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Texas Officials Take 401 Kids From Polygamist Leader Warren Jeff's Compound
Monday, April 07, 2008

April 7: Members of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, walk along the grounds of their temporary housing, Fort Concho National Historic Landmark, in San Angelo, Texas.

ELDORADO, Texas  —  More than 400 children were taken into state custody as of Monday from a sprawling West Texas compound built by the polygamist leader Warren Jeffs, authorities said.

Child welfare and law enforcement officials had been interviewing more than 200 mostly women and girls who had been removed from the compound since a raid began on the reclusive sect last week, when a 16-year-old girl called to say she was being abused.

Authorities said they had 401 children in custody as of Monday afternoon.

"In my opinion, this is the largest endeavor we've ever been involved in the state of Texas," said Child Protective Services spokeswoman Marleigh Meisner, who said she was also involved in the 1993 seige of the Branch Davidian compound in Waco.

Meisner said they have space for all the children who have been removed from the compound but "it's very tight."

Since Thursday, Meisner said, authorities have been searching the 1,700-acre compound 40 miles south of San Angelo "from house to house ... and we're getting close to being finished."

Tela Mange, a spokeswoman for the state Department of Public Safety, said the criminal investigation was still under way, but that charges would be filed if they determined children were abused.

Still uncertain is the location of the girl whose call initiated the raid. She allegedly had a child at 15, and authorities were looking for documents, family photos or even a family Bible with lists of marriages and children to demonstrate the girl was married to Dale Barlow, 50.

The church members were being held at Fort Concho, a historic fort-turned-museum 40 miles away in San Angelo to be interviewed about the 16-year-old girl and whether, in fact, the 16-year-old girl was among them.

The search continued on Monday. Troopers arrested one person on a charge of interfering with the duties of a public servant, but it was not of Barlow, said DPS spokesman Tom Vinger, who had no other information about the arrest.

Vinger said it's not clear how many people live there; about 20 buildings have to be searched, including a large annex and a massive white limestone temple that rises out of the scrubby flat brushland, easily the tallest building for dozens of miles in any direction.

"For the most part, residents at the ranch have been cooperative. However, because of some of the diplomatic efforts in regards to the residents, the process of serving the search warrants is taking longer usual," said Vinger, who declined to elaborate. "The annex is extremely large and the temple is massive."

Barlow's probation officer, Bill Loader, told The Salt Lake Tribune that he was in Arizona. Phone messages seeking comment from Loader and Barlow were not immediately returned Monday.

Barlow was sentenced to jail last year after pleading no contest to conspiracy to commit sexual conduct with a minor. He was ordered to register as a sex offender for three years while he is on probation.

The compound, built on a former exotic animal ranch that the group bought for $700,000, was built by Warren Jeffs, the jailed former leader of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. The sect, an offshoot of the Mormon church which disavowed polygamy a generation ago, is concentrated in a community on the Arizona-Utah line but several enclaves have been built elsewhere, including in Texas.

Jessop said the move to more isolated locations after Jeffs took over for his father in 2002.

The compound sits down a narrow paved road and behind a hill that shields it almost entirely from view in Eldorado, a town of fewer than 2,000 surrounded by sheep ranches nearly 200 miles northwest of San Antonio. Only the 80-foot-high white temple can be seen on the horizon.

FLDS church members began building the compound several years ago as authorities in Arizona and Utah began increasingly scrutinizing the group.

Jeffs is jailed in Kingman, Ariz., where he awaits trial for four counts each of incest and sexual conduct with a minor stemming from two arranged marriages between teenage girls and their older male relatives.

In November, he was sentenced to two consecutive sentences of five years to life in prison in Utah for being an accomplice to the rape of a 14-year-old girl who wed her cousin in an arranged marriage in 2001.

The investigation prompted by the girl's call last week was the first in Texas involving the sect.

