In This Article
30-Second Summary
Headline Links: Women and children bussed out of compound, one arrest made
Background: The Yearn for Zion Ranch
Video & Audio: Life at the Eldorado Ranch and Warren Jeffs’ teachings
Key Player: Warren Jeffs (1955-)
Historical Context: The 1953 raid in Short Creek, Ariz.
Opinion & Analysis: Children at greatest risk of political, cultural fallout
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Over 219 People Removed from Polygamist Compound
by
findingDulcinea Staff
After a 16-year-old girl called police about her marriage to a 50-year-old man, Texas authorities raided the compound of a polygamist Mormon sect.
30-Second Summary
Although police have yet to find the young caller, local prosecutor Allison Palmer said that “she is a young, underage mother with an older husband.”
Officials are also searching for Dale Barlow, who is wanted in connection with the marriage. However, child protection services agent Marleigh Meisner says that the commonality of last names and birth patterns is complicating their efforts.
Since April 4, 159 children and 60 women have been bussed out of the YFZ—Yearn for Zion—Ranch to the nearby town of San Angelo.
The inhabitants of the ranch belong to a Mormon sect, not recognized by the mainstream Mormon church, called the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. The FLDS broke away from the central Mormon church after it banned polygamy in 1890.
According to NPR, members believe leader Warren Jeffs is “God’s mouthpiece on earth.” Jeffs is currently incarcerated in a Utah prison on two counts of serving as an accomplice to rape for his role in the marriage of 14-year-old Elissa Walls and her 19-year-old cousin.
Brooke Adams, a polygamy expert for The Salt Lake Tribune, laments the fate of the sect’s children, writing that they will have to “face the prospect of other moves to strange locales.”
In contrast, former sect member Carolyn Jessop asserts that the women being taken from the ranch will be taken care of and have “numerous options.” The YFZ Ranch events recall the 1953 arrests at the group’s compound in Short Creek, Ariz. Those events saw the town’s men put behind bars and the women and children hauled away to Phoenix.
Photos of the incident turned the raid into a public relations disaster, leading to the release of many of group’s members.
Officials are also searching for Dale Barlow, who is wanted in connection with the marriage. However, child protection services agent Marleigh Meisner says that the commonality of last names and birth patterns is complicating their efforts.
Since April 4, 159 children and 60 women have been bussed out of the YFZ—Yearn for Zion—Ranch to the nearby town of San Angelo.
The inhabitants of the ranch belong to a Mormon sect, not recognized by the mainstream Mormon church, called the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. The FLDS broke away from the central Mormon church after it banned polygamy in 1890.
According to NPR, members believe leader Warren Jeffs is “God’s mouthpiece on earth.” Jeffs is currently incarcerated in a Utah prison on two counts of serving as an accomplice to rape for his role in the marriage of 14-year-old Elissa Walls and her 19-year-old cousin.
Brooke Adams, a polygamy expert for The Salt Lake Tribune, laments the fate of the sect’s children, writing that they will have to “face the prospect of other moves to strange locales.”
In contrast, former sect member Carolyn Jessop asserts that the women being taken from the ranch will be taken care of and have “numerous options.” The YFZ Ranch events recall the 1953 arrests at the group’s compound in Short Creek, Ariz. Those events saw the town’s men put behind bars and the women and children hauled away to Phoenix.
Photos of the incident turned the raid into a public relations disaster, leading to the release of many of group’s members.
Headline Links: Women and children bussed out of compound, one arrest made
Although they have yet to positively identify the girl whose call sparked the recent raids, authorities believe the girl may have been among those already bussed to San Angelo, Texas.
Source: Reuters
Member of a Texas child advocacy group Debra Brown said, “When children live in a pretty secluded environment and they're as sheltered as these children, it's very difficult to get them to talk to you and to open up. If you can get them to a neutral place, they're a lot more prone to answer you truthfully.”
