52 Girls Removed From Mormon Offshoot Compound - With Video
Pictured: (L) The Compound. (R) The Removal.
ELDORADO, Texas- Child welfare officials are scrambling to find foster homes for dozens of girls removed from a secretive West Texas religious retreat built by polygamist leader Warren Jeffs after a 16-year-old living there complained of physical abuse.
Officials from Texas Child Protective Services, escorted by state troopers, took 52 girls, ages 6 months to 17 years, from the remote retreat on Friday afternoon.
By the end of the day, 18 were put legally into state custody, and CPS spokeswoman Marleigh Meisner said interviews would continue Saturday. A warrant has been issued for at least one individual.
The girls put in state custody were believed to be in danger, Meisner said. “Those are the ones we believe have been abused or they are in imminent risk of harm, and it would not be safe for those children to remain in the compound,” she said.
Child welfare officials were looking for foster homes for the girls, most of whom have rarely been outside the insular world of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. They were being housed for now at a civic center, she said.
“We’re dealing with children that aren’t accustomed to the outside world, so we’re trying to be very sensitive to their needs,” Meisner said.
The investigation began with a call Monday alleging physical abuse of a 16-year-old girl living there, Meisner said. Authorities first arrived at the compound Thursday evening. They interviewed and searched through the night.
On Friday, a search warrant and arrest warrant were issued.
The search warrant sought records dealing with the birth of children to a 16-year-old and any records listing a marriage between a 50-year- old man and the girl, according to the San Angelo Standard-Times, which cited court records released late Friday in Tom Green County.
The individual listed in the arrest warrant had not been located by Friday evening, said Department of Public Safety spokeswoman Tela Mange. She said she could not reveal whose name was on the warrant.
A small white bus that left the compound accompanied by state troopers was filled with children, Meisner said. She could not immediately say how many.
The bus was filled with what appeared to be mostly girls, dressed in conservative long-sleeve dresses.
The ranch covers roughly 1,700 acres. It is north of this two- stoplight town, down a narrow paved road. Authorities blocked access to the compound’s gate, keeping onlookers miles away.
State officials said they did not know how many people lived at the retreat, but local officials in 2006 put the number at about 150, as members of the reclusive church moved from a community on the Arizona- Utah line.
The congregation, known as FLDS, has been led by Jeffs since his father’s death in 2002. It is one of several groups that split from The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, based in Salt Lake City, decades after it renounced polygamy in 1890.
In November, Jeffs was sentenced to two consecutive sentences of five years to life in prison in Utah for being an accomplice to the rape of a 14-year-old girl who wed her cousin in an arranged marriage in 2001.
In Arizona, Jeffs is charged as an accomplice with four counts each of incest and sexual conduct with a minor stemming from two arranged marriages between teenage girls and their older male relatives. He is jailed in Kingman, Ariz., awaiting trial.
The Eldorado retreat, about 160 miles northwest of San Antonio, is on a former exotic game ranch. The church bought the property in 2004 for $700,000 and began an ambitious construction program anchored by an 80-foot-tall, gleaming white temple.
(AP)
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Okay, let’s get something straight about this “timed” story (I say timed, as in just last week there was strong speculation McCain’s poss. Veep might be Romney, “notorious Mormon”).
These polygamists (this Warren Jeffs) just happen to be Mormon.
All Mormons are NOT terr——er, polygamists.
Let’s use our well known mantra here as an analogy, shall we?
All Muslims are not terrorists … But all terrorists are Muslim.
All Mormons are NOT polygamists … But all polygamists appear to be Mormons.
Actually, having had a cousin who was Mormon, the LDS Church is appalled by polygamy, and if I’m not mistaken, you are what amounts to “excommunicated” if found to be such.
Having bullshitted my way through that rant …
Let me just point out how quick and eager the MSM is to jump on this story, as opposed to the imposed burka-wearing, female circumcision, executing-rape-victims Muslims.
April 5th, 2008 at 12:46 pmDrillanwr, I really think it’s a coincidence. I’m sure main stream Mormons are embarrassed by this nut-job Jeffs but no one could really move against these places of his until he was out of the way. Jeffs was really doing a number on them and what I heard on this report on these places back when Jeffs first got arrested was there about 10,000 of his followers that the authorities have to try to integrate into normal society. I wouldn’t be surprized to find the Morman Church isn’t doing all they can to help in anyway they can, as discreetly as they can so as to not bring too much attention to it so that the main scream media doesn’t go crazy. This is similar to Jim Jones, David Koresh in it’s seriousness. These are fanatics. Funny how we can go after our fanatics and muslims just can’t quite know what to do.
April 5th, 2008 at 1:02 pmWell in a society driven by suicidal multiculturalism where it’s worse to be accused of racism than treason and sedition it only makes sense to make a big deal of Branch Dividians and wacko Mormons but heaven forbid we round up hate spewing islamo’s who are working from within for out destruction. That would be profiling. Ok to get whitey, not ok to get dark skinned terrorist.
April 5th, 2008 at 1:45 pmBranch Dividians and the fundamentalist LDSers were and are into child abuse. These issues have not a thing to do with race.
April 5th, 2008 at 2:00 pmUm those people were in no way affiliated with the mormon church. If you are a polygamist it is straight excommunication. You are NOT mormon if you are a polygamist. They may think they are but the church and the church’s records do not acknowledge you. The mormon church has not practiced polygamy for more than 100 years.
April 5th, 2008 at 2:41 pmI think it’s disgusting. I’m LDS and I think it’s terrible, not much more that I can say then that. I just hope the people who were victimized in this situation can find solace and the propagator finds serious time behind bars.
April 5th, 2008 at 5:32 pmIf the local sheriff’s department really wanted to arrest Dave “the nutjob” Koresh they could have got him on one of his many forays into town. I think there was something else at work when they stormed his compound. I think what the Davidians did to the sheriff’s department was also wrong. And then when Janet “the dyke” Reno authorized the use of military vehicles against civilian targets and used Delta force operators as advisors on the operation we turned a corner in American law enforcement.
It’s undeniable that the local, state and federal authorities have knowledge of mosques here in America advocating and helping terrorist cells here on our soil and are doing nothing little about it, let alone executing high profile raids.
Child abuse is wrong and the sickos should go to jail be pastey mormons or extinct branch davidians. But brown skinned arabs should also be nabbed for aiding and abetting terrorists.
April 5th, 2008 at 7:12 pmI am right there with you Professor but isn’t it interesting that President Hitl…I mean Bush didn’t just send in the Storm Troops against these people? After all the Neo-Cons are facists! Karl Rove is the anti-Christ!
Whereas during the first, and hopefully only, reign of the Presidents Klinton, both the ATF, and the HRT had a field day stamping all over the rights of individual American citizens. I suspect that Kaiser Bill thought the Posse Comitatus Act was something you did with an intern.
April 5th, 2008 at 9:08 pmThe knowledge of a weapons stash under their living area complete with automatic weapons was the reason for the search warrant. We haven’t forgotton the ones that fired first were the nutjobs in the compound when the authorities tried to serve the warrant that authorized the search. The nutjobs fired first at Federal agents and it’s good that the place was accidently burned to the ground. The unintended consequence eliminated the need for years of endless sessions on Oprah’s and Dr. Phil’s couches spinning the day’s events. And it eliminated endless apoligists that don’t know what the fuck their talking about. Janet Reno simply issued the warrant, the nutjobs suffered their own consequences.
April 6th, 2008 at 2:44 am