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.”
Thankfully it only took 4 years in Texas.
What were they thinking?
Did they really think that Texas would put up with this bull?
Texas was just waiting for a chance to bring these perverts down.
Next time, stay in Utah!
I have no problems at ALL with Romeny or his religion. I was trying to point out that the “ image “ of Mormons overall is hurt by this cult.
“I was trying to point out that the “ image “ of Mormons overall is hurt by this cult.”
Things like this make people learn about the religion’s fundamental beliefs and it makes the “milk instead of meat” method of gaining new followers just a little more difficult.
An update.
ELDORADO - The children taken from the Mormon splinter sect compound were housed Saturday at Eldorado’s community center and the First Baptist Church fellowship hall, sleeping on donated cots and eating food dropped off by Eldorado residents.
The food was cooked by Sutton County Steak House of Sonora, about 20 miles south of Eldorado.
The Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints stays in seclusion, eating food grown at the compound and minimizing contact with the outside world - the extent of which became apparent as the children sampled what the steakhouse had to offer, said owner Linda Love.
“They didn’t even know what a steak finger was,” she said. “They’re singing songs. So happy and sweet and precious. It’s heartbreaking.”
Church volunteers and Eldorado residents bought diapers and food supplies from the local Super S Food Store, dropped off bottles of water and wheeled cases of soda in shopping carts. Some came in hopes of volunteering, but signs on the door to the fellowship hall said officials only accepted donations.
Many church members and officials were helping Friday and Saturday, said Shea Politte, whose husband, Sylas, is the First Baptist Church youth minister and helped coordinate the church’s efforts in providing buses and supplies.
Politte declined to give specifics about the church’s new tenants.
“I don’t want to jeopardize their rights,” she said. “They have more now.”
O.K. I admit I don’t even know what a steak finger is. Sounds disturbing.
“O.K. I admit I don’t even know what a steak finger is. Sounds disturbing.”
I served many a steak finger and gravy when I worked for Dairy Queen.
My memory of it, is that it is a fast food bag of pieces of tenderized round steak that is breaded and deep fried, I think they were about 3” long and an inch wide.
They are like chicken nuggets, except they are beef, and you dip them into gravy instead of the chicken nugget sauces.
” And just because some people of their faith once practiced polygamy, just like some folks in the good old “Biblical” days did, “
They stopped doing it 13 years before Bob Hope was born.
What’s a “chicken nugget”?...sound gross! Is it something you wipe off your shoe? ;)
You will be hard pressed to find a Mormons who thinks polygamy is a sin and was a sin 160 years ago.
I am well aware that the mainstream Mormon church no longer practices it.
There have been many mainstream Mormons on FR who have defended polygamy.
I will never agree with them, and I am not one to shy away from saying so.
LOL.
I’ll take a ‘nugget’ over a ‘finger’ any day!
I can assure you that here in the midwest, they don’t serve fingers at Dairy Queen.
Go to Wendy’s for that. :)
No more than Christianity's image is hurt by the bakers and swaggarts of the world.
In some cases, the children may have escaped the frying pan only to land in the fire. Animal products such as deep-fried steak fingers, dairy products such as Vermont cheese, and particularly processed foods such as are usually available at 'Super S' convenience stores are known to cause heart disease, stroke and dementia in the 80% of Americans whose diet consists predominantly of such foods high in acrylimides & hopelessly low in nutrients per calorie.
I certainly hope that evidence of abuse on the compound is substantiated or, relatively, the kids may be worse off in the steak house than they were on the compoound...at least nutritionally.
No doubt, however, that the kids are NOT facing the dire threats of imminent incarceration that they would be facing if Hillary & Bill were back in the White House...
Here is a recipe for ‘steak fingers’, tasty stuff.
http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Steak-Fingers/Detail.aspx
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicken_McNuggets
Oooops...”incarceration” should be “incineration”...imminent, that is...
John 10:30
I and my Father are one.
John 14: 15-17
"If you love me, you will obey what I command. And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Counselor to be with you forever-- the Spirit of truth. The world cannot accept him, because it neither sees him nor knows him. But you know him, for he lives with you and will be in you.
Hmmmmmmmmmmm.......don't see the Council of Nicea mentioned there at all.
But, I guess why should we believe this Jesus guy anyway, right?
“In some cases, the children may have escaped the frying pan only to land in the fire. Animal products such as deep-fried steak fingers, dairy products such as Vermont cheese, and particularly processed foods such as are usually available at ‘Super S’ convenience stores are known to cause heart disease, stroke and dementia in the 80% of Americans whose diet consists predominantly of such foods high in acrylimides & hopelessly low in nutrients per calorie.”
At least now they stand a better chance of dying as Christians, and a much less chance of being molested, used, and abused.
Freep-mail me to get on or off my pro-life and Catholic List:
Please ping me to note-worthy Pro-Life or Catholic threads, or other threads of interest.
The apostles never believed in a three person Trinity. That was hatched out of the Council of Nicea. See Colossians 2:9: For in him dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily.Really? Try the Gospel:
And there are Three who give testimony in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost. And these three are one.1 John Chapter 5,7
See post 438.
"Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit."
Matthew 28:19
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