Some people believe that the mainstreaming into society of homosexuality, transvestites, and sexual promiscuity brings us back to the days of the ancient Roman bathhouses, and sexual deviance.  I guess it depends on your personal perspective whether that's progressive or regressive.  Children are taught in school to accept the fact that having two mommy's or two daddy's is normal.  As long as those mommy's and daddy's are gay, and not bigamist.

A Transvestite having a baby is celebrated on Oprah.  Should the C.P.S. take that child away??

We have a swingers club in downtown Schenectady that the authorities can do nothing about. Are the children of the couples who attend being harmed by their parents behavior??  The authorities hands are tied in that instance.  

An anonymous phone call from a cell phone inside a Christian Fundamentalist Community, claiming abuse gets met with armored vehicles and sheriffs armed with machine guns, and 401 children in state custody.  

13 days latter and no formal charges, and the 16 year old "Sarah" who allegedly called still not identified.

http://www.sltrib.com/ci_8941294

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Texas: What matters most is the evidence
Polygamous mystery: Does allegedly abused teen bride 'Sarah' exist?
By Brooke Adams
The Salt Lake Tribune
Article Last Updated: 04/16/2008 10:19:42 AM MDT


FLDS women who were in state shelters with their children until Monday say investigators appeared desperate to find "Sarah" and were grilling girls by that name.
    There also are discrepancies between what the girl said about her "spiritual husband" and what is known about the man later named in the search and arrest warrant first used to enter the YFZ Ranch, owned by the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.
    
    Authorities say a girl named Sarah made a series of telephone calls to the crisis line at NewBridge Family Shelter on March 29 and March 30.
    In those calls, the girl talked of becoming the seventh wife of a 50-year-old man named "Dale" and conceiving her first child when she was 15, according to affidavits used to get the first search warrant. In a later call, she seemed to indicate he had three other wives living at the ranch.
    She described being beaten by her husband, once so badly she needed treatment at a hospital for broken ribs.
    The girl said she was pregnant and wanted to leave the ranch but had been warned of the dangers of the outside world and threatened with being locked up. She also said her parents, who lived out of state, were planning to send her younger sister to the ranch.
    Two women who have worked with teens leaving the FLDS sect - Joni Holm of Utah and Flora Jessop of Arizona - say Sarah is real.
    Holm said last week she has been in contact with people who know Sarah and believes she is among the girls now in state custody.
    "They just have to keep weeding through them," she said last week. Neither Holm nor Jessop returned calls from The Salt Lake Tribune on Tuesday.
    
    But there are some who believe the story of a 16-year-old victim sounds concocted, that
statements attributed to her don't ring true.
    "There is no verbage or terminology used that leads me to believe the statements were made by someone inside," said Ezra Draper of Hildale, Utah, who left the FLDS sect six years ago. "I think it's bunk."
    Examples: The term FLDS use to describe other people is "gentiles," not outsiders, and they don't observe such holidays as Easter Sunday, when the alleged victim claimed she was last beaten.
    Susan Risdon, the crisis shelter spokeswoman, said the calls to the shelter were not recorded but that the two employees who spoke with the girl wrote down what she said.
    "I think it's the exact language," Risdon said.
    He points out that only the most worthy among the FLDS were called to live at the ranch. Those "FLDS wouldn't have tolerated any abuse like that [the girl's broken ribs] within their society," he says.
    Draper also wonders how the girl knew to call the shelter, given the isolation and control that authorities say those at the ranch experienced.
    Rod Parker, a Salt Lake City attorney who is representing the FLDS families, said there are "sufficient questions surrounding the authenticity of that call that cry out for an answer."
    
    On Monday, hours after being separated from the children taken into state custody, FLDS women claimed authorities appeared driven to find Sarah.
    "They are trying to pin it on anybody named Sarah," said Annette, who is back at the YFZ Ranch after more than a week in custody with her six children and five nieces and nephews she is raising.
    Sarah is a common name and several are in custody, she said. One by one, the Sarahs have been interviewed, she said. "They find out and then let them go, then grab another one and try to find out and the let them go."
    "There is just not a Sarah that fits what they said," said Annette.
    Investigators have zeroed in on one Sarah in particular, Annette said. The girl, who has a 5-month-old daughter, is petite and looks young, so the investigators don't believe she is 18, she said. She declined to name the girl's husband, but said it is not Dale Evans Barlow, the Arizona man named in the initial arrest and search warrants.
    One night, shortly before midnight, child welfare workers came into the dorm where the mothers with small children were and told this specific Sarah that she and her baby had to leave. In a phone call later, Sarah told other mothers she and her baby were sent to a house, alone, at Fort Concho, Annette and other women said.
    On Tuesday, 51st District Judge Barbara Walther rejected an attempt by this Sarah's family to have her recognized as an adult so she could be represented by a private attorney rather than an attorney ad litem.
    
