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.”
We in Texas believe it was wise to change the law, too. :D
It’s nice having a part-time legislature that HAS to have other jobs in the community they represent. They have to live with the decisions they make and they get to hear what their constituents want.
That’s your problem not mine!
Well, given that baptist buses are shown carrying people out of the place, I am quite sure that when the LDS members attorneys are examining prospective jurors, they will be asking how many of them are baptists, and likely none of THOSE will be on the jury either.
With her vast travel experience, surely she's been to El Dorado...
Well, if you are feeling restless as you say, perhaps you should go find something else to do besides showing your ignorance.
Did you miss the (within the law) part. If this is happening I say throw the Book at them. So far, have they determined the kids were being molested though?
What DuMoFo doesn’t understand is how Texas society works these days.
Nobody really cares about your religion so long as you don’t push it off on others and don’t violate any laws. It’s best if you are friendly to others, though.
I mean, last I heard, there was an entire Wiccan colony somewhere out in West Texas, and nobody cares about them.
You posted to me, not the other way around. I was simply looking for a few facts and found a lot of holes. More reporting on this is making those holes get bigger. Hopefully it is just because the average media type could not get a dog-chases-cat story correct if it had a week to write it.
Actually, FLDS practice what is in the BOM and also in Mormon history.
Your analogy about a "Baptist" who goes around saying "God Hates (fill in the blank)" is easily refutable, because Baptists can point to the Bible and point out how Phelps doesn't follow the teachings of Christ.
The same cannot be said to so easily divorce what the FLDS church practices, and what the BOM and Joseph Smith's own history and practices stand before us as facts.
Agreed. Unlike Warren Jeff’s Utah trial.
don’t be surprised to witness someday things mention in Numbers 14 & 16!
I said witness!
Judging by the current media? Yes.
But then, journalism these days is for those that can’t do, can’t teach, and can’t be bothered by things like “standards”.
ROFL. Yeah, keep telling yourself that. All is harmony in Texas, Catholics, Mormons, and Baptists all sitting around the campfire singing Kumbaya.
You're right, I will call your FALSE religion out. JS was nothing but a two-bit con artist and gold digger. If you demand I can show a plethora of FACTUAL evidence to back my claims. Furthermore, when is the last time you've read the BOM or The Pearl Of Great Price and not noticed the overwhelming contradiction which exist against the claims of the Holy Bible?
Unfortunately, the false religion of Mormonism is a pox which affects a multitude of unsuspecting souls. Nothing against freepers, but I won't allow a religion formulated of the basis of deception and lies be promoted as worthy and holy just because it parishioners are spiritually deceived.
As I said..they have to check it out. Our Rangers are kind of in a bad spot right now. No matter what they do some will be unhappy. Just praying it ends peacefully.
They are not calling it that but I would wager not one of them is free to leave the "protective custody." And that fits my description of being arrested.
I guess you missed some of the interviews of the child brides of Koresh.
Harsh Discipline and Child Brides
The children remember a close-knit community in which they were not allowed to have contact with anyone outside the cult. They were taught that there were only two types of people: "good" people who were inside the cult, and "bad" people who were everyone else.
During Koresh's Bible study sessions - which could be as long as 12 hours - he preached a vision of violent confrontation with the government. He taught his followers that his mission was to lead them into the final battle that would end the world and take them onto eternal glory. The members understood that meant they would die.
The children were taught the morbid message too. They used to chant: "We are soldiers in the army. We've got to fight. Some day we have to die. We have to hold up the blood-stained banner. We have to hold it up until we die."
They were kept in line by a wooden paddle known as "the helper," and faced severe beatings for minor infractions like spilling a glass of milk. Dana Okimoto, Sky's mother, remembers being so under Koresh's control that she beat Sky until he bled.
Koresh ordered the men in the cult to be celibate and took some of their wives and daughters to be his own wives. Jewell became Koresh's youngest "bride" when she was just 10, and would later testify in Congress that Koresh molested her at a motel. She told Primetime she was not upset at the time. "I had been trained from a very early age that this was a good thing," she said.
I remember seeing interviews of the Jewell girl.
CPS was only allowed to see what Koresh allowed them to see.
Have to be here legally to be in the jury pool. My point is, Baptists predominint in west Texas. If you aren’t a Baptist, all your friends are. If LE needs buses, and church’s are the best option, the 3 biggest churches in that town are, Baptist. It’s not where you want to live if you hate Baptists. My wife’s family is Catholic, I grew up Episcopal, and we don’t hate Baptists. If we did, we wouldn’t have half our friends (and family).
Who said they’d be singing kumbaya? I said they leave each other alone and don’t really care. That’s different than having a love-in between religions.
That said, though, it is quite common for one a church from one sect to help out another sect that’s in need. For example, when a Baptist church gets taken out by a tornado, it’s not surprising to see a Lutheran, Methodist, or Catholic church loaning them their facility so that they may hold services (Baptist services) for their displaced congregation. And vice versa.
Don’t judge Texas by your situation.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.