Fundamentalist Church Of Jesus Christ Of Latter Day Saints

Texas officials said Monday that they had taken more than 400 children into temporary state custody while they continued investigating allegations that girls at a remote polygamist compound were being sexually abused by men. "This is the biggest single removal in the history of this agency," Child Protective Services spokesman Darrell Azar said Monday evening. "No one can remember anything quite like it.

Child welfare investigators who entered a polygamist compound in West Texas this weekend found many pregnant teenagers and underage girls who said they were forced to marry, according to court documents unsealed Tuesday. The documents detailed the evidence that Texas officials presented to a judge to justify taking temporary state custody of more than 400 children from the YFZ Ranch, near the tiny town of Eldorado, built by the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.

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.

A judge ruled Friday evening that 416 children seized by authorities during a raid on a polygamous sect's compound are at risk of sexual abuse if they stay with the group and must remain in state care. Texas District Judge Barbara L.

Attorney Donna Broom had no idea what to expect when she threw her bags in her green Chevy Tahoe on Wednesday and set off on an eight-hour drive from Houston to San Angelo. She would miss her sons' baseball games that evening to represent a child seized from a polygamist compound. She did not know whether her client was a boy or a girl, a teenager or a baby.

As officials haggled Friday over how to return more than 400 children to their parents, it was becoming increasingly clear that Texas' audacious attempt to rein in the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints had backfired -- and become a lesson in the difficulty of cracking down on the 10,000-member polygamist sect. "If you want to make any change . . .

The polygamist sect preached that Dan Fischer was a heretic who had turned his back on God's chosen children. But for Enos Deloy Steed, who was banished at age 17 for kissing a girl, Fischer was like a guardian angel, the kindest man he had ever met. Steed's father disowned him and left him wandering southern Utah in search of menial work. Fischer gave him a place to live -- and volunteered to put him through college.

Texas authorities on Tuesday indicted the leader of a polygamous sect and four of his followers on charges of felony sexual assault on a minor, the first criminal charges to stem from a massive raid on the group's West Texas compound in April. The indictments were handed down late in the afternoon in San Angelo after a grand jury hearing. According to a statement by Texas Atty. Gen. Greg Abbott, they contain nine counts against a total of six individuals.

Progress is measured slowly here. To Isaac Wyler, it is a sign of the times that he can sit at a picnic table at a park. Three years ago, when Wyler was exiled from a polygamist sect that dominates this slice of the Arizona-Utah border, the park and everything in town was under control of the group's prophet, Warren Jeffs. Wyler, 41, was told he had no right to stay in his home or be out in public.

The leader of a polygamous sect being tried on charges that he coerced a 14-year-old girl to marry her cousin feared prosecution for presiding over underage unions if the girl fled her marriage, her sister testified Monday. Rebecca Musser told jurors that Warren Jeffs asked her to encourage her younger sister to be happy in her marriage, citing changes to laws on underage marriage in Utah and Arizona, where his Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is based.