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KSL team coverage and AP reportingThere was a crackdown on a polygamist compound after a 16-year-old girl claimed she was sexually abused. It's being called the largest single investigation by the Texas Department of Family Services, and it's centered around the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints' (FLDS) ranch near Eldorado, Texas.
Midland County, TX Sheriff Gary Painter says authorities still haven't found the 16-year-old girl who made the initial complaint, so she may still be in the compound. That teenager has a child and Sheriff Painter says authorities want to talk with the father, a sex offender who is not registered with the state of Texas.
The story began with that teenager's complaint, but since then we've learned there are other victims. Busloads of girls have been taken from the polygamist compound in Eldorado -- 52 girls total; 18 of them are now in the legal custody of the Texas Department of Family Services.
Marleigh Meisner, with Child Protective Services, said, "Those are the ones that we believe have been abused or are in imminent risk of harm or imminent risk of abuse. And it wouldn't be safe for those children to remain in the compound for another day."
Sheriff Painter said, "If they are shut off from the world, not allowed to have communication, they can't get any help. And that is the information we have received -- needing help, needing our assistance."
The Midland County Sheriff says most of the girls are under age 16 and some of them are pregnant. The compound authorities took them from is the YFZ Ranch, an FLDS religious retreat that polygamist leader Warren Jeffs built four years ago.
When a teenager complained of abuse, an investigation began, and last night, sheriff's deputies surrounded the compound. "We are getting extremely wonderful cooperation from the people at the compound," Meisner says.
So why would there need to be dozens of police officers plus armored vehicles, as witnesses have reported? KSL reporter John Hollenhorst has covered numerous stories on polygamy over the years. He weighed in, in tonight's "talking points" segment on Eyewitness News at 6:30. "To surround the compound would create a lot of risk. I don't think they would have done that unless communications had broken down."
Randy Mankin, with the Eldorado Success newspaper, told Eyewitness News that there are several roadblocks leading to the compound. They've been in place since last night.
The Midland County Sheriff believes his deputies and other authorities will be there for another day, maybe two. They're trying to serve an arrest warrant, but there's no word right now who is named in that warrant. We may not know for a little while as the state district judge has issued a gag order.
The ranch is north of Eldorado, down a narrow, paved road. Authorities blocked access to the compound's gate, keeping people miles outside the area.
Only the compound's 80-foot-tall, gleaming white temple is visible on the wind-swept desert horizon, but Tom Vinger, a Department of Public Safety spokesman, said the ranch has numerous buildings. Local authorities in 2006 put the figure at about 150.
The retreat was built by the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. The congregation, known as FLDS and led by the reclusive Jeffs since his father's death in 2002, is one of several groups that split from The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints based in Salt Lake City decades after it renounced polygamy in 1890.
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.
In Arizona, Jeffs is charged as an accomplice with four counts each of incest and sexual conduct with a minor stemming from two arranged marriages between teenage girls and their older male relatives. He is jailed in Kingman, Ariz., awaiting trial.
The group's retreat, about 160 miles northwest of San Antonio, is located on a former exotic game ranch. The group bought the property in 2004 for $700,000 and began an ambitious construction program anchored by the temple.
E-mail: acabrero@ksl.com
E-mail: gkennedy@ksl.com
(The Associated Press contributed to this story. Copyright 2008 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)