    Tela Mange, a spokeswoman for the Texas Department of Public Safety, said investigators are still looking for the 16-year-old who placed the calls, but she said she didn't know whether they have any good candidates.
    Texas Rangers interviewed Barlow on Saturday and Mange said they are still reviewing information he provided. She said Texas authorities are not ready yet to definitively clear him of any involvement with a 16-year-old girl in Texas.
    Barlow, who was convicted in Arizona of sexual misconduct with a minor in 2007, has said he does not know the girl and has not been to Texas since 1977 - claims backed by his attorney and his Arizona probation officer.
    A presentencing report prepared on Barlow by Arizona authorities states that he has three wives - all of whom, according to friends and family, live in Colorado City, Ariz. That contradicts the girl's description of his family.
    
    Some experts say it matters less if Sarah is never found or turns out not to exist.
    It is the strength or weakness of the state's evidence of alleged abuse found at the ranch that will matter when Judge Walther decides whether the 416 FLDS children will go to foster homes, they say.
    John J. Sampson, a University of Texas law professor and expert on family law, said those cases will focus on what investigators found once they were at the ranch.
    But if the state hopes to later bring criminal charges, they must find Sarah.
    "The problem for the state is this girl is the linchpin that holds together any criminal case against the group or even any individual," said Jonathan Turley, a George Washington University law professor.
    brooke@sltrib.com
    ---
    * KRISTEN MOULTON contributed to this story.
    

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Historic battle brewing in Lone Star state
Parents ready to defend a lifestyle they say is aimed at raising moral and pure children
By Brooke Adams
The Salt Lake Tribune
Article Last Updated: 04/17/2008 02:40:44 AM MDT



SAN ANGELO, Texas - Both sides knew it was coming.
    When a polygamous sect began building a secluded community in west Texas, state authorities went to work on ways to shut them down.
    But no one predicted the clash would result in this: 416 children in state custody, authorities prepared to remake their lives and a long-silent people speaking out in a desperate bid for their children's return.
    Today, the Tom Green County Courthouse will be the setting for a historic hearing on the children's welfare. The state will argue parents belonging to the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints put them at risk through physical abuse and socializing them into accepting early, illegal marriages.
    The parents will resist the state's attempt to make a single argument that envelops all the families, and defend a lifestyle they say is aimed at raising moral, pure and beloved children.
    "We want our families back and we want to be together again," said Nancy, 19, who said she spent 11 days in the shelter with a diabetic younger sister. "We want our children home."
    The state raided the sect's YFZ Ranch on April 3 after a 16-year-old girl called a family shelter for help. But authorities still say they have not found the girl, and the man she apparently accused of abuse remains free in Arizona, though authorities have not yet clearedhim as a suspect.
    On Wednesday, men and women on the ranch spoke in their own defense.
    "I pray and pray for Heavenly Father to intervene," said Lamar Johnson, whose five daughters are in custody. "My work needs to be within myself . . . to let him fight our battles."
    Utah and Arizona authorities are part of this chain of events. Beginning in the late 1990s, both states began prosecuting men who married, legally or otherwise, young girls and in ensuing years passed laws to curtail underage marriages.
    Sect leaders looking for safe haven thought they had found it in Texas, which back in 2003 still let 14-year-olds get married with parental permission.
    Texas also, unwittingly perhaps, engineered the landmark Lawrence v. Texas U.S. Supreme Court decision that said what adults do behind closed doors is no one's business.
    In 2003, Texas land was still affordable, so the FLDS bought a 1,700-acre spread outside Eldorado and began to build a small city where they hoped peace could reign and spiritual devotion increase. Its centerpiece: a limestone temple.
    Members "yearn to be here," said Janet, whose three children are in custody. "I want [people] to know we're so happy here and want to be free here to love God with all our heart and strength."
    Soon after their arrival, ex-sect members and child advocates provided a group portrait that was anything but pastoral, claiming systematic abuse was the norm in the FLDS. And one ex-member began feeding information to Schleicher County Sheriff David Doran.
    Pressure increased in the sect's home base of Utah and Arizona, which seized its $110 million communal property trust and began prosecuting men who married underage girls.
    Among those targeted: FLDS President Warren S. Jeffs, who is now in prison for rape as an accomplice for conducting such a marriage.
    In 2005, the Texas Legislature passed child protection legislation that included provisions targeting FLDS marriage practices.
    "The overwhelming majority of people in Texas want to prevent little girls from being forced to be married and forced into sexual relationships," said sponsoring state Rep. Harvey Hilderbran. "Our laws needed to be updated even if this group hadn't come to Texas."
    The changes raised the marriage age to 16, outlawed first cousin and stepparent marriages, made it a crime to officiate at illegal marriages and to enter a polygamous union.
    "This isn't a part of Texas values, having polygamy, bigamy and forcing marriage of teenage girls," Hilderbran said. "We didn't invite them to come here, but if they're going to come here, they've got to obey Texas law."
    One law is key here: Are girls age 16 or younger assigned in marriage as a matter of course? It's a question the FLDS deflect but that state authorities are determined to prove as fact.
    Salt Lake City attorney Rod Parker, who represents the FLDS families, said Texas has deceived the FLDS at every turn since entering the ranch two weeks ago - most hurtfully when it separated mothers from children on Monday. Now, he said, Texas "has an obligation to treat their people fairly. This is not about winning, it is about reaching a proper resolution for all concerned."
    A state lawmaker says that's the state's aim.
    "None of us like human misery," Drew Darby, of San Angelo, said Tuesday. "Nor do we like abuse of our children."
    At the YFZ Ranch Wednesday, the schoolhouse was empty. A woman stood on a porch, head hanging. For the first time in days, men resumed building a new home.
    "We're still depending on the same Heavenly Father to deliver us," said Gwendolyn, 80, who was 25 in 1953 when Arizona authorities conducted a similar raid aimed at wiping out the group. "I was numb the first time and I was numb this time, too."
    Lamar Johnson, her son, clutched copies of a letter written by his 8-year-old daughter, who is custody along with four older sisters.
    Dear Father, I love you. I miss you. I am doing very well. We need you. And we are praying for you. I love you, Avalon.
    "I miss my daughters," said Johnson, his face a portrait of anguish and frustration.
    brooke@sltrib.com

