Reply #114: Here is the article I read.

[uppityperson]

http://www.csmonitor.com/2008/0421/p01s02-usju.html?page=2

(clip) The DNA tests will not only identify fathers, but mothers as well. And if those mothers were found to willingly turn over their underage daughters for such marriages, they could be charged as complicit to statutory rape, experts say.

"As long as the women were conspiring in the child sex abuse, knowingly allowing these underage marriages, all of them are capable of being indicted," says Marci Hamilton, an expert on church-state issues at Cardoza Law School in New York and author of the recently released "Justice Denied: What America Must Do To Protect Its Children."

As of now, no criminal charges have been filed in this case. That could be, experts say, because the children haven't identified their parents – some young children believe all the so-called sister wives are their mothers – and the women are being evasive in the answers they provide, according to the Child Protective Services workers' testimony. That may change once the DNA tests are completed.

"I suppose what they're hoping to do in part is identify the guys who impregnated these girls and prosecute them for statutory rape," says Ira Ellman, an expert on family law at Arizona State University's Sandra Day O'Connor College of Law in Tempe. "The adult women who cooperated in supplying these underage girls who were impregnated could have a criminal liability, too." (clip)