And Arizona authorities on Friday issued a warrant to collect DNA from the sect's spiritual leader, Warren Jeffs, who is being held for trial there on sexual-abuse charges. Jeffs is believed to have fathered a child with a 12-year-old girl at the ranch, according to an affidavit. He was convicted last year in Utah of forcing a 14-year-old girl to marry her adult cousin, and received a sentence of up to life in prison.
Advertisement
Texas vows new tack against sect
Suspected child abuse at a polygamist ranch will probably be dealt with case by case after a raid clearly failed.
For The Record
Los Angeles Times Tuesday, June 03, 2008 Home Edition Main News Part A Page 2 National Desk 1 inches; 58 words Type of Material: Correction
Polygamist sect: A Section A article Saturday about a Texas court ruling that ordered that more than 400 children seized from a polygamist sect be returned to their parents said one of the group's critics, Flora Jessop, fled a polygamous marriage as a teen. Jessop fled a forced marriage to an older cousin, who had no other wives.
Advertisement
The Texas raid was not the first time that the government had moved against the sect and been disappointed by the results.
In 1953, Arizona authorities arrested the sect in its entirety -- then about 400 people -- in the hamlet of Short Creek on the Utah state line. They put the 236 children into foster care. Images of sobbing mothers sparked a backlash that contributed to the then-governor's loss in the next election.
Scarred by memories of that raid, officials in Utah and Arizona have preferred to prosecute individual abuse cases against FLDS members in their states.
On Friday, they warned that history may repeat itself.
"For 50 years, [the sect] used the Short Creek raid as reason to keep their people secretive and isolated," Utah Atty. Gen. Mark Shurtleff said in an interview. "We said that was not going to happen again. Well, it has happened again."
FLDS leaders, Shurtleff said, will probably cite the Texas raid "as a reason why they should not trust the government, and instead go to their [religious] leaders first" with complaints of sexual abuse.
The sect -- which broke away from the mainstream Mormon Church long ago -- built its Yearning for Zion Ranch four years ago just outside Eldorado, a dusty western Texas hamlet. Its members attracted attention from locals, who were unnerved by the sight of FLDS women in full-length prairie dresses coming and going at the walled compound.
Many here cheered the raids, but on Friday residents were fuming. "I absolutely don't agree with what they do," Curtis Phillips, 33, said of the FLDS as he worked the register at the town's feed and mercantile store. "But blowing in that ranch like cowboys and taking all those kids -- that was just stupid. That's why people like me don't trust the government."
Curtis Griffin, 45, owner of the local fuel depot, counts many FLDS members as customers. He blamed Sheriff David Doran, who is up for reelection, for mischaracterizing the entire sect as pedophiles.
