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.”
LOL. Too true.
Just for the record, if people wish to PM me, even those with whom I disagree, I will keep it private... so long as they do not get into flaming. When you use it to insult and belittle, you have no right to expect it to remain “private”. That is MY personal policy, and all have been fairly warned ahead of time.
Sounds vaguely 72-virginish.
Tagline fiddling...
The Bible is clear the if a man does not work, he should not eat and that a man who does not support his family, especially his immediate family, is worse than an unbeliever.
Somehow they must have missed that part.
And there’s still people defending the cult under the guise of the First Amendment.
†
“Our stay in Salt Lake City amounted to only two days, and therefore we had no time to make the customary inquisition into the workings of polygamy and get up the usual statistics and deductions preparatory to calling the attention of the nation at large once more to the matter. I had the will to do it. With the gushing self-sufficiency of youth I was feverish to plunge in headlong and achieve a great reform here - until I saw the Mormon women. Then I was touched. My heart was wiser than my head. It warmed toward these poor, ungainly and pathetically “homely” creatures, and as I turned to hide the generous moisture in my eyes, I said, “No - the man that marries one of them has done an act of Christian charity which entitles him to the kindly applause of mankind, not their harsh censure - and the man that marries sixty of them has done a deed of open-handed generosity so sublime that the nations should stand uncovered in his presence and worship in silence.”
Mark Twain
LOL!
Hmph. The LDS ate my HTML.
OUCH!!!
Great point.
Not at all. Men cannot become gods. That was just the lie Satan used to sucker in Adam and Eve to destroy them.
What I’m saying is that it’s the same lie. Men are still getting suckered in by that lie and it’s a little surprising that people haven’t wised up yet.
Thank you.
but...............
I didn't ask for an explanation.
My policy with vile FReepmails is to forward them to the mods. They don’t take to kindly to that kind of abuse of FReepmail.
It’s always been deal with.
That would prbably suffice, I am sure. But I like embarassing them by exposing them publicly.. stripping the mask off for all to see.
All I did was to quote 14 separate major translations which all described the relationship of Hagar to Abram as "WIFE."
This passage in no way provides any support whatsoever that God ever condoned or permitted polygamy.
Go through all my posts and show me ONCE where I even hinted at that suggestion. It seems to me that YOU are the one splitting hairs. I am simply pointing out the obvious.
Oh the depths that men will go to excuse sin out of the depravity of their own hearts..............
Was that comment directed to me?
Thank you for the clarification, metmom.
Indeed it is a possible translation. However, I don't believe there is any legitimate translation that uses that word. But it is possible.
The fact is that Sarai was Abram's mate and so was Hagar. And that would be a legitmate translation provided that the same word was translated the same way both in the beginning of the sentence and the end. Since in that verse they are both described using the same word, the implication is that the relationship was deemed to be equal or identical.
And let’s not forget, and this is critically important, that any alleged polygamy on the part of Abraham PREDATED Mosaic Law and the prohibition against adultery. Moreover, as others have mentioned, St. Paul clearly stated that a man should have ONE wife.
AND, by restornu, of all people, who has done the same exact thing.
BTW, minute,gal, I would like to see you show the same outrage against the posting violations by restornu and old mountain man in their constant vicious personal attacks against others.
Check out their posting histories. I have, in the past few days been called a viper, a coward, and told I have a wicked soul by restornu, and the mods allow the two of them the freedom to spread their personal bile without consequence. Perhaps you should reconsider the targets of your "shunning".
I am pinging others who have been the target of these vicious personal attacks.
Minutegal, I suggest before you jump in and condemn someone you spend some time on these threads and become knowledgeable about just what goes on.
Funny that the posters calling out others aren’t even active on this thread. Just happen to be reading along?? sure.......
It was once suggested to me that I would have happily participated in Christ's crucifixion. Theology aside, that's just mean.
You post about the food stamps...First of all Texas gives them a debit card. This really needs to be looked into though because weren’t they producing most of there own food?
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