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Polygamist Sect; Your Views
Tweet Topic Started: Apr 15 2008, 11:43 PM (757 Views)
Auntie Maine Apr 15 2008, 11:43 PM Post #1
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I don't think this has really come up and don't know it the Brits even know it is happening.



Texas defends separation of polygamist sect kids from moms.

ELDORADO, Texas - State officials Tuesday defended their decision to suddenly separate mothers from many of the children taken in a raid on a polygamist ranch in West Texas.
Texas Children's Protective Services spokeswoman Marleigh Meisner said the separation was made Monday after they decided that children are more truthful in interviews about possible abuse if their parents are not around.
When state troopers and child welfare officials seized 416 children from the compound, 139 women accompanied them on their own and had been allowed to stay with the children until Monday, when they were driven back to the compound.
Only women with children under 5 could stay at the San Angelo Coliseum where they were being held.
Meisner said the decision was made after much discussion with experts.
The mothers have complained the state deceived them, but Meisner said the situation was explained and, while there were tears, the operation went smoothly.
"I can tell you we believe the children who are victims of abuse or neglect, and particularly victims at the hands of their own parents, certainly are going to feel safer to tell their story when they don't have a parent there that's coaching them with how to respond," Meisner said.
Although Meisner called the decision typical in any case her agency works "every single day," she also ticked off a list of obstacles making the seizure of more than 400 children from a polygamist sect anything but typical.
Meisner said child welfare officials still can't find birth certificates for many of the children, making parentage and age determinations impossible. She said many of the children don't know who their parents are and many have the same last name but may or may not be related.
"It's a difficult process," she said.
Authorities raided the sect's ranch more than a week ago in response to allegations that underage girls were forced to marry older men.
About three dozen of the women who returned to the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints ranch spoke out Monday, after 11 days in temporary shelters. They said in interviews that police surrounded them Monday and gave them a choice between returning home, or relocating to a women's shelter.
"It just feels like someone is trying to hurt us," said Paula, 38, who like other members of the sect declined to give her full name. "I do not understand how they can do this when they don't have a for sure knowledge that anyone has abused these children."
Brenda, a 37-year-old mother of two teenage boys, said the women were threatened with arrest if they resisted the court order. Previously, the women had been told they would stay with the children at least until Thursday, when a custody hearing is scheduled, she said.
The state is accusing the sect of physically and sexually abusing the youngsters and wants to strip their parents of custody and place the children in foster care or put them up for adoption. The sheer size of the case was an obstacle.
Brenda and others were critical of CPS, saying the agency misled them as to what was to happen Monday, weren't told why the children were removed from the compound and given inaccurate messages about opportunities to meet attorneys.
"We got to where we said, 'We cannot believe a word you say. We cannot trust you,'" she said.
Officials said the investigation began with a call from a young girl who has yet to be located by CPS. The women in the sect said they suspect she may be a bitter ex-member of the church.
The FLDS practice polygamy in arranged marriages, sometimes between underage girls and older men. The group has thousands of followers in two side-by-side towns in Arizona and Utah.
The church has repeatedly fought because of its lifestyle before. Men, women and children have been swept up in raids that took place in 1935, 1944 and 1953.
"It's been all through history, " said Brenda, the mother of two. "We were just here trying to live a peaceful, happy, sweet life. We don't understand why we can't do this freely."



I am now curious about the 1925,44,and 53 raids.
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Julesy Apr 16 2008, 12:35 AM Post #2
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Its very disgusting to me.
Marrying a 15-16 yr old off to an old man to just be bred like a dog in a puppy mill.

Not to mention its CHILD ABUSE/RAPE!

I was watching on GOOD MORNING AMERICA and they were interviewing some of the wives. They asked "Do you think its right to marry off a 15-16 yr old girl to an older man?"

They would only say " We will only talk about the children"

WTF?
a 15-16 yr old isnt a fucking adult you stupid frying pan face idiot woman!