This is a very sad situation as all the children must be afraid because for some it's the first time they have ever been outside the compound. They have been isolated and indoctrinated[brain washed] into thinking that this is the only way to live and to follow every word that their leader tells them in order to get to heaven. Not all of the many groups that live similar to this are bad just the ones that are a haven for pedophiles that exploit and abuse the children under the guise of religion. The parents of these children are suffering as well and are only trying to put their families back together.

I wonder if they know who Santa Claus is or the Easter Bunny????.....nah, they are just raised to do what they do in their community---not unlike those gated communities in Hollywood or on Michael Jacksons ranch or Hugh Heffners community etc.......and then there is the rest of us with the likes of Sesame Street, Barney, and other talking animals/creatures through which our children learn to use their 'inside voices' and to talk and debate what they think the consequences to their behavior should be....or maybe those within some urban communities and their 'rights of passages' such as shooting other people to gain entrance into those communities.......oooohhhh, the list is endless......let's not forget that 'special' community that Mr.Spitzer was a card carrying member of.....shall we call it the Goldfinger Club.........dorks.......

I say---let's get the Hooters chicks to do some quick teaching........send them all to Oprah for free makeovers and maybe we can send them to one of Oprah's schools in Africa for a 'real' education.......

BTW---do those folks vote????

It is interesting how the media has deliberately or through gross incompetence, is underreporting the fact that the government is asking for custody of 400+ children with no proof a crime has been committed.  No arrests, and no victim.  We can debate all day whether we agree or disagree of the polygamist lifestyle. Whether it brainwashing, immoral, or illegal.  The fact still remains that the government was able to make an unwarranted, sweeping, search and seizure of a community's personal property and children with very little if any outcry from the general public.

If a phone call of sexual abuse originated from a home in the Castro District of San Francisco, I don't believe that armored vehicles and police with machine guns would have swept every child out of every house, and taken them into police custody until they could sort it out.  The ACLU would be there by the hundreds protecting the rights of the gay lifestyle, and screaming discrimination.  

Aint that a fact CICERO----maybe someday we will fight our way out of this paperbag......

http://www.new.yahoo.com

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Investigator says girls pregnant in polygamist sect
By MICHELLE ROBERTS, Associated Press Writer

SAN ANGELO, Texas - After hours of lawyers popping up with similar objections and questions, a custody hearing for 416 children seized from a polygamist sect finally turned to whether they were abused: A child welfare worker said some women at the sect's ranch may have had children when they were minors, some as young as 13.

The testimony came late Thursday, the first day of a court hearing to determine whether the children, swept up in a raid on the ranch two weeks ago, will remain in state custody. Child welfare officials claim the children were abused or in imminent danger of abuse because the sect encourages girls younger than 18 to marry and have children.

Child welfare investigator Angie Voss testified that at least five girls who are younger than 18 are pregnant or have children. Voss said some of the women identified as adults with children may be juveniles, or may have had children when they were younger than 18.

Identifying children and parents has been difficult because members of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints have given different names and ages at various times, Voss said. The state has asked that DNA be taken from all of the children and their alleged parents to help determine biological connections. The judge has not ruled on that request.

