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.”
All Christian denominations deny the LDS as fellow Christian brothers, but Baptists first went further to label them a cult.
As such, the use of the Baptist buses is a poke in the eye to Mormonism.
Good.
“I live on planet Earth, where (unfortunately) nearly every different denomination believes all the others are WRONG, and believes other denominations are leading people to Hell.”
“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.”
The major Christian churches disagree on a lot, but they all agree on the question of “Is Mormonism Christian” Catholics, Baptists, Assemblies of God, Greek Orthodox, Methodists, etc, etc, are unified in their knowledge that Mormonism is not Christian.
I still maintain that if they’d done what all the locals recommended, the Branch Davidian siege would have been a non-issue.
What should have happened is that the sheriff, a Ranger, and an FBI agent with a few others should have gone to the property and served the search warrant. I believe that Koresh had stated something along the lines of “if they’d come peacefully, I would have let them in.” Not so?
You aren’t from around here, are you? You want conservative Texas Baptists on your jury.
One of the mandates of Warren Jeffs, the so-called and self-proclaimed prophet, is that the men must pay to the "church" upwards of over $1000 per month. Jeffs can, and regularly does, demand that this amount be increased, depending upon what the needs of the "church" are at the time. This money comes from the welfare benefits that the plural wives are receiving.
Men in the FLDS who own businesses are required to turn over the majority of their profits to the "church." The homes that these followers live in are all owned by the "church" via a Trust that was set up by one of Warren Jeffs' predecessors.
In the Utah/Arizona community of Hildale, Utah and Colorado City, Arizona, the state prevailed in a lawsuit and is now allowing disenfranchised (or ousted) members of FLDS to buy back the homes that they built with their own money and that were previously owned by the FLDS Trust.
Deviate from WHAT or from WHOM? From another church's determinations of meanings from The Bible?
Which church?
Yours, I assume?
??????????
Whoa. Where did that come from?
What's next here - debating Campaign Finance Reform?
MY situation? Man, if you actually think all denominations are just tickled to death with denominations who preach different dogmas and doctrines, then you have a VERY active fantasy life. Different denominations are in COMPETITION with each other. Always have been, and always will be. Texas is no different than any other place in the world in that regard.
Personally, I am not opposed to any particular religious beliefs since I am not omnipotent, and since I am unsure WHO is right. BUT, I am not foolish or ignorant enough to believe that all the different denominations are living some harmonious utopian ideal that you seem to believe.
That aside, the LDS say that these people are not theirs. So I seriously doubt the LDS are going to care much about this. I suspect there will even be much glee in that quarter. Something about the “heretics” getting their due, I imagine.
LOL! Who wrote this, anyhow?
I would also point out that polygamy was practiced and condoned in the Old Testament – King David and King Solomon both had many wives and “concubines”.
While I agree with much of the rest of your post, that statement is ridiculous. - We need to stay within, say, 2,000 years when using examples...
You have no schools in your state?
Oh I aksed that already, and your response answers that question pretty clearly.
So tell me....
are any of the 16 year old girls cute?
Here’s an old article from the Salt Lake City, UT Tribune. It dates from 2005 and is quite interesting.
http://www.sltrib.com/faith/ci_8809606
“As far as I am aware, Catholics are not really fond of Baptists”
Don’t blow the differences up too big though, Catholics recognize Baptist baptism as fellow Christians, Catholics officially will not accept Latter Day Saints baptism as Christian.
Yes - she did. She also claimed they were cooking Meth in the bathtubs.
Child advocacy counselors went out to Mount Carmel and interviewed the children. No charges of sexual abuse were found.
Reno parroted those charges again in front of the press in order to justify her actions.
Site just upgraded. One officer said they found everything the needed and more.
As spktyr already said. Not holding hands in a big singalong, just live and let live. We don’t care what you are, as long as you are a decent person. That is why this compound has been there for several years with no problems from LE.
I do know that Dads are gone after aggressively and unless they put father unknown the fathers would also be having to pay child support.
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