
HOUSTON — The custody battle over 468 children seized from the ranch of a polygamist sect in Eldorado, Tex., moved on Friday to the Supreme Court of Texas, where the state insisted that the children were too endangered by sexual and emotional abuse to be returned to their families.
"The record is uncontroverted that adult men engage in 'spiritual marriages' with under-age children," the state's brief said. "No age was too young to marry and they wanted to have as many babies as they could."
It said that girls as young as 13 were pregnant and that boys "were groomed to be perpetrators." The state also argued that the ranch functioned as "one big family, one large community and they have the same belief system" so that "all the children there are potential victims."
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