The court hearing, which continues Friday morning, disintegrated into farce early Thursday, as hundreds of lawyers who descended on San Angelo for the proceedings shouted objections or queued up to cross-examine witnesses. The judge struggled to maintain order.

"I've tried to impose some structure to this free-for-all," said Texas District Judge Barbara Walther.

The case — one of the biggest, most convoluted child-custody hearings in U.S. history — presented an extraordinary spectacle: big-city lawyers in suits and mothers in 19th-century, pioneer-style dresses, all packed into a historic courtroom and an auditorium two blocks away that was patched into the proceedings by a grainy video feed.

The state wants to keep the children in its custody, and likely move them to foster homes while officials continue investigating abuse allegations. The state must provide evidence the children were physically or sexually abused, or are in imminent danger of abuse.

In 11 hours on Thursday, only three witnesses testified, including Voss.

As lawyers shouted, dozens of mothers sat quietly in their long cotton dresses and braided upswept hair. They were sworn in as possible witnesses at the hearing's outset, but it was not clear when they might testify.

In the satellite courtroom at City Hall, hundreds of people strained to see and hear a large projector set up on the auditorium's stage. But the feed was blurry and barely audible.

"I'm not in a position to advocate for anything," complained Susan Hays, the appointed attorney for a 2-year-old sect member.

No decisions were made on the fate of any of the youngsters, and more cross-examination of Voss was likely Friday.

The children, most of whom are being kept in a domed coliseum in San Angelo, range in age from 6 months to 17 years. About 130 are under 4 years old, Voss said.

She said she was concerned about how the children and women followed the orders of the church's prophet, identified as jailed leader Warren Jeffs.

"The children reported that if the prophet heard from the Heavenly Father that they were to marry at any age, they were to do that. If the prophet said they were to lie, they were to do that," Voss said.

Jeffs is currently awaiting trial in a Kingman, Ariz., jail on charges related to the promotion of underage marriages. He previously was convicted of being an accomplice to the rape of a 14-year-old wed to her cousin in a Utah case.

The sect came to West Texas in 2003, relocating some members from the church's traditional home along the Utah-Arizona state line. Voss said the ranch was considered a special place, the sect's Zion.

Authorities raided the 1,700-acre ranch south of here in Eldorado on April 3 and began removing children while seeking evidence of underage girls being married to adults. Walther signed an emergency order giving the state custody of the children taken from the ranch.

The raid was prompted by a call from someone identifying herself as a 16-year-old girl with the sect. She claimed her husband, a 50-year-old member of the sect, beat and raped her.

The girl has yet to be identified, though Voss said a girl matching her description was seen by other girls in the ranch garden four days before the raid began.

___

Associated Press writer Jennifer Dobner in San Angelo contributed to this report.

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Polygamy Trail Leads to Colorado
Texas Rangers Take Part in Arrest of Woman Who Allegedly Made Hoax Call in Colorado
By JIM AVILA, TERI WHITCRAFT, REYNOLDS HOLDING, ANDREA BEAUMONT and SCOTT MICHELS
SAN ANGELO, Texas, April 17, 2008


Rangers participated in the arrest of a Colorado woman who allegedly pretended to be a girl locked in a basement. The Rangers were in the state as part of their investigation into the Texas polygamy custody battle, local police told ABC News.


It was unclear if the arrest was related to the phone call from a woman who claimed to be a 16-year-old girl, a phone call that sparked what has become one of the largest child custody cases in U.S. history.

Officials in Texas raided a polygamist compound and took 416 children into custody after an abuse hotline received a series of phone calls from the purported teen who said she was being held at the compound. The girl, who called herself Sarah, said she was being physically and sexually abused by her adult husband, court documents say.

Texas child protection lawyers have said they believe the girl does exist, even though they have not found her.

But ABC News has learned that Texas Rangers flew to Colorado Springs, Colo., and participated in the arrest of a 33-year-old woman who was charged with filing a false report.

The FBI also told ABC News it is assisting local police in the investigation. Colorado Springs police said in a statement that "The Texas Rangers were in Colorado Springs Wednesday as part of their investigation involving the compound in Texas."

Local police said Swinton had been under investigation for some time on that accusation, but police made an immediate arrest after the Texas Rangers became involved.

"This arrest stemmed from an incident that occurred in Colorado Springs in February of this year," Colorado Springs Police said in a statement. "The Texas Rangers were in Colorado Springs yesterday as part of their investigation involving the compound in Texas. They left and have not filed any charges on Rozita Swinton as of this time. "

ABC News was unable to reach Swinton or her lawyer for comment.

Swinton became a person of interest to Texas authorities when former Fundamentalist Latter Day Saints member Flora Jessop, who now operates a rescue mission for teenage girls trying to escape the sect, told authorities she had been getting calls from a girl claiming to be Sarah -- the same girl who made the call for help to a San Angelo, Texas, shelter that led to the raid on the El Dorado compound.

