APRIL 8--Forced marriage and sexual abuse were "pervasive" inside the Texas compound of a polygamist sect raided last week by investigators, according to child welfare officials seeking custody of more than 400 children removed from the religious group's sprawling YFZ Ranch. In a harrowing District Court affidavit, a Child Protective Services investigator charged that the children were placed in risk of "emotional, physical and/or sexual abuse" at the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints facility, where female children were groomed to "accept spiritual marriages to adult male members of the YFZ Ranch resulting in them being sexually abused." Similarly, investigator Lynn McFadden noted, young men on the YFZ Ranch were "spiritually married to minor female children," with whom they engaged in sexual relationships, becoming, in the process, sexual "perpetrators."