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Officials contend polygamist site rife with sexual abuse
BY MICHELLE ROBERTS The Associated Press

    ELDORADO, Texas — A polygamist compound with hundreds of children was rife with sexual abuse, child welfare officials allege in court documents, with girls spiritually married to much older men as soon as they reached puberty and boys groomed to perpetuate the cycle.
    The documents released Tuesday also gave details about the hushed phone calls that broke open the case, by a 16-year-old girl at the West Texas ranch who said her 50-year-old husband beat and raped her. Days after raiding the compound, offi cials still aren’t sure where the girl is.
    Officials have completed removing all 416 children from the ranch and have won custody of all of them, Child Protective Services spokeswoman Marleigh Meisner told reporters in San Angelo, about 40 miles from the compound in Eldorado.
    Court documents said a number of teen girls at the 1,700-acre compound were pregnant, and that all the children were removed on the grounds that they were in danger of “emotional, physical, and/or sexual abuse.” Another 136 women left on their own.
    “Investigators determined that there is a widespread pattern and practice of the [Yearn for Zion] Ranch in which young, minor female residents are conditioned to expect and accept sexual activity with adult men at the ranch upon being spiritually married to them,” read the affidavit signed by Lynn McFadden, a Department of Family and Protective Services investigative supervisor.
    McFadden said the girls were spiritually married to the men as soon as they reached puberty and were required to produce children.
    An unknown number of men were being held at the ranch while authorities completed the search of the gleaming 80-foot-high temple, a cheese-making plant, a cement plant, a school, a doctor’s offi ce and housing units.
    Church lawyer Patrick Peranteau did not immediately return a call seeking comment Tuesday.
    The compound was raided Thursday after the 16-year-old girl called a local family violence shelter March 29 and 30, using someone else’s cellphone and speaking in hushed tones to avoid being overheard, McFadden’s affidavit said.
    The girl said she was not allowed to leave the compound unless she was ill. She told the shelter that her husband would “beat and hurt” her when he got angry, including hitting her in the chest and choking her while another woman in the house held her baby.
    The girl also said her husband sexually assaulted her, and that she was several weeks pregnant. The girl told the shelter her husband went to “the outsiders’ world” but didn’t know where.
    Authorities have issued an arrest warrant for church member Dale Barlow, who is believed to be in Arizona, but the girls’ husband is not identified in the court documents released Tuesday.
    In the March 30 call, the girl told the shelter she was being held against her will. If she left, church members told her, “outsiders will hurt her, force her to cut her hair, to wear makeup and [modern] clothes and to have sex with lots of men.”
    At the end of the call, she began to cry.
    Meisner said the agency still didn’t know whether the 16-year-old was among the children removed from the ranch. Child welfare officials have been interviewing the children in search of the girl and to investigate allegations of abuse.
    Investigators said some of the children were unwilling or unable to provide the names of their biological parents or identified multiple mothers.
    The boys were groomed to be ready to marry underage girls upon adulthood and engage in sexual activity, “resulting in them becoming sexual perpetrators,” the affidavit said.

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An anonymous phone call, triggers a government siege of a religious community.

Quoted from JoAnn

But for right now, this incident sickens me, if it is all true.

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Documents: Teens forced into marriage, sex
BY MICHELLE ROBERTS The Associated Press

    SAN ANGELO, Texas — Young teenage girls at a polygamist compound in West Texas were required to have sex in a soaring white temple after they were married in sect-recognized unions, according to court documents unsealed Wednesday.
    The temple “contains an area where there is a bed where males over the age of 17 engage in sexual activity with female children under the age of 17,” said an affidavit quoting a confidential informant who left the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.
    Agents found a bed in the temple with disturbed linens and what appeared to be a female hair, said the affidavit signed by Texas Ranger Leslie Brooks Long. The Rangers are the state’s investigative law enforcement arm.
    The temple also contained multiple locked safes, vaults and desk drawers that authorities sought access to as they searched for records showing alleged marriages of underage girls as young as 12 or 13 to older men and births among the teens. The affidavit unsealed Wednesday mentions a 16-year-old girl who has four children.
    Texas law prohibits polygamy and the marriage of girls under 16.
    Also Wednesday, Texas Department of Public Safety troopers completed a weeklong search of the 1,700-acre grounds, said spokeswoman Tela Mange.
    Lawyers for the sect had wanted to cut off the wide-ranging search as it dragged on but agreed in court Wednesday to the appointment of a special master who will vet what is expected to be hundreds of boxes of records, computers and even family Bibles for records that should not become evidence for legal or religious reasons.
    Gerry Goldstein, a San Antonio lawyer flanked by nine other attorneys the church hired, said the search of the temple is analogous to a law enforcement search of the Vatican or other holy places. The church lawyers described in documents three men being dragged from the temple as law enforcement sought entry for the search.
    Troopers also arrested two men over the week and charged them with interfering with the search.
    Prosecutor Allison Palmer argued the search was to uncover any evidence of criminal activity, not to malign a religion.
    The search of the compound in Eldorado, 40 miles south of San Angelo, began last Thursday after a 16-year-old girl called a local family violence shelter to report her 50-year-old husband beat and raped her. The search warrant covered all documents related to marriages among sect members, including photos and entries possibly written in family Bibles.
    Since then, the state has taken legal custody of 416 children, who are being housed at two sites in San Angelo, about 200 miles west of San Antonio. Another 139 women voluntarily left the compound of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints — known as the YFZ Ranch — and were being housed with the children.
    Goldstein said a federal search warrant was issued as well as the state warrants.
    Outside court, Goldstein declined to comment on the allegations against the church.
    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.”