Jessop told ABC News that she -- at the direction of Texas Rangers -- began recording those calls in the past two weeks and that the Rangers were able to trace them to Colorado Springs, where the arrest was made.
Jessop's allegations could not be immediately confirmed by ABC News.

The Colorado Springs police gave no details about the Texas connection other than to confirm that the Texas Rangers were in on the arrest and helped with the investigation.

The government may have over stepped their boundary in one aspect. But you just can not ignore a call like that. I mean you just CAN'T!! And let's face it...that religious sector does have a bad track record. If there is a suspicion of rape or incest or procreation against one's will, it should be investigated...don't you think?  Sure it was unfortunate that the call was from some wacko but perhaps this will be a blessing to this religious sect. Perhaps it will expose the religion and they will come out the victors!

I look at this particular religious group as a totalitarianism and authoritism sect. That was one of the reasons for the Reformation. Roman Catholic was and still is lead by ONE figure head...the Pope, the Leader, the keeper of the sacred documents. The Pope instructed it's followers on birth control (none), when to eat meat, when not to eat meat,  who will become a 'saint' etc..etc..etc.. BUT, they followed the law of the land. Polygamy and forcing sex and procreation on a 13 year old girl is against the law of our land. And my belief tells me it is the law of God as well.

I found it very interesting this sect was alleged to have kidnapped a group of children from Arizona that weren't even their children. IMHO they should take DNA samples from every man, woman, and child and find out who the children's parents really are and if there are children giving birth at the age of 12 to 15 after being impregnated by much older men. There is something very wrong going on in this particular sect.

I don't understand how the general public has determined that this sect is guilty, while the authorities have yet to charge any individuals.  Oh yeah.... when your dealing with C.P.S. you're guilty until you can prove yourself innocent beyond reasonable doubt.  Any anonymous accusation received by C.P.S. results in the detention of your children until you can disprove the accusation.  Very scary!

I find it hard to buy into the ends justifies the means in this situation.  Especially when the government could have been the ones to arrange the phone call.  The government may not have been directly compliant, but they may not have fully vetted the authenticity of phone call because, as bumble mentioned, it was the "blessing", or probable cause to get them in the door.  I guess as long as the government only disregards the rights of those weird people who dress funny and I total disagree of their lifestyles it's OK.

Let's remember.... The raid was trigger by a phone call of a 16 year old abused girl named Sarah.  The State is making many other accusations of abuse, none of which have to do with the warrant they were issued to rescue Sarah.

Welcome to Communism!

http://www.news.yahoo.com

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Judge kept chaotic Texas polygamist abuse case on track
By MICHELLE ROBERTS, Associated Press Writer

SAN ANGELO, Texas - Most of the cases that come across Judge Barbara Walther's bench are quiet affairs: divorces, drunken-driving violations, the kind of small-time disputes that sprout in places where land and livestock are more plentiful than people.

But in the past two weeks, the no-nonsense state district judge has found herself at the center of one of the most convoluted, unruly custody cases in U.S. history, herding hundreds of lawyers while dozens of reporters camp out on the lawn of the historic columned courthouse that sits in the center of San Angelo.

Those who know her say Walther did what she always does. She needled yammering lawyers, refocused wandering questions and then ruled. No drawn-out testimony, no taking the case under advisement, no lengthy written ruling later.

After 21 hours of testimony over two days, Walther took a short break, then ruled Friday night. The 416 children taken from a polygamist sect and placed in state custody will stay there, she said. Walther also ordered all the children and parents involved to take DNA tests.

"She will rule, and that is something in a judge's personality that lawyers really appreciate," said Guy Choate, a longtime San Angelo attorney. Her attitude is, "I may be right or may be wrong, but I'm not uncertain."

Walther was the first Republican elected to cover the five-county area that includes San Angelo and sparsely populated adjacent counties, including the polygamist sect's Schleicher County, when she was elected in 1992.

She hasn't had an opponent since.

The 55-year-old comes from a longtime San Angelo family and is married to a prominent radiologist in the city of 90,000.

Walther survived the polio epidemic that slammed San Angelo in the 1950s, infecting the town's people at a rate of 1 in 124. She still wears a leg brace.

Her manner — that of a self-proclaimed "simple country judge" — helped control a chaotic case that includes hundreds of lawyers, one for each child and for the parents.

"We're going to handle this the best we can," she said at the outset of a hearing required to continue the state's temporary custody.

There were so many lawyers that an auditorium with a video link had to be added because the deep courtroom that sat roughly 200 people wasn't enough. Throughout the hearing, lawyers popped up from their seats to make objections, often simultaneously, and they queued up in the aisle or in the front of the auditorium for a chance to raise their objections or question witnesses.

