Phony statistic on pregnant teens clouds YFZ Ranch debate

Mark Twain famously said that a lie can travel halfway around the world before the truth can tie its shoes, and ample proof of that may be discovered by analyzing the claim from the Texas Department of Family Protective Services that 31 of 53 teens found on the YFZ Ranch were pregnant or had children, even though in court the agency only claimed five teens were discovered who fit that description.

This statistic is still being used in the mainstream press even though a cursory interrogation shows it's probably false. Yesterday on the Dallas News' opinion blog, Sharon Grigsby cited the 31 of 53 statistic as a primary reason their editorial board hasn't criticized the state's handling of the case.

At the original 14-day hearing, CPS said it had found five underage mothers, though several of those were disputed by their lawyers. Then, all of a sudden, just before FLDS mothers were to be separated from their children, 26 more underage pregnant "girls" were supposedly identified, and headlines across the planet claimed 60% of teenage girls at the ranch were pregnant.

Even when they issued the statistic, though, DFPS knew it was disputed, contradicted documentary evidence, and was likely inaccurate. Several days after the misleading statistic was put out in the world, DFPS clarified where the new numbers came from, according to a DFPS spokesman: "26 claim to be 18 or older. But we don't think they are."

So add those 26 to the original five, and that's how you get so quickly from 5 to 31. But that math only works if you assume someone is lying. The question is who? And why?

We now know at least part of the answer. DFPS can say whatever it likes in its press releases, but lying in court will get you in trouble. It's telling, then, that in the first instance where one of these mothers whose age is disputed went to court, it turned out DFPS admitted she was really 22 years old, and monogamously married to a 24 year old man. (The agency still wants to seize her kid, though.)

How did she end up in DFPS custody? Here's what happened in a nutshell: Before the kids were herded onto the buses to be taken away from the San Angelo sports arena where they were initially held, their moms were told that only mothers who were underage could stay with their kids (see, e.g., this DFPS press release saying the agency planned to "keep the teenage girls and their children together"). In order to stay with their children, 26 more women announced they were minors, boarded the bus with their kids, and there's your 31.

In other words, as a commenter at The Volokh Conspiracy put it, "CPS' placement strategy intentionally skews the reported ages of mothers by withholding placement with their own children unless they lie."

If the Dallas News and other media are still relying on that 31 of 53 number as anything but media hype from a badly discredited PR machine at CPS, their editorial board should dig deeper and reconsider. That's a phony baloney statistic.