Quoted from CICERO

Guilty until proven innocent.  You have already drawn an emotional conclusion based on the information the media has fed you.  This is the information they chose to feed you.  My point exactly.

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Officials say they had to wait to make move on polygamist sect
BY BETSY BLANEY AND MICHELLE ROBERTS
The Associated Press

    SAN ANGELO, Texas — It was no secret that a polygamist sect that built a compound in the West Texas desert believed in marrying off underage girls to older men. And the sheriff had an informant for four years who was feeding him information about life inside the sect.
    But authorities say their hands were tied until last week, when they finally obtained the legal grounds to move against the group.
    The trigger for the raid was a hushed phone call from a terrifi ed 16-year-old girl to a family-violence shelter to report that her 50-yearold husband had beaten and raped her. State troopers put into action the plan they had on the shelf to enter 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 after it moved in.
    “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.”
    Doran said it was not until after the raid began that he learned that the sect was, in fact, marrying off underage girls at the compound and had a bed in its soaring limestone temple where the girls were required to immediately consummate their marriages. Also, investigators say a number of teenage girls there are pregnant.
    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-byside 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.
    “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 identifi ed the 16-year-old girl among the children and the 139 women being held at two sites in 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.”
TONY GUTIERREZ/THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Law enforcement vehicles are seen on the grounds of the “Yearning For Zion” Ranch, home of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints in Eldorado, Texas, this week. State troopers, Texas Rangers and other authorities completed their search Wednesday.

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Officials still have not identifi ed the 16-year-old girl among the children and the 139 women being held at two sites in 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.”

Quoted from CICERO

  If the government wants to find pregnant teens they should go to Schenectady High School.  Start yanking those kids out of their homes and see what happens.  

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Police face stumbling block in prosecuting sect members
Polygamists’ devotion to Jeffs may be big hurdle
BY CHRIS KAHN The Associated Press

