This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Wednesday, April 23rd, 2008. I'm

Caleb Brown. An allegation of rape has now opened up a group of

fundamentalist Latter-day Saints to the world.

But now hundreds of children are in state custody awaiting placement in foster care.

No other claims of abuse have emerged and the basis for the original claim of rape seems more dubious than it did three weeks ago.

The wise Child Protective Services in Texas insisted that these children be kept from their families.

Tim Lynch, the director of the Cato Institute's Project on Criminal Justice, explains.

What started out as a reasonable investigation into an allegation of rape

has turned into a high-handed seizure of 400 children from their parents and from their

home.

The police went in when they received an anonymous call from a 16-year-old girl that she

had been beaten and raped.

And it's been three weeks now and the authorities basically admit that they have not found

this 16 year old girl and they're beginning to think that the initial call was bogus, but what they are doing is they're moving

towards the transfer of custody of 400 kids away from this community and into foster care.

And I think we should be very concerned about the legal precedent that is being put in place here by the state of Texas.

It's a serious matter when the authorities want to

question a child outside of the presence of their parents or without their

knowledge or consent. That's serious. It's very serious if the state wants to temporarily remove custody

of their parents for a period of days or weeks and I think it's an extremely serious

situation when the state is saying that they're going to move for a permanent

transfer of custody, permanently take the kids away from their parents and move them into foster

...