First Look Inside Polygamist Ranch - With Video
YFZ RANCH, Texas — The children’s shoes still sit neatly, side by side where they last left them. Child-sized shovels and miniature wheelbarrows sit on the porch of their three-story, log cabin-like home.
The only noise now emanating from this 1,700-acre compound is the rustle of the wind, birds chirping, the occasional scurry of a roadrunner or a truck traveling along the dirt roads.
“It’s miserable. It’s too quiet,” says Nancy, struggling to keep her emotional voice loud enough to be heard.
This grandmother and others at the reclusive ranch belonging to the Fundamentalist LDS Church on Saturday allowed the Deseret News onto their land and into their homes, which were raided last week by Texas authorities. All 416 children who lived there were removed and placed into temporary state custody.
It was the first time they had allowed the media access to places they consider private and sacred. During interviews with ranch residents, FLDS officials insisted that questions remain focused on the children’s plight and declined to discuss other topics, including allegations of physical and sexual abuse.
Those who spoke asked that only their first names be used.
Click on the picture to watch video.
Collectively, their hearts are broken but their spirits undaunted.
“If you know what it’s like to have a little child look you in the eyes, throw their arms around your neck, smile and give you a hug, then you know what it’s like (here now),” she said, turning her head and sobbing into her shoulder.
The leader of the Yearning For Zion Ranch says he doesn’t understand how the government could sweep in and seize all their children based on an unproven allegation.
“This whole situation is abusive and out of hand,” said Merril Jessop, a presiding elder in the FLDS Church. “The nearest thing I have ever seen comparable to this, even on the TV shows, is Nazi Germany.”
“The only thing we ask of the governor and citizens of Texas,” Jessop said, “is to give every man, woman and child due process and an attorney before they destroy their lives.”
Jessop extended Texas’ governor an invitation to come and see where these children are now and what conditions they are being placed under and then to come and see what kind of home they were taken from.
Jessop then went one further, inviting a fellow Texan, President George Bush, to come and see what the state is doing to its citizens. “What can be more important than the safety and protection of the children of America?” he asked.
(…)
Shannon, a mother who was also off the ranch when officers served the search warrants, said she’s also tried several times to see her three children but has been refused.
“Every day I’ve called them. They put me off saying they don’t have the authority to let me in and there’s no proof the children are mine. I tell them the children know who their mother is, and I know who my children are,” she said.
The 30-year-old says she provided child welfare officials with identification and even birth certificates proving she is her children’s mother. She says she and other mothers were told those documents could have been fake.
“I couldn’t believe it. I wondered if we were in America or Russia,” Shannon said. “I kept thinking, ‘How can they do that?’ They’re breaking every rule. They’re breaking every law.”
Shannon has been told that her youngest child, who is just 2 years old, clings to her caretaker in the shelter. “She’s sick right now and needs her mother.”
Texas officials say they removed the children because they believe they’re being abused or neglected. The raid was authorized by a judge after workers at a family domestic hotline reported receiving calls from a pregnant 16-year-old girl claiming she was being abused and was afraid to leave the ranch.
Shannon insists the children were not in any harmful environment at the ranch and were well-loved and cared for.
“We are not child abusers. We take very good care of them. These are innocent and sweet children,” she said.
“The only abuse my children have ever had is since they’ve been taken away.”
Read the full Deseret News article By Nancy Perkins and Brian West here.
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Oh, such God fearing people. They’re full of shit. Welfare fraud will mostly likely come up. All of the women and children are collecting social services and these people call it “bleeding the beast”. They’re no different than ghetto blacks, those in the swarm from south of the border and muslims. They believe, all three groups do, they will out breed us and we will financially support it. Every time one of their kids pops out we’re experiencing another of the thousand cuts.
April 13th, 2008 at 11:53 pmpolygamy is the men’s paradise though
April 14th, 2008 at 2:20 amBon jour, Franchie.
I see I made one mistake in my comment. I wrote “all three groups”. I meant to say “all four groups”. The fundamentalists, ghetto blacks, swarmers and muslims.
April 14th, 2008 at 3:08 amSalut John,
apart the ghetto blacks, the others are religious bigots : funny how they all share the “viril” rights
April 14th, 2008 at 3:28 amAn MSM diversion if I’ve ever seen one!!
Get your eyes back onto the prize Dollard Nation–this aint it.
Wright is the one we should focus on, not polygamy..
Just a thought that I’ve had since this story broke, I do not condone their religion or beliefs, but I can spot MSM spin when I see it, and I know which candidate the MSM’s refuse to vet. And I know we are a nation full of suckers.
April 14th, 2008 at 4:58 amLooks like a scene from M. Night’s movie, The Village. I wonder if they had fake, 19th Century accents.
April 14th, 2008 at 5:49 amMerrill Jessop can burn in hell. I saw one of his former wives interviewed on O’Reilly and she said that he was regularly abusive.
The Kingston clan is another notorious polygamist group here in Utah. About 10 or 12 years ago, a member of their clan tried to marry is 15 year old daughter off to her own UNCLE. She ran away and the father beat the hell out of her when he found out. The father did go to jail for the beating.
The state of Texas is in a precarious position. They have yet to identify the 16 year old girl who made the allegations of rape and abuse. If they are unable to do so or if she does not come forward, their case is toast.
April 14th, 2008 at 6:41 amDan, we’re not one trick ponies. We can walk and chew gum at the same time, we’re just multi-tasking.
April 14th, 2008 at 6:46 amI like pizza.
April 14th, 2008 at 9:46 amI like pizza too!
April 14th, 2008 at 10:25 amAfter seeing how we God-fearing Westerners stormed into another culture, ransacked their domain, and terrorized their children in an effort to “save” them, I am beginning to understand the mess in IRAQ. The same brilliant crew is running the White House.
April 14th, 2008 at 8:19 pm