State officials announced the release of more than 460 children seized by state authorities in April in an investigation of possible sex abuse at the ranch owned by the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. The state Supreme Court ruled that the seizure was not justified.

The announcement was made after a judge signed an order clearing the children to leave with their parents. The parents are required to stay in Texas, to attend parenting classes and to allow the children to be examined as part of any abuse investigation, Judge Barbara Wather said.

A spokeswoman for the Department of Family and Protective Services, Marleigh Meisner, said the investigation into possible sex abuse will continue.

FLDS spokesman Rod Parker said some of the attorneys have advised parents to stay away from the ranch for now, but most families want to return, the Associated Press reported.

Child Protective Services removed all the children from the ranch after an April 3 raid prompted by a call to an abuse hot line from a girl who said she was 16 and that her middle-age husband was abusing her.  

The church members of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Days lived at the isolated ranch build by the sect’s prophet, Warren Jeffs, who was convicted in Utah last year because he had been an accomplice to the rape of a 14-year-old girl. She and other minor girls were forced to marry older male relatives. The Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Days is a branch of the Mormon Church which broke away after the latter denied polygamy more than a century ago. The sect believes that a man must have at least three wives in order to ascend to heaven and the women must obey their husband.