It was often difficult to determine which attorney should be allowed to talk next, and at one point, she called on an attorney who wasn't objecting.

"This is like a cattle auction. If you scratch your nose, you bought it," Walther said to a chorus of laughs.

Walther peppered the hearing with humor, easing frustrated attorneys and nervous witnesses.

When one of the lawyers sniped that he didn't understand why another attorney was following a particular line of questioning, Walther quipped, "If I knew the purpose of any lawyer's question, I wouldn't be sitting here."

To get a soft-spoken mother in a pioneer-style dress to speak loudly enough for everyone to hear, Walther leaned toward the witness box and said, "Pretend you're yelling at a child far, far away." The otherwise stoic woman smiled.

Walther, who could not be reached for comment Saturday, has a lot of experience with family law cases. Before being elected in 1992, the Southern Methodist University law graduate served as a special master in family law, a position that allowed her to hear parts of family law cases in the place of a judge.

Choate, who isn't involved in the polygamist custody case but has tried other cases before Walther, said, "She was really made for this case and I thought did a terrific job under incredibly adverse conditions."

Still, Walther made it clear she doesn't want to preside over a similar circus in the future. The hundreds of children in state custody will get individual hearings before June 5 to determine whether they'll have to remain in foster care or have a chance to go home.

"Trust me," she said Friday. "I'm going to do everything I can to avoid a mass hearing in the future."

http://www.news.yahoo.com

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How a hunting ground became polygamous nightmare
By TODD LEWAN, AP National Writer
Sat Apr 19,

The guy didn't look much like a hunter. He was beanpole tall — scarecrow-ish, some might say, with a high, collegiate forehead and a reluctant handshake. Even in a pearl-snap shirt and jeans, this cowboy somehow seemed better suited for a college lecture hall than a saddle.

Still, he wanted land — lots of it — for a corporate hunting retreat. Said he might build a lodge, to entice some big-roller clients of his in Vegas. North of town, the old Isaacs ranch — rocky and dotted as it was with rusty oil rigs, cactus and gnarled mesquite trees — caught his eye. It was plenty cheap, he said, and plenty remote.

But it didn't take long for the sheriff and everyone else in Schleicher County to figure out that their new neighbor, David S. Allred, president of YFZ Land, LLC, had much more on his mind than the hunting of whitetail.

After the closing in November 2003, dozens of Allred's associates arrived to make improvements on the property. Sunday to Sunday, day and night they toiled, completing three, three-story houses — each 10,000 square feet — within weeks. Soon, a cement plant shot up. Then fields of limestone were miraculously plowed into fertile farmland. And then, a superstructure unseen in these parts — a temple, masterfully clad with limestone quarried onsite — ascended into the west Texas sky.

And that, as it happened, was only the beginning.

The YFZ Ranch — which, as the townspeople would come to learn, stood for Yearning for Zion — would mushroom into a bustling, parallel city: a 1,691-acre, self-sustaining enclave carved, literally, into a rock pile for the innermost circle of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, FLDS, a 10,000-member sect that has continued to practice polygamy after it was banned by the Mormon Church in 1890.

Here, there would be enormous dormitories for enormous families, a cheese factory, a medical clinic, a grain silo, a commissary, a sewage treatment plant — and watchtowers with sentries, infrared night-vision cameras to monitor gated entrances, and 10-foot-high compound walls topped with spikes.

There would evolve a saga of "plural marriages," racism, underage "celestial" brides and allegations of child abuse, turning Eldorado upside down with frightening tales, rumors, and a flood of reporters and investigators. A raid on the polygamists' compound — the largest of its kind in more than a half century in the West, involving hundreds of law enforcement agents — would lead to the removal of 416 children and set up a child custody confrontation of unprecedented dimensions.

The episode would also fire up debate in the courts, and in this community of 1,951 residents, over the state's duty to protect children from alleged abuse and over the limits of basic constitutional rights like religious liberty and freedom from unreasonable search and seizure.

In the end, the residents of Eldorado would lose a measure of their rural innocence and find themselves conflicted, caught between their love of traditional, family values and their powerful, west Texas beliefs in civil liberties.

___

On a chilly evening in January 2004, J.D. Doyle, a pilot, and his father, James, the local justice of the peace, climbed into their Piper twin-engine plane and took to the skies over Schleicher County to see if recent rains had greened the grazing fields owned by friends who were cattle ranchers.

But as they flew over the YFZ property four miles north of Eldorado, they noticed something different: Down below, jutting up between scatterings of cedar bushes and outcroppings of limestone, were three enormous, cabin-style barracks with enough room to accommodate two football teams.

What were those doing on a hunting retreat?

Later, they asked a friend, Joe Christian, a computer tech who lived adjacent to the YFZ ranch, what he made of it. Christian hadn't a clue, actually. His new neighbors had been reclusive, leaving him to puzzle over all that nonstop building. We should take some aerial photographs, he suggested; the Doyles agreed.

