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 sheriffs 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 states 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 sheriffs 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 didnt 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, Dont look here, she said, it makes you concerned thats 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 sheriffs deputies and game wardens from the Texas Department of Parks and Wildlife.
Although CPS and Department of Public Safety officials have described the compounds 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.
Theyre in the process of looking, she said. Theyre literally about halfway through.
From what I have read, the community wasn’t happy about them but adults are free to live as they choose. As soon as they got a complaint they acted.
Ditto that.
They need to throw that tar baby out.
??
It looks that way!
I have NO IDEA what you are trying to say.
There is one covenant for the Children of Israel and another covenant for the Children of Ishmael.
God said that he would bless Ishmael and multiply him, that he would beget twelve chiefs and make him a great nation; however, this IS NOT a covenant.
And you still have not answered my most important question, is Ishmael the legimate heir of Abraham? YES or NO
More.
Read this.
Birth defect is plaguing children in FLDS towns
http://www.deseretnews.com/article/1,5143,635182923,00.html
What?
Do a search on my posts and you will see I have been posting consistently ever since I joined FreeRepublic in 1999.
BTW, I have never posted anything on this thread to suggest that I support anything going on with the cult in Eldorado.
I just believe that it is unfair to lump all Mormons in with what is going on in Eldorado, and it is a waste of bandwidth to be trying to convert Mormons, or more likely merely antagonize Mormons.
It's one thing to discuss how this case is similar to or differs from the Waco case, or how this case relates to church/state relations. But to turn this into a sophomoric attempt to attack people who by and large agree with most Catholics, Protestants, and conservative Jews on matters of public policy is counterproductive.
“Good stuff here too and they will pack and ship to our military”
I was a young soldier once, nothing would have made me happier than receiving that kind of hard core man food.
Send a woman chocolate cake, but send a man smoked meats.
I don't support the Eldorado Temple crowd. My only complaint is that this thread is being used to castigate all members of the LDS church. Which is just silly and counterproductive.
Conservatives of all faiths should be trying to regroup rather than coming up with reasons to remain splintered.
I never said you did, so who's wet?
In a dusty neighborhood under sheer sandstone cliffs studded with juniper on the Arizona-Utah border, a rare genetic disorder is spreading through polygamous families on a wave of inbreeding.
The twin border communities of Hildale, Utah, and Colorado City, Ariz., have the worlds highest known prevalence of fumarase deficiency, an enzyme irregularity that causes severe mental retardation brought on by cousin marriage, doctors say.
Arizona has about half the worlds population of known fumarase deficiency patients, said Dr. Theodore Tarby, a pediatric neurologist who has treated many of the children at Arizona clinics under contracts with the state.
It exists in a certain percentage of the broader population but once you get a tendency to inbreed youre inbreeding people who have the gene there, so you markedly increase the risk of developing the condition, he said.
The community of about 10,000 people, who shun outsiders and are taught to avoid newspapers, television and the Internet, is home to the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (FLDS), a sect that broke from the mainstream Mormon church 72 years ago over polygamy.
The group, who wear conservative 19th-century clothing, is led by Warren Jeffs, who was arrested in August and charged as an accomplice to rape for using his authority to order a 14-year-old girl against her wishes to marry and have sex with her 19-year-old cousin.
Doctors in the area declined requests for interviews and families refuse to talk to reporters. But former FLDS members, independent doctors and authorities say the disorder appears to have struck at least 20 children in the past 15 years.
The disease itself is very rare in the rest of the world, said Dr. Vinodh Narayanan of Arizonas St. Josephs Hospital & Medical Center and Barrow Neurological Institute. Doctors worldwide had only studied about 10 cases just a decade ago.
Once you get people within the same community marrying, then the chances grow of having two people carrying the exact same mutation.
Closed door
Local historian Benjamin Bistline said 75 to 80 percent of people in the area are blood relatives of two men John Y. Barlow and Joseph Smith Jessop who founded the sect on the remote desert plateau in the early 1930s.
There arent any new people coming in. Its a closed door and that gene just keeps getting passed around, said Bruce Wisan, a court-appointed accountant overseeing a trust of the sects assets.
Dr. Leslie Biesecker, chief of the Genetic Disease Research Branch at the National Institutes of Health, said the bad gene could have been introduced after the original founding families settled there. Any person who joined that community could have brought that mutation with them, he said.
Tarby, who has recently retired, said he first observed the problem when an FLDS couple came to a Phoenix clinic about 15 years ago with a 10-year-old boy suffering from a degenerative condition. He sent a urine sample to a lab in Colorado for analysis and was stunned by the diagnosis.
Since then, increasing numbers of children in the community have been stricken with the disease, which causes unusual facial features, frequent epileptic seizures, episodes of coma and possibly early death.
In the disorder, brain cells fail to receive enough fuel to grow, multiply and function properly because of a missing enzyme needed to generate energy from food, causing severe mental retardation and muscle control problems.
Tarby met with about 150 FLDS members in November, explaining that the disorder was not caused by tainted drinking water as rumored but by cousin marriage.
But even with that knowledge, it is still hard for people to leave the sect, said Brenda Jensen, 55, who fled the FLDS several years ago and now works for the Utah-based HOPE Organization, which helps women leave.
If they are willing to marry their cousin, or unwilling but do it anyway, or even in a relationship that is closer than that, it can be very hard for them, Jensen said.
And local habits are deeply ingrained, authorities say.
They will tell you if thats what God wants for you than thats what you will get, said Gary Engels, an investigator assigned to Colorado City by the Mohave County attorneys office. They dont think too much about marrying cousins and things like that.
link
The link was MSNBC but has been removed.
My son sent me an e-mail from his ship. “Send Beef Jerky”
THAT line brought us the Messiah, no matter how many foxes in the henhouse/snakes_in_the_grass were in it.
When Christ died and rose again for ME, His 'it is finished' ended the WORK of the Cross.
All that is left, is to tell the world about His sacrifice and grace.
"We don't need no steenkin' Restored Gospel®!"
Here in Missouri they use the card too, but it is still food stamps. OUR f*$%^#%$#^ing tax money!!!
It shows a Capital A with a ^ on top and then a tall +
Thou Shalt not mess with established Scripture. |
Flap - flap - flap!
Report me to the teacher after recess!
??WHAT??
You post before you check out the accuracy of your allegations?
Who knew!!
And you've learned well; Grasshopper!
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.