400 children seized from sect amid fear of *** abuse
Published Date: 09 April 2008
Source: The Scotsman
Location: Edinburgh
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By Michelle Roberts
in Eldorado, Texas
UNTIL the raid on their compound last week, the women and teenage girls of
the Yearning for
Zion Ranch in Texas spent their days caring for its many children, tending
gardens and making
quilts, dressed in pioneer-style dresses sewn by their own hands.
But it was no idyllic recreation of 19th-century prairie life, according
to the authorities.
Since last week, they have interviewed members of the polygamist sect,
looking for evidence
that girls younger than 16 had been forced into marriages with older men.
The raid followed a call from a 16-year-old who said she had been abused.
Police were looking
for evidence that the girl, who allegedly gave birth at 15, was married to
a 50-year-old, and
for records related to other mothers aged 17 or younger.
Texas law forbids girls younger than 16 to marry, even with their parents'
permission.
By yesterday, the state authorities had taken legal custody of 401
children, saying they had
been harmed or were in imminent danger of harm.
Some 133 women left the ranch voluntarily with the children and were being
housed at a historic
fort in Eldorado, while the authorities conducted interviews. Dressed in
ankle-length dresses,
their hair pinned up in plaits, the women milled about as the children
played on the fort's old
parade grounds.
State troopers were holding an unknown number of men in the compound until
investigators
finished executing a house-to-house search of the 1,700-acre ranch, which
is like its own city,
with a gleaming temple, doctor's office, school and factories.
They initially had difficulty getting access to the 80ft white limestone
temple that rises out
of the brown scrub, but were searching it yesterday.
In the compound, five miles off the highway, beyond a double gate, the
group's members live
lives that are isolated, even for the scruffy West Texas prairie. It was
founded by the jailed
polygamist leader Warren Jeffs, of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus
Christ of Latter Day
Saints – a breakaway Mormon group.
"Once you go into the compound, you don't ever leave it," said Carolyn
Jessop, who was one of
the wives of the alleged leader of the Eldorado complex, but left the sect
before it began
moving to its current base in Texas in 2004.
Ms Jessop, 40, who wrote an autobiography entitled Escape, said that the
women dedicated so
much time to raising children and their tasks because the community
emphasised
self-sufficiency: members believed the apocalypse was near, and they would
have to start again
when the world was destroyed.
They were not allowed to wear red – the colour Jeffs said belonged to
Jesus – and were not
allowed to cut their hair. They "were born into this", said Ms Jessop.
"They have no concept of
mainstream society; and their mothers were born into and have no concept
of mainstream culture.
Their grandmothers were born into it."
Marleigh Meisner, of Texas's children's protective services, said each
child would get an
advocate and a lawyer But she said they would have a tough time adjusting
to modern life if
they were permanently separated from their families.
Tela Mange, from the state's department of public safety, said a criminal
investigation was
still under way, and that charges would be filed if investigators
determined children had been
abused.
Still uncertain is the location of the girl whose call initiated the raid.
Authorities were
looking for do***ents, family photos or even a family Bible with lists of
marriages and
children to determine whether the girl was married to Dale Barlow, a
convicted *** offender.
He was sentenced to jail last year after pleading no contest to conspiracy
to commit ***ual
conduct with a minor. The court ordered him to register as a *** offender
for three years while
he was on probation.
The authorities hoped to determine whether the girl was among the church
members being
interviewed at the 150-year-old fort.
Lawyers for the church have filed motions asking a judge to quash the
search on constitutional
grounds, saying the Texas state authorities did not have enough evidence
and that the warrants
were too broad.
A hearing on their motion is scheduled for today.
How they get round laws on polygamy
THE Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (FLDS),
headed by Warren Jeffs
after his father's death in 2002, broke away from the Mormon church after
the latter disavowed
polygamy more than a century ago.
The group is concentrated along the Arizona-Utah line, but several
enclaves have been built
elsewhere, including in Texas.
In 2003, the church paid $700,000 (£350,000) for the Eldorado property, a
former exotic animal
ranch, and began building the compound, as the authorities in Arizona and
Utah began
increasingly to scrutinise the group.
On
ly the 80ft white temple can be seen from Eldorado, a town of fewer than
2,000 surrounded by
sheep ranches nearly 200 miles north-west of San Antonio.
Polygamy is outlawed everywhere in the United States, but the male
followers of sects such as
the FLDS typically marry one woman officially and take others as
"spiritual wives".
This makes the women single in the eyes of the state, which can entitle
them and their children
to various welfare benefits.
Jeffs is is prison in Kingman, Arizona, where he is awaiting trial on four
counts each of
***** and ***ual conduct with a minor, stemming from two arranged
marriages between teenage
girls and their older male relatives.
In November, he 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.
http://thescotsman.scotsman.com/world/400-children-seized-from-sect.3960597.jp
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