The photos intrigued Randy and Kathy Mankin, who published the town's weekly paper, The Eldorado Success, so they did a background check on the buyer, Allred. Initially, they saw no red flags: He was, as he'd claimed, a builder from Washington County, Utah. Still, why build such large residences on so remote a ranch?

Then, in late March, the paper got a call from Flora Jessop, an anti-polygamy activist from Utah who'd been raised in the FLDS and who, as a teenager, had run away from the sect. A polygamist group, she'd been told, was rumored to be establishing another enclave in west Texas.

In Randy Mankin's mind, polygamy had already taken its place on history's ash heap. But the caller wouldn't stop asking questions. When Mankin finally relinquished the name of the buyer, he heard a silence on the line, then:

"Oh, my God ... it's them ... "

___

"Them," Jessop went on to explain, was the FLDS, a renegade, splinter group of Mormons that by the 1930s were practicing polygamy (the ticket to heaven, followers believed) in secret ceremonies for "spiritual brides" that circumvented bigamy laws in the United States.

In recent years, sect members and their prophet, Warren Jeffs, were being investigated by authorities in the sister cities of Hildale, Utah, and Colorado City, Ariz., for allegedly marrying off girls as young as 13 to much older men with multiple wives. Women and girls who fled the sect — and boys who'd been forced out or abandoned — told stories of forced marriages, incest and abuse; some who left called the FLDS a destructive cult.

The March, 25, 2004, story atop the Success' front page — "Corporate retreat or prophet's refuge?" — sent shockwaves up and down Eldorado's dusty streets. Everyone wanted to know: Were these outsiders like the Branch Davidians, whose compound near Waco was stormed in 1993, resulting in the deaths of 80 people?

Would they kidnap their sons and daughters? Brainwash them? Would they try to conquer Eldorado by ballot, voting as a bloc for judges, commissioners and school and hospital board members sympathetic to their ways?

At the local library, paperback, cassette and hardcover copies of "Under the Banner of Heaven," an unsparing look at similar sects, suddenly were in demand. The local paper featured articles almost every week on the FLDS, and posted online audio clips of Jeffs ranting in a steely monotone about the Beatles being covert agents of a "Negro race."

Locals, buzzing regularly over the property in their planes, snapped photos of FLDS women in long, pioneer dresses tending gardens, men digging small graveyards, erecting thick walls around their temple, and building enough dwellings to establish a mini-city.

"They never shut down," says Gloria Swift, who runs the Hitch'n Post Coffeeshop with her husband, Jerry, in town. "Even when you drive by that ranch at night, you see this glow of lights from the highway. They're out there with heavy machinery, building, 24 hours a day."

The sect's members, meanwhile, shunned nearly all contact with outsiders, including the media, insisting they wanted to be left alone to practice their religious beliefs in peace. The women didn't shop in local stores; the children were home schooled on the ranch.

As a group, sect members bought most of their merchandise in the much larger city of San Angelo, 45 miles up the road past sun-baked fields of cotton and mesquite trees. There, they shopped in bulk for warehouse staples, and were often seen at the Lowe's home-improvement store hauling away dozens of appliances at a clip.

When drivers waved to the men, who occasionally came to town in their trucks to buy propane, housewares or tools, they didn't wave back. They did maintain a cordial, if not friendly, relationship with Curtis Griffen, who ran Eldorado's only fuel depot with his father.

"They were always nice, polite," Griffen says. They bought thousands of dollars in fuel each month, always paying their monthly bills on time, in cash. "From what I could gather, they had no intention of creating problems here in town. In all my dealings with them, them seemed like any other regular customer."

Most other Eldorado residents, however, remained wary. Owners of neighboring ranches were warned to keep an eye out for young girls fleeing the compound. Some days the sheriff, David Doran, stood at the gates, in view of the sect's sentries, peering at the group through binoculars. (As time passed, Doran established a rapport with the sect's leaders; he was one of a handful of outsiders ever allowed inside before the raid.)

State Rep. Harvey Hilderbran became alarmed by reports from Eldorado, former sect members and the Utah attorney general. In 2005 he pushed into law a bill that raised the legal age of consent to marry in Texas from 14 to 16.

"Every now and then you'd hear something about alleged child abuse, but there was never any hard evidence of it," says Randy Mankin, publisher of Eldorado's local paper.

___

As the months passed without incident, the townspeople's' fear of the group morphed first into a generalized disgust of the sect's polygamous practices, then a morbid curiosity with the now-finished, gleaming white temple (which had 4-foot-thick outer walls of poured concrete), and its priesthood rites, marriage ceremonies and secretive ordinations.

