(Agencies)
Updated: 2008-04-19 10:30

SAN ANGELO, Texas - Girls in the west Texas polygamous sect enter into underage marriages without resistance because they are ruthlessly indoctrinated from birth to believe disobedience will lead to their damnation, experts for the state testified Friday at a custody hearing for 416 youngsters.

Young men of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints who were removed from the Yearning for Zion (YFZ) compound in Eldorado, Texas play outside in the evening at Fort Concho April 13, 2008 in San Angelo, Texas. [Agencies]

The renegade Mormon sect's belief system "is abusive. The culture is very authoritarian," said Dr. Bruce Perry, a psychiatrist and an authority on children in cults.

But under questioning from defense lawyers who lined up in the courtroom aisles to have a turn at each witness, the state's experts acknowledged that the sect mothers are loving parents and that there were no signs of abuse among younger girls and any of the boys.

The testimony came on Day 2 of an extraordinary mass hearing over an attempt by the state of Texas to strip the parents of custody and place the children in foster homes away from the compound inhabited by members of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.

Women of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints who were sent home without their children console one another at the Yearning For Zion ranch April 14, 2008 near Eldorado, Texas. [Agencies]

A witness for the parents who was presented by defense lawyers as an expert on the FLDS disputed the state's contention that a bed in the retreat's gleaming white temple was never used to consummate the marriages of underage girls to much older men.

Instead, W. John Walsh testified, it is used for naps during the sect's long worship services.

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"There is no sexual activity in the temple," Walsh said.

The children were seized this month in a raid on the desert compound because of evidence of physical and sexual abuse, including the forcing of underage girls into marriage and childbearing.

Texas District Judge Barbara Walther boiled it down this way: "The issue before the court is: Can I give them back?"

Attorneys for the children and the parents appeared to be trying to show in cross-examination that their children were fine and that the state was trying to tear families apart on the mere possibility that the girls might be abused when they reach puberty several years from now.

Only a few of the children are teenage girls. Roughly a third are younger than 4 and more than two dozen are teenage boys. But about 20 women or more gave birth when they were minors, some as young as 13, authorities say.

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