    PHOENIX — Polygamous sect members who were moved to a Texas compound from their longtime homes along the Utah-Arizona line were hand-picked for their fierce loyalty to leader Warren Jeffs, and that allegiance may be a stumbling block for law enforcement, authorities say.
    Jeffs, the imprisoned leader of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, transferred people to Eldorado, Texas, to escape growing government scrutiny on the sect’s base in Colorado City, Ariz., and Hildale, Utah, Arizona Attorney General Terry Goddard said.
    “This was Warren Jeffs’ all-star cast,” said Goddard, who has been investigating the sect since 2004. “They had the strongest sense of obedience.”
    As a result, their extreme devotion could make it hard on Texas authorities as they push for prosecutions, said Utah Attorney General Mark Shurtleff.
    “All these girls are taught from the cradle not to trust anybody from the outside,” Shurtleff said. “Especially the government. We’re the beast. We’re the devil.”
    Authorities raided the Eldorado ranch April 3 after a girl from the clan made a whispered telephone call for help to a family violence shelter. Texas has since taken legal custody of 416 children on suspicions that they were being sexually and physically abused.
    Jeffs, who was convicted last year in Utah of being an accomplice to rape, wanted “to isolate and perhaps purify the sect from any kind of outside influences,” Goddard said.
    Eldorado “is the most concentrated version of this particular style of life,” he said.
    Prosecutors in Arizona and Utah struggled for years to gain the trust of witnesses in abuse cases, but many young girls still refused to speak out.
    “We’ve had them come out and make statements, and then they disappear, or they recant,” Shurtleff said.
    The FLDS split from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints more than a century ago when the mainstream Mormon Church renounced polygamy. The Mormon Church excommunicates members who practice plural marriage.
    Until recently, Arizona and Utah authorities had left the FLDS communities in Hildale and Colorado City alone.
    The last time Arizona officials focused their attention on the FLDS homeland was a notorious raid in 1953. That action turned into a public relations debacle as pictures circulated of children being pulled from their mothers. Afterward, authorities left the FLDS to police themselves.
    However, Goddard started talking with Shurtleff about the FLDS in 2002 shortly after he was elected, his spokesman said.
    Arizona officials put up a billboard in Colorado City with a tollfree number for young women who felt abused. They got rid of local police officers, who had pledged loyalty to Jeffs, and opened an office in the community manned by Mohave County officers.
    The Arizona Board of Education took over the Colorado City school system, and Utah officials cut off a major source of assets from the sect’s United Effort Plan trust, which was estimated to contain as much as $114 million.
    “We were increasing the pressure,” Goddard said. “That’s when they started this escape to Texas.”
    In 2005, news started circulating about a new FLDS community that was being built on 1,700 acres in Eldorado.
    FLDS leaders said publicly at the time they weren’t expecting any apocalyptic event or mass exodus to Texas. But former FLDS member Flora Jessop, 38, said she heard a different story from family members who made it to the Texas compound. Eldorado, Jessop said, was to make up for the failures Jeffs perceived in Colorado City and Hildale.
    “Warren thought it was there were too many unfaithful people in Colorado City,” Jessop said. “So he started the culling, if you will.”
    “He started moving all the most faithful to Texas so that God would be able to lift them up while he swept the evil wicked outsiders off the face of the Earth.”
    Following his Utah conviction, Jeffs is in jail in Arizona while awaiting trial on four counts of incest, four counts of sexual contact with a minor, one of sexual conduct with a minor and one of conspiracy to conduct sexual conduct with a minor. The charges predate the Eldorado raid.

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Mothers from sect seek help from Texas governor
BY JENNIFER DOBNER The Associated Press

    SAN ANGELO, Texas — The mothers of children removed from a polygamous sect’s ranch in West Texas after an abuse allegation are appealing to Gov. Rick Perry for help, saying some of their children have become sick and even required hospitalization.
    In the letter, a copy of which was obtained by The Associated Press, the mothers from the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints also say children are “horrified” by physical examinations they have undergone while in state custody.
    The mothers said the letter was mailed Saturday. Perry spokesman Robert Black said Sunday that he had not seen the letter and couldn’t comment.
    Some 416 children were rounded up and placed in temporary custody 11 days ago after a domestic violence hot line recorded a complaint from a 16-year-old girl. She said she was physically and sexually abused by her 50-year-old husband.
    The one-page letter, signed by three women who claim they represent others, says about 15 mothers were away from the property when their children were removed.
    “We were contacted and told our homes had been raided, our children taken away with no explanation, and because of law enforcement blockade preventing entering or leaving the ranch, we were unable to get to our homes and had nowhere to go,” it said. “As of Wednesday, April 9, 2008, we have been permitted to return to our empty, ransacked homes, heartsick and lonely.”
    The mothers said they want Perry to examine the conditions in which the removed children have been placed.
    “You would be appalled,” the letter said. “Many of our children have become sick as a result of the conditions they have been placed in. Some have even had to be taken to the hospital. Our innocent children are continually being questioned on things they know nothing about. The physical examinations were horrifying to the children. The exposure to these conditions is traumatizing them.”
    A judge will decide this week whether the children will remain in state custody or return to their families. Hearings are scheduled for today and Thursday.
    On Sunday, state officials enforced a judge’s order to confi scate the cellphones of the women and children removed from the ranch.
    The order was sought by attorneys ad litem for 18 FLDS girls in the state’s custody, said Marissa Gonzalez, a spokeswoman for Texas Child Protective Services.
    Reading from the court document, Gonzalez said attorneys reasoned that cutting off communications would “prevent the possible tampering of witnesses.”

