Free Republic

A Schleicher County grand jury today handed down three new felony indictments in the state's polygamist sect investigation, a court clerk said. Schleicher County District Clerk Peggy Williams said the indictments involve three individuals. It's unclear whether those individuals are new defendants or suspects already charged in the probe. The identities of those individuals were not immediately available. Neither were the actual charges listed in the indictments. The grand jury last month indicted six members of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. Court hearings for those individuals is scheduled for Sept. 8, authorities said. The grand jury...

There are new questions about the raid on a polygamist compound in Texas. What did authorities know, when did they know it, and why did they wait so long to go in if hundreds of women and girls were in fear of being abused? ... Considering the high emotions and tense situation, it's remarkable it didn't turn out worse. When Texas Rangers and state police surrounded the compound and started looking for children, it took days instead of hours. The parents didn't want them found. Capt. Barry Caver, with the Texas Rangers, said, "They were shuffled around houses as we...

The Success has learned that William Sunderland Jessop, 29, died Thursday, July 31, 2008, of unknown causes at the YFZ Ranch. The official cause of death has not been released pending an autopsy but, authorities say they do not suspect foul play. Jessop was the son of YFZ overseer Merril F. Jessop. He is believed to be survived by two wives and at least six children, as well as his parents and numerous brothers and sisters.

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. -- The Colorado woman alleged to have sparked the raid on the polygamous FLDS ranch in Texas with bogus tips may be on the run. On Monday, an arrest warrant was issued for Rozita Swinton after she failed to show up for a court hearing on charges of violating her probation for one of two other false-reporting cases against her, court administrator Lori McKager told Salt Lake City's 2News. Swinton is accused of violating her probation stemming from her 2007 guilty plea for telling police she was a 16-year-old girl who was suicidal after giving birth. Authorities...

Six-year-old Samuel Jeffs has only one leg. On April 3 he was taken away from his home and his mother by the Texas Child Protective Services (CPS). His father, Warren Jeffs, is in prison, convicted in Utah of being an accomplice to child rape. On May 19, Samuel’s mother, Sharon Barlow, is sitting in a San Angelo courtroom with her attorney to hear a review of Samuel’s care. She is wearing an ankle-length turquoise dress, cut roughly in the style of a 19th-century prairie housewife’s. She has reddish hair, a pointed nose, sleepy eyes and poor skin. The hair rises...

YFZ RANCH, Texas - Anne Sweeter Jessop puts her arms around her mother's neck and hangs on, her smile a Texas-mile wide. She is home. Her mother is here. So are her father and three brothers. And that is all this 3-year-old cares about. A day after a district judge gave the go-ahead for parents to reclaim their children, families are trickling back to the YFZ Ranch outside Eldorado. Edson Jessop and his wife Zavenda Young were among the first to return. The couple were on their way to Waco to visit Ephraim, 7, and Zachery, 9, on Monday when...

ELDORADO, Texas — He was the man at the gates in the white cowboy hat and the folksy southern drawl. Schleicher County Sheriff David Doran was one of the few outsiders whom the FLDS would initially allow onto the YFZ Ranch, and he cultivated a relationship with them. That relationship has been severely strained in the aftermath of the raid on the YFZ Ranch. "I did not have the power to step in and stop this," Doran said. "The state of Texas had an investigation. They had a call, an outcry of a child they had to investigate and we...

YFZ RANCH, Texas - Anne Sweeter Jessop puts her arms around her mother's neck and hangs on, her smile a Texas-mile wide. She is home. Her mother is here. So are her father and three brothers. And that is all this 3-year-old cares about.

Texas Supreme Court justices ended the day Friday by sending for the trial record in the polygamist sect custody case from the Third Court of Appeals, an indication that the justices will spend the weekend grappling with the legal issues surrounding state custody of well more than 400 children.Meanwhile, the parents of 12 of the children are enjoying a reunion after state authorities in San Antonio on Friday temporarily released the children of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints' embattled YFZ Ranch families back to their parents pending the outcome of an action in district court there.Rod...

With the price tag of providing care for more than 400 children seized last month from a polygamist ranch in West Texas expected to reach the tens of millions of dollars, a legislative panel suggested Tuesday that the state explore garnisheeing the religious organization's assets to recoup the costs. "That compound didn't grow out of fairy dust," Sen. Robert Deuell, R-Greenville, said after a Senate Finance Committee hearing in which he urged state health officials to determine whether members of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, or even the sect as a whole, should be held...

