ELDORADO, Texas (AP) — Sect leaders at a polygamist compound in West Texas refused Saturday to let authorities search a temple for a teenage girl whose report of abuse led to the raid, and authorities said they were preparing "for the worst."

If no agreement is reached with sect leaders, authorities will forcibly remove the sect's followers "as peaceably as possible," Allison Palmer, a prosecutor in Tom Green County, told the San Angelo Standard-Times.

Medical workers are being sent "in case this were to a go in a way that no one wants," Palmer said. Law enforcers are "preparing for the worst," she said.

"Within the religion that we have encountered, their place of worship is very special to them," Palmer said. "It appears to be of great concern to them if a person from outside their congregation even attempts to step inside their place of worship."

A search warrant authorized troopers to enter the retreat, run by the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. They are looking for evidence of a marriage between the girl and a 50-year-old man.

Court documents the girl had a baby eight months ago, when she was 15.

State welfare officials on Friday removed 52 girls from the compound. Marleigh Meisner, a spokeswoman for Child Protective Services, said another 131 residents were removed overnight. By Saturday afternoon, 137 children and 46 women were being housed and interviewed at local community centers.

"They seem to be doing fine," Meisner told The Associated Press. Investigators remained inside the compound looking for additional children, she said.

The whereabouts of the 16-year-old mother who sparked the investigation are unknown, Meisner said. State troopers who raided the religious retreat were looking for the girl, her baby girl and 50-year-old Dale Barlow.

Under Texas law, girls younger than 16 cannot marry, even with parental approval.

Officials in Texas declined to comment Saturday on whether they had found Barlow, citing a gag order, but the man's probation officer told The Salt Lake Tribune that he was in Arizona.

"He said the authorities had called him (in Colorado City, Ariz.) and some girl had accused him of assaulting her and he didn't even know who she was," said Bill Loader, a probation officer in Arizona.

Barlow was sentenced to jail time last year after pleading no contest to conspiracy to commit sexual conduct with a minor. He was also ordered to register as a sex offender for three years while he is on probation.

His lawyer in that case, Bruce Griffen, said he had not spoken to Barlow in a year.

The search warrant instructed officers to look for marriage records or other evidence linking her to the man and the baby. The warrant authorized the seizure of computer drives, CDs, DVDs or photos.

Those inside the retreat did not respond to requests for comment.

The Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints broke away from the Mormon church after the latter disavowed polygamy more than a century ago.

The compound sits down a narrow paved road and behind a hill that shields it almost entirely from view in town. Only the 80-foot-high, gleaming white temple can be seen on the horizon. Authorities blocked access to the gate, keeping onlookers miles away.

The 1,700-acre property had been an exotic game ranch. It is surrounded by dusty, wind-swept land where sheep are raised and mohair produced.

Eldorado (pronounced el-dor-AY'-do) is a two-stoplight town of fewer than 2,000 people and located nearly 200 miles northwest of San Antonio. It consists of a cluster of government buildings, a couple churches and a few blocks of houses.

State officials said they did not know how many people lived at the retreat, although local officials estimated about 150 two years ago.

The FLDS has been led by Warren Jeffs since his father died in 2002. In November, Jeffs was sentenced to two consecutive sentences of five years to life in prison in Utah for being an accomplice to the rape of a 14-year-old girl who wed her cousin in an arranged marriage in 2001.

In Arizona, Jeffs is charged as an accomplice with four counts each of incest and sexual conduct with a minor stemming from two arranged marriages between teenage girls and their older male relatives. He is jailed in Kingman, Ariz., awaiting trial.

http://gosanangelo.com/news/2008/apr/06/lawmen-enter-temple/

http://mauberly.blogspot.com/

B.C. columnist shines light on closed world of forced marriages, abuse and greed

The Secret Lives of Saints: Child Brides and Lost Boys in Canada's Polygamous Mormon Sect

By Daphne Bramham

Vancouver Sun columnist Daphne Bramham took the road to Bountiful and found it paved with child abuse, forced marriage, greed, lies, fraud and the suckering of the provincial government. The story she tells in The Secret Lives of Saints, a well-researched book on the community, is gripping, illuminating and infuriating.

Bountiful, near Creston in southeastern B.C., has been the home of a polygamous community of fundamentalist Mormons since the 1940s. The villain of the piece is Winston Blackmore, millionaire bishop, husband of (at last count) 26 wives and father of 109 children. He is the folksy, shrewd patriarch of an essentially pre-modern society, which he controls by his knowledge of the modern/postmodern world in which the rest of us live -- a world to which he largely denies his followers access.

