Judge orders foster care for ranch kids

SAN ANGELO, Texas, April 18 (UPI) -- The 416 children found at a Texas ranch belonging to a polygamist sect must be placed in foster care, a judge ruled late Friday.

Judge District Judge Barbara Walther also ordered members of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter Day Saints to provide DNA so the biological mothers and fathers of the children could be determined, the Los Angeles Times reported.

Walther presided over a two-day hearing on the future of the children. She found a high risk that the children would be sexually abused if they were returned to the YFZ Ranch.

The FLDS broke away from the Mormon church in the 1930s, reasserting the traditional practice of polygamy, which the Mormons abandoned in 1890. The Texas compound was raided after someone who used the name Sarah called a help line and said she was 16 and had been forced into a plural marriage with a 50-year-old leader of the sect, having her first baby at 15.

Investigators have not been able to identify Sarah but say a number of children at the compound appear to have been born to underage women.