Legislative Hearing (TX) Tomorrow, One FLDS Representative to Testify

San Angelo's Paul Anthony is reporting that a representative of the FLDS will be one of three people who will testify in front of the Senate Health and Human Services Committee at a hearing on Tuesday to address the raid, and Representative Hilderbran will testify on his House bill 4255. The bill "would ease DFPS' ability to remove children from an allegedly abusive situation by removing a requirement that the agency make 'reasonable efforts' to eliminate the need to remove a child, and also would allow investigators more leeway to remove parents from a home instead of the children."

Unlike last year's April 30 fiasco where "then-Department of Family and Protective Services Commissioner Carey Cockerell gave his now-infamous briefing to the Senate Health and Human Services Committee", this hearing will actually permit testimony from a representative of the FLDS.

On that last occasion, Cockerell apparently "took no questions and after which the most attention-grabbing of his claims - that 41 children from the compound showed evidence of broken bones - was quickly discredited as being well within the norm for any similar-sized group of children."

It seems some lessons were learned in the last year. There are horrible consequences when truth is sacrificed to expediency, or, heaven forbid, bias. Those consequences reach beyond department heads "retiring" as Cockerell later did, particularly when the safety of children is a primary concern.

Hopefully, a more accurate picture can finally be presented to this committee.

Anthony writes: "It's the first time since the sect moved to Texas in 2003 that it will confront a Legislature that has raised the state's legal marriage age in response to its presence and is considering more action this session as a result of the complications born from last year's raid."

It's about time. The FLDS ARE a part of Texas now. The YFZ residents are Texans, and apparently they are staying put.