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.”
The issue of whose kids they are has come up on other threads.
If they are indeed hand picked as has been suggested, and they moved from Utah to Texas, that MAY mean they have crossed state lines with children who are not their own.
If they find kids whose DNA does not match any of the women, someone is going to be in deep doo-doo if the men either refuse to give samples or theirs doesn’t match either.
She ought to be.
Can you believe how totally clueless some people are about child abuse cases.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2003823/posts
The people in this thread are just blown away. You’d think they never heard anything like this before.
How can you live in this country and not know it by now?
Its a felony to more children across state lines etc...
move
You mean the mods have ACTUALLY suspended her before? Hard to believe. How far back has this happened, do you remember?
Pinging those who have borne the brunt of her attacks.
This picture is upsetting some of the Temple-Worthy-Men-Who-Are-Soon-To-Be-Gods around here.
That is Carolyn Jessop in the second row, far left.
Don’t worry about Resty, she has other names/computer access under which she can post, when she deigns us worthy of her tutelage.
I never consider her inane comments to be "attacks". Hell, I can't understand 90% of what she posts. I wouldn't know if I was attacked or not.
ROFL.
_________________________________________________________________________
FROM: Called-From-Behind-the-Veil
You Vipers!
this FLDS, is a rogue organization, is a Fake LDS!
You are using hearsay for document!
greyfoxx39 it is a new day and those like you continue to do your fort tongue thing don’t be surprised to witness someday things mention in Numbers 14 & 16!
It just shows you don’t listen!
You would like this to be true for your own selfish readsons!
Do you like kat?
Did ju loook?
Viper Gentiles!
Careful now, the resty, et al don’t like their covers being pulled!
"Viper"..."wicked soul"...she reminds me of the crochety old-maid aunt who thinks she can run the family by the use of her nasty tongue, and most of the family members, since they can't get rid of her, just tolerate it until she goes too far.
Sad, because the aunt is just a lonely old soul with nothing better in life to direct her energies toward and has invested too much of herself in a sham.
I don’t know either. I asked and she never answered. Sometimes I don’t hear from her for a long time then she’s back.
To repeat. I don’t know. She wouldn’t answer. Let’s wait till she or both of them show up again to ask.
She’s been suspended a number of times, IIRC.
Why is the picture upsetting them? Why isn’t Carolyn smiling? Why are the others mostly “plump” when these women in El Dorado look so thin?
You know, Cindy, I noticed the gaunt look about those women. Yesterday I saw one on TV that looked much like my father did when he had fatal cancer. He eventually starved to death from it.
It was eerie.
Guant and “old”eyes. They remind me of pictures of POWS.
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.