AUSTIN – Texas Child Protective Services will ask the state's highest court to keep a polygamist sect's children in state custody, following a Thursday appeals court ruling that ordered the youngsters be returned to their homes. Texas Supreme Court spokesman Osler McCarthy said attorneys for the state called Friday morning and said they'd be "filing an action in this court" later in the day. On Thursday, a state appeals court ordered many though perhaps not all of a polygamist sect's children returned to their parents Thursday, saying Texas failed to prove they were in physical jeopardy and urgently needed to...

"Three weeks into covering the polygamous ranch raid story, I keep hearing from colleagues throughout NBC News who want to know more about how members of the sect live." --snip-- "Here are some of the things members of the sect told me about life on the YFZ Ranch – which stands for Yearn For Zion – in Eldorado, Texas:" --snip-- "Much of the above sharply contrasts with the picture of alleged physical and sexual abuse painted by state investigators. The courts will ultimately decide which version of the truth is closer to reality. I can’t say whether what ranch residents...

Cases for seven children from one family, five from another and at least two fathered by polygamous sect leader Warren S. Jeffs are among those set for court Monday as the next phase begins in the largest child welfare action in United States history.

Elissa Wall Speaks Out About Her 'Stolen Innocence' Forced Into Marriage at 14, She Testified Against Polygamous Prophet Warren Jeffs By JOSEPH DIAZ May 16, 2008 — The recent raid on Warren Jeffs' Yearning for Zion ranch in Eldorado, Texas, which resulted in the removal of more than 400 children from their homes, has thrust allegations of widespread child abuse at the polygamous sect into the national spotlight. But one of the darkest secrets of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints unfolds at a seedy roadside motel in the remote Nevada desert, where underage girls --some...

    May 10, 2008 George W. Bush, President The White House 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW Washington, DC 20500 RE: CURRENT CRISIS IN TEXAS CRISIS in Texas includes: a gross disregard for human life, women and children held hostage, with the ultimate separation of children and mothers, the invasion of a community and the desecration of a Temple, outrageous mock hearing, blatant disregard of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights as adopted by the United Nations and vouchsafed by the Constitution of the United States of America. Dear Mr. President: We appeal to you, as President of the United States...

Texas child welfare attorneys say children were removed from the YFZ Ranch and should not return there because its residents live as one big family and all have the same dangerous belief system. The agency that has taken legal custody of 464 children sent its response Thursday to a petition from dozens of Fundamentalist LDS Church mothers. The petition asks the Texas 3rd Court of Appeals to order Judge Barbara Walther to return the children to their mothers. "The community has one common belief system that young girls are called on to be wives and no age is too young...

State District Judge Barbara Walther has approved a motion appointing the Attorney General of Texas as a special prosecutor to assist with any criminal cases that may arise from the state's raid of the YFZ Ranch near Eldorado. The request - described as routine in large, complex cases such as this one - was filed and granted Monday. Local prosecutors, meanwhile, said they anticipate filing charges in the case. "It's early in the game," said First Assistant 51st District Attorney Allison Palmer, "but I expect that ultimately there will be some criminal prosecution coming out of this." The Attorney General's...

ELDORADO, Texas (AP) -- A 50-year-old member of a polygamist sect whose alleged abuse of a teenage girl triggered the raid on a West Texas religious compound is no longer wanted by state authorities, officials said Friday. But authorities did not say when or why the arrest warrant was dropped for Dale E. Barlow, who at one time was thought to be the husband of a 16-year-old member of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. The teenage girl claimed she was beaten and raped at the church's Eldorado ranch in a hushed call made to a...

ELDORADO, TEX. — The Yearning For Zion ranch a few miles west of nowhere was built to keep the secrets of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints hidden from prying eyes. But the church's days of splendid isolation and impenetrable secrecy – only the top fringe of the temple's white limestone walls visible from a distant rural road at the edge of the 1,700-acre spread – are rapidly ending. The Texas Rangers raid of the secluded ranch in early April led to sensational allegations of grooming underage girls for marriage and sexual abuse. And the discovery...

SAN ANTONIO — A judge ordered that the baby boy born to a girl taken from a polygamist sect's ranch in West Texas be placed in state custody, according to documents released Thursday. Texas District Judge Barbara Walther signed the order Wednesday giving the state custody of the 1-day-old infant born to a teen believed to be 15 or 16 years old. The girl has claimed to be 18, according to an affidavit signed by Ruby Gutierrez, a Child Protective Services caseworker, but officials believe she is younger and placed her in foster care with other children taken from the...