"They're not of the world as we know it. You can't just thrust them into that and expect what we consider normal behavior."

How can the state of Texas possibly take proper care of the 437 children it has removed from the polygamist sect?

Children's homes and shelters across Texas prepared to welcome 437 youngsters from a polygamist sect by turning off TVs, serving a lot of bland chicken and vegetable dishes, setting up home schools and accommodating twice-daily devotionals....

Until this month, the youths inhabited a cloistered world where they couldn't swear, curse, date, dance, watch TV, go to malls or movies, play Nintendo, or surf the Web.

They instead ate fresh food, most of it home-grown; wore long dresses and long-sleeved, buttoned-down shirts; and seldom strayed far from a secluded Eldorado ranch....

"This is a unique population that has already been through quite a bit," said Ed Knight, president of Presbyterian Children's Homes and Services, which expects 14 of the children at its Waxahachie campus. He said the agency will "bend and stretch" its policies and usual practices.

"We are not planning to integrate these children into our normal population," Mr. Knight said. "They will in fact be isolated."

And how can the state provide appropriate legal counsel?

[The lawyers] with their clients in a corner of the crowded local coliseum. Most lawyers didn't get to talk to parents or do any investigation, as is customary. Most didn't get to see the evidence gathered by Child Protective Services, even in court....

"This is wildly different than anything I've encountered," said Betty J. Luke, a South Texas College of Law professor who works on clinical studies. She's represented children before. But this week, she's had trouble getting to sleep with the begging cries of her new 7-year-old client's last phone call echoing in her head....

"There was no meaningful way to have my client addressed at this cattle call. ... There has been no way yet to meaningfully represent my client," said Luke, who has had trouble reaching a Texas Child Protective Services case worker....

"The biggest complaint is that each child has not had the separate 14-day hearing they are entitled to," [said lawyer Guy Choate.] "There are questions about whether to appeal, whether it would be in state court or federal court, in San Angelo or where the children wind up."

But was the state wrong to intervene so drastically and dramatically?

"I suspect that they [the FLDS] had a whole lot of kids there without their parents," said [Carolyn] Jessop, who fled the community in 2003 with her eight children....

For several years now, children have been reassigned from one father to another and even one family to another as Warren Jeffs, the prophet of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, grew increasingly tyrannical, Carolyn Jessop said in an interview.

That helps explain why so many of the children are unable or unwilling to tell child protection officials who their parents are. This confusion over identities is the reason a Texas judge ordered DNA tests for all of the children and asked that parents voluntarily provide DNA samples....

And while some of the mothers have said they will do anything to get their children back, including leave the reclusive, breakaway Mormon sect, Jessop said Texas ought to require psychiatric evaluations.

"I don't think there is one of them who is stable enough to get their children back. Mind control is classed as a mental illness and a child's right to safety far exceeds a mother's rights."

"The women in this society will never protect their children. . . . They turn them over to the perpetrators."