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.”
Sure, I understand that. It is CPS that is stating they have “yet to identify her” which in the context of their statment it means they can’t find her. As in she is not there.
You just missed my post number 392. Look up two posts...
One of the things that bothers me the most about these tactics, is that folks seem to sign on to them without questions. Is this the type of law enforcement we want whenever criminality is suspected? If so, we're in for a bumpy ride.
In this case I don’t think LE “stormed” the compound. I agree, even if we think these people are nuts, we should respect their rights. If there is a legitimate concern about abuse though, the LE authorities have to investigate. Up until now, although the locals weren’t thrilled with their presence, they tolerated them.
It seems to me that some method could have been found to interrogate the kids at the farm. If just cause could then have been found, I’m all for escalating the situation.
This wholesale incarceration doesn’t set well with me.
I may be wrong, but I do find this troublesome.
I agree that they should have launched an investigation. I have no problem with that. If criminality is suspected, you have to.
I'd rather see a Mormon like Romney POTUS than a lying phony corrupt "Christian" Democrat like Obama or Hillary.
When I said LE, I meant real LE, not CPS. One of the updates said they found evidence and maybe that is why they began removing people.
It seems to me that some method could have been found to interrogate the kids at the farm. If just cause could then have been found, I’m all for escalating the situation.
This wholesale incarceration doesn’t set well with me.
I may be wrong, but I do find this troublesome.
I agree that they should have launched an investigation. I have no problem with that. If criminality is suspected, you have to.
Folks can say what they want about these folks being flakes, but those buildings don’t look like the work of a bunch of losers.
Even a nut can build a solid building. Hitler proved that.
I would have voted for Romney in a second if I had thought he agreed with my view of conservatism. If these arrests had taken place and many convictions had been obtained, I wouldn’t judge him to have been of the same mind as the perps.
Are you saying you wouldn’t have voted for him based on his religion? I don’t think that’s your attitude. I don’t think a broad of cross section of society looks at this any differently than you or I do. And if they did, I’ll bet some education in the process of the political campaign would have convinced them otherwise.
Yes but Hitler wasn’t limited to a 200 member community on a farm. Was this farm getting funding from other churches around the country?
Ooooohhh, those big bad Baptist buses!
Really, who cares how they were brought out!
In fact they are staying at the Baptist Church. They are being fed and cared for by those evil baptists!
s
I believe it was.
Well that could be. And if so, I suppose your point could be reasoned.
What happens if these people are held in local jails and lose their jobs? They lose the farm, the families are split to the far corners of the region, thirty charges are bought, and one or two people are convicted of anything on a count or two each?
Is the utter destruction of this community going to be justified?
It will be interesting to see how this plays out. Perhaps much more criminality would be found, than I suspect.
If the candidate were a Conservative, he would most likely be of better character than a Liberal, IMHO.
The Baptist buses were used and the women and children are staying at the local Baptist Church. Can you not see how offensive that is? sarc/
I agree MTR. Thanks for the follow-up comments.
Actually the first buses went in on Thursday. The school buses were tied up, you know with schoolkids.
No worries, several of us have now been labeled as vipers!
Have you reached that kingdom yet?
:)
“I don’t understand the Baptist bashing here.”
On all Mormon threads there is an effort to demonize Baptists and often evangelicals, which the Mormons strive to identify only as Baptist, and for the Mormons to try to separate them from the pack of the other Christian churches.
I think the main reason is that the Mormons want to attempt to minimize the totality of agreement by their Christian opposition.
It does work, as you have seen on many threads, a lot of Catholics and other denominations don’t know that their church does not recognize Mormonism as Christian, and they sometimes see that view as a bigoted view limited to some hick evangelicals, especially many Catholics do not know the very clear position that the church takes on the Mormon cult.
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