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Plural marriage has Utah promise State law enforcement tells a forum it plans no anti-polygamy raids. By Kirk JohnsonThe New York Times Article Last Updated: 05/09/2008 10:55:09 PM MDT ST. GEORGE, Utah — Polygamy is probably here to stay. But child abuse in the polygamous world must be eradicated at all costs. That was the two-part message Thursday night from top state officials from Arizona and Utah, who spoke to a packed audience of fundamentalist polygamists and curious local residents. "We do not plan a raid to end polygamy," said Utah Attorney General Mark L. Shurtleff. "I know you're worried about...

Group Discusses Decriminalizing Polygamy Last Update: 5/09 9:41 pm It's outlawed under the Utah constitution and that's unlikely to change. But decriminalizing it could mean lesser penalties for bigamy convictions. “I think something needs to happen. Something needs to be changed. It needs to be decriminalized,” said Dorothy Allred Solomon. Solomon is the daughter of Rulon Allred she says she grew up in polygamy and said she had a happy childhood. Allred was murdered in 1977 in a hit ordered by rival polygamist Ervil Lebaron. “What happens when a way of life is outlawed is that it attracts outlaws. And...

Texas officials drafting plans for FLDS children By Ben WinslowDeseret News Published: May 8, 2008 Texas child welfare authorities have begun drafting service plans for the children taken from the Fundamentalist LDS Church's YFZ Ranch. "It's the plan that has to address the permanency," said Mary Walker, a spokeswoman for the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services. "Whether or not children will be unified with their parents or whether or not they will remain in foster care." Children and parents are being interviewed this week, and Texas Child Protective Services will make recommendations. A judge would ultimately sign...

Texas AG will prosecute any criminal cases from polygamous ranch raid By Nate Carlisle The Salt Lake TribuneSalt Lake Tribune Article Last Updated: SAN ANGELO, Texas - A judge has ordered the Texas attorney general's office to prosecute any future criminal cases connected to last month's raid on a polygamous sect's Eldorado ranch.     In a request filed Monday, Tom Green County District Attorney Stephen Lupton asked the state to step in. In a one-paragraph order issued the same day, a state judge instructed the attorney general to review any possible charges arising from two search warrants served on...

SAN ANGELO, Texas -- A judge today ordered the Texas Attorney General's Office to appoint a special prosecutor to handle any criminal cases arising from the raid of the FLDS polygamous ranch in El Dorado. Two men were arrested on suspicion of interfering with police during the raid last month but have not been formally charged. Texas child protective services also say they found 31 teenagers at the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints ranch who were pregnant or who had already given birth.

Parents seek Ottawa's help Daughter is among children in custody after raid on compound in Texas ROBERT MATAS From Monday's Globe and Mail May 5, 2008 at 4:32 AM EDT SAN ANGELO, TEX. — The federal government should intervene to speed up the return to Canada of a 17-year-old girl who was apprehended during a raid of the Yearning For Zion polygamist compound in Texas, the parents' lawyer says.The Canadian teenager was among 463 children under 18 years old who were taken into custody during a raid of the isolated compound run by the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ...

Published: 05.04.2008 Woman recalls life in polygamist sect By David Perlmutt MCCLATCHY NEWSPAPERS CHARLOTTE, N.C. — She was raised by her father and his three wives, surrounded by 12 siblings. There was no TV, no radio. At school, she was taught that man never landed on the moon. She and other girls in the polygamist Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints were required to "keep sweet," free of jealousy or anger, or risk beatings or humiliation. And by the time Kathy Jo Nicholson turned 14, she was sewing her wedding dress, knowing that any day she could...

Colorado Woman Makes Plea To Sisters In Polygamist Compound Story Of Arranged Marriages, Abuse Chronicled In New Book Lane Lyon, 7NEWS Reporter POSTED: 9:23 pm MDT May 2, 2008 UPDATED: 9:29 pm MDT May 2, 2008 DENVER -- When Texas authorities raided a polygamist compound last month, Laura Chapman took special interest."I thought about when I was little and thought about how I wanted to be adopted, and I wanted out of my family," Chapman said Friday.Now living in Durango, Chapman was born into a polygamist family in Utah.Chapman said she grew up on 6 acres in Sandy, a suburb...

Combating polygamous crime: Utah officials say they can handle it Harry Reid calls for task force, but local officials say they have it coveredBy Thomas Burr The Salt Lake TribuneSalt Lake Tribune Article Last Updated:05/02/2008 02:47:25 AM MDT WASHINGTON - The U.S. attorney for Utah and the head of the FBI's Salt Lake City field office said Thursday there should be no rush to establish a federal task force on polygamous crimes because existing partnerships already offer cross-agency cooperation.     "What's also lost in this debate is let's not ignore that just announcing a task force doesn't give you probable...

