NEW YORK — I love my job but there are things I hate about this business. Like when we hype a story for weeks and then just let it drop because the people involved continue to be torn apart by whatever event made them a story in the first place.

As usual, Jami Floyd has the Last Word.

That’s exactly the case in Texas with the polygamy ranch raid last month. We reported that story every day for weeks — all about alleged sexual abuse at the ranch — none of it yet proved, by the way. But, now that the media brouhaha has died down, don’t think the story is over for the children taken from their mothers, because here iw what has been proved and not widely reported:

These children are now on an odyssey through the Texas child welfare system. Children who had never eaten processed foods, had never watched television. And Wal-Mart? They don’t sell those prairie dresses.

Imagine the shock of being flung headlong into potato chips and the likes of Hannah Montana. All of this in the context of a child welfare system that was underfinanced and already failing the children in its care, even before it took on 462 new cases.

What were they thinking? I’m thinking they weren’t.

And that’s the Last Word.

– Jami Floyd, In Session anchor

NEW YORK – The DNA tests and upcoming custody hearings for more than 400 children seized from a polygamist sect’s West Texas ranch are only the first chapters in what will likely be a lengthy and complex legal nightmare. Read more

The state obviously has a duty to protect children from abuse, but the debate will rage as to whether the constitutional rights concerning religious liberty and freedom from unreasonable search and seizure were upheld.

Now it seems the tip that led to police descending upon the Yearning for Zion compound with body armor, automatic weapons and an armored personnel carrier may have come from a Colorado woman who has a history of false reporting to authorities.

In court filings seeking the termination of parental rights, Child Protective Services officials say being born into the sect ensures child abuse, describing “a widespread pattern and practice … in which young, minor female residents are conditioned to expect and accept sexual activity with adult men at the ranch upon being spiritually married to them.”

We’ll have to see what that evidence of abuse is. Sect lawyers say the searches of the 1,700-acre compound violated First and Fourth Amendment protections as well as the Texas Constitution.

Despite this, people arguing the government overreached its authority may have a difficult time making a case if allegations of abuse turn out to be true.

The government certainly hopes history is not repeating itself, with this ending up being another Short Creek, the 1953 raid at a compound on the Utah-Arizona border that seemed to strengthen FLDS leaders who were Warren Jeffs’ predecessors, drove a governor from office and possibly discouraged officials from taking action against the group for decades.

Times have changed. Jeffs is behind bars, sentenced to two consecutive five-year sentences to life in prison in Utah for being an accomplice to the rape of a 14-year-old girl who married her cousin in 2001.

But as child welfare officials in Texas move some 437 children to temporary foster care facilities before custody hearings in May, authorities have not seen the last of the FLDS, which has an estimated 10,000 members across the United States, Mexico and Canada.

– Bob Regan, In Session senior executive producer