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Apr 10, 2008 6:28 pm US/Central
Documents Reveal Details Of Polygamists' Temple
ELDORADO (AP) ―
When authorities moved to search the large white temple on the polygamist compound in West Texas, about five dozen of the sect's men prayed and cried around the structure, state investigators said Thursday.
The trigger for the raid was a hushed phone call from a terrified 16-year-old girl to a family-violence shelter to report that her 50-year-old husband had beaten and raped her.
State troopers entered the 1,700-acre compound, and 416 children, most of them girls, were swept into state custody because of suspicions that they were being sexually and physically abused.
On Thursday, state and local law enforcement authorities defended their decision to leave the sect alone for four years.
"We are aware that this group is capable of sexually abusing girls," Sheriff David Doran said. "But there again, this is the United States. We are going to respect them. We're not going to violate their civil rights until we get an outcry."
When investigators started toward the temple, Texas Ranger Capt. Barry Caver said some of the 57 men near the wall were on their knees praying. Others sobbed. One resisted officers' attempt to enter the area and was arrested.
He said authorities made the temple the last stop on the weeklong search because "if there was going to be any resistance at all it would be then." When authorities finally gained entrance to the three-story building, no one was inside.
But on the top floor they found beds, allegedly used by husbands to immediately consummate their marriages to underage girls. Texas law prohibits polygamy and the marriage of girls under 16.
Caver also described the difficulties faced by child welfare officials in finding and removing all 416 children from the compound.The children "were shuffled around houses as we were searching," he said, noting that as soon as they saw children in one house, they would be quickly ushered to other houses.
Court documents said a number of teen girls at the compound were pregnant, and all the children were removed on the grounds that they were in danger of "emotional, physical, and-or sexual abuse." Another 139 women left on their own.
Tammy Harris, the executive director of the shelter that took the call from the 16-year-old girl, said Thursday the shelter called Child Protective Services and law enforcement as soon as workers determined that she had given birth at 15.
"This is a very overwhelming situation," said Harris, who declined to give details of the calls made by the girl. "It is something that is new to most of us."
On Wednesday, state officials said the women and children were in good overall health but would not comment on pregnancies. About a dozen children appear to have chicken pox but were being separated at the evacuation sites, which include an old historic fort and a convention center, said Child Protective Services spokesman Chris Van Deusen.
Authorities were trying to determine the identities of many of the children; some were unwilling or unable to provide the names of their biological parents or identified multiple mothers.
Authorities in Texas suspected there would be trouble ever since members of the renegade Mormon splinter group -- the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints -- bought an exotic game ranch in Eldorado in 2004 and began building the ranch.
Warren Jeffs, the sect's prophet and spiritual leader at its longtime headquarters in the dusty, side-by-side towns of Hildale, Utah, and Colorado City, Ariz., was charged in 2005 and 2006 with forcing underage girls into marriages there. He was convicted in September in Utah of being an accomplice to rape and is serving up to life in prison.
Doran had been making occasional visits to the Eldorado compound -- he even called to tell members of Jeffs' capture in 2006 -- but he said he saw nothing to warrant a criminal investigation. Most of those milling around the compound would scatter when he and a Texas Ranger visited, he said.
"You can only press someone so far without having a criminal investigation going on," the sheriff said. "This group doesn't openly talk and they do not openly answer questions."
Doran said he had an informant who was "instrumental in teaching me the group's ways." But he declined to say whether the informant, a former sect member, was in Texas, or Utah or Arizona.
Barry Caver, a Texas Ranger who sometimes went with Doran to the compound, said a general welfare check wouldn't have produced much. "They would allow us on the property to the extent that we could talk to the main three or four people only," Caver said.
Texas Attorney General Gregg Abbott said that despite other states' investigations into Jeffs and FLDS, Texas authorities had to wait until they had evidence of wrongdoing in this state to act. He said authorities handled the case properly.
"You cannot go in and bust in someone's house if there's not probable cause to do so," Abbott said.
Jonathan Turley, a George Washington University law professor who has written about polygamy, said even Jeffs' conviction was not enough to barge in on the sect in Eldorado.
"You cannot use stale evidence," Turley said. "They would need a contemporary statement or evidence at trial that an individual at the compound is practicing polygamy."
The man alleged to be the 16-year-old girl's husband, Dale Barlow, is a registered sex offender who pleaded no contest to having sex with a minor in Arizona. Texas has an outstanding arrest warrant for Barlow related to the raid.
"I do not know this girl that they keep asking about," he told Utah's Deseret Morning News on Wednesday. "And I have not been to Texas since I was a young man back in 1977."
Officials still have not identified the 16-year-old girl among the children and the 139 women being held at two sites in West Texas.
"When you're dealing with a culture like this, they're taught from very early on that they don't answer questions to the point," Doran said. "All of that is certainly being sorted out right now."
(© 2008 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.)
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