Brainwashing cult is what it is.
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Denovissimus Apr 16 2008, 02:15 AM Post #3
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They should have busted up that cult a long time ago! The police had a mole in there!
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la anaconda de chocolatee Apr 16 2008, 11:27 PM Post #4
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Is it just one man that is married to all these women in this cult? Or are there several different men?
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Denovissimus Apr 17 2008, 12:43 PM Post #5
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Several different pervs
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la anaconda de chocolatee Apr 17 2008, 01:26 PM Post #6
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oh ok. I asked because I only heard of the one guy ever mentioned
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Derblutsaguer Apr 17 2008, 02:11 PM Post #7
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Hooray Group SEX!

(but seriously Cults are bad news, because They brainwash (As dirty as my mind is, It might need a good washing) ppl and make them believe the cult is a good thing!
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Julesy Apr 18 2008, 01:14 AM Post #8
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Quote:
 
Hooray Group SEX!



lol Yeah, I wouldnt mind it at all if it was all CONSENTING ADULTS.
Not some sordid crap cult preying on ignorant young teen girls.
Thats just SICK!

On so many levels.

I hope these old gross men go to jail with other old men and the prisoners have thier way with THEM, as they did to those young girls.

:rocks
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Auntie Maine Apr 18 2008, 12:12 PM Post #9
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I don't get why these men and women aren't being arrested.Polygamy is illegal.
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Julesy Apr 18 2008, 02:09 PM Post #10
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Are they for real with this Little House on the Praire look?
:alondria

http://cosmos.bcst.yahoo.com/up/player/pop...226713&src=news
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Auntie Maine Apr 18 2008, 02:32 PM Post #11
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When I was a kid my holy roller aunt had hair like those women because the bible told her not to cut her hair and she always had terrible headaches from the weight of it.
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Julesy Apr 18 2008, 02:39 PM Post #12
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people are dumb when they take the bible literally. like ever single word of it.
RIDICULOUS!

How is cutting your hair a bad thing? :huh
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Auntie Maine Apr 18 2008, 02:43 PM Post #13
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I agree.
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Julesy Apr 18 2008, 03:14 PM Post #14
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another reason why I really have a simmering hatred for some men.
how can you not know as an adult, that knocking up a 13 yr old is wrong?
HOW?

Investigator says girls pregnant in polygamist sect By MICHELLE ROBERTS, Associated Press Writer
2 hours, 27 minutes ago



SAN ANGELO, Texas - After hours of lawyers popping up with similar objections and questions, a custody hearing for 416 children seized from a polygamist sect finally turned to whether they were abused: A child welfare worker said some women at the sect's ranch may have had children when they were minors, some as young as 13.

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The testimony came late Thursday, the first day of a court hearing to determine whether the children, swept up in a raid on the ranch two weeks ago, will remain in state custody. Child welfare officials claim the children were abused or in imminent danger of abuse because the sect encourages girls younger than 18 to marry and have children.

Child welfare investigator Angie Voss testified that at least five girls who are younger than 18 are pregnant or have children. Voss said some of the women identified as adults with children may be juveniles, or may have had children when they were younger than 18.

Identifying children and parents has been difficult because members of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints have given different names and ages at various times, Voss said. The state has asked that DNA be taken from all of the children and their alleged parents to help determine biological connections. The judge has not ruled on that request.

The court hearing, which continues Friday morning, disintegrated into farce early Thursday, as hundreds of lawyers who descended on San Angelo for the proceedings shouted objections or queued up to cross-examine witnesses. The judge struggled to maintain order.

"I've tried to impose some structure to this free-for-all," said Texas District Judge Barbara Walther.

The case — one of the biggest, most convoluted child-custody hearings in U.S. history — presented an extraordinary spectacle: big-city lawyers in suits and mothers in 19th-century, pioneer-style dresses, all packed into a historic courtroom and an auditorium two blocks away that was patched into the proceedings by a grainy video feed.

The state wants to keep the children in its custody, and likely move them to foster homes while officials continue investigating abuse allegations. The state must provide evidence the children were physically or sexually abused, or are in imminent danger of abuse.

In 11 hours on Thursday, only three witnesses testified, including Voss.