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Mothers of sect’s children sent away
Huge child custody case a legal morass
BY JENNIFER DOBNER AND MICHAEL GRACZYK
The Associated Press

    SAN ANGELO, Texas — Texas officials who took 416 children from a polygamist retreat into state custody sent many of their mothers away Monday, as a judge and lawyers struggled with a legal and logistical morass in one of the biggest childcustody cases in U.S. history.
    Of the 139 women who voluntarily left the compound with their children since an April 3 raid, only those with children 4 or younger were allowed to continue staying with them, said Marissa Gonzales, spokeswoman for the state Children’s Protective Services agency. She did not know how many women stayed.
    “It is not the normal practice to allow parents to accompany the child when an abuse allegation is made,” Gonzales said.
    The women were given a choice: Return to the Eldorado ranch of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, a renegade Mormon sect, or go to another safe location. Some women chose the latter, Gonzales said.
    The state is accusing the sect of physically and sexually abusing the youngsters and wants to strip their parents of custody and place the children in foster care or put them up for adoption. The sheer size of the case was an obstacle.
    “Quite frankly, I’m not sure what we’re going to do,” Texas District Judge Barbara Walther said after a conference that included three to four dozen attorneys either representing or hoping to represent youngsters.
    The mothers were taken away Monday after they and the children were taken by bus under heavy security out of historic Fort Concho, where they had been staying, to the San Angelo Coliseum, which holds nearly 5,000 people and is used for hockey games, rodeos and concerts. The polygamist retreat is about 45 miles south of San Angelo.
    Authorities ordered the children to be moved after some of the youngsters’ mothers complained to Gov. Rick Perry that the children were getting sick in the crowded fort.
    About 20 children had a mild case of chicken pox, said Dr. Sandra Guerra-Cantu with the state Health Department.
    Perry spokesman Robert Black said the governor did not believe the children were being housed in poor conditions at the West Texas fort. “Let’s be honest here, this is not the Ritz,” Black said, but he called the accommodations “clean and neat.”
    Monday’s courtroom conference was held to work out the ground rules for a court hearing beginning Thursday on the fate of the children.
    The judge made no immediate decisions on how the hearing will be carried out. Among the questions left unanswered: Would a courtroom big enough to hold everyone be available at the Tom Green County Courthouse, or would some kind of video link be employed?
    Texas bar officials said more than 350 lawyers across the state have volunteered to represent the children free of charge. Moreover, the 139 mothers who voluntarily left the sect to be with their children may hire lawyers, too, to fight for custody.
    The sheer numbers left the judge perplexed as she considered suggestions from the lawyers for how to handle Thursday’s hearing.
    “It would seem inefficient to have a witness testify 416 times,” the judge offered. “If I gave everybody fi ve minutes, that would be 70 hours.”
    In an unintended illustration of the problem, Walther gave the lawyers 30 minutes to break into groups and report back to her with ideas. It took almost two hours for everyone to reassemble.

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Polygamous mothers decry loss of children; Texas says it was necessary
By Brooke Adams
and Kristen Moulton
The Salt Lake Tribune
Article Last Updated: 04/15/2008 11:35:00 AM MDT

