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Randall Jeppesen reportingAuthorities continue to search for evidence of child abuse at a compound near Eldorado, Texas.
Listen for a little flapping noise; that's police tape in the wind surrounding sections of Fort Concho, which is the temporary home for hundreds of FLDS women and children. Word is spreading about the police search warrant that claims FLDS men were having sex with underage girls inside the FLDS temple.
"Those poor girls. I mean, they're not even girls. They're children," one woman said. The overall feeling appears to be pure disgust. But even so, a few people have expressed concern about how the raid took place.
"If we're going to be governed by laws, then we can't just go in and raid some place based on an anonymous phone call," another person said.
The gate to the FLDS Yearn for Zion Ranch is padlocked shut. Just down the road, straight ahead, is the FLDS temple.
Eldorado Mayor John Nikolauk said, "They present themselves as honorable businessmen. It's a charade."
He helped with an area-wide effort to feed and shelter the young mothers and children during the first four days of the raid. He says it wasn't easy trying to make them feel as comfortable as possible. "They don't eat margarine. We went back and got butter, but that was fine. They wanted whole milk, which they had out there because they had cows. We didn't have that, so they had to suffer with our homogenized," he said.
He says it's amazing how little they knew of the world around them. "Crayolas were given to them; they didn't know what they were. Even the young mothers didn't know what they were. They had never seen toys," he said.
Nikolauk says he hopes the kids will get a glimpse that the outside isn't out to get them, as they've been taught all their lives.
E-mail: rjeppesen@ksl.com
