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Authorities remove all children from sect’s Texas ranch

Texas state authorities have removed 401 children from the secluded, sprawling compound of a polygamist sect, amid allegations of widespread sexual and physical abuse.

The tally could rise as authorities search the 688 hectare ranch owned by the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, led by Warren Jeffs, the sect’s “prophet,” who is serving a life sentence in prison.

A judge has ordered every child removed from the ranch because they were deemed at imminent risk of harm.

Some 133 women dressed in ankle-length dresses voluntarily left the compound with the children. Most were mothers.

“I can’t speculate on what those women are feeling,” said Marleigh Meisner, spokeswoman for Texas Child Protective Services (CPS), which is conducting the probe.

More than 200 CPS workers were brought into the small town of Eldorado to conduct one-on-one interviews.

“You can imagine this is a whole new world for them and we’re trying to be sensitive to that,” Meisner told reporters.

Meisner would not describe what type of abuse allegedly took place on the ranch, but said a judge determined there was sufficient evidence to order all 401 children into temporary state custody.

Court hearings will be held in the next two weeks to determine whether the children should be permanently taken from their parents.

“There were allegations of physical abuse, allegations that these children were at risk of harm,” she said.

In court filings on Monday lawyers for the religious sect asked for a restraining order against the state and called the raid unconstitutional and an “irreparable” desecration of the group’s way of life.

The women and children were temporarily housed in an old Army fort that is now a museum in the nearby town of San Angelo, as state resources were stretched to the limit to accommodate the unprecedented case.

State police sealed off the compound and would not allow the men to leave, although they had been conducting their search with care in order to ease tensions.

The operation began after authorities received a call from a 16-year-old girl who said she had been sexually and physically abused and had given birth to a child fathered by her 50-year-old husband.

Authorities have not yet identified the girl.

The Yearn For Zion ranch is linked to Jeffs, an avowed polygamist. Jeffs was arrested near Las Vegas in 2006 and jailed for being an accomplice to rape.

The mainstream Mormon church — The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints — renounced polygamy more than a century ago.

It disavows any connection with the Fundamentalist Latter Day Saints church.

Members of the fundamentalist church are known to live in Utah, Nevada, Arizona, Texas, Colorado, South Dakota and British Columbia.
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