On the wall of his office is the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, which he confidently believes gives him, through its reference to freedom of religion, the right to practise polygamy as a religious duty.

..... These fundamentalists are, of course, not recognized by mainstream Mormons. This bothers the sect not a whit, because members see themselves as faithful to the original revelation and the mainstream Mormons as apostates.

In real terms, this means teenaged girls can be "married" in ceremonies that have no legal standing in Canada to men as old as their grandfathers; that B.C. taxpayers have for years been funding schools that inculcate the total subservience of women to men; that young men -- the "lost boys," exploited by being forced to work for peanuts for fundamentalist-owned companies -- are being ejected from the community because the older men have no intention of letting them marry women their own age; that men who disobey the leadership can be "stripped" of their wives and children, who are then "assigned" to "obedient" members of the community; and that "lying for the Lord" to the police is entirely acceptable.

.....Speaking of Blackmore and other cult leaders, Bramham's summary is unsparing: "The depth of ... inculcated misogyny, the grotesqueness of (their) greed and the sheer depravity of their actions in this cult is stunning."

More

Texas authorities say some of them have been abused and others were in jeopardy. About 130 women choose to stay with the youngsters rather than return to their compound.

Los Angeles Times, By Miguel Bustillo, April 8

HOUSTON -- Texas officials said Monday that they had taken more than 400 children into temporary state custody while they continued investigating allegations that girls at a remote polygamist compound were being sexually abused by men.

"This is the biggest single removal in the history of this agency," Child Protective Services spokesman Darrell Azar said Monday evening. "No one can remember anything quite like it. We had enough information to show a judge that many of these children had in fact been abused and others were in jeopardy."

Texas' decision to take temporary custody of the 401 children represented a significant ratcheting up of state intervention -- child welfare officials had initially placed 18 children under state control and merely moved others to a more neutral location to interview them.

Azar said he could not discuss the details of the abuses that state officials allegedly uncovered, but affidavits detailing the state's findings could become public as soon as today.

Texas officials also cite allegations of forced underage marriages. Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints officials see religious persecution.

Los Angeles Times, By Miguel Bustillo, April 9

HOUSTON -- Child welfare investigators who entered a polygamist compound in West Texas this weekend found many pregnant teenagers and underage girls who said they were forced to marry, according to court documents unsealed Tuesday.

The documents detailed the evidence that Texas officials presented to a judge to justify taking temporary state custody of more than 400 children from the YFZ Ranch, near the tiny town of Eldorado, built by the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.

The papers say that in responding to an initial report that a 16-year-old girl had been sexually abused at the ranch, a guarded complex with a towering limestone temple at its center, investigators found many young girls who either were pregnant or had given birth.

Lynn McFadden, an investigator with the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services, declared in an affidavit that it was "widespread pattern and practice" among young girls at the YFZ Ranch to enter into "spiritual marriages" arranged by the polygamist sect and to begin having sex with older men and giving birth as soon as they turned 13 or 14.

The men, she added, were "having sexual relationships with a number of women, some of whom are minors."

AP, By Michelle Roberts, April 10

ELDORADO, Texas - Agents searching a 1,700-acre polygamist compound in West Texas found a bed in the soaring limestone temple and prosecutors believe it was used for male members to have sex with their underage wives after sect-recognized unions.

The discovery was revealed Wednesday as troopers completed their weeklong search of the grounds of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, said spokeswoman Tela Mange.

The temple "contains an area where there is a bed where males over the age of 17 engage in sexual activity with female children under the age of 17," according to an affidavit quoting a confidential informant who had been providing information to the Schleicher County sheriff for years.

Texas law prohibits polygamy and the marriage of girls under 16.

The Texas town of Eldorado had always wondered why a fundamentalist church had chosen to set up a compound there. This week, to their horror, they discovered the truth

The Independent, By David Usborne, April 10

When a member of the secretive Fundamentalist Church of Latter-day Saints turned up in the sleepy Texas town of Eldorado four years ago and paid $700,000 (£350,000) for an abandoned exotic-animal farm on its outskirts comprising 1,700 acres of prairie scrub, many residents were disturbed. "The Devil is Here!" was the slogan drawn on one protest placard paraded outside civic offices at the time.

The locals were sceptical of claims by the purchaser, David Allred, that he planned to turn the property into a hunting preserve. Of all the habits associated with the church – including polygamy and self-sufficiency – no one had heard of rabbit-chasing. The land, they thought, would become another enclave.

