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  Officials Question Kids at Jeffs Retreat

The Associated Press
April 3, 2008

http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5jXexQ4KMBDzsBAxUHFa2JyVQSNJgD8VR4KT04

ELDORADO, Texas (AP) — State welfare investigators sealed off a secretive religious retreat built by jailed polygamist leader Warren Jeffs in order to investigate the treatment of children there, officials said Friday.

Child Protective Services is "investigating whether any children are in danger," said spokeswoman Marleigh Meisner. She said no decisions had been made on whether to remove any children.

The Texas Department of Public Safety and other law enforcement helped investigators gain access to the complex near Eldorado, Meisner said.

Local officials were notified Thursday that law enforcement agencies were investigating at the compound, Schleicher County Justice of the Peace James C. Doyle said.

"There are DPS cars on the road blocking all entrances into that area," he said.

The retreat was built by the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. The congregation, known as FLDS, has been led by the reclusive 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 in the decades after the mainline Mormon church renounced polygamy in 1890.

In November, Jeffs was sentenced to two consecutive sentences of five years to life in prison in Utah. That was after he was found guilty of 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.

In 2004, the group bought a former exotic game ranch about 160 miles northwest of San Antonio for $700,000 and began an ambitious construction program anchored by an 80-foot-tall, gleaming white temple. In 2006, officials estimated 150 people lived there.

It is known as the YFZ Ranch, with the letters standing for Yearning For Zion.

 
 

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