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.”
You know, I was thinking- this is the perfect opportunity for Mitt Romney to display his statesmanship and negotiate a peaceful end to this.
> Do you think Islamberg is the next cult compound raided?
Lord, I hope so. If it is, we can only hope for no survivors.
And just WHO would that be?
No, they would be in the third day of an armed stand off, with tanks and APCs moving in, loud and offensive music and noise being blasted at them, and threats by hundreds of ATF in full flack gear getting ready to shoot, smoke, and grenade their way in.
But you were close enough...!
Interesting that you point that out. In my brief time as a Mormon, I heard that reasoning used regularly to defend the formerly practice teaching of polygamy. While the church disavowed the practice, it was still somewhat defended as "biblical".
Of course, to use the Old Testament as a defense of the practice completely ignores the New Testament and Christ's own definition of adultery, as well as the qualifications of those over the church found in Ephesians.
Well said. Everyone is probably better off looking the other way when a streetwise 15 year old has sex with her 18 y/o boyfriend, but these girls have no real choice or options, they can’t exactly say, “No, I’d rather wait until I’m 25 and finish college”, or “No, but it you were less than 3 times my age, I’d date you.”.
They’re stuffed inside this polygamist cult hideout for a reason, and it’s not for their developmental benefit. They’re brainwashed into the lifestyle and escape is made very difficult.
I’d support raiding the place for a parking ticket.
“What? No flammable tear gas? No machine gunning people attempting to flee the flames?”
Yea, and no poring gasoline down the halls of their own compound.
What about post #20 that seems to indicate that girls down to 14 can legally marry with parental permission...?
John Taylor, who took at 16 year old woman to be his bride at the age of 77, said the following:
STATEMENT OF PRESIDENT JOHN TAYLOR
As taken from the Salt Lake Tribune of date,
January 6, 1880
“The people of the rest of the country are our enemies. They do not understand us, we do not understand them. We should pray for them, but we MUST NOT YIELD to them. They think we are foolish, and we think they are foolish; they think we are a pack of rascals, but we have the best of them, for we know they are a pack of rascals. We believe in honesty, morality and purity, in freedom and loyalty to our country; but when they enact TYRANNICAL LAWS, forbidding us the free exercise of our religion, we cannot submit. God is greater than the United States. And when the Government conflicts with Heaven, we will be ranged under the banner of HEAVEN and AGAINST THE GOVERNMENT. The United States says we cannot marry more than one wife. GOD SAYS DIFFERENT. We had no hand in the business; Joseph Smith had no hand in it. Brigham Young had no hand in it. I had no hand in it. It was all the work of God, and HIS LAWS MUST BE OBEYED. If the United States says different the Saints cannot obey it. We do not want to rebel against the United States. Rebellion is not on the program but we will worship God according to the dictates of our own conscience. We want to be friendly with the United States, if the Government will let us; BUT NOT ONE JOT NOR TITTLE of our rights will we give up to purchase it. I would like the good God of heaven to prevent them from making laws that we CANNOT KEEP; but when adulterers and libertines pass a law forbidding polygamy the Saints CANNOT OBEY IT. Polygamy is a divine institution. It has been handed down direct from God. The United States CANNOT ABOLISH IT. No nation on earth can prevent it, NOR ALL THE NATIONS OF THE EARTH COMBINED. I DEFY THE UNITED STATES. I will obey God. These are my sentiments, and all of you who sympathize with me in this position raise your right hands. All hands went up sustaining his position.”
They disavow but at the same time condone and defend.
“It’s wrong but it’s really not wrong” um, okaaaaaay!
Me too. LOL
At Waco, the only way to save those children was to burn them...
“Really than stop distorting my faith, viper!”
The truth is not distortion. If you don’t like to hear the truth about your faith then don’t come on the threads that reveal these truths.
“Why the selective outrage?”
The same place as the evidence. You find proof of any of that taking place in any specific place in an organized way like this, and the same kind of raid will happen. No double standard, no “white Christian” bias, no “selective outrage”.
After four years of quietly building a polygamous enclave in west Texas, the fundamentalist FLDS sect has been sundered by a major state raid that by Saturday had brought out 183 boys, girls and women for questioning about their well-being.
http://www.sltrib.com/ci_8823648
Here we go again.
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