BREAKING NEWS UPDATE: Authorities enter Eldorado-area temple (Fundamentalist LDS cult)

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.

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.”

Jeeze. Calm down will you. I am getting back to other posters. No need to scream in red and super-sized large font with exclamation points. Are you always this rude?

That posting on identifying cults is a compilation from multiple sources that Freeper Zakeet put together.

I'll let Zakeet share with you his or her sources.

It is also verified from any number of postings that you could find from a simple Google search. Feel free to debate or pick apart any of them, but it won't really do you any good. They are agreed upon by most authors who have written about cults and cult practices.

Cult definition

What is the definition of a cult?

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.

Let's try to recall what the original warrants were for at the Branch Dividian farm. The BATF executed that raid. The raid was to investigate firearms violations.

I would wager that a very strong arguement could be made that every church in this nation teaches that there are two types of people, ones that will be saved and ones that won't. Please make the case for the two types of people arguement you used above, and why it wouldn't apply to every church in this nation. You see, that's the problem with this nonsense. The charges get so broad that almost every church member in the U.S. is guilty of some of this.

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.

While I do disagree with Koresh's interpretations, I think you're kidding yourself if you think churches across this nation don't think persecution by the government is a very real possibility. Should we bulldoze every one of them men women and children inside? Should we pump them full of flamables first, then let them burn to the ground?

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."

What seems to elude you, is that this very thing did happen. What utterly amazes me is that you seem to think the chants were worse than the actual events that occurred. After all, that's what you have chosen to herald here. Rather strange IMO.

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.

You've never had a paddle used on you? I attended a boarding school in the 60s, and our dean of men had a paddle that he gave whacks with. I look at kids today and think they and society could benefit from a return to that practice. Evidently you disagree. As for Sky bleeding, I don't exactly know what that means. What type of injury are we talking about? Saying that he bled could mean that he received a slight injury from the paddling. It could also mean that he was severely beaten. Which was it? I don't consider paddling a kid for just cause to be a beating. It would depend on what precipitated the paddling and what the exact nature of the paddling was.

Koresh ordered the men in the cult to be celibate and took some of their wives and daughters to be his own wives.

And the men and the women remained loyal to the group, so what's your point? We had Bill Clinton running around schtupping anything with two legs and a skirt. Did we march into the White House with guns blazing, fill the place with chemicals known to be fatal to young children and burn the place down?

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.

Perhaps you remember the McMartin preschool fiasco in Southern California. Kids said quite a few things in those days too. None of it was true. It just may be that this 10 year old was telling the truth. It still might have been advisable for Koresh to be able to testify in his own defense. Instead the BATF went in with guns blazing, killing the dogs as a first measure. This caused the people inside the compound to start firing and they were off to the races.

Thanks for your comments. I know where you are coming from. Neither of us wants criminality taking place or kids being abused either sexually or in other ways. I do however want these issues looked into in a professional legal manner. I don't want these folks destroyed in the media without any actual facts being proven.

If this is happening I say throw the Book at them.

Well dig your head out of the sand. None of these polygamist marriages has the sanctioning of the State of Texas.

So far, have they determined the kids were being molested though?

Did your head out of the sand. This has been going on for 100 years outside the LDS Church and 160 years if you go back to Joseph Smith.

Do you think all these 14 year old girls living with 50 year old men who are not their fathers are not being "molested"? And do you not realize that all these girls have been brainwashed since birth to accept the fact that they exist for no other purpose than to provide sexual pleasure to their polygamist husbands and to provide them with children to trade with their neighbors for plural wives for their husbands and brothers?

What planet have you been living on?

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.