As lawyers shouted, dozens of mothers sat quietly in their long cotton dresses and braided upswept hair. They were sworn in as possible witnesses at the hearing's outset, but it was not clear when they might testify.

In the satellite courtroom at City Hall, hundreds of people strained to see and hear a large projector set up on the auditorium's stage. But the feed was blurry and barely audible.

"I'm not in a position to advocate for anything," complained Susan Hays, the appointed attorney for a 2-year-old sect member.

No decisions were made on the fate of any of the youngsters, and more cross-examination of Voss was likely Friday.

The children, most of whom are being kept in a domed coliseum in San Angelo, range in age from 6 months to 17 years. About 130 are under 4 years old, Voss said.

She said she was concerned about how the children and women followed the orders of the church's prophet, identified as jailed leader Warren Jeffs.

"The children reported that if the prophet heard from the Heavenly Father that they were to marry at any age, they were to do that. If the prophet said they were to lie, they were to do that," Voss said.

Jeffs is currently awaiting trial in a Kingman, Ariz., jail on charges related to the promotion of underage marriages. He previously was convicted of being an accomplice to the rape of a 14-year-old wed to her cousin in a Utah case.

The sect came to West Texas in 2003, relocating some members from the church's traditional home along the Utah-Arizona state line. Voss said the ranch was considered a special place, the sect's Zion.

Authorities raided the 1,700-acre ranch south of here in Eldorado on April 3 and began removing children while seeking evidence of underage girls being married to adults. Walther signed an emergency order giving the state custody of the children taken from the ranch.

The raid was prompted by a call from someone identifying herself as a 16-year-old girl with the sect. She claimed her husband, a 50-year-old member of the sect, beat and raped her.

The girl has yet to be identified, though Voss said a girl matching her description was seen by other girls in the ranch garden four days before the raid began.

___
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Jane Apr 18 2008, 09:10 PM Post #15
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It has been in the news over here too. My thought is polygamy itself isn't the problem here, a religious cult is the problem. My current reading people makes me want to say all religion is like a cult and should be outlawed!!!

But yah of course this is terrible abuse of innocent children.
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Julesy Apr 18 2008, 10:49 PM Post #16
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what do you Brits think of this crapfest?
Do you have anything like it over there?

LMAO at her unibrow
I thought Frida Kahlo was dead.

http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/bestoftv/...l.web.extra.cnn
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Auntie Maine Apr 19 2008, 12:59 PM Post #17
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We saw her on the news the other night and I turned to Jimmy and said it was the girl from the new Planters commercial for cashews. :chuckle
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Auntie Maine Apr 20 2008, 06:26 PM Post #18
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This is long but I found a lot of it interesting.



How a hunting ground became polygamous nightmare

By TODD LEWAN, AP National Writer Sat Apr 19.

ELDORADO, Texas - The guy didn't look much like a hunter. He was beanpole tall — scarecrow-ish, some might say, with a high, collegiate forehead and a reluctant handshake. Even in a pearl-snap shirt and jeans, this cowboy somehow seemed better suited for a college lecture hall than a saddle.
Still, he wanted land — lots of it — for a corporate hunting retreat. Said he might build a lodge, to entice some big-roller clients of his in Vegas. North of town, the old Isaacs ranch — rocky and dotted as it was with rusty oil rigs, cactus and gnarled mesquite trees — caught his eye. It was plenty cheap, he said, and plenty remote.
But it didn't take long for the sheriff and everyone else in Schleicher County to figure out that their new neighbor, David S. Allred, president of YFZ Land, LLC, had much more on his mind than the hunting of whitetail.
After the closing in November 2003, dozens of Allred's associates arrived to make improvements on the property. Sunday to Sunday, day and night they toiled, completing three, three-story houses — each 10,000 square feet — within weeks. Soon, a cement plant shot up. Then fields of limestone were miraculously plowed into fertile farmland. And then, a superstructure unseen in these parts — a temple, masterfully clad with limestone quarried onsite — ascended into the west Texas sky.
And that, as it happened, was only the beginning.

