"Sect accused of marrying pubescent girls" (AP)

[bluecoat28]

Nothing new here, but at least the abuses the girls/ young women are experiencing are making mainstream TV news and it's being talked about in terms of what these females are socialized to believe.

http://news.yahoo .com/s/ap/20080409/ap_on_re_us/polygamist_retreat

Sect accused of marrying pubescent girls
By MICHELLE ROBERTS, Associated Press Writer
Wed Apr 9, 10:56 AM ET


The scared girl, already a mother at 16, whispered into a cell phone: she wanted out. She'd been forced to marry a man more than three times her age, becoming his seventh wife.

Her husband sexually assaulted her, and when he was angry, he would beat her while other women held her infant, she told a family violence shelter in a series of secret calls that triggered an investigation of the polygamist sect here.

The girl had looked for opportunities to escape before, but she was warned that outside the double-gates blocking entry to the Yearning For Zion Ranch, in a world completely foreign to her, she would be forced to cut her hair and wear makeup, and to have sex with many men — all damning transgressions in a faith where modesty calls for women to wear long underwear year-round under pioneer-style dresses.

At the end of one call she began to cry; she wanted to take it all back.

But child welfare officials allege in court documents released Tuesday that the compound built by leaders of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints was rife with sexual abuse, with girls spiritually married to much older men as soon as they reached puberty and boys groomed to perpetuate the cycle.

The documents detail the hushed phone calls, but days after raiding the West Texas compound, officials still aren't sure where the girl is. She is not named among the children in initial custody petitions by the state.

Texas authorities have legal custody of 416 children, all of those believed to have lived at the ranch, 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 all the children were removed on the grounds that they were in danger of "emotional, physical, and-or sexual abuse." Nearly 140 women left on their own.

"Investigators determined that there is a widespread pattern and practice of the (YFZ) 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 bear children. A spiritual marriage is one recognized by the FLDS church, but lacking a state marriage license. Texas law prohibits polygamy and the marriage of girls under 16.

Attorneys for the church and church leaders have filed motions asking a judge to quash the search on constitutional grounds, saying state authorities didn't have enough evidence and that the warrants were too broad. A hearing on their motion was scheduled for Wednesday in San Angelo.

Church lawyer Patrick Peranteau did not immediately return a phone message seeking comment Tuesday.

An unknown number of men and women were 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 office and housing units. Tela Mange, a spokeswoman for the Department of Public Safety, said Tuesday the adults were not being held, but if they left the compound, they could not return while the search continued.

At least two FBI agents were seen entering the back entrance of the temple on Tuesday.

Spokesmen for the FBI and DPS declined comment.

The compound was raided Thursday after the girl called a local family violence shelter March 29 and 30, using someone else's cell phone and speaking quietly 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, hitting her in the chest and choking her while another woman in the house held her baby. Once, he broke her ribs, she said.

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 she didn't know where.

The girl's husband was not identified in the court documents released Tuesday. But authorities have issued an arrest warrant for church member Dale Barlow, a 50-year-old believed to be in Arizona.

Authorities were looking for documents, family photos or even a family Bible with lists of marriages and children to determine whether the girl was married to Barlow, who 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.

Authorities were trying to determine the identities and parentage of many of the children; some 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 new "perpetrators," the affidavit said.

Children in the sect were deprived of food and forced to sit in closed closets as a form of discipline, a warrant said.

An FLDS member now living in the Texas Panhandle, Samuel Fischer, objected to the raid.

"It's religious persecution," said Fischer, who moved to a ranch near Lockney with his two wives and 12 of his children from Hildale, Utah, last year.

The Texas investigation is the state's first of FLDS members, but prosecutors in Utah and Arizona have pursued several church members in recent years, including sect leader Warren Jeffs, who is serving two consecutive sentences of five years to life for being an accomplice to the rape of a 14-year-old wed to her cousin in Utah. He awaits trial on other charges in Arizona.

Authorities investigating the Eldorado compound have described FLDS members as cooperative, but the house-by-house search of the temple, factories and living quarters has led to some trouble.

On Monday, 41-year-old Leroy Johnson Steed was arrested on charges of felony tampering with evidence — a day after 19-year-old Levi Barlow Jeffs was arrested on misdemeanor charges of interfering with the duties of a public servant, said DPS spokesman Tom Vinger.

He declined to give details on the arrests or how Levi Barlow Jeffs might be related to the FLDS leader.

[pisaquari]

This is just so overwhelming. 416 children? This poor girl--how much courage it took to make that call.
So ing. So Handmaiden's Tale.

[MaggieH]

Such a distressing story! What an awful sect! 416 children? It's unbelievable.

And all the violent treatment that this poor girl (and others like her) suffered is so terribly appalling.