FLDS doctor denies abuse at YFZ Ranch By Heather May and Brooke Adams The Salt Lake TribuneSalt Lake Tribune Article Last Updated:05/01/2008 01:20:20 AM MDT The physician who cares for the polygamous community now in the national spotlight - and who has treated its prophet in a Utah jail - is described by his mentor as "very kind, very sensitive, very concerned."     Lloyd H. Barlow, a member of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, graduated from the University of Utah's School of Medicine in 1995.     He completed a one-year internship in internal medicine...

Lawmaker: Investigate FLDS-linked contract The transaction was made with New Era Manufacturing, then based in Hildale By Thomas Burr The Salt Lake TribuneSalt Lake Tribune Article Last Updated: WASHINGTON - A Texas congresswoman wants the House Armed Services Committee to look into a federal contract awarded to a company linked to the polygamous sect raided earlier this month and under fire for alleged child abuse.     Rep. Kay Granger, a Republican from Fort Worth, wrote to committee chairman Ike Skelton and ranking GOP member Duncan Hunter asking for a hearing to look at the vetting process for Department of...

One phase of FLDS work is complete SAN ANGELO, Texas — The last of the extra Texas state troopers, child welfare investigators and others involved in the massive effort of caring for Fundamentalist LDS Church children in custody have rolled out of town. "The demobilization of resources in San Angelo was completed only (Monday)," said Gov. Rick Perry's spokeswoman Krista Piferrer. "It was a large scale effort with a tremendous law enforcement presence, nonprofit presence and (Child Protective Services) workers from all around the state. We basically transformed a coliseum into a shelter.-SNIP- Boys locatedAttorneys identified Monday the location of...

This won't be 'another Short Creek' Action: Criminal charges are urged By Amy Joi O'DonoghueDeseret News Published: April 28, 2008 SAN ANGELO, Texas — A Texas lawmaker who helped pass legislation strengthening the state's marriage laws in response to the Fundamentalist LDS Church presence in his state said he believes criminal charges will result from the Eldorado raid earlier this month. "I don't think this will be another Short Creek," Rep. Harvey Hilderbran, R- Kerrville, told the Deseret News. The controversial Short Creek Raid of 1953 in Arizona rounded up polygamist wives and children and jailed the men. No...

Gene Disorder Complicates Sect Custody FightApril 27, 2008 · Lawyers for the mothers of 462 children taken from a polygamist ranch in West Texas will ask a state appeals court for relief, but the process is slowed by problems in determining the children's parentage. Texas family law officials continue to investigate allegations of physical and sexual abuse. Wade Goodwyn and Liane Hansen discuss the legal proceedings.Meanwhile, many of the children in the FLDS group suffer from fumarase deficiency, a genetic disease that causes acute retardation and physical deformation. The disease was spread through decades of inbreeding, according to John...

Care of sect could top $5 million Web Posted: 04/25/2008 11:37 PM CDTNancy Martinez and Janet ElliottHearst Bus convoys carrying 265 children bound for foster homes around the state pulled out of San Angelo at midday Friday, ending a three-week emergency shelter operation launched in the wake of a raid on a West Texas polygamist sect. The cost of the massive effort, which cared for 462 children and, at one point, more than 100 mothers, could top $5 million, a source familiar with the operation there said. The governor's office said Friday it did not have final cost figures. The...

Culture shock: Seized polygamous sect kids face tough adjustment The Associated Press Article Last Updated: 04/24/2008 07:32:33 AM MDT Posted: 7:33 AM- SAN ANGELO, Texas - The hundreds of children from a polygamist compound taken into state custody are on their way to group homes, shelters and residences, but experts and lawyers fear their transition may be much harder than it is for other foster children.     The 437 children taken from the compound in West Texas will be plunged into a culture radically different from the community where they and their families shunned the outside world as a hostile, contaminating...

Texas court: State can take sect children to foster homes By: Associated Press Posted: 4/25/08 SAN ANGELO, Texas (AP) - Dozens of mothers from a polygamist retreat were bused away from their children Thursday, their legal efforts to stay united rejected as Texas officials sort out their massive custody case. Two buses took the women from the San Angelo Coliseum, where they had been temporarily housed with their children. Texas officials were preparing to move the last of more than 400 children to group homes, shelters and residences, some hundreds of miles away, over the next few days. One woman...