Tuesday, April 08, 2008
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,348148,00.html
Court do***ents said a number of teen girls at the 1,700-acre compound
were
pregnant, and that all the children were removed on the grounds that they
were in danger of "emotional, physical, and-or ***ual abuse." Another 139
women left on their own.
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Polygamist Retreat "Investigators determined that there is a widespread
pattern and practice of the (Yearn for Zion) Ranch in which young, minor
female residents are conditioned to expect and accept ***ual activity with
adult men at the ranch upon being spiritually married to them," read the
affidavit signed by Lynn McFadden, a Department of Family and Protective
Services investigative supervisor.
McFadden said the girls were spiritually married to the men as soon as
they
reached puberty and were required to produce children.
An unknown number of men and women were being held at the ranch while
authorities completed the search of the gleaming 80-foot-high temple, a
cheese-making plant, a cement plant, a school, a doctor's office and
housing
units. Tela Mange, a spokeswoman for the Department of Public Safety, said
Tuesday the adults were not being held, but if they left the compound,
they
could not return while the search continued.
Church lawyer Patrick Peranteau did not immediately return a phone message
seeking comment Tuesday.
The compound was raided Thursday after the 16-year-old girl called a local
family violence shelter March 29 and 30, using someone else's cell phone
and
speaking in hushed tones to avoid being overheard, McFadden's affidavit
said.
The girl said she was not allowed to leave the compound unless she was
ill.
She told the shelter that her husband would "beat and hurt" her when he
got
angry, including hitting her in the chest and choking her while another
woman in the house held her baby.
The girl also said her husband ***ually assaulted her, and that she was
several weeks pregnant. The girl told the shelter her husband went to "the
outsiders' world" but didn't know where.
Authorities have issued an arrest warrant for church member Dale Barlow,
who
is believed to be in Arizona, but the girls' husband is not identified in
the court do***ents released Tuesday.
In the March 30 call, the girl told the shelter she was being held against
her will. If she left, church members told her, "outsiders will hurt her,
force her to cut her hair, to wear makeup and (modern) clothes and to have
*** with lots of men."
At the end of the call, she began to cry.
Meisner said the agency still didn't know whether the 16-year-old was
among
the children removed from the ranch. Child welfare officials have been
interviewing the children in search of the girl and to investigate
allegations of abuse.
Investigators said some of the children were unwilling or unable to
provide
the names of their biological parents or identified multiple mothers.
The boys were groomed to be ready to marry underage girls upon adulthood
and
engage in ***ual activity, "resulting in them becoming ***ual
perpetrators,"
the affidavit said.
Children in the sect were deprived of food and forced to sit in closed
closets as a form of discipline, the affidavit said.
Former members of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day
Saints predicted an uneasy adjustment to foster care. They are likely the
grandchildren or great-grandchildren of those taken by Arizona authorities
54 years ago in a similar raid.
That raid a half-century ago and the one this week pulled children of
polygamist families from the only community and culture they'd ever known
—
an event that decades later a former community member recalls as
traumatizing.
"It was total misery for them," said Ben Bistline, now 72. He was 18 when
authorities raided the remote community of Short Creek — now known as the
twin towns of Colorado City, Ariz., and Hildale, Utah. Authorities took
200
children into custody as part of an effort to wipe out a "nest of
polygamy."
Bistline, who is now a Mormon, was not rounded up in the 1953 raid, but
the
woman he married later in life was 15 when she and her seven siblings were
****pped to Phoenix, pulled from the friends and family who constituted
their
whole world. Nearly two years passed before they were allowed to return,
he
said.
Most of the current sect members are descended from families from the
Arizona-Utah community.
The 1953 Short Creek raid also changed the community, said Carolyn Jessop,
the former wife of the man believed to be running the Eldorado compound.
The distinct pioneer-style dresses, worn over long underwear year-round
and
sewn by the women, became part of the dress code after the 1953 raid as
each
generation added more restrictions, said Jessop, who left the community
five
years ago.
Despite the new hard****ps for the children and women in Texas, Bistline
said
the raid is appropriate if children are being forced into marriages.
"This situation in Texas is a justifiable raid," he said.
But an FLDS member now living in the Texas Panhandle, Samuel Fischer, had
a
different view.
"It's religious persecution," said Fischer, who moved to a ranch near
Lockney with his two wives and 12 of his children from Hildale, Utah, last
year.
The Texas investigation is the state's first with FLDS, but prosecutors in
Utah and Arizona have pursued several church members in recent years,
including sect leader Warren Jeffs, who is serving two consecutive
sentences
of five years to life for being an accomplice to the rape of a 14-year-old
wed to her cousin in Utah. He awaits trial on other charges in Arizona.
Authorities investigating the Eldorado compound have described FLDS
members
as cooperative, but the house-by-house search of the temple, factories and
living quarters has triggered some trouble.
On Monday, 41-year-old Leroy Johnson Steed was arrested on charges of
felony
tampering with evidence — a day after 19-year-old Levi Barlow Jeffs was
arrested on misdemeanor charges of interfering with the duties of a public
servant, said DPS spokesman Tom Vinger.
He declined to give details on the arrests or how Levi Barlow Jeffs might
be
related to the FLDS leader.
Attorneys for the church and church leaders have filed motions asking a
judge to quash the search on constitutional grounds, saying state
authorities didn't have enough evidence and that the warrants were too
broad. A hearing on their motion was scheduled for Wednesday in San
Angelo.
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