SAN ANGELO, TEXAS — Attorney Donna Broom had no idea what to expect when she threw her bags in her green Chevy Tahoe on Wednesday and set off on an eight-hour drive from Houston to San Angelo.
She would miss her sons' baseball games that evening to represent a child seized from a polygamist compound. She did not know whether her client was a boy or a girl, a teenager or a baby.
Whoever her client was, she had one question: Would she be able to get him or her a fair hearing in a room full of hundreds of attorneys representing more than 500 children, mothers and fathers?
It was a question that consumed all the attorneys who traveled last week across the Lone Star state to San Angelo, a West Texas town of 100,000, to represent children in the largest custody case in U.S. history.
Ever since Texas officials took 416 children into temporary state custody, saying they were physically and sexually abused or at risk of abuse at a ranch run by the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, the state's legal community has struggled to cope with the immense task of coordinating legal representation for the children. State law requires a hearing in such cases within 14 days.
After hearing two days of testimony, the judge ruled Friday that all 416 remain in the state's custody while officials investigate whether they were at risk at the YFZ -- Yearning for Zion -- Ranch operated by the FLDS, a sect that broke away from the Mormon Church in the 1930s. Its members believe in divinely inspired polygamous marriage involving underage girls.
Between now and June 5, the court will hold individual hearings to update each child's status, but setting individual hearings does not mean they will prove to be less complex.
"Judges from El Paso to Beaumont and all points in between will have to help out," said Guy Choate, a local attorney who helped coordinate the mass hearing.
Already, the unprecedented scale of the case has led to a morass of practical challenges for court officials and local attorneys.
"We're a town of about 80 lawyers, and all of a sudden we need 416," Choate said. "What everyone keeps saying is, how do we do this logistically?"
At the beginning of last week, mass e-mails were sent out to attorneys appealing for volunteers. There was a run on paper as court officials sought to make thousands of copies so each attorney would have all of the filings. A 3 1/2 -hour training session was set up in a local bank to train attorneys on family code laws.
