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.”
Thanks, Sky. I have trouble with people from *certain religious faiths* proclaiming that splinter groups are not connected and yet they refuse to denounce said splinter groups.
Or for that matter, I have trouble with Obama talking out against his own pastor while he continues sitting in the front pew. Don’t. Stop. Don’t. Stop. Dontstop dontstop dontstop...
a crude submarine
The kids look like little kids but the women look...old.
Interesting book - insiders take on this cult and the lie of polygamy.
Escape (Hardcover)
by Carolyn Jessop (Author), Laura Palmer (Author
Editorial Reviews
From Publishers Weekly
Seventeen years after being forced into a polygamous marriage, Jessop escaped from the cultlike Fundamentalist Church of Latter Day Saints with her eight children. She recounts the horrid events that led her to break free from the oppressive world she knew and how she has managed to survive since escaping, despite threats and legal battles with her husband and the Church. Though sometimes her retelling overflows with colorful foreshadowing and commentary on how exceptional she is, the everyday details she reveals about this polygamous society are devastating and tragic. Frasier delivers Jessop’s words in a soft voice that develops intriguingly from an innocent and naïve tone into a more assertive and self-confident one that mirrors Jessop’s journey. She maintains the same rhythm, but through the inspired words of the text, she really embraces Jessop’s persona. The bonus telephone interview with Jessop on the final disc suffers from poor sound quality and, unfortunately, doesn’t add any new information. Simultaneous release with the Doubleday hardcover.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. —This text refers to the Audio CD edition.
Review
“Escape provides an astonishing look behind the tightly drawn curtains of the FLDS Church, one of the most secretive religious groups in the United States. The story Carolyn Jessop tells is so weird and shocking that one hesitates to believe a sect like this, with 10,000 polygamous followers, could really exist in 21st-century America. But Jessop’s courageous, heart-wrenching account is absolutely factual. This riveting book reminds us that truth can indeed be much, much stranger than fiction.”
—Jon Krakauer, Author of Under the Banner of Heaven, Into Thin Air, and Into the Wild
Those women are certainly Rubenesque, eh? And see that little redheaded boy? All the rest look like brothers and sisters, except him.
My little grandson has hair that color. He stands out in a crowd , even with his cousins.
"Well okkkkkkkk boys. How's about we say ah..... Wed. That too soon for yall?"
It’s beautiful hair, and the rarest. I just wonder why NO ONE else in the picture has it, them being all incesty and all...???
Well, the one "alleged" rapist was 50. So, they are probably wives Number 2 or 3. The new ones were wives Number 8 or 9.
How do they get their hair to poof up like that in the front? Yikes.
What is it with these religions and offering sex for eternity as a reward for faithful devotion?
OH..... MY...... GOD!!!!!
Something should have been done about this group a LONG time ago.
Everyone should watch that video clip. I need to find that book.
The Book off Jacob, Huh?
And that’s part of who’s Scriptures, need I ask?
Oh my gosh! I just watched that video clip from MSN interviewing Carolyn Jessup. That part about Mr. Jessup holding BABIES under the water tap so they could not breathe is just horrifying! There is not a word to describe the evil of this man....cult cult cult cult CULT CULT CULT!
The women look old because they are married off as teenagers to old men twice to three times their age and then become baby making machines for the rest of their child bearing years or until their “husbands” no longer have sex with them. Birth control not allowed.
Why does no one ever talk about the OTHER big elephant in the room about these cults? The RAMPANT welfare abuse? hmmmm...
If this stuff can be corroborated, this guys need to be covered in honey and tied to a fire ant hill.
My God. Torturing infants to *break the baby*. Words fail me.
I don't know how she managed to sneak out with all 8 of her children, but God bless her for trying and succeeding.
Maybe that explains the look on this girl's face as she appears to be RUNNING for the bus dragging her mother behind her
Check out those dresses! Little House on the Prarie.
Here’s a link to the post that will take you to another link of her being interviewed.....
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/1997522/posts?page=1376#1376
Merciful heaven. The girl looks happy to me. Smiling.
Satan, Satan, Satan, Satan, Satan, Satan, Satan, .....
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