Additional Children Removed at Polygamist Ranch in Texas
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By RALPH BLUMENTHAL
Published: April 6, 2008
HOUSTON — Authorities removed an additional 85 children from a polygamist compound on Saturday, bringing the total to 137, officials said, as a confrontation appeared to be developing over law enforcement access to parts of the facility in Eldorado, in West Texas.

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52 Girls Are Taken From Polygamist Sect’s Ranch in Texas (April 5, 2008) Randy Mankin, the editor of The Eldorado Success, said on Saturday night that state ambulances were heading into the remote compound, the Yearning for Zion Ranch of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, a breakaway Mormon sect. Its leader, Warren S. Jeffs, 51, was convicted last year of forcing a 14-year-old girl into marriage and sexual relations.

Mr. Mankin said police reports he was monitoring suggested that church officials were refusing access to the authorities and that the officers were preparing to force their way in.

The Texas Department of Public Safety refused to comment, citing a judge’s gag order.

State troopers, Texas Rangers and investigators from Child Protective Services raided the ranch on Thursday night to serve search and arrest warrants after a 16-year-old girl complained of sexual and physical abuse, officials said Friday.

Tela Mange, a Department of Public Safety spokeswoman, said Friday that church officials were cooperative.

But Ms. Mange said on Saturday night that a judge’s gag order in the case — issued Saturday in San Angelo at the request of the Tom Green County district attorney, Stephen R. Lupton, who has jurisdiction in Schleicher County — kept her from providing any information on whether violence had broken out.

Darrell Azar, communications manager for the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services, said late Saturday that in addition to the 52 girls ages 6 months to 17 years who were removed from the ranch on Friday, another 85 children, including 40 boys, were taken Saturday to a civic center in Eldorado for questioning. An unknown number of children remained at the ranch, he said.

Mr. Azar said the 16-year-old girl whose complaint had set off the raid had not been identified.

The Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints split from the mainstream Mormon Church after church leaders in 1890 repudiated the polygamy prescribed by its founding prophet, Joseph Smith, and excommunicated members practicing plural marriage.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/06/us/06dorado.html

May God have mercy!!!!   If it is Nigeria. . . no one will ever stand up for these brainwashed women and children all in the name of some sick culture and religion.

How disgusting!  How can such a thing go undetected in America for so long without prosecution of the criminal mormons!  Is this Nigeria? Where you just ram women and children into a compound and molest them at will in the name of religion and culture? Or better still allow them to practice molesting themselves.

High tech pediphilia!

_{So pissed!}

no wonder the cousins, uncles, aunts, nephews, nieces, brothers and sisters are all marrying each other within these kinds of sects.

They said 401 children were rescued from that compound.

Am wondering who are the fathers- is it Jeff Warren or maybe him and nine other men.  Say 40 children per man.

What a useless state of affairs.

@AJ

I tell you say na primitive country that America be sef. This kind of thing no fit happen for Britain Too civilized for such nonsense to thrive here.

I don't understand how these groups went under the authorities' radar.I heard somewhere that there was a similar raid there decades ago that prompted a backlash which made the authorities reticent towards investigating what was going on.

4 Play:

@AJ

I tell you say na primitive country that America be sef. This kind of thing no fit happen for Britain Too civilized for such nonsense to thrive here.

I don't understand how these groups went under the authorities' radar.I heard somewhere that there was a similar raid there decades ago that prompted a backlash which made the authorities reticent towards investigating what was going on.

I am going to wikipedia to find out the load down on you guys. . . so do not hold that smile permanently on your face!

Frankly I can't understand if the children where not going to school or something?