The YFZ Ranch — which, as the townspeople would come to learn, stood for Yearning for Zion — would mushroom into a bustling, parallel city: a 1,691-acre, self-sustaining enclave carved, literally, into a rock pile for the innermost circle of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, FLDS, a 10,000-member sect that has continued to practice polygamy after it was banned by the Mormon Church in 1890.
Here, there would be enormous dormitories for enormous families, a cheese factory, a medical clinic, a grain silo, a commissary, a sewage treatment plant — and watchtowers with sentries, infrared night-vision cameras to monitor gated entrances, and 10-foot-high compound walls topped with spikes.
There would evolve a saga of "plural marriages," racism, underage "celestial" brides and allegations of child abuse, turning Eldorado upside down with frightening tales, rumors, and a flood of reporters and investigators. A raid on the polygamists' compound — the largest of its kind in more than a half century in the West, involving hundreds of law enforcement agents — would lead to the removal of 416 children and set up a child custody confrontation of unprecedented dimensions.
The episode would also fire up debate in the courts, and in this community of 1,951 residents, over the state's duty to protect children from alleged abuse and over the limits of basic constitutional rights like religious liberty and freedom from unreasonable search and seizure.
In the end, the residents of Eldorado would lose a measure of their rural innocence and find themselves conflicted, caught between their love of traditional, family values and their powerful, west Texas beliefs in civil liberties.

___
On a chilly evening in January 2004, J.D. Doyle, a pilot, and his father, James, the local justice of the peace, climbed into their Piper twin-engine plane and took to the skies over Schleicher County to see if recent rains had greened the grazing fields owned by friends who were cattle ranchers.
But as they flew over the YFZ property four miles north of Eldorado, they noticed something different: Down below, jutting up between scatterings of cedar bushes and outcroppings of limestone, were three enormous, cabin-style barracks with enough room to accommodate two football teams.
What were those doing on a hunting retreat?
Later, they asked a friend, Joe Christian, a computer tech who lived adjacent to the YFZ ranch, what he made of it. Christian hadn't a clue, actually. His new neighbors had been reclusive, leaving him to puzzle over all that nonstop building. We should take some aerial photographs, he suggested; the Doyles agreed.
The photos intrigued Randy and Kathy Mankin, who published the town's weekly paper, The Eldorado Success, so they did a background check on the buyer, Allred. Initially, they saw no red flags: He was, as he'd claimed, a builder from Washington County, Utah. Still, why build such large residences on so remote a ranch?
Then, in late March, the paper got a call from Flora Jessop, an anti-polygamy activist from Utah who'd been raised in the FLDS and who, as a teenager, had run away from the sect. A polygamist group, she'd been told, was rumored to be establishing another enclave in west Texas.
In Randy Mankin's mind, polygamy had already taken its place on history's ash heap. But the caller wouldn't stop asking questions. When Mankin finally relinquished the name of the buyer, he heard a silence on the line, then:
"Oh, my God ... it's them ... "