ELDORADO, Texas - Concealing their anger but not their tears, more than two dozen women of a polygamous sect told reporters they were surrounded by troopers and forced to leave their children in state custody Monday.
    In an extraordinary break from past reticence, the women met with reporters at the YFZ Ranch hours after leaving their children and accused the Texas Child Protective Services of lies and trickery.
    "They just as well line us up and shoot us as take our children away," said Donna, a 35-year-old mother who left behind a 10-year-old daughter. The women used only their first names.
    After a week's stay at two makeshift shelters - described by one woman as a
"concentration camp" - state authorities moved women and children to the San Angelo Coliseum on Monday, promising them they were being taken to a "bigger, better" place. They were told they would be reunited with other family members, the women said.
    Once at the coliseum, the women were separated according to the ages of their children.
    Mothers of those age 6 or older were herded into a room, each one flanked by a CPS worker. More than 50 troopers, according to the women, lined the room. The women were given a choice: return to the ranch or go to a domestic violence shelter.
    Their children, they were told, were no longer theirs. "They told us the state is in charge of them now," said Donna.
    "They wouldn't even let us go back and say goodbye to our children," said Sarah, who now has five children, ages 8 to 16, in state custody.
    Like many of the women, she wept as she spoke.
    Marissa Gonzales, spokeswoman for CPS, said 82 women remained Monday with the youngest of the 416 children taken from the ranch. She said 51 women returned home and six chose to go to a "safe location."
    Rod Parker, a Salt Lake City attorney representing the FLDS families, said no women went to the shelter.
    One woman said that CPS workers pressed the women to go to the shelter, assuring them they would see their children more often if they did.
    Donna said she didn't believe it. "We have not been able to trust anybody."
    State authorities raided the YFZ Ranch on April 3 after receiving a report from a local family violence shelter that a 16-year-old girl telephoned several times, claiming she had been abused by her "spiritual" husband.
    The women from YFZ Ranch said Monday the girl does not exist and the calls were a hoax.
"It is a bogus person. It is a person they made up. That person does not exist on this land," said Joy.
    Janet said no one has heard of the girl named in a search warrant. "She is a fictitious person."
    Another girl with a name similar to that of the girl in the search warrant was grilled for hours by investigators, Janet said. They kept telling her " 'You are this girl. Why don't you want our help?' " she said.
    State officials said Monday they still have not located the caller but are "hopeful" she is among the children in custody.
    Texas CPS say that because of a "pervasive pattern" of abuse and exploitation at the ranch, all children need to be removed.
    The women said no one is forced to stay at the ranch and that anyone can leave at any time, contrary to the state's contention that it is a closed, controlled community.
    Teenage girls were separated early on after the raid, and several mothers said that boys 12 and older were taken away Sunday. CPS said the boys have been moved to a facility "outside the area."
    One mother said she was asked if her two daughters, 15 and 16, were married or pregnant. She said no. The girls were given pregnancy tests, she said, and the results proved she was truthful.
    Asked if any teenage girls were pregnant, the women refused to answer.
     Monday evening, reporters were allowed to travel the half-mile dirt road onto the ranch and were escorted to a log building, where they were met by the women, whose faces were drawn and weary.
    Construction of the ranch began four years ago by members of the FLDS faith, most of whom lived in Hildale, Utah, and Colorado City, Ariz.
    The women described how Texas Rangers and CPS workers came knocking on their doors and began removing their children 11 days ago.
    Sarah said she and her two teenage daughters were taken to a school building at the ranch, where authorities spent three or four hours questioning the girls. She has not seen the girls since.
    "We just want our children back, clean and pure," she said.
    While at Fort Concho, the woman said her 10-year-old son was asked by CPS workers if he was married and if he had ever been touched in "sacred" places.
    "He said, 'Of course not. That is a stupid question,' " Sarah said.
    Donna said that living conditions at the shelters became harsh Sunday when CPS confiscated the women's cell phones and forced even the smallest child to pass through a metal detector. Their bedding was searched, too.
    When they were hastily separated from their children on Monday, the women had to leave bags of belongings - including medication - behind.
    They described some of the CPS workers and troopers in tears as the women were loaded on buses that took them back to the ranch.
    "There were a few whose hearts were touched," said Mary, now separated from her 8-year-old daughter and 6-year-old son.
    "The truth is we need our children and our children need us," said Donna.
    Janet said her 11-year-old son was hopeful that the buses were taking them home.
    "The last thing my little boy said is, 'I just want to go home.' "

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Strip club fee found unconstitutional

    AUSTIN, Texas — A $5-percustomer fee on strip club patrons dubbed the “pole tax” has been declared unconstitutional.
    A state district judge ruled that clubs can’t collect the fee. The charge went into effect in January and was expected to raise about $44 million for sexual assault prevention programs and health care for the uninsured.
    Judge Scott Jenkins wrote in the March 28 decision that the fee, “while furthering laudable goals, violates the First Amendment to the United States Constitution and is therefore invalid.”
    The Texas Entertainment Association Inc., which is a group of topless clubs, and Karpod Inc., the owner of an Amarillo club, sued Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott and Comptroller Susan Combs over the fee.

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Polygamy laws expose our own hypocrisy
By Jonathan Turley

Tom Green is an American polygamist. This month, he will appeal his conviction in Utah for that offense to the United States Supreme Court, in a case that could redefine the limits of marriage, privacy and religious freedom.
If the court agrees to take the case, it would be forced to confront a 126-year-old decision allowing states to criminalize polygamy that few would find credible today, even as they reject the practice. And it could be forced to address glaring contradictions created in recent decisions of constitutional law.<