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 guess you can hang your hat on that if you wish. I maintain that keeping the girl incognito is a wise move with family members still in danger of retaliation for her actions. In any case, feel free to defend the cult...I have other things to do besides debate with you.
Or the media is typically confused and clueless, which is par for the course.
Even if the FBI didn’t want this case, there is the possibility of kidnapping, and that is a federal crime. They will have someone there observing, and will step in if they have to, even if if it reluctantly. They probably won’t have to, which is just fine because the Rangers can handle this without their help.
“...since a 16-year-old told authorities she was married to a 50-year-old man and had given birth to his child.”
Not to diminish the sickness of this, but which part justifies all the drama? I guarantee there are *plenty* of underage girls around the country giving birth (or not) and the circumstances aren’t investigated, and the fathers are very often much older men. Of course, it must be the “married” part that gets their dander up.
I don’t believe that the authorities WILL be releasing the name of the minor as that is illegal save in missing persons cases in Texas.
The other girls aren’t calling 911 repeatedly, though.
Unless they’ve changed the law in Texas, I believe a kid of fourteen can get married with parental consent. Of course that’s providing the child also consents.
Arresting 200 individuals to investigate the marital status of one 16 year old girl, seem like it might just be a little overkill, don’t ya think?
As I recall, Arizona Republican Governor, Howard Pyle, cooperated in the “Short Creek” raid on FLDS in the Arizona strip. This was in the 1950’s and the upshot was that Pyle’s political career was over and the fundamentalists were know but “off limits” thereafter. Public reaction to enforcing such laws dealing with religious beliefs has always been skeptical.
I doubt it. Given the glacial slowness of the Texas offices of the FBI, they probably just finished processing the paperwork and the FBI agent will be dispatched on Monday.
If the scenario is still ongoing, the FBI agent will be kept WAY WAY away from the actual location - say in the county sheriff’s office. And the FBI agent will probably like it that way.
Agreed. This is a modern-day slave ring that preys upon their own children, under the guise of religion. The large majority of the boys lives are destroyed also, when they are expelled from the sect as teenagers with no resources, work or social skills, so that 50 year old men can have all the child brides.
I don’t understand the Baptist bashing here. What did we do?
I believe the law was changed sometime between 99 and 05.
Let me go look.
Hadn't thought of that aspect. Also, there are so many pligs in LEO ranks in AZ and UT that the name could be leaked to one of them, and retaliation would follow if her name wasn't held closely to a few.
I don't believe a judge would issue a warrant on an operation this large without cause.
I don’t get it either.
The nearest buses just happened to be from a Baptist church. If it had happened to be a Catholic or Episcopalian one, the authorities would still have commandeered them.
And before people ask - IIRC the geography of the county, the county seat is some distance away and the county school buses are there.
This may just be about a kid that was angry about something. KIds can lie. What do you do though? They have to check things out.
I believe the parenthetical “Fundamentalist LDS-cult” is an inaccurate and unfair association of FLDS with mainline Church of Jesus Christ of LDS.
FLDS is “LDS” in the same way as Fred Phelps is “Baptist” . . . which is to say, not at all.
No judge in Texas would issue a warrant for this without *very* good cause.
Remember, in Texas, all but a few judges are *elected* officials and answerable to the people who they serve. Any judge rubber stamping warrants that turned out to be a huge fiasco would be out of office at the next election.
I like our elected judges. It keeps the system far more honest than in other places.
You are using hearsay for document
greyfoxx39 it is a new day and those like you continue to do your fort tongue thing don’t be surprised to witness someday things mention in Numbers 14 & 16!
This is a conservative site and a lot of mormons (members of the Church of Jesus Christ ...) are on this forum. You freely call their church a “con” and a “cult”. Maybe you are just a troll or maybe your church ,if there is one, consists of a bunch of raving heretics spewing hate for other Christians.
How about coerced at best, at worst forcible ILLEGAL, bigamous "marriage"? These girls aren't given a choice in the matter and the underage births you are describing are not a result of an institutionalized practice as are these in the FLDS cult.
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