___
"Them," Jessop went on to explain, was the FLDS, a renegade, splinter group of Mormons that by the 1930s were practicing polygamy (the ticket to heaven, followers believed) in secret ceremonies for "spiritual brides" that circumvented bigamy laws in the United States.
In recent years, sect members and their prophet, Warren Jeffs, were being investigated by authorities in the sister cities of Hildale, Utah, and Colorado City, Ariz., for allegedly marrying off girls as young as 13 to much older men with multiple wives. Women and girls who fled the sect — and boys who'd been forced out or abandoned — told stories of forced marriages, incest and abuse; some who left called the FLDS a destructive cult.
The March, 25, 2004, story atop the Success' front page — "Corporate retreat or prophet's refuge?" — sent shockwaves up and down Eldorado's dusty streets. Everyone wanted to know: Were these outsiders like the Branch Davidians, whose compound near Waco was stormed in 1993, resulting in the deaths of 80 people?
Would they kidnap their sons and daughters? Brainwash them? Would they try to conquer Eldorado by ballot, voting as a bloc for judges, commissioners and school and hospital board members sympathetic to their ways?
At the local library, paperback, cassette and hardcover copies of "Under the Banner of Heaven," an unsparing look at similar sects, suddenly were in demand. The local paper featured articles almost every week on the FLDS, and posted online audio clips of Jeffs ranting in a steely monotone about the Beatles being covert agents of a "Negro race."
Locals, buzzing regularly over the property in their planes, snapped photos of FLDS women in long, pioneer dresses tending gardens, men digging small graveyards, erecting thick walls around their temple, and building enough dwellings to establish a mini-city.
"They never shut down," says Gloria Swift, who runs the Hitch'n Post Coffeeshop with her husband, Jerry, in town. "Even when you drive by that ranch at night, you see this glow of lights from the highway. They're out there with heavy machinery, building, 24 hours a day."
The sect's members, meanwhile, shunned nearly all contact with outsiders, including the media, insisting they wanted to be left alone to practice their religious beliefs in peace. The women didn't shop in local stores; the children were home schooled on the ranch.
As a group, sect members bought most of their merchandise in the much larger city of San Angelo, 45 miles up the road past sun-baked fields of cotton and mesquite trees. There, they shopped in bulk for warehouse staples, and were often seen at the Lowe's home-improvement store hauling away dozens of appliances at a clip.
When drivers waved to the men, who occasionally came to town in their trucks to buy propane, housewares or tools, they didn't wave back. They did maintain a cordial, if not friendly, relationship with Curtis Griffen, who ran Eldorado's only fuel depot with his father.
"They were always nice, polite," Griffen says. They bought thousands of dollars in fuel each month, always paying their monthly bills on time, in cash. "From what I could gather, they had no intention of creating problems here in town. In all my dealings with them, them seemed like any other regular customer."
Most other Eldorado residents, however, remained wary. Owners of neighboring ranches were warned to keep an eye out for young girls fleeing the compound. Some days the sheriff, David Doran, stood at the gates, in view of the sect's sentries, peering at the group through binoculars. (As time passed, Doran established a rapport with the sect's leaders; he was one of a handful of outsiders ever allowed inside before the raid.)
State Rep. Harvey Hilderbran became alarmed by reports from Eldorado, former sect members and the Utah attorney general. In 2005 he pushed into law a bill that raised the legal age of consent to marry in Texas from 14 to 16.
"Every now and then you'd hear something about alleged child abuse, but there was never any hard evidence of it," says Randy Mankin, publisher of Eldorado's local paper.

___
As the months passed without incident, the townspeople's' fear of the group morphed first into a generalized disgust of the sect's polygamous practices, then a morbid curiosity with the now-finished, gleaming white temple (which had 4-foot-thick outer walls of poured concrete), and its priesthood rites, marriage ceremonies and secretive ordinations.
When Jeffs, the self-styled prophet, predicted Armageddon in 2005, an Eldorado resident paraded in front of the ranch's outer gate in a grim reaper costume. Caps were sold in town with ELDORADO: POLYGAMY CAPITAL OF TEXAS stitched across them. A resident songwriter had a local hit with "The Plural Girl Blues," a tune about polygamy.
"People would stop each other on the street and ask, 'So, what's the latest on our polygamists?'" recalls J.D. Doyle, the pilot. "They'd ask, 'How many houses do they have now?' Or, 'Have you ever met one yet?' See, those people were like an itch on the back of your neck, and you needed a way to make light of it."
Gradually, interest waned, except for those times that reporters came to town, or when Jeffs made headlines in Utah with his legal troubles. (Last year, he was convicted in Utah for being an accomplice to the rape of a 14-year-old girl for forcing her to marry her cousin.)
Indeed, the taxes the county collected from the YFZ ranch — the sect's property at one point was valued at $8 million — was a boon to a community of sheep and cattle ranchers and cotton farmers. And yet, the nagging doubts, the scuttlebutt and rumors about what was going on behind the fences and walls of the sect's compound wouldn't die.
A Mormon who had lived in town with his family for years moved away with his wife and children, after first writing a letter to the editor of the local paper which said the FLDS was not representative of mainstream Mormons.
"Those people came under false pretenses to our area," says Lynn Meador, 62, a local sheep and cattle rancher. "Even though they brought a lot of things to our community, I think people deep down were afraid this thing would end up like Waco. We were all just waiting for the other shoe to drop."

