400 children seized from sect amid fear of sex abuse

UNTIL the raid on their compound last week, the women and teenage girls of the Yearning for Zion Ranch in Texas spent their days caring for its many children, tending gardens and making quilts, dressed in pioneer-style dresses sewn by their own hands.

But it was no idyllic recreation of 19th-century prairie life, according to the authorities. Since last week, they have interviewed members of the polygamist sect, looking for evidence that girls younger than 16 had been forced into marriages with older men.

The raid followed a call from a 16-year-old who said she had been abused. Police were looking for evidence that the girl, who allegedly gave birth at 15, was married to a 50-year-old, and for records related to other mothers aged 17 or younger.

Texas law forbids girls younger than 16 to marry, even with their parents' permission.

By yesterday, the state authorities had taken legal custody of 401 children, saying they had been harmed or were in imminent danger of harm.

Some 133 women left the ranch voluntarily with the children and were being housed at a historic fort in Eldorado, while the authorities conducted interviews. Dressed in ankle-length dresses, their hair pinned up in plaits, the women milled about as the children played on the fort's old parade grounds.

