Officials from Texas Child Protective Services (CPS) removed a total of 183 young women, girls and boys from the Fundamentalist LDS Church’s compound near Eldorado, TX. According to Marleigh Meisner, spokesperson for CPS, told reporters they had removed 97 girls, 40 boys and 46 young women over the age of 18 from YFZ Ranch.
Eighteen of the girls removed from the compound were put legally into state custody because they appear to be “under threat of physical, mental or sexual abuse, or of neglect.” The remaining children have been taken to a local civic center for questioning and until authorities have found them foster homes.
The Eldorado Success reported that the investigation began after Child Protective Services was notified by a 16-year-old girl at the YFZ Ranch who suffered physical abuse at the hands of 50-year-old Dale Barlow. Police set up roadblocks and blocked off the entrances and exits to the compound.
According to the San Angelo Standard-Times, a search warrant authorized police to enter the compound and to look for evidence of a marriage between the girl and Dale Barlow. The warrant, signed by 51st District Judge Barbara Walther, reportedly allowed authorities to seize any records or documents detailing the marriage and fathering a child with the 16-year-old girl victim. The search warrant said the girl had a baby eight months ago, when she was 15.
YFZ Ranch is the site of FLDS’ first-ever temple. The 1,900-acre property was purchased in 2003, where the polygamous sect completed building the ranch in 2006. “YFZ” stands for “Yearn for Zion,” after a song penned by FLDS leader Warren Jeffs.
The community was led by Warren Jeffs, who succeeded his father Rulon Jeffs in 2002. Warren Jeffs resigned his leadership of the FLDS Church in 2007, shortly after being convicted of being an accomplice to rape by the state of Utah. It is still unknown who is leading the FLDS church. However, several enclaves can be found in Utah, Arizona, Nevada, Colorado, Texas, South Dakota, and in British Columbia, Canada.
It is important to keep in mind that Mormon fundamentalism, like FLDS, is considered a splinter group from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, otherwise known as the Mormons. Mormon fundamentalists embrace the doctrine and practice of polygamy, also known as “plural marriage” or “plurality of wives,” as it is generally referred to. Polygamy is not practiced by any, active contemporary member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Mormons have stopped practicing polygamy since 1890, after the Mormon Church officially disavowed polygamy.
Mormon Fundamentalists, however, believe that acceptance into the American mainstream came at way too high a price. They felt that the Mormon leaders sold them out and splintered off from the Church. Fundamentalists have formed numerous small sects, often within cohesive and isolated communities in areas of the Western United States, Western Canada, and northern Mexico.
Related posts (automated):
- The banshee screams for loon meat: Warren Jeffs heads to the bighouse
- The women of FLDS: teary-eyed defenders of the church of child rape
- CU postscript: Benson must be resisted and the Regents must be removed
- “I’m not going to shake the hand of Hitler Youth.” (Updated)
- Lord Monckton labels climate activists “Hitler youth”
Print This Post
It’s a very odd religion. Its founder, Joseph Smith, who lived practically yesterday by the standards of most other religions, was quite clear about the divine sanction of polygamy. Yet, before the end of the century in which Smith lived, his church had foresaken his teaching. Mormon leaders are Popes, it would seem, or even more than Popes in that they seem able to change even the most bedrock doctiine with the newest “revelation.”
I’ve known way too many abused Mormon women to have much truck with Mormon men.
Maybe if I looked at them through green glasses?
For “compound,” read “induction center, breeding facility and internment camp run by pedophiles.”