Source: ABC News
Background: The Yearn for Zion Ranch
The Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints made the west Texas hamlet of Eldorado into the home of their 1,700-acre compound. Called the YFZ––Yearn for Zion––Ranch, the site includes a temple visible from over the hill that otherwise shields the property from view. It is believed that a combination of scrutiny from Utah officials and the group’s apocalyptic beliefs prompted the church members to build the ranch in Eldorado. Randy Mankin, editor of local weekly paper The Eldorado Success, said that the group’s members “believe that at the end of time, the city of Zion will be built with gold in a precinct near the Gulf of Mexico. Now, if you're from Houston, Eldorado may not seem that close to the Gulf. But if you’re from Utah, it might.”
Source: Houston Chronicle
Video & Audio: Life at the Eldorado Ranch and Warren Jeffs’ teachings
Child protective services official Marleigh Meisner said that the search for the 16-year-old caller is being impeded by the fact that many people at the Eldorado Ranch have similar names and life histories. A former church member said that women in the sect are treated as “breeding machines to prolong the goals of the patriarchy.”
Source: San Antonio CBS affiliate KENS
Eldorado, Texas paper The Eldorado Success has several sound files of Jeffs espousing largely anti-African-American teachings. In one clip, Jeffs instructs a group of followers that the Beatles were “pingy-pangy unnoticed useless people nobody would hire” and that rock music would "rot the soul and lead the person to immorality, to corruption, to forget their prayers, to forget God. Thus the whole world has partaken of the spirit of the Negro race.”
Source: The Eldorado Success
Key Player: Warren Jeffs (1955-)
Warren Jeffs was named the prophet of the Fundamentalist Church of Latter-Day Saints after the September 2002 death of his father and former church head Rulon Jeffs. Followers of the sect believe Jeffs is “God’s mouthpiece on earth.” NPR reports that the male members of the group whose actions please Jeffs are rewarded with wives. Those who fall out of favor with the leader are punished by having their wives reassigned.
Source: NPR
Warren Jeffs has been featured on “America’s Most Wanted,” and in April 2006 was charged as an accomplice in two cases of child rape by the state of Utah. The official court documents are available from FindLaw.
Source: FindLaw
In November 2007, the polygamist leader received two five-year sentences for being an accomplice to rape after he helped force 14-year-old Elissa Wall to marry her 19-year-old cousin Allen Steed. She complained to Jeffs that her cousin and husband touched her in a way that made her feel “uncomfortable.” Jeffs responded that she should dedicate her “mind, body and soul” to her new husband. The state of Arizona has indicted him on similar charges. He also faces federal charges for evading law enforcement officers after he was first charged in 2005.
Source: Court TV
Historical Context: The 1953 raid in Short Creek, Ariz.
In September 1953, Arizona state authorities stormed the group’s Short Creek, Ariz., compound in an effort to arrest male church members on a number of charges such as statutory rape and misuse of public education funds. Women and children were seized from the compound and bussed to Phoenix. Ariz. Gov. Howard Pyle said the community was “unalterably dedicated to the wicked theory that every maturing girl child … should be forced into multiple wifehood with men of all ages.” The photos of crying children turned out to be a public relations disaster. The men were released from jail and their families returned.
Source: Help the Child Brides
Opinion & Analysis: Children at greatest risk of political, cultural fallout
Brooke Adams, author of The Salt Lake Tribune blog Polygamy Files, went to Eldorado, Texas, to cover the recent raid. Likening it to the 1953 Short Creek, Ariz., raid, she writes that hundreds of children have “been taken from their homes and made to stay in a church hall or civic center and then military outpost, all in the space of three days. And they face the prospect of other moves to strange locales, too.”
Source: The Salt Lake Tribune
Logan, Utah, radio show “KVNU for the People” said the events at the Eldorado ranch will amount to political and legal disaster for the state of Texas. “Fantastic. These kids are already traumatized by being taken into a world far different from their own by law enforcement. Now, they have religious zealots ‘witnessing Christ’ to them.”
Source: KVNU for the People
Carolyn Jessop, a former member of the Fundamentalist Church of Latter-Day Saints who has become well-known for writing and speaking about the polygamous sect, said that the women and children being taken from the Eldorado compound are likely frightened of the outside world. She said that the state of Texas’ actions are nothing like the 1953 Arizona events because the women are being provided for and given “numerous options.”
Source: Religion News Blog
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