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.”
Sounds like my 1901 house in the big sky country. Plaster and lathe wall. Tough suckers, but boy is it a pain getting the wallpaper off. What has worked for 9 layers for you?
“It appears that Spot may not have the intelligence necessary......”
BREAKING NEWS UPDATE: Authorities enter Eldorado-area temple
I posted it as that because....well, that was the title. You mess around with titles of news articles here on FR and you are violating posting rules.
Question: What is the upside for a FLDS woman when 2 close male relatives die at the YFZ compound?
Answer: Only one body. Your husband and uncle are one and the same.
Sure, rub it in!
Up here we have to wait a few more weeks.
I hate the north.
If you only knew......!
All good points but they won’t register.
You are talking to someone who said polygamy is beautiful.
Nothing. That’s why I’m texturizing!
The walls in my upstairs mnaster bedroom have a texturized green paint on them. I don’t like the gritty feel the sand gives the wall, but the effect makes the walls look like velvet the way light plays off of them.
9 layers of wallpaper? Wow. Ya sure the house is not paper-mache?
Sounds kinda like my house. I remodeled it a couple years ago. Darn good thing they used oak 2X4s, since the load bearing wall had the studs 48 inches on center (I kid ya not), and it had 7 layers of shingles on the roof. Started out just tearing the kitchen cabinets out to rebuild the kitchen, and the more I tore out the more I found that needed redoing. By the time I finished, the only part that was original was the floor, 3 exterior walls, and the fireplace. Woulda been better off just bulldozing it down and starting from scratch.
I do it with joint compound. no sand. It’s a pain but I like the look. Your walls sound beautiful!
Ditto. But summers are beautiful!
I hear ya. We have had the same experience. Things that were “remodeled” had to be redone. Everything was jerryrigged and half-azz. They had so much furniture/antiques in here that much of the bad stuff was covered up.
We’ve spent mega bucks and lots of elbow grease to get this house into shape so we can sell. With the market the way it is, we are up the creek.
“Well.... you WILL have ETERNITY to take of 72 honeydew lists!”
Oh fun. I am doing good just keeping up with one.
The effect is quite soothing for afternoon naps where the room is not completely dark.
Well, hopefully the market will turn around soon. My mother is a real estate broker, and she has seen it start to improve this last quarter, finally, but then we are in one of the fastest growing regions in the U.S.
WE MOVED from the fastest growing region in TX and made money on our house. What the heck were we thinkin’?
Now we are trying to get BACK there!
The bright side is that if the housing market HAS bottomed out, as the talking heads keep trying to say, it will be a good time to get some decent deals on houses whose value will just go up. Good luck.
He repeatedly argued the temple is a holy site protected by the First Amendment's religion clause, and that the state should have taken care to make a search of the building as limited as possible.
This brings up the possibility that one reason the mormons here are so vehemently defending the FLDS is because if this case is successful for the State of Texas and the federal government, the secrecy of the SLC LDS temples may be questioned.
THAT, in effect could end the practice of the mormon church of forbidding entrance to "unworthy" people so they could attend the weddings of their children, family members and friends.
An added problem for the LDS church would be that these "unworthies" who are members, (non-members are still not allowed entry) could no longer be coerced into bringing "up to date" their tithing donations, a requirement for a temple recommend to enter the temples. I think the practice is questionable for a tax-exempt organization, anyway.
A double slam to the LDS...loss of control and loss of money.
Explains a LOT!
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