San Antonio - A San Antonio judge has blocked state Child Protective Services from removing a mother from a polygamous sect from her infant son when he turns a year old tomorrow.
The temporary restraining order keeps Lori Jessop and her son together. Mothers from the sect with children younger than a year have been allowed to stay with them, but older children have been taken from their mothers and placed in foster care.
The woman had been held along with more than 400 children taken last month from a West Texas ranch run by the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. State officials say the children were endangered by underage and polygamous spiritual marriages.
Texas child welfare officials conceded yesterday that a newborn's mother held in foster care as a minor after her removal from the ranch is an adult. A Child Protective Services attorney told a judge that the mother of a boy born April 29th is not a minor, as CPS had claimed as justification for holding her.