___
It came in late March, when a 16-year-old girl reportedly called a local domestic abuse hot line to report that a 49-year-old man had married her, impregnated her at 15, and beaten and choked her repeatedly, according to court documents.
In one of several phone calls to the hot line, the girl said her husband had broken her ribs. But church members had warned her to not to flee — otherwise she would be found and locked in a room, according to an affidavit signed by an investigator for the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services.
On April 3, hundreds of agents — a SWAT team, FBI agents, Texas Rangers, San Angelo police, highway patrol, and sheriff's department officers from four counties — raided the YFZ ranch, backed by an armored personnel carrier, K9 dog units and ambulances. For six days they searched the compound for evidence of child abuse and illegal marriages, hauling away a cache of computers, photographs, and birth and marriage records.
According to other affidavits, investigators saw numerous underage girls who were pregnant, and took statements from others who told of entering into polygamous marriages in their early teens. They described finding beds on a top floor of the temple, including one that had what looked like a long strand of female hair.
The long-feared bloody conflagration didn't materialize. Tela Mange, a spokesperson for the Texas trooper and Department of Public Safety, said agents had been much more "diplomatic" with the sect that they have been in other raids. "Not a shot was fired," she said, "and there wasn't even a twisted ankle in this one." (She declined to say whether weapons had been found on the ranch.)
But the sight of the confused, anxious faces of women and children gazing out the bus windows as they were transported to local churches, then mass shelters in San Angelo, was enough to shake Eldorado's townfolk, and stir a debate over whether the authorities may have gone too far.
Some were uncomfortable that the 16-year-old who reportedly called the child abuse hotline wasn't identified. A man authorities thought could be her alleged abuser had not set foot in Texas in the last five years. No arrests have been made on any abuse charges in the compound.
Others wondered if it was legal for the agents to keep the sect's men in their homes the first 24 hours after the raid, without charges. Later, at the group shelter in San Angelo, authorities took the cell phones away from mothers who remained in contact with their husbands back at the ranch.
Since the women hadn't been charged with a crime, folks asked, did the police have that right?
"A lot of people here are starting to ask those questions," says Griffin, the oil dealer. "If those women weren't under arrest, how could the police do that to them?"
Others were less bothered by it. "It's about time they went in there and busted that thing up," says Lisa Lopez, a 43-year-old homemaker. "I couldn't understand how people in Eldorado could sit back and let them have sex with underage girls for so long."
You've got it all wrong, say the people of the YFZ ranch, finding their voices after years of near silence. Children were not abused here. Eldorado — indeed, all the outside world — does not understand.
"We are all Heavenly Father's children," says an FLDS mother of two boys, ages 11 and 14, who identified herself only as Brenda. "You have your religion. I have mine. You choose to live how you want. I choose how I live mine. Is this not freedom? Can't we choose?"
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Auntie Maine Apr 22 2008, 11:08 PM Post #19
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it is a cult Jane.


About the FLDS organization:

The FLDS was founded in 1935 by two excommunicated Mormons: John Y. Barlow and Joseph White Musser. Barlow subsequently became the group's first leader. Roulon T Jeffs became the FLDS' second leader. He died in 2002 at the age of 92. His son, Warren Jeffs, (1956 -) then took over. Warren was previously the principal of Alta Academy, a FLDS religious high school which is now closed. 3

The FLDS' main membership is now centered in the twin cities of Colorado City, AZ and Hildale, UT. Wikipedia reports that:

"According to FLDS accounts, Brigham Young visited the site of Hildale and Colorado City and stated that 'this is the right place [and it] will someday be the head and not the tail of the church [and]...the granaries of the Saints'." 4

A separate colony of about 1,000 FLDS members live in Bountiful, British Columbia, Canada. Almost all in that colony are descendents of six men.

