Posted on 07/29/2008 6:44:21 AM PDT by ricks_place
Five indicted members of a West Texas polygamist sect turned themselves in to authorities Monday to face charges related to allegations of child sexual abuse.
The five men were indicted last week with Warren Jeffs, the already-jailed leader of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. The charges stem from a state investigation into allegations that the sect forced underage girls into marriage and motherhood with much older men.
State authorities raided the FLDS's Yearning For Zion Ranch in Eldorado on April 3, eventually sweeping more than 400 children into foster care until the state Supreme Court said officials had overreached and sent the children home.
Raymond Merrill Jessop, 36, Allan Eugene Keate, 56, Michael George Emack, 57, and Merrill Leroy Jessop, 33, were charged with one count each of sexual assault of a child, a felony punishable by a sentence ranging from five to 99 years or life in prison. Their bond was set at $100,000 each.
Merrill Leroy Jessop also was charged with bigamy, a felony with the same potential penalties as the sexual assault charge.
Lloyd Hammon Barlow, 38, the ranch's onsite physician, was charged with three counts of failure to report child abuse, a misdemeanor punishable by up to six months in prison. His bond was set at $5,000.
Attorney General Greg Abbott on Monday declined to provide details of what the men were accused of doing.
Efforts to find the men's attorneys were not immediately successful. A message left for FLDS attorney Rod Parker was not immediately returned.
Abbott said the state would try to have Jeffs extradited to Texas to face a charge of sexual assault of a child.
Last week's charges were the first since the April raid.
(Excerpt) Read more at kansascity.com ...
5 more?
After Convicted Felon FLDS leader Warren "Now Finding My Celestial Partners at Utah State Prison" Jeffs, perhaps.
Drat. I thought that this was further persecution of the poor innocent child-rapers....
Oh ok.
Why aren’t they snatching all of the 450 kids now? And their mothers?
So, LG, you still wanna execute all of those Texas officials who were involved in the case, now that the indictments are starting to be handed down against the FLDS men?
Some of the mothers are accomplices. They should nab some of them.
Call and ask them.
Hey PeeWee Herman got busted
I agree. I read that some parents are in parenting classes which is good. Those that refuse to change should be treated equally IMO. No use of gender card.
Yep, I want to see them tried and convicted of kidnapping. Is that too much to ask for?
That is what they did isn't it?
O.K., just checkin’ to see if you’ve changed your mind now. Guess not.
They already did, but didn't charge them. They just illegally held them for two months until the Supreme court told them to let them go.
What has changed? Now they actually have charges. They might actually have a reason now to nab 450 kids and their mothers.
Nope. Unlike you I believe in our Constitutional rights.
The difficulty with the mothers is that virtually all of them are both victims and perpetrators in a very real sense. The choices they have made to perpetrate are the direct result of crimes that were perpetrated on them when they were still to young to resist. By the time they were old enough to be expected to think for themselves, they were already not only brainwashed and “married”, but ties to the cult by their children who they’d had no choice about bearing. They’re trapped, often with their children physically in the hands of other women, so escaping with their children is impossible for some, and escaping without their children unthinkable to any remotely normal mother. So they rationalize about what they “should” do, and have been cornered into concluding that they should do whatever the cult leaders tell them to do.
There are leaders among the women who have the responsibility of keeping the young girls in line and covering up the problems.
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