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.”
So you’re basing what you’re stating as facts on an news article?
O.K. wise one, show me where the feds are involved.
You obviously don’t believe that they aren’t, so put up or shut up.
The attempt at parallels in this thread to Waco are misguided.
Yes - the Branch Davidians had different beliefs, but that raid was primarily about gun control.
This one wasn't. It was about rape and the sexual molestation and exploitation of children.
While Koresh was also accused of sexual abuse, he was also accused of having automatic weapons at his compound (he didn't, they had completely legal Hellfire spring triggers). Furthermore, the Fed accused the Branch Davidians of have a meth lab there - which was completely false and was a lie generated so that military tanks, armored personnel vehicles, and helicopters could be brought to bear on the residents.
This was a raid on sick perverts who raped children and deserve to be locked up for good.
Vipers!
The informant told LE that there were kids as young as 3 months old being abused there. What are they supposed to do?
dmw: "The truth is not distortion. If you don’t like to hear the truth about your faith then don’t come on the threads that reveal these truths."
“[We] were also told that floating through space were thousands of infant spirits, who were waiting for bodies; that into every child that was born one of these spirits entered, and was thereby saved; but if they had no bodies given them, their wails of despair would ring through all eternity; and that it was, in order to insure their future happiness, necessary that as many of them as possible should be given bodies by Mormon parents. If a woman refused to marry into polygamy, or, being married, to allow her husband to take other wives, these spirits would rise up in judgment against her, because she had, by her act, kept them in darkness.” - Ann Eliza Young, Wife No. 9, Chapter 18
The FLDS are STILL living by these polygamist beliefs. LDS still believe in the pre-mortal spirits needing earthly bodies, thus the large families.
Of course, nothing to see here. Just because a group is more Mormon than the Mormons, doesn’t mean they are really Mormons.Although, I expect the FLDS claim they are Christians, and so must be taken at face value.
You aren't aware that the FLDS is a polygamist cult? It has to be mentioned? Exactly WHAT do you consider polygamy to be?
The earlier refusal to provide access was even more disconcerting because CPS investigators have yet to identify the 16-year-old girl …
I suggest you do some research on how these cults operate. Identifying the girl could put her family members remaining in the compound in danger.
I may be speculating, but I believe you will find that the girl is indeed, not the legal wife and that statutory rape charges are indicated.
This is the reason the Kolob cult moved to Utah in the first place, so they could marry multiple pre teens.
Lets not forget Romney's dad was born in Mexico:
Romney was born in Colonia Dublán, Galeana, in the Mexican state of Chihuahua to Gaskell Romney (1871-1955), an American of English ancestry, and wife Anna Amelia Pratt (1876-1926), born to a New England and Scottish father and a German mother.
Romney's grandparents were polygamous Mormons who fled the United States because of the federal government's opposition to polygamy
These people are now being kept at a local Baptist church.
LOL.
That will send some into a tizzy.
http://www.sltrib.com/ci_8823648
“Just to clarify, these people are not part of the modern “
Yeah, sure. They are closer to Joseph Smith than the modern LDS and that’s what throws you into a tizzy.
I got it straight from Montana Central...via short-wave connection to my 1000 megahertz Tinfoil Hat!
How do you know that?
Because the story mentioned only State and Local LE authorities. Not that the MSM is reliable on facts, but if the Feds were involved they would mention it after Waco.
That being said, I'm sure there's an FBI agent there, if only to serve as a "consultant".
Maybe this story isn’t true, nothing is going on.
After all it is based on a news story.
Where the heck do you think most of FR posts come from?
(:
“this FLDS, is a rogue organization, is a Fake LDS!”
sort of like the LDS is a roque organization, a fake Christian Curch!
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