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 believe in the laws which protect minors from advances by dirty old or young men.
________________________________________
It’s good that you agree that the false prophet Joseph smith, Brigham Young and other mormon pedophiles were criminals and should have gone to jail for their sex crimes...
Agreed.
That said, there are going to be a TON of charges filed, both by the great State of Texas, and I believe Federal charges as well.
Federal charges?
Yup.
Do you remember the Spitzer scandal?
He may be charged under the Mann Act - a Federal law on the books that makes it illegal to transport women across state lines for the purpose of sexual exploitation.
Since these little girls were never "married" to these fat pigs of men, (they were nothing more than sex slaves and captive wombs), then the Mann Act would apply to the girls taken from Colorado, Utah, Arizona, and other states.
I KNOW that because They are One, that is the essence of the Trinity. However, under your belief, They could disagree.
Who would disagree?
Thank you brother mine...
I’m honored to be part of THE family of God with you
(HUGS)
:)
Since these little girls were never “married” to these fat pigs of men, (they were nothing more than sex slaves and captive wombs), then the Mann Act would apply to the girls taken from Colorado, Utah, Arizona, and other states.
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And child abuse...
It’s a felony...
Lots of possible charges
these animals are going away for a long time...
Say Howdee to Leroy Bown, boys...
He’s the meanest man in the whole cell block and he’s your new cell mate...
And he dont like what you bin a’doin’
Leroy Brown
You don't get it, do you?
The souls of people are at stake here - and that is what is most important to Christ.
The Pharisees could have made the same argument to Jesus that you just made.
"Hey Yeshua - I mean come on here. We both hate the Romans, we follow that law and respect Moses! Let's focus on the positive here."
Here is what he said about those who are not with Him:
As he taught, Jesus said, "Watch out for the teachers of the law. They like to walk around in flowing robes and be greeted in the marketplaces, and have the most important seats in the synagogues and the places of honor at banquets. They devour widows' houses and for a show make lengthy prayers. Such men will be punished most severely."
Mark 12: 38-40
Huh?
I haven't read it yet...does anyone want to post the affadavit here?
APRIL 8--Forced marriage and sexual abuse were "pervasive" inside the Texas compound of a polygamist sect raided last week by investigators, according to child welfare officials seeking custody of more than 400 children removed from the religious group's sprawling YFZ Ranch. In a harrowing District Court affidavit, a Child Protective Services investigator charged that the children were placed in risk of "emotional, physical and/or sexual abuse" at the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints facility, where female children were groomed to "accept spiritual marriages to adult male members of the YFZ Ranch resulting in them being sexually abused." Similarly, investigator Lynn McFadden noted, young men on the YFZ Ranch were "spiritually married to minor female children," with whom they engaged in sexual relationships, becoming, in the process, sexual "perpetrators."
Thanks, Sky
I wondered where MD wandered off to!
?
thanks for putting that up.
To Lynn McFadden where is the girl?
These verses are EXACTLY what Presbyterians believe!
Do they have all the men in ONE building yet??
;^)
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