Posted on 04/06/2008 5:27:22 AM PDT by SkyPilot
Local and state officials entered the temple of a secretive polygamist sect late Saturday, said lawmen blockading the road to the YFZ Ranch near Eldorado.
The action comes hours after local prosecutors said officials were preparing for the worst because a group of FLDS members were resisting efforts to search the structure.
The Texas Department of Public Safety trooper and Schleicher County sheriff’s deputy confirmed that officials have entered the temple but said they had no word on whether anything occurred in the effort.
The incursion into the temple caps the three-day saga of the state’s Child Protective Services agency removing at least 183 women and children from the YFZ Ranch since Friday afternoon. Eighteen girls have been placed in state custody since a 16-year-old told authorities she was married to a 50-year-old man and had given birth to his child.
Saturday evening, ambulances were brought in, said Allison Palmer, who as first assistant 51st District attorney, would prosecute any felony crimes uncovered as part of the investigation inside the compound.
“In preparing for entry to the temple, law enforcement is preparing for the worst,” Palmer said Saturday evening. They want to have “medical personnel on hand in case this were to go in a way that no one wants.”
Apparently as a result of action Saturday night at the ranch, about 10:15 p.m. Saturday, a Schleicher County school bus unloaded another group of at least a dozen more women and children from the compound.
Although members of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, or FLDS, have provided varying degrees of cooperation to the sheriff’s deputies and Texas Rangers searching the compound, all cooperation stopped once authorities tried to search the gleaming white temple that towers over the West Texas scrub, Palmer said.
“There may be those who would oppose (entry) by placing themselves between law enforcement and the place of worship,” Palmer said Saturday afternoon. “If an agreement cannot be reached … law enforcement will have to — as gently and peaceably as possible — make entry into that place.”
Sect members consider the temple, dedicated by then-leader of the sect Warren Jeffs in January 2005 and finished many months later, off-limits to those who are not FLDS members, said Palmer, who prosecutes felony cases in Schleicher County.
Palmer said she didn’t know the size or makeup of the group inside the temple.
The earlier refusal to provide access was even more disconcerting because CPS investigators have yet to identify the 16-year-old girl or her roughly 8-month-old baby among the dozens removed from the compound, Palmer said.
“Anytime someone says, ‘Don’t look here,’” she said, “it makes you concerned that’s exactly where you need to look.”
The girl told authorities in two separate phone calls a day apart that she was married to a 50-year-old man, Dale Barlow, who had fathered her child, Palmer said.
The joint raid included the Texas Rangers, CPS, Schleicher County and Tom Green County sheriff’s deputies and game wardens from the Texas Department of Parks and Wildlife.
Although CPS and Department of Public Safety officials have described the compound’s residents as cooperative, Palmer disagreed.
“Things have been a little tense, a little volatile,” she said.
Authorities removed 52 children Friday afternoon and 131 women and children overnight Friday. About 40 of the children are boys, said CPS spokeswoman Marleigh Meisner.
No further children have been taken into state custody since Friday, when 18 girls were judged to have been abused or be at imminent risk for abuse. CPS has found foster homes for the girls, Meisner said, and will place them after concluding its investigation.
Meisner declined to comment on the fate of the 119 other children and said authorities were still searching the ranch for others Saturday evening.
“They’re in the process of looking,” she said. “They’re literally about halfway through.”
Yes it does justify it.
The young news reader on radio sounded overjoyed to call this ‘another Waco.’ What are they teaching in schools these days that would produce such a statement?
The bus comment was made since I believe that it’s the government’s business to handle the matter from top to bottom. As I said before, many of the members of the group probably are good and decent people. Southern Baptists have over the years had problems with Jews, Roman Catholics, blacks and most recently Mormons (Huckster’s comments for Mitt Romney’s ears). As a RC, I’d prefer to witness through silence or in this case leave this squarely in the hands of the government.
Put ME in coach!
It poped up on a Google search but I posted the version you have linked in my Post 38. That appears to be the latest and greatest. Looks to me like they ammend the code about two times a year.
I now know what YFZ stands for.
Yearning For Zion Ranch.
LOL. Thats just funny.
An update.
ELDORADO, Texas - A helicopter hovered over the FLDS compound in West Texas late Saturday and ambulances were on the ground as a SWAT team peacefully entered and left the sect’s temple, considered sacred by believers.
During the past three days, state child welfare investigators have removed more than 183 boys, girls and women from the compound four miles north of downtown Eldorado for questioning about their well-being.
The action followed a report Monday by a 16-year-old girl who alleged she had been physically abused.
Preceded by officers, child-protection investigators went building to building at the YFZ Ranch.
By late afternoon, authorities were unsure if the 16-year-old girl was among those taken from the ranch, leading them to insist on going into the temple to look for her, Allison Palmer, an assistant attorney in the 51st District Court, told the San Angelo Standard-Times on Saturday.
As they expected, officers met with resistance by the FLDS, who believe nonbelievers should not enter the temple.
“In preparing for entry to the temple, law enforcement is preparing for the worst,” Palmer said. They want to have “medical personnel on hand in case this were to go in a way that no one wants.”
The officers declined to speak about the matter because a judge earlier issued a gag order. Contacted by phone,
Schleicher County Sheriff David Doran said, “I can’t talk. We’re in the middle of a mission here.”
The SWAT team entered the temple at about 10:45 p.m. CDT, secured the building in about 5 minutes, then moved on to check another building.
About an hour earlier, a school bus carrying child-protection investigators and more women and children came out of the compound headed to the First Baptist Church Fellowship Hall in Eldorado.
At the side of the road near the ranch, an FLDS man sat in his truck, unable to re-enter the property. He had been waiting all day.
“It’s gut-wrenching,” said the man, who declined to give his name. “It’s not in my hands. It’s up to a higher power.”
He said he has a family at the compound, but hadn’t heard anything from them. “I don’t know what’s going to happen. My stomach is just in knots.”
The girl allegedly gave birth to a child at age 15, that is the crux of their argument. She would have to at the latest been 15 when she became pregnant, making it rape no matter what because she is younger than the law of consent.
If a girl gets married at 14 does it allow for an older man to have sex at that age also? I am just curious, the two don’t have to go hand in hand when the law is concerned.
That is silly. Elections are held in churches all the time! There is nothing wrong with moving these people with church buses.
That is the PC way of looking at things. Yes Baptists have had issues with those you mentioned.
That doesn’t mean this church does.
I doubt very seriously if any of these deviant perverted cultists applied for any marriage licenses for any of these polygamist marriages.
Maybe you should study a little more.
Oh, dear...
Jesus' papa is God and mama is Mary, a virgin.
"Study your scriptures!"
Good advice, try it.
Obviously, this present child was NOT his first or legal wife.
The suspect now denies even knowing the girl.
http://www.sltrib.com/ci_8827761
Hmmm... I wonder if he has ever heard of DNA or paternity testing?
ROTFL...I SEE what you did, ;)
I agree. I'm starting to suspect their true motivation behind this raid on the sect. I sure hope cooler heads will prevail so we don't end up with another Camp Davidian assault and massacre.
That is probably where they keep their sacred mormon undies.
I guess that makes it RAPE.
Hmmm... I wonder if he has ever heard of DNA or paternity testing?
With all the incest going on in these cults, I suspect that it would be impossible to pinpoint the father.
Can you imagine growing up as young girl in Utah in the 1850's to 1890's? This compound is a slice of what life must have been like.
Huh?
Jesus was also the descendant of a prostitute. Does that make prostitution ok?
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.