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.”
Shep doesn’t look like he is fond of Merril Jessop!
I KNOW that because They are One, that is the essence of the Trinity. However, under your belief, They could disagree.
If ever there is a church in serious need of reform its mine.
I appreciate your post, Degaston. Would that many more of your fellow mormons would have the same decency to condemn the leaders for their condoning of by ignoring this practice.
However, be careful what you post in the way of information...there are those here who would report you to the church if they knew who you are IRL.
I would like to second that recommendation, not to let paranoia set in though. Your statement was like a breath of fresh air here.
8 And I gave thee thy master’s house, and thy master’s wives into thy bosom, and gave thee the house of Israel and of Judah; and if that had been too little, I would moreover have given unto thee such and such things.After David has fallen and slept with Bathsheba, and killed Uriah, Samuel comes to him to tell him of the lord's punishment for his murder of Uriah, as part of that Samuel tells David how much he had and what he as lost. God Gave David his wives, that means God approved of them, God does not change therefore he still approves of Polygamy. This is a simple point to understand which does not excuse the horrific things that apparently were going on in this "community" I use the word loosely. In a day when Marriages were Common at 15 and 16, because of the projected lifespan, fine. That day has passed. There is IMHO no reason for any woman to marry either before she is ready or a man she does not want to. I believe in the laws which protect those too immature to make such decisions. I believe in the laws which protect minors from advances by dirty old or young men. Those have nothing to do with polygamy, and I wish someone would explain to me why otherwise logical Christians would rather see a couple of Guys "get hitched" (I refuse to call it a Marriage) than allow two women who want to to marry the same man who wants to marry them.
FLDS teen whose call sparked Texas raid said she feared for her life from physically abusive husband
I don’t have the computer skills. It looks kind of blurry as it is so I don’t know how much more you could see of it.
So you see, unlike Christianity that equates male souls and female souls as equal in God’s eyes and precious to Him, Mormonism teaches that a woman will be damned to hell without a celestial marriage to someone of the “preisthood.”
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A few months ago, a mormon guy told me in a thread that I was evil and a feminist because I claimed that I could be saved on my own without a man’s help..
He boasted that his mormon wife was a “real”woman” and placed him on a pedestal and “adored” him and did all manner of things for him etc
he told me his wife had read my posts and told him that I was not a “good” woman etc...
Warren Jeffs is a FReeper ?????
Would I be amiss in presuming that they didn't have it before, either?
Dang!
Who was that Freeper?
PM me, I am dying to know.
The sentence is misleading - I believe the intent was they never had tv/phones at the ranch and now they will have access to both.
Vile and evil. Everytime someone tries to justify this evil it’s only because they don’t believe there is anything wrong. They live among us too which scares me even MORE!
To even speak out about it (even here on FR) will open you up to threats, ridicule, name calling, Freep hatemail, deleted posts, threats of banning, and the like.
That’s fine with me. I consider it persecution for Christ’s sake.
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And even be accused of going over to the “darkside” (whatever that is) by non-mormons who dont have a clue but are sympathetic towards the poor widdle victim mormons...
Abortion is murder
Homosexuality is perversion
The second amendment is not about the National Guard
Property Rights are key to maintaining economic and political freedom
etc.
But I guess if you want to focus on the differences and sow dissent rather than try to help create unity against the evil forces of libertinism, socialism, and communism then you are free to do so.
That you are focusing your energy on creating dissent among otherwise agreeable people says more about you than about the particular thread you are posting to.
POLYGAMY IS OF THE DEVIL.
Jesus so clearly taught against it.
Some of these posters have the same mind set as described above in
"If the law comes in and takes over, or anything happens to them, it is all a test sent from God, through WarrenJoseph Smith. Everything is a test, because they believe that the afterlife is going to tell the truth. And they believe that once this life is over then they're going to be -- they're going to be either celestialized, which is you know, given the highest degree of glory in the kingdom of heaven, or they will damned forever to hell."
What do you do with them? Nothing different than what you've been doing. They've been on the welfare roles already, have they not? Nothing new then.
Why are you using bible passages for defending forced Polygamy in this day and age? I’m sorry but this was practiced ALONG TIME AGO in a different time. Do you still travel via donkey or camel too?
After David has fallen and slept with Bathsheba, and killed Uriah, Samuel comes to him to tell him of the lord’s punishment for his murder of Uriah,
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No, Samuel never did that at all
It was Nathan that came to David...
And God did not condone adultery or bigamy...
You go after all the fathers for child support owed the state.
You are my sister in Christ Nana.
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Then the Sadducees, who say there is no resurrection, came to him with a question. "Teacher," they said, "Moses wrote for us that if a man's brother dies and leaves a wife but no children, the man must marry the widow and have children for his brother. Now there were seven brothers. The first one married and died without leaving any children. The second one married the widow, but he also died, leaving no child. It was the same with the third. In fact, none of the seven left any children. Last of all, the woman died too. At the resurrection whose wife will she be, since the seven were married to her?" Jesus replied, "Are you not in error because you do not know the Scriptures or the power of God? When the dead rise, they will neither marry nor be given in marriage; they will be like the angels in heaven. Now about the dead rising—have you not read in the book of Moses, in the account of the bush, how God said to him, 'I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob? He is not the God of the dead, but of the living. You are badly mistaken!"
Mark 12: 18-27
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