When Jeffs, the self-styled prophet, predicted Armageddon in 2005, an Eldorado resident paraded in front of the ranch's outer gate in a grim reaper costume. Caps were sold in town with ELDORADO: POLYGAMY CAPITAL OF TEXAS stitched across them. A resident songwriter had a local hit with "The Plural Girl Blues," a tune about polygamy.

"People would stop each other on the street and ask, 'So, what's the latest on our polygamists?'" recalls J.D. Doyle, the pilot. "They'd ask, 'How many houses do they have now?' Or, 'Have you ever met one yet?' See, those people were like an itch on the back of your neck, and you needed a way to make light of it."

Gradually, interest waned, except for those times that reporters came to town, or when Jeffs made headlines in Utah with his legal troubles. (Last year, he was convicted in Utah for being an accomplice to the rape of a 14-year-old girl for forcing her to marry her cousin.)

Indeed, the taxes the county collected from the YFZ ranch — the sect's property at one point was valued at $8 million — was a boon to a community of sheep and cattle ranchers and cotton farmers. And yet, the nagging doubts, the scuttlebutt and rumors about what was going on behind the fences and walls of the sect's compound wouldn't die.

A Mormon who had lived in town with his family for years moved away with his wife and children, after first writing a letter to the editor of the local paper which said the FLDS was not representative of mainstream Mormons.

"Those people came under false pretenses to our area," says Lynn Meador, 62, a local sheep and cattle rancher. "Even though they brought a lot of things to our community, I think people deep down were afraid this thing would end up like Waco. We were all just waiting for the other shoe to drop."

___

It came in late March, when a 16-year-old girl reportedly called a local domestic abuse hot line to report that a 49-year-old man had married her, impregnated her at 15, and beaten and choked her repeatedly, according to court documents.

In one of several phone calls to the hot line, the girl said her husband had broken her ribs. But church members had warned her to not to flee — otherwise she would be found and locked in a room, according to an affidavit signed by an investigator for the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services.

On April 3, hundreds of agents — a SWAT team, FBI agents, Texas Rangers, San Angelo police, highway patrol, and sheriff's department officers from four counties — raided the YFZ ranch, backed by an armored personnel carrier, K9 dog units and ambulances. For six days they searched the compound for evidence of child abuse and illegal marriages, hauling away a cache of computers, photographs, and birth and marriage records.

According to other affidavits, investigators saw numerous underage girls who were pregnant, and took statements from others who told of entering into polygamous marriages in their early teens. They described finding beds on a top floor of the temple, including one that had what looked like a long strand of female hair.

The long-feared bloody conflagration didn't materialize. Tela Mange, a spokesperson for the Texas trooper and Department of Public Safety, said agents had been much more "diplomatic" with the sect that they have been in other raids. "Not a shot was fired," she said, "and there wasn't even a twisted ankle in this one." (She declined to say whether weapons had been found on the ranch.)

But the sight of the confused, anxious faces of women and children gazing out the bus windows as they were transported to local churches, then mass shelters in San Angelo, was enough to shake Eldorado's townfolk, and stir a debate over whether the authorities may have gone too far.

Some were uncomfortable that the 16-year-old who reportedly called the child abuse hotline wasn't identified. A man authorities thought could be her alleged abuser had not set foot in Texas in the last five years. No arrests have been made on any abuse charges in the compound.

Others wondered if it was legal for the agents to keep the sect's men in their homes the first 24 hours after the raid, without charges. Later, at the group shelter in San Angelo, authorities took the cell phones away from mothers who remained in contact with their husbands back at the ranch.

Since the women hadn't been charged with a crime, folks asked, did the police have that right?

"A lot of people here are starting to ask those questions," says Griffin, the oil dealer. "If those women weren't under arrest, how could the police do that to them?"

Others were less bothered by it. "It's about time they went in there and busted that thing up," says Lisa Lopez, a 43-year-old homemaker. "I couldn't understand how people in Eldorado could sit back and let them have sex with underage girls for so long."

You've got it all wrong, say the people of the YFZ ranch, finding their voices after years of near silence. Children were not abused here. Eldorado — indeed, all the outside world — does not understand.

"We are all Heavenly Father's children," says an FLDS mother of two boys, ages 11 and 14, who identified herself only as Brenda. "You have your religion. I have mine. You choose to live how you want. I choose how I live mine. Is this not freedom? Can't we choose?"

You should have just tuned into Larry King Live on CNN. It carried it's usual bleeding heart liberal  slant on this issue. He had the 'poor mothers' on his show. With an 'exclusive ever first' media footage of inside the compound. It showed the beds the kids 'use' to sleep. The kids slept in the same bedroom with their mother. Then when they grew older, they would room 3-4 beds per room. They also showed their little socks, pants and other little attire. It even showed the 'grass' that the kids play on.

Oh it was quite the display.