In This Article
30-Second Summary
Headline Link: Officials investigating broken bones, sexual abuse at FLDS ranch
Background: The Yearn for Zion ranch and developments at the ranch
Video & Audio: Life at the Eldorado ranch and Warren Jeffs’ teachings
Reactions: FLDS lawyer and ranch leader decry raid, Harry Reid applauds Texas
Key Player: Warren Jeffs (1955–)
Historical Context: The 1953 raid in Short Creek, Ariz. and the 1993 siege in Waco, Texas
Opinion & Analysis: Mainline Mormons react to FLDS raid
Reference: Polygamous sects and how to help the women and children of YFZ
Subscribe to Americas Updates
Children at Polygamist Ranch Had Past Injuries, Officials Report
by
findingDulcinea Staff
Dozens of children taken from the Yearn for Zion ranch had previous broken or fractured bones, and some of the boys may have been sexually abused.
30-Second Summary
The Texas Department of Family and Protective Services said that at least 41 of the 463 children in state custody had past broken or fractured bones, although it was unclear whether those injuries could be attributed to life on a ranch with a large amount of construction and farm equipment.
Officials are also looking into possible sexual abuse of boys, based on interviews and journal entries.
The news comes on the heels of reports that more than half of the teenage girls taken from the ranch already have children, or are pregnant.
Developments have been unfolding since 533 women and children were removed from the ranch following a raid that occurred on April 4. The raid was sparked by a call from a 16-year-old girl who said she was sexually abused by her 50-year-old husband.
The inhabitants of the Yearn for Zion ranch, located outside of Eldorado, Texas, 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.
The incident has sparked many reactions.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid on Monday applauded Texas's efforts in punishing members of the Yearn for Zion ranch, and spoke out harshly against Utah and Arizona, states he believes are "turning a blind eye to" polygamy.
"To have what goes on in Arizona and in Utah go on year after year after year and people turn a blind eye to it, I think it is a travesty," he said.
Officials are also looking into possible sexual abuse of boys, based on interviews and journal entries.
The news comes on the heels of reports that more than half of the teenage girls taken from the ranch already have children, or are pregnant.
Developments have been unfolding since 533 women and children were removed from the ranch following a raid that occurred on April 4. The raid was sparked by a call from a 16-year-old girl who said she was sexually abused by her 50-year-old husband.
The inhabitants of the Yearn for Zion ranch, located outside of Eldorado, Texas, 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.
The incident has sparked many reactions.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid on Monday applauded Texas's efforts in punishing members of the Yearn for Zion ranch, and spoke out harshly against Utah and Arizona, states he believes are "turning a blind eye to" polygamy.
"To have what goes on in Arizona and in Utah go on year after year after year and people turn a blind eye to it, I think it is a travesty," he said.
Headline Link: Officials investigating broken bones, sexual abuse at FLDS ranch
“Specifics about the investigation are confidential in order to protect the privacy of the children and others,” Carey Cockerell, head of the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services, told a Senate panel Wednesday morning. “But I can tell you generally, we are further investigating the following findings: historical physical injuries and fractures that we have found via medical exams and medical record review. Several of these fractures have been found in very young children and several had multiple fractures.”
Source: The Houston Chronicle
Background: The Yearn for Zion ranch and developments at the ranch
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
Developments since April 4
31 out of 53 of girls between the ages of 14 and 17-years-old taken from the ranch already had children, or were pregnant, Texas Child Protective Services reported this week.
Source: Breitbart (Associated Press)
Marleigh Meisner, spokesperson for Texas Children’s Protective Services, said that the raid on the Eldorado compound “is the largest endeavor we've ever been involved in in the state of Texas.” She also worked on the 1993 siege of the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Texas, that killed at least 86 people.
Source: ABC News
The girl who called the authorities said that the domestic abuse began soon after she was “spiritually married to man who was about 49 years old, becoming his seventh wife,” reports The Salt Lake Tribune. According to the girl, her husband repeatedly forced her to have sexual relations with him. During the March 30 phone call, she also said that she feared she would be put in solitary confinement if her escape route were discovered.
Source: The Salt Lake Tribune
The week after the raid, the search continued for the missing 16-year-old girl who called police as the sect’s members faced the difficult task of rejoining mainstream society.
Source: findingDulcinea
Texas Gov. Rick Perry toured the facilities housing the women and children bussed from the Eldorado compound after women complained of cramped conditions. Perry spokesperson Robert Black said, “Let’s be honest here, it’s not the Ritz … but clean and neat.” First sheltered at the San Angelo National Historic Landmark, the children and women who chose not to return to the compound were moved on Monday to the San Angelo Coliseum, a sports complex.