Unfortunately there is little precise information about the FLDS available to outsiders. Jeffs does not give interviews to non-FLDS members. He allegedly even refused to meet with Mark Surtleff, the Attorney General of Utah. As a result, most of the information comes from critics of the FLDS or from ex-FLDS members who have left the group. These can be unreliable sources.

Jeffs has allegedly:
Forbidden members to use television sets, VCRs, video games or connections to the Internet.
Banned boating, fishing and other water activities.
Instructed parents to throw away most children's books including the Bible and Book of Mormon storybooks.
Terminated community and holiday celebrations, such as observing the birthdays of previous leaders and Pioneer Day.
Stopped further dances, socials and other get-togethers.
Warned members that laughter causes the spirit of God to leak from their bodies. He based this belief on an obscure statement by Joseph Smith.
Expelled hundreds of men and reassigned their wives and children to other men.
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Auntie Maine May 1 2008, 12:14 PM Post #20
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Officials probing possible abuse of boys in polygamous sect



SAN ANTONIO - Authorities investigating whether teen girls in a polygamist sect were forced into underage marriages and sex said they are also looking into possible abuse of young boys — allegations that drew a sharp rebuke by sect's members.

Carey Cockerell, the head of the state's Department of Family and Protective Services, told state lawmakers Wednesday that his agency was looking into whether young boys were abused based on "discussions with the boys" and journal entries.

In a written report, the agency said interviews and journal entries suggested young boys may have been sexually abused, but didn't elaborate.

Cockerell also said 41 of the 463 children seized from the Yearning For Zion Ranch in Eldorado had evidence of broken bones. Some of those children are "very young," he said.

After Cockerell's presentation to the Senate Health and Human Services Committee, he sent an aide from the lieutenant governor's office to tell reporters he would not make further comments.

Members of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, the renegade Mormon sect that runs the ranch, countered that the state was deliberately misleading the public to cover up its own errors in the case.

A physician at the ranch, who is also a sect member, said most of the broken bones were from minor falls and that there was no pattern of abuse there.

The state took custody of all 463 children living at the ranch after an April 3 raid that was prompted by calls to a domestic abuse hot line. One of those minors gave birth Tuesday to a boy who will remain with his mother in a group foster-care facility.

The sweeping action in the custody case has raised concerns among civil liberties groups. Individual custody hearings are scheduled to be completed by June 5, but in the meantime, all the children are in foster facilities scattered around the state.

Before Wednesday's disclosure, the state had argued it should be allowed to keep the boys, not because they were abuse victims, but because they were being groomed to become adult perpetrators in the sect. Men in the sect take multiple wives, some of whom are allegedly minors.

After Cockerell's comments on broken bones, a briefing issued said, "We do not have X-rays or complete medical information on many children so it is too early to draw any conclusions based on this information, but it is cause for concern and something we'll continue to examine."

Sect spokesman Rod Parker called Cockerell's testimony "a deliberate effort to mislead the public" and said state officials were "trying to politically inoculate themselves from the consequences of this horrible tragedy."

"This is just an attempt to malign these people," he said.

Lloyd Barlow, the ranch's onsite physician, said he was caring for a number of FLDS children with broken or fractured bones at the time they were removed from the ranch.

"Probably over 90 percent of the injuries are forearm fractures from ground-level or low level falls," Barlow said. "I can also tell you that we don't live in a community where there is a pattern of abuse."

The state has said that nearly 60 percent of the 14- to 17-year-old girls in custody are pregnant or already have children. Many refused to take pregnancy tests, the agency said Wednesday.

Under Texas law, children under the age of 17 generally cannot consent to sex with an adult. A girl can get married with parental permission at 16, but the sect's girls are not believed to have legal marriages.

Church officials have denied any children were abused at the ranch and say the state's actions are a form of religious persecution. They also dispute the count of teen mothers, saying at least some are likely adults.

Cockerell told lawmakers the investigation has been difficult because members of the church have refused to cooperate. Parents coached children not to answer questions and children — even breast-feeding infants — were switched around to different mothers in what Cockerell called a coordinated effort to deceive.
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