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.”
I have to restrain myself. Sometimes it becomes very easy to blame a plethora of the world’s problems on pathetic specimens of the male gender.
I must say no more.
We don't need any steenkin' hammers...perfume and sweet talk will work just fine.
This has been a state operation up to this point, and now they’ve brought in the feds. I wonder what state authorities have discovered. They had to use the “jaws of death” to get into the temple, and last night they brought in jack hammers.
Also, law enforcement is reportedly on the lookout for Seth Jeffs, brother of Warren Jeffs who may be headed to the ranch.
Yeah. It’s seems that there are tearing the place apart looking for her.
They may be concerned that she was moved to another state.
And a frying pan... for the man that even thinks about bringing another “wife “ home.
My argument is that polygamy is never right, not now, not a hundred years ago, not ever.
All those people in the Bible that you mentioned were sinners, men of God but still sinners.
Just because they practiced it doesn't mean they were right in doing so.
Sarah and Abraham is the prime example. She was attempting to ‘help’ God by giving her maid to Abraham. She doubted she could have a child. That was wrong. And Hagar was only property. She belonged to Sarah. Abraham having a child with Hagar was not ordained by God. It was all Sarah's stupid idea.
That is what those poor women in Texas are. Property.
Another wife, or her germs! There are less romantic reasons for keeping oneself chaste, ya know? Sheesh!
Flowers and champagne are always the right choice. I never have to force myself on my husband! [/blush]
Greyfoxx is evidence that my motto is true: There IS nothing finer on the planet than a gentleman!
I am getting a very nasty feeling that they will never find her. And, she must have thought of that before she called. She chose to risk sacrificing herself [one] for the others [401.]
John 17: 11, 21-22
11 And now I am no more in the world, but these are in the world, and I come to thee. Holy Father, keep through thine own name those whom thou hast given me, that they may be one, as we are.
• • • 21 That they all may be one; as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be one in us: that the world may believe that thou hast sent me.
22 And the glory which thou gavest me I have given them; that they may be one, even as we are one:
Thanks for that great sermon on the trinity. However, how does this relate exactly to your contention that God approves adultery???
OOPS! Greyfoxx is a woman....
The FLDS have an incinerator that is capable of destroying DNA.
I posted this earlier on this thread.
here’s a link: http://www.rickross.com/reference/polygamy/polygamy395.html
A former FLDS member who left the church in April tells New Times he believes Jeffs is building a blood-atonement room in the Texas temple where sinners’ throats would be slit and their bodies burned in a DNA-incinerating crematory. It is believed by strict constructionists of FLDS doctrine that this last-gasp ritual is sometimes necessary to ensure a sinner’s eternal salvation.
Robert Richter says he left the church in April while he was working on a “secret project” to build computer controls for an extremely high-temperature thermostat that he now fears could be used to operate such a crematory at the temple to dispose of the remains of blood-atonement victims.
Richter says he was told to design controls to operate a thermostat that could handle temperatures up to 2,700 degrees. At that heat level, DNA is destroyed. Richter says he felt unqualified to handle such a project and wondered why YFZ officials did not hire a licensed specialist to do the work.
Richter says he was deeply troubled when he was told his work on the thermostat controls was to be kept secret. Richter, who was working in Colorado City, says he knew the thermostat was to be used in conjunction with a furnace, but he was not allowed to speak to other FLDS technicians working in Texas about the project.
The secrecy disturbed him to the point that he decided to leave the FLDS. It was a monumental decision, especially since he had a young wife and an infant to support.
A woman with an eye for fine gentleman! ;o)
Who says there are any? The bible does.
Ephesians 4:
11 And he gave some, apostles; and some, prophets; and some, evangelists; and some, pastors and teachers;
12 For the perfecting of the saints, for the work of the ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ:
13 Till we all come in the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ:
14 That we henceforth be no more children, tossed to and fro, and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the sleight of men, and cunning craftiness, whereby they lie in wait to deceive;
15 But speaking the truth in love, may grow up into him in all things, which is the head, even Christ:
Uh, you missed Ephesians 2:20 - ”And are built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ himself being the chief corner stone;”
Apostles and prophets had a set time in history, they were foundational to the establishment of the Church. They are no more necessary today than when you build a building you need to keep laying a foundation upon a foundation upon a foundation upon a foundation…..
And you missed I Cor. 13:8-10 - 8Charity never faileth: but whether there be prophecies, they shall fail; whether there be tongues, they shall cease; whether there be knowledge, it shall vanish away.
9For we know in part, and we prophesy in part.
10But when that which is perfect is come, then that which is in part shall be done away.
Again, these verses teach specifically that prophecy is temporary….
Why is it temporary you ask?
Hebrews 1:1&2 - 1God, who at sundry times and in divers manners spake in time past unto the fathers by the prophets,
2Hath in these last days spoken unto us by his Son, whom he hath appointed heir of all things, by whom also he made the worlds;
Your insistence on a ‘living prophet’ violates clear scriptural teaching that Christ has superceded such an office. Unless of course you’re claiming Joseph Smith or any other ‘living prophets’ are greater than Christ????
Let’s hope that what they don’t find is a body. Jackhammers are used for concrete.
I saw that, and while I am no conspiracy theorist I wouldn’t be too quick to discount such a thing. It makes you wonder though, doesn’t it, whether men like Richter can’t stay in because they have too much character, too much honor? Doesn’t say much for the rest...
Oh dear Lord.
these people are sick and evil.
You thinking what I am? Ala ‘Telltale Heart?’
I think we all are. Sad part is, I don’t think anyone of us would be suprised. :(
This cannot possibly be what is meant to be protected by the First Amendment. One can call it *religious* activity all they want. Enough is enough.
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