Over the months, a compound began to take shape. Roads were laid, housing blocks rose, as well as other unidentified buildings. Only an 80-foot high limestone temple was visible from town, where anxieties about the arrivals began to subside. They kept to themselves and, better still, they paid their taxes. In fact, so large was the community that, in the past fiscal year, it contributed nearly half a million dollars to city revenues. "There was a lot of paranoia in the beginning," noted Randy Mankin, editor of the Eldorado Success. But, he went on, "they live on their property, we never see them. One or two men come into town but we never see [the others]."

Curiosity lingered about what went on behind the tall iron gates of what became the "Yearning For Zion ranch", named after a song written by its founder, Warren Jeffs. This is the same Jeffs who, last year, was tried and convicted in Utah for being an accomplice to rape, stemming from a marriage arranged between an under-age girl and a much older cousin. Jeffs, serving two consecutive five-year sentences, faces additional charges filed in Arizona involving incest and sexual conduct with a minor.

[...]

"From the time you are born you are taught not to think for yourself," she said. "You are taught to do exactly what you are told. The women are treated like property. This is an Old Testament system where the women are just chattel and the children are the same. They are property."

will emerge that explains the low percentage of boys; probably an ultrasound that enabled the doctor to do selective abortions.

http://mauberly.blogspot.com/

AP, April 15

SAN ANGELO, TX — The judge and the lawyers involved in one of the biggest child-custody cases in United States history struggled Monday with the legal and logistical morass of deciding the fate of 416 children seized by Texas authorities in a raid at a polygamist sect.

“Quite frankly, I’m not sure what we’re going to do,” Judge Barbara Walther of State District Court said after a conference that included three to four dozen lawyers either representing or hoping to represent youngsters taken two weeks ago from the ranch in Eldorado that belongs to the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, a breakaway Mormon sect.

The April 3 raid came after a call to a domestic violence hot line from a 16-year-old girl who said she had been beaten and raped by her 50-year-old husband.

The turmoil and confusion deepened Monday when the children were taken by bus under heavy security from Fort Concho, where they had been staying, to the San Angelo Coliseum, which holds nearly 5,000 people and is used for hockey games, rodeos and concerts.

Some of the youngsters’ mothers complained to Gov. Rick Perry, a Republican, that the children were getting sick in the crowded fort. About 20 children had a mild case of chickenpox, said Dr. Sandra Guerra-Cantu of the Department of State Health Services.

At least this happened after the rodeo.

By Kirk Johnson & John Doherty, May 8

COLORADO CITY, Ariz. — As the supper dishes were being cleared away and the rice pudding brought out for dessert, Marvin Wyler’s two wives, along with some of their children and a group of friends, began poring over the list.

The 44-page document, from a court in Texas, gives a glimpse of who is married to whom in the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, or F.L.D.S. — and in the hothouse world of religious polygamy, a list like that is a sort of Rosetta Stone to the usually hidden relationships of power, politics and piety.

“We are adding up the number of men who may be going to prison,” said Isaac Wyler, 42, the eldest of Mr. Wyler’s 34 children, who was examining the list on Sunday to see which men may have had wives under the legal age when they married.

Scenes like this have played out in recent days in polygamist communities on the Arizona-Utah border as the marriage list and other records, seized last month from the polygamist sect in Eldorado, Tex., along with 462 children in an investigation of possible under-age brides, have filtered west.

New York Times, By KIRK JOHNSON, May 9

ST. GEORGE, Utah — Utah’s attorney general, Mark L. Shurtleff, sat before a room of perhaps 400 people, most of them fundamentalist polygamists, at a town hall meeting here on Thursday night. He asked for a show of hands. How many people, he wanted to know, were related to the children who were seized last month in a raid in Texas in an investigation of possible marriage and abuse of child brides?

Scores of hands shot up. Then Mr. Shurtleff asked his follow-up: How many of you would be willing to take those children into your homes? Without a moment’s hesitation, the same hands rose.

“We think it would be wonderful if that were to happen, and we’re going to continue to try to encourage that,” Mr. Shurtleff said, as the room exploded with applause.

The raid in Eldorado, Tex., was not formally on the agenda here, and neither was the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, or F.L.D.S., the sect at the heart of the Texas case. And never mind the question, for the moment, of whether foster placements from Texas into polygamist homes in Utah would ever actually happen for any of the 462 children seized in the Texas raid.