Source: USA Today
Video & Audio: Life at the Eldorado ranch and Warren Jeffs’ teachings
Texas child protective services official Marleigh Meisner said at a press conference that children aged 5 and older would be taken from their families. “We believe that families should be together whenever possible…but sometimes that’s not possible,” she said. Meisner added that the children were “smiling,” and playing games such as kickball. An organ was brought in so the children could worship.
Source: CNN
Good Morning America was invited to the Yearn for Zion ranch in Eldorado, Texas for a rare outsider’s glimpse into the compound. Two women said that the Texas Department of Child Protective Services was lying to their children. When asked if teenage girls on the compound were routinely married to older men, the women responded, “We’re talking about our children now.” Another woman said, “I understand for the outside world, they cannot understand us. We cannot understand them.” She responded to a question about whether she shared a husband, “I cannot answer that at this time…It’s spiritual for me.”
Source: ABC News
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 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
Reactions: FLDS lawyer and ranch leader decry raid, Harry Reid applauds Texas
“There needs to be a public outcry that goes far and wide,” said Merrill Jessop, an elder in the FLDS and the head of the Eldorado YFZ Ranch. “What’s coming we don't know. The hauling off of women and children matches anything in Russia or Germany.”
Source: The Salt Lake Tribune
Lawyer for the FLDS Gerry Goldstein argued that the search of the group’s temple was similar to a search of a religious center such as the Vatican. Allison Palmer, a prosecutor working on the case, countered that the investigation was to look for “evidence of criminal activity, not to malign a religion.”
Source: Chicago Tribune (Associated Press)
Reid's comments brought quick reactions from Utah Attorney General Mark Shurtleff and Arizona Attorney General Terry Goddard. "To have him come in, without any knowledge whatsoever, and to accuse Utah of doing nothing, is unacceptable," Shurtleff said. "He ought to get educated before he opens his trap, frankly." Goddard said that "The senator certainly doesn't understand Utah and Arizona."
Source: The Salt Lake Tribune
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. and the 1993 siege in Waco, Texas
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
On Feb. 28, 1993, federal agents tried to arrest David Koresh at his Waco, Texas, compound. A gunfight ensued, killing 10 and beginning a 51-day standoff.
Source: findingDulcinea
Opinion & Analysis: Mainline Mormons react to FLDS raid
Some Mormons, many of whom have polygamist ancestry, feel conflicted over the FLDS compound raid. Says lawyer Guy Murray, the mainline Mormon church gained credibility once it formally renounced polygamy in 1890, becoming a “more respected, mainstream, conservative government-supporting institution. But we are just one popular opinion away from where these folks are.” Elizabeth Harmer-Dionne says that in the early Mormon church, women in polygamist households had the right to divorce their husbands. “My ancestors worked things out fine.”
Source: The Salt Lake Tribune
Blog Feminist Mormon Housewives writes of mixed feelings on the raid on the YFZ compound. “Patriarchy has taken steroids, women can’t cut their hair, kids have little exposure to the outside world. Ick factor: very high…You know, advocates of social liberty (which includes feminists, usually) also find the “ick factor” rather high when a group of people’s religious liberties are significantly curtailed by the state. The only justifiable reason for so doing, no matter how icky those religious choices might otherwise be, is if the religion itself precludes free will and engenders abuse.”
Source: Feminist Mormon Housewives
An interdiction on black, prints and red is just part of the sartorial standard inflicted by Warren Jeffs on the FLDS compounds. Women and girls must wear voluminous hand-sewn dresses evocative of the garments worn by the original Mormon pioneers who settled Utah. The more pious the woman, the larger the pompadour she wears on her head. Says anthropology professor and polygamist dress expert Janet Bennion at Vermont’s Lyndon State College, “From their perspective, if you believe you're the people of God, that you're the chosen ones, the materialistic things of this world don't matter as much.”
Source: The Salt Lake Tribune
Reference: Polygamous sects and how to help the women and children of YFZ
The Texas Department of Family and Protective Services has a list of ways to help the women and children from the FLDS compound, including sources on adoption and making donations.
Source: Texas Department of Family and Protective Services
FindingDulcinea has a guide to the history of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, including that of polygamous sects that claim to be fundamentalist Mormon.
Source: findingDulcinea
Most Recent Beyond The Headlines
© 2012 Dulcinea Media, Inc.