[elfeminista]

Bed discovered in sect temple





Tony Gutierrez / Associated Press
Women and children removed from a polygamist compound under investigation for child abuse gather on the porch of the Fort Concho National Historic Landmark in San Angelo, Texas, where they are being temporarily housed.
An informant says that it was used for sex between underage girls and adult men at the polygamist compound.
By Miguel Bustillo, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
April 10, 2008
SAN ANGELO, TEXAS -- Authorities searching a remote polygamist compound for a 16-year-old girl who had claimed she was sexually abused discovered a bed inside a towering limestone temple and were told by a "confidential informant" that men used it to have sex with underage girls, according to a court document unsealed Wednesday.

The discovery of the bed, which was ruffled and contained what appeared to be a long strand of a female's hair, was disclosed in an affidavit that Texas Rangers used to obtain a second search warrant to expand their investigation of the YFZ Ranch, a 1,700-acre guarded complex outside the tiny West Texas town of Eldorado.

YFZ, which stands for Yearning for Zion, was built by the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, a 10,000-member sect that broke away from the Mormon Church in the 1930s after it banned polygamy.

The allegation that sex between adult men and underage girls was occurring inside the monolithic white temple came Saturday from a confidential informant who formerly belonged to the religious sect and who had been cultivated over several years by Schleicher County Sheriff David Doran, according to the affidavit.

In addition, Texas Ranger Leslie Brooks Long disclosed in the affidavit that investigators had interviewed numerous underage girls who were pregnant or married to men with multiple wives. While inside the compound, Long saw a document "indicating marriages between one man and more than 20 wives, all of whom resided in the same residence" as of last August.

When an investigator asked one girl her age, the affidavit states, the girl turned to her husband, Lee Roy Jessop, who said, "You are 18." The girl then told the investigator that she was the fourth wife of Jessop, 33, and that "he was still married to the other three wives" in the eyes of the sect.

The 16-year-old girl who triggered the initial complaint has yet to be found, though authorities believe she may be among the more than 400 children from the compound that Texas child welfare officials took into state custody this week.

According to court papers also made public Wednesday, the frightened girl called a family shelter March 29 and said she was the child bride of a 50-year-old man named Dale Barlow who "hits her and hurts her."

She claimed that she had given birth to his child eight months earlier at age 15 and was pregnant again. She also claimed that if anyone learned she was making the call, she would be locked in a room without food "for her disobedience."

Barlow, a registered sex offender on probation in Arizona for an unrelated crime involving a minor, has been located in that state and claims to not even know his accuser. He has not been apprehended despite a Texas warrant for his arrest.

Some activists who help women who leave the religious sect said Wednesday they were convinced that Texas had the wrong suspect; they believe that the Dale Barlow in Arizona is not the 16-year-old's husband.

The records were unsealed on a day during which attorneys for the church convinced a judge that they should play a role in criminal court proceedings triggered as a result of Texas' investigation.

In addition, the FBI confirmed that it had joined the investigation. FBI officials declined to elaborate.

In a hearing in the city of San Angelo, a phalanx of FLDS attorneys -- including lawyers who represented the sect's self-styled prophet, Warren Jeffs, in a Utah sex abuse case last year -- argued that they had a right to review computer hard drives, documents and other evidence seized.

"The church has rights. Entry to the church is a sacred area," said Gerald H. Goldstein, an attorney for church elder Lyle Jeffs. He argued that seized texts and genealogies considered holy by the FLDS should not become part of any court cases if they don't directly relate to crimes.

Tom Green County District Judge Barbara Walther agreed that with help from an independent special master, the group should have the right to review evidence -- for example, to ensure that attorney-client privilege is not violated if the evidence contains correspondence between attorneys and members of the sect.

Warren Jeffs, 50, was convicted last year of being an accomplice to rape after he arranged a marriage between a 14-year-old girl and her cousin. He is jailed in Arizona, where he awaits trial on similar charges.

[bluecoat28]

we've been over this before, but i wish the media would stop writing/saying: adult men "having sex with" girls-- it's rape.

[elfeminista]

NOUN VERB NOUN.

[hologirl2]

've been over this before, but i wish the media would stop writing/saying: adult men "having sex with" girls-- it's rape.

I am nodding my head in total agreement with that statement. This is such a horrible event! Horrid!

The porn industry will probably capitalize on this by creating some sort of fetish film about these poor girls being raped.......

[bluecoat28]

what happened to these girls and women is horrible, but I think this is on mainstream news and terrible to *most* people, because they fall under the "good" girl/women category.

[elfeminista]

And very sadly, they are also 'good girls-Women" because they are white. If they were Women of color the adult Women would be suspects, not victims.
This is what patriarchal racist society does.