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Age of pregnant FLDS 'girls' disputed
who: many women in the south west
what:When Texas child welfare authorities released statistics showing nearly 60 percent of the teen girls taken from a polygamist sect's ranch were pregnant or had children, they seemed to prove what was alleged all along: The sect commonly pushed girls into marriage and sex
where:SAN ANTONIO
when:April
how it happened:But in the past week, the state has twice been forced to admit "girls" who gave birth while in state custody are actually adults. One was 22 and said she showed state officials a Utah birth certificate shortly after she and more than 400 minors were seized from the West Texas ranch in an April raid.
The state has in custody two dozen other young mothers and others whose ages are in dispute. If most of them also turn out to be adults, it would be a severe blow to the state's claim of widespread sexual abuse.
If it turns out the other 24 disputed minors are adults, the number of actual 14- to 17-year-old girls with children could drop to as low as five or six. That would amount to about one-fifth of the girls that age found at the ranch -- substantially higher than the average rate of teen pregnancies in Texas but a far cry from 60 percent.
"It's not widespread, and you've got to look at every family individually to determine whether there's a problem in a family," said Rod Parker, a spokesman for the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, the renegade Mormon sect that runs the ranch.
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