Child welfare in Texas removes children from polygamist compound UPDATE #13

[Catty1]

Wasn't this guy already charged and found guilty of something related to this?

http://ca.news.yahoo.com/s/capress/polygamist_retreat

Fri Apr 4, 4:53 PM

By The Associated Press

ELDORADO, Texas - Child welfare officials and state troopers have removed a busload of children from a secretive Texas religious retreat built by polygamist leader Warren Jeffs.

The children were taken after authorities received a complaint to state child welfare investigators.

A spokeswoman for Child Protective Services says a white bus that drove out of the compound accompanied by state troopers was filled with children being taken away from the compound.

There's no immediate word on how many children were taken.

The bus left the compound filled with what appeared to be mostly girls.

Authorities surrounded the retreat, built by the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, late Thursday.

They served search and arrest warrants Friday. The children were removed several hours later.

[jackie]

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.

Sick!

What is wrong with people who prey on the children they should be trying to protect.

[sasvermont]

I know that I do not agree with this religious group, and think they are a bunch of nutballs. BUT.....this is about religious beliefs....and I wonder why our government has the right to barge in and take children. There are lots of girls having sex at age 14 and under, with cousins, and geessseee, they don't get arrested. I know, I know. I don't like it but these folks are at least feeding and clothing and educating their families. The word cult comes to mind, but this craziness is based on their religion.

I once attended a "gypsy wedding"....in Philadelphia. The kids were well under 16. I don't know if they were related, but I do know that the pool of genes (as well as the weak genes) were very close in the reproduction process for the group. It is their culture to marry early and stay within the group. You should have seen the gold necklaces everyone wore. That is how they invest their money....it is quite portable and not taxed by the IRS.

Anyway, I don't think these folks are right but I do respect their rights to practice their religion, however odd and crazy it may seem.

Just my opinion, doesn't make in right!

[shepgirl]

Polygamy is not practicing religious beliefs. To me the government has all the rights to butt in, this is a case of child abuse. Church of Latter Day Saints are well known for the abuse of young girls. From experience I know how they work within this cult...my own niece was involved until someone finally opened her eyes. She had 3 children who were abused (in the name of the Lord) as they blatantly put it and to this day they are all seeing psychiatrists, I don't think they will ever be normal.
To say the government has no right to protect these kids is horrendous, someone has to do it. We're not talking about two people who get involved voluntarily, we're talking abuse hidden in the form of a religious cult.
These people actually think they will become gods at the end, they also act like gods in public around other people...they are always right and the rest of the world is always wrong.

[lady_zana]

Church of Latter Day Saints are well known for the abuse of young girls.

I just wanted to point out that while you are right about the abuse of the young girls, it is the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints who have been part of this abuse, to the best of my knowledge. It is a branch that broke off from the main Church of Latter Day Saints (Mormons).

[Catty1]

http://ca.news.yahoo.com/s/reuters/u...rmons_abuse_dc

Sat Apr 5, 6:11 AM

SAN ANTONIO (Reuters) - Texas authorities said on Friday that they were investigating a potential child-abuse case at a ranch operated by followers of a breakaway Mormon sect linked to jailed polygamist leader Warren Jeffs.
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No arrests had been made as of late Friday afternoon but officials said 52 girls have been removed from the secretive sect's compound.

"We took 52 children out, they were all girls between the ages of six months and 17 years," said Patrick Crimmins, a spokesman for the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services.

"Eighteen of the 52 have been legally removed into state custody," he added.

A spokesman for the Texas Department of Public Safety said no suspect had been taken into custody but a search and arrest warrant had been issued.

The ranch is about 120 miles northwest of San Antonio and is a compound for a renegade Mormon sect called the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, which is under the sway of Jeffs, a self-proclaimed prophet.

In November, Jeffs was sentenced in a Utah court to 10 years to life in prison as an accomplice to rape for forcing a 14-year-old girl to marry her 19-year-old first cousin. Jeffs is awaiting trial on similar charges for arranged marriages in Arizona.

Local media reports said the Texas compound had been sealed off by investigators.

Crimmins earlier said he could not comment on the nature of the investigation but said "generally speaking, an abuse and neglect investigation is triggered when there is a complaint to the agency."

The mainstream Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, as the Mormon faith is officially known, renounced the practice of polygamy more than a century ago and is at pains to distance itself from breakaway factions that bless multiple marriages, often involving adolescent girls.

(Reporting by Jim Forsyth in San Antonio and Ed Stoddard in Dallas; Editing by Philip Barbara)

[Catty1]

http://cfcn.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNe...retreat_080405

Standoff emerges at polygamist retreat in Texas

Standoff at polygamist retreat

CTV.ca News Staff

Sat. April. 5 2008 9:23 PM ET

Sect leaders on a remote polygamist compound in West Texas are refusing to let authorities search a temple for a 16-year-old girl who was reportedly physically abused.

In preparation for the worst, ambulances have been sent to the compound, Prosecutor Allison Palmer told the San Angelo Standard-Times on Saturday.

Since Friday, child welfare officials have removed nearly 200 women and children from the religious retreat, built by polygamist leader Warren Jeffs.

The whole series of events was triggered last Monday when the 16-year-old girl in question made a call to officials and alleged physical abuse, said Marleigh Meisner, a spokesperson for Texas Child Protective Services (CPS).

A search warrant was then issued, allowing state troopers to enter the retreat to look for evidence of a marriage between the girl and a 50-year-old man.

The warrant states that the girl had a baby eight months ago, at the age of 15.

On Friday, CPS removed 52 girls from the compound.

Meisner said another 131 residents were removed overnight.

By Saturday afternoon, 137 children and 46 women were being housed and interviewed by officials.

"They seem to be doing fine," Meisner said.

Meanwhile, four investigators remain inside the polygamist compound searching for more children.

The ranch, once an exotic game farm, covers 670 hectares and is near Eldorado, although the nearest major community is San Angelo.

The Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (FLDS), bought the property in 2004 for US$700,000.

Members moved there from another community on the border between Arizona and Utah.

Earlier Saturday, Meisner said the whereabouts of the 16-year-old who called officials and the girl's baby is unknown.

Police are also believed to still be looking for Dale Barlow, 50.

Officials, who said Friday that Barlow had not been found, declined to comment on his status Saturday -- stating that a state judge had issued a gag order.

Texas law forbids girls younger than 16 from marrying, even with parental approval.

Most of these girls have little experience outside the closed world of the FLDS, said Meisner.

FLDS leader Jeffs is currently in prison. A Utah court sentenced him to five years to life in prison for being an accomplice in the rape of a 14-year-old girl in 2001. She married her cousin in an arranged marriage.

Jeffs is also awaiting trial on charges in Arizona. He is charged with four counts each of incest and sexual conduct with a minor. The charges stem from two arranged marriages between teenage girls and their older male relatives.

The FLDS split from the more mainstream Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, also known as the Mormons, decades after the latter renounced polygamy in 1890.

With files from The Associated Press

[smokey the elder]

Mormonism gave up polygamy because they agreed to live by the law of the land they lived in.

[shepgirl]

LADY ZANA--------sorry, I should have mentioned that. I took it for granted that everyone knew about the break off from the regular church of Latter Day Saints.
Not all Latter Day Saints believers follow the church rules, some still believe in harsh punishment for children. The cult is something beyond comprehension though.

[momoffuzzyfaces]

I know that I do not agree with this religious group, and think they are a bunch of nutballs. BUT.....this is about religious beliefs....and I wonder why our government has the right to barge in and take children.

So, if someone's "religious beliefs" included sacrificing children to a volcano god or something, the government should let them?

[RICHARD]

Did anyone notice that they have a washed out, 1850's style of the Stepford Wives.

If anything the men should have their arse kicked for making women look that way...

And what was going on with the cult woman and that UNIBROW.

That was frigging scary to look at.....I'm still skeezed out about it!

[Catty1]

http://ca.news.yahoo.com/s/capress/0...gamist_retreat

Some of the children seized from Texas polygamist compound are Canadians

1 hour, 58 minutes ago

By Michelle Roberts, The Associated Press



SAN ANGELO, Texas - The attorney general for British Columbia said Friday he was alerted by officials in Ottawa that some of the children taken from a polygamist compound inhabited by members of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints are Canadians.

The confirmation came hours after Angie Voss of Texas Child Protection Services testified at a custody hearing for 416 children, seized in a raid earlier this month because of evidence of physical and sexual abuse, that some of the children before the court are Canadians.

State District Judge Barbara Walther, meanwhile, ruled that the children will stay in state custody.

She also ordered that all children and parents be given genetic testing. Child welfare officials have said they've had difficulty determining how the children and parents are related because of evasive or changing answers.

In Vancouver, Attorney General Wally Oppal said he had been alerted about some Canadians.

"I received the same report from Ottawa so it seems that that is accurate," said Oppal.

He said the Justice Department or External Affairs called "indicating that there are Canadians."

"What that means is that External Affairs would get involved in something like that."

But Foreign Affairs in Ottawa did not confirmin what Oppal said he was told by federal officials privately.

"To date no confirmation has been received on the citizenship status of the children," said Eugenie Cormier-Lessonde, a department spokeswoman.

Canadian consular officials have been in contact with Texas officials, she said.

Oppal said "this has been an issue for quite some time in that it has been said that at Bountiful there are said to be some Americans there as well."

"It sort of adds another dimension to the problem here. That is, that people move in and out of these communities and it's sometimes difficult to find out who's where and what."

Bountiful, located in southeastern B.C., is home to a polygamist compound.

Oppal said the call from Ottawa was "giving us a heads up because they know that we're involved in that same issue here.

Earlier in San Angelo, Voss testified that some of the children are Canadian citizens, although the New York Times reported that she did not say how many, or their age or sex.

Girls in the west Texas polygamous sect enter into underage marriages without resistance because they are ruthlessly indoctrinated from birth to believe disobedience will lead to their damnation, experts for the state testified Friday.

The renegade Mormon sect's belief system "is abusive. The culture is very authoritarian," said Dr. Bruce Perry, a psychiatrist and an authority on children in cults.

But under questioning from defence lawyers the state's experts acknowledged that the sect mothers are loving parents and that there were no signs of abuse among younger girls and any of the boys.

A witness for the parents who was presented by defence lawyers as an expert on the FLDS disputed the state's contention that a bed in the retreat's gleaming white temple was never used to consummate the marriages of underage girls to much older men.

Instead, John Walsh testified, it is used for naps during the sect's long worship services.

"There is no sexual activity in the temple," Walsh said.

Lawyers for the children and the parents appeared to be trying to show in cross-examination that their children were fine and that the state was trying to tear families apart on the mere possibility that the girls might be abused when they reach puberty several years from now.

Only a few of the children are teenage girls. Roughly a third are younger than four and more than two dozen are teenage boys. But about 20 women or more gave birth when they were minors, some as young as 13, authorities say.

The judge controlled the hundreds of lawyers with a steelier hand Friday than she did the day before.

Under cross-examination, Voss conceded there have been no allegations of abuse against babies, prepubescent girls or any boys.

But her agency, Child Protective Services, contends that the teachings of the FLDS - to marry shortly after puberty, have as many children as possible and obey their fathers or their prophet, imprisoned leader Warren Jeffs - amount to abuse.

"This is a population of women who appear to have a problem making a decision on their own," Voss said.

In response, the FLDS women, dressed in long, pioneer-style dresses with their hair swept up in braids, groaned in chorus with their dark-suited lawyers.

Walsh disputed that young girls have no say in who they marry.

"Basically, they're into match-making," he said of the sect, adding that girls who have refused matches have not been expelled.

"I believe the girls are given a real choice. Girls have successfully said, 'No, this is not a good match for me,' and they remained in good standing," he said.

Jeffs is in prison for being an accomplice to rape. He was convicted in Utah last year of forcing a 14-year-old into marrying an older man. W

-With files from The Canadian Press.

[Catty1]

And one more...

http://www.smh.com.au/news/world/pre...420485585.html

April 10, 2008

HOUSTON: Child welfare investigators who raided a polygamist sect in Texas found many pregnant teenagers and under-age girls who claimed they were forced to marry, according to court documents.

The documents, unsealed on Tuesday, contained details of evidence Texan officials presented to a judge to justify taking temporary state custody of 416 children at the Yearning for Zion ranch, operated by the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

They disclosed that in responding to an initial report that a 16-year-old girl had been sexually abused at the ranch, a guarded complex with a limestone temple at its centre, investigators found many young girls who were either pregnant or had given birth.

Click on link to read more

[NicoleLJ]

I have been reading this in the paper and it all sickens me. I am a mormon. Member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. Not the fundamentialist group that they are talking about here. We do not practice polygamy. but because of these groups many people think we still do or are a part of this group or believe as they do. We do not, I do not.

I personally am glad the children were removed and an investigation is being done. I hope it makes it's way to the Canadian ones here to put a stop to all this. Abuse in any form is wrong.
Nicole

[lizbud]

And what was going on with the cult woman and that UNIBROW.

That was frigging scary to look at.....I'm still skeezed out about it!

I noticed that too.......hard NOT to.


They act like robots. Wierd.