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.”
But it makes the authorities feel so good about themselves......we don't want their self esteem to suffer do we?
And then if one team’s bus breaks down, the other school will send their bus to go get them and take them home.
Quite often these schools are of different denominations or sects.
After all, I'm just aksing.
The Bible itself and its teaching. Is that so hard to grasp?
Knock it off.
I deal with school administrators on a regular basis. I am the chairman of the local PTA (as well as President of the Chamber of Commerce).
Argh, silly post button.
Anyway, it is not at all unusual to see people from one sect on another sect’s private bus. Especially on Football Night.
Good for you. It still doesn't answer the question though.
I'll try again.
Do you believe salvation is by works?
Hm, then why not ask your superintendent how long it would take to roll out buses on a weekend when an emergency request was submitted?
You may be surprised at his answer. I won’t be.
Might want to wait and see if there are convictions before engaging in the armchair psychiatry.
The CULT POLICE!
Knock WHAT off? Being critical of the stupid manner in which authorities handled the situation? Or pointing out the truth that different denominations are in competition with each other?
Exactly.
“All Christian denominations deny the LDS as fellow Christian brothers, but Baptists first went further to label them a cult.”
What about the Assemblies of God description of the Latter Day Saints?
“In the final analysis, Mormonism is an original, invented religion, born of the mind of Joseph Smith, who is responsible for the spiritual seduction of millions of people. To the world, Mormonism sells itself as the friendly Christian church down the street, but in reality it is no closer to biblical Christianity than Hinduism or Islam.
The goals of Mormonism, however, remain unchanged. It desires to turn Protestants and Catholics, Evangelicals and Pentecostals, into Mormons. It seeks to introduce them to what the Bible calls another gospel, another spirit, and another Jesus (2 Corinthians 11:4).”
http://pentecostalevangel.ag.org/Articles2002/4579_spencer.cfm
Let me see if I get your point, Ed, you are asserting that because ALL criminal behaviors are not being addressed equally this sort of criminal behavior should be ignored and the victims relegated to ‘victims of failed state controls’?
Might want to wait for a trial then :-)
Payoffs do not have to be monetary. Being granted a "spiritual blessing" from the Prophet is at least as much of an incentive to trade your child into slavery as a monetary payoff. The fact is that these parents willingly force their children into sexual relationships with old men and expect some kind of reward in exchange.
I suspect that most of what went on was that one perverted old man would trade his own 13 year old daughter for another perverted old man's 13 year old daughter. That, my friend, is slavery.
Make no mistake about it. What has been going on here is the selling and trading of human beings for sexual purposes.
what armchair psychology? I am simply pointing out the reality that religious intolerance between different denominations DOES exist. YOU are the one making the claim that they all are in perfect harmony. Prove THAT one. I have history, millenia of religious strife to back up MY view.
Think I should post a brief summary of “impressive” incidents the Texas Rangers have had a hand in for those out of state?
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