A GOP state lawmaker who fled Texas on a private jet said he did so for his family after his house

[Ms. Toad]

13. Not charges - but his children were briefly taken away from him.

It appears he bought his way out of it.

If you read the article I linked to, he admits much of it - he just disagrees that his method of disciplining children is inappropriate.

The empty fig newton stapled to the child's shirt was what triggered the call to CPS that resulted in removing all 13 children from his home briefly.

His acknowledgement of the substance of some of the accusations:

Besides, Gary Gates has some plausible deniability of his own.

Yes, he has administered ipecac syrup to two of his 13 children on, he thinks, four occasions over the years. Little Lexie sometimes eats whole pecans off the ground on the Gates property, and Travis once ate a whole loaf of moldy bread out of a garbage can. That's what ipecac syrup is for.

Yes, he once put a pair of T.J.'s plastic toy handcuffs on Travis, for about 30 minutes, after a family discussion of a newspaper account of a California man who received a mandatory 20-year sentence for stealing a pizza. Gary says he wanted to show Travis something of what it might feel like to have his freedom taken away if he kept stealing food. The spanking "board" is a paddle. Travis is not weighed every day, only when he appears bloated from gorging, and he is weighed on a bathroom scale that doesn't even register ounces. Yes, Gary kicked Travis, with the side of his foot on the rump, to get him moving. Yes, he kicked a chair out from under him and pushed him to the wall. "I meant to seem very angry and threatening to him, which I believe I achieved." When Gary suggested the wrappers-stapled-to-shirt punishment, Travis cried, and this was encouraging to his parents, who had struggled to break through Travis's lack of remorse, and Melissa approved the tactic.