
"As long as the women were conspiring in the child sex abuse, knowingly allowing these underage marriages, all of them are capable of being indicted," says Marci Hamilton, an expert on church-state issues at Cardoza Law School in New York and author of the recently released "Justice Denied: What America Must Do To Protect Its Children."
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