Associated Press
April 7, 2008
http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5iIdMpRHjN4hpNKBhfYyAsR4DDo4QD8VTTST00
ELDORADO, Texas (AP) — The 16-year-old girl whose phone call triggered the massive raid on a polygamist sect's West Texas compound told a local family violence shelter that her husband beat and raped her, according to court documents released Tuesday.
Child welfare officials said Tuesday they had completed removing 416 children from the ranch and have won custody of all the children. Another 136 women left on their own.
"All of the children have safely been removed from the ranch," Child Protective Services spokeswoman Marleigh Meisner told reporters in nearby San Angelo.
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| A Texas State Trooper patrols the grounds at Fort Concho National Historic Landmark, the temporary housing for members of Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints in San Angelo, Texas, Monday, April 7, 2008. Photo by Tony Gutierrez |
But Meisner said the agency still didn't know whether the 16-year-old was among the children pulled from the compound on the grounds that they were all in danger of "emotional, physical, and-or sexual abuse."
The documents said that investigators discovered a number of teen girls who appeared to be pregnant as they searched the compound.
"Investigators determined that there is a widespread pattern and practice of the (Yearn for Zion) Ranch in which young, minor female residents are conditioned to expect and accept sexual activity with adult men at the ranch upon being spiritually married to them," read the affidavit signed by Lynn McFadden, a Department of Family and Protective Services investigative supervisor.
McFadden said that as soon as girls reached puberty, they were spiritually married to an adult male and required to produce children.
The girl said she was not allowed to leave the compound unless she was ill. She told the shelter that her husband, would "beat and hurt" her when he got angry, including hitting her in the chest and choking her while another woman in the house held her baby. The girl also said her husband sexually assaulted her.
Authorities have issued an arrest warrant for church member Dale Barlow, who is believed to be in Arizona, but the girls' husband is not identified in the court documents released Tuesday.
The teen also indicated she is several weeks' pregnant.
The girl called the shelter on March 29 and 30, using someone else's cell phone and speaking in hushed tones to avoid being overheard, McFadden's affidavit said.
Since authorities raided the 1,700 acre polygamist compound last week, child welfare officials have been interviewing the children in search of the 16-year-old and to investigate allegations of abuse.
Investigators said some of the children were unwilling or unable to provide the names of their biological parents or identified multiple mothers.
The boys were groomed to be ready to marry underage girls upon adulthood and engage in sexual activity, "resulting in them becoming sexual perpetrators," the affidavit said.
The girl told the shelter that her hsuband went to "the outsiders' world" but didn't know where he went.
Former members of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter Day Saints predicted an uneasy adjustment to foster care. They are likely the grandchildren or great-grandchildren of those taken by Arizona authorities 54 years ago in a similar raid.
That raid a half-century ago and the one this week pulled children of polygamist families from the only community and culture they'd ever known — an event that decades later a former community member recalls as traumatizing.
"It was total misery for them," said Ben Bistline, now 72. He was 18 when authorities raided the remote community on the Arizona-Utah line, taking 200 children into custody as part of an effort to wipe out a "nest of polygamy."
Bistline was not rounded up in the 1953 raid, but the woman he married later in life was 15 when she and her seven siblings were shipped to Phoenix, pulled from the friends and family who constituted their whole world. Nearly two years past before they were allowed to return, he said.
Most of the current sect members are descended from families from the Arizona-Utah community.
The 1953 Short Creek raid also changed the community, said Carolyn Jessop, the former wife of the man believed to be running the Eldorado compound.
The distinct pioneer-style dresses, worn over long underwear year-round and sewn by the women, became part of the dress code after the 1953 raid as each generation added more restrictions, said Jessop, who left the community five years ago.
Despite the new hardships for the children and women in Texas, Bistline said the raid is appropriate if children are being forced into marriages.
"This situation in Texas is a justifiable raid," he said.
But another FLDS member now living in the Texas Panhandle, Samuel Fischer, had a different view.
"It's religious persecution," said Fischer, who moved to a ranch near Lockney with his two wives and 12 of his children from Hildale, Utah, last year.
The Texas investigation is the state's first with FLDS, but prosecutors in Utah and Arizona have pursued several church members in recent years, including sect founder Warren Jeffs, who is serving two consecutive sentences of five years to life for being an accomplice to the rape of a 14-year-old wed to her cousin in Utah. He awaits trial on other charges in Arizona.
An unknown number of men were being held at the ranch while authorities completed the search of the gleaming 80-foot-high temple, a cheese-making plant, a cement plant, a school, a doctor's office and housing units.
Authorities have described FLDS members as cooperative, but the house-by-house search of the temple, factories and living quarters has triggered some trouble.
On Monday, 41-year-old Leroy Johnson Steed was arrested on charges of felony tampering with evidence — a day after 19-year-old Levi Barlow Jeffs was arrested on misdemeanor charges of interfering with the duties of a public servant, said Department of Public Safety spokesman Tom Vinger.
He declined to give details on the arrests or if Levi Barlow Jeffs might be related to FLDS leader Warren Jeffs.
Attorneys for the church and church leaders filed motions asking a judge to quash the search on constitutional grounds, saying state authorities didn't have enough evidence and that the warrants were too broad. A hearing on their motion was scheduled for Wednesday in San Angelo.
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