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.”
Exodus 34:1 The LORD said to Moses, "Chisel out two stone tablets like the first ones, and I will write on them the words that were on the first tablets, which you broke.
What's so hard about that?
Where do you hear that there was a lesser law given the second time? What book, chapter and verse tells that? Is the verse in Exodus wrong? How do you know?
I care about what Scripture says. I don't care about made up stuff that nobody can support with sources.
Resty, enough already. Read Exodus 34:1
Wow, beat me by eighteen seconds, and you posted the actual verse! LOL You’re gooood!
You have Scriptural evidence which contradicts Exodus 34:1?
Let’s see it.
Perhaps an apology to Mountain Man would be in order.
Leni
.
OMm didn’t deny the insults in the freepmail ... the OMm poster is known for ‘chumming’ the waters. Frankly, I don’t hold it against Sky Pilot for exposing the insulting beggar.
What source does the Bible have for backing up what it says
The same standards should the same for judging all doctrine!
double standard two face!
Could be in some cases but I haven't read that account in Jacob/Israel family tree.
I don’t care who you are; that’s funny.
Just curious Rest. Do you ever get banned?
Could be in some cases but I haven't read that account in Jacob/Israel family tree. [Restornu]
Resty, you can't begin to understand polygamy in Jacob's family until you've read Gen. 30. And how can you miss Gen. 30 without reading verse 1? When Rachel saw that she was not bearing Jacob any children, she became jealous of her sister.
It wasn't a very healthy family situation...Rachel started inserting Jacob in the place of God as the source of an open womb--she said to Jacob, "Give me children or I'll die." (And Jacob understandably responded in anger, Am I in the place of God? (Gen. 30:2)
Genesis 30--with Jacob’s two wives & the two servant girls--is all about overblown surrogacy--a baby competition fueled by jealousy (Gen. 30:1)...& please note, that this is exactly what many of the 19th century LDS families degenerated into! (Jealous baby competitions in which women like Leah tried to win love & favor via childbirth)
As a matter of fact. Yes.
Finally, are you & DelphiUser going to try to continue convincing us that all this sleeping together with three slave girls by Abram & Jacob was an act of faith?
I thought I conveyed exactly the opposite point.
Now since I answered your questions answer this:
The Bible uses the same word for Wife to describe the relationship between Hagar and Abram that is used to describe the relationship between Adam and Eve and Abram and Sarai. So are you denying that the Bible teaches that Hagar was given by Sarai to Abram as a "wife"?
Maybe you should read it again.
Oh please sister even become jealous when one can have another can’t in normal families!
So hatred is not just a plural marriage by product!
Men do the same thing if there brother or close friend can have children their spouce is not producing!
it is a human emotion.
So I gather you don’t think this is not a double standard two face reply
This man does not have diologue it just a hurling insult machine!
OMm didn’t deny the insults in the freepmail ... the OMm poster is known for ‘chumming’ the waters. Frankly, I don’t hold it against Sky Pilot for exposing the insulting beggar.
Your adulterous peepstone false prophet claimed to have been given the Urim and Thummim, even fabricating a story coercing others to support it as if the U&T were like a pair of glasses! You should withdraw before you dig too deeply to escape your own pit, Resty.
Poor Resty, trying to teach about critical thinking yet doesn’t know the difference in ‘would not’ and ‘could not’.
BTW, resty, did you understand the most excellent explanation given by our new member?... I didn’t think so.
Resty! You of all posters ought not try to teach ‘critical thinking’!
MHGinTN to restornu
Hinckley’s words, is that why you call sound Biblical teaching ‘horse manure’? Does that make one a hypocrite? Or is it even possible for a mormon on the Internet to be a hypocrite?
Resty, can you with a straight face say you would have trouble remembering the particulars of a visit like old liar Joe claimed occurred? Seriously, how far must you stretch credulity to defend this lying peepstone false prophet adulterer?
Nice try at diversion into Protestant v Catholic. Did the FAIR LDS tell you what to follow up with, or did they leave poor you hanging ... ?
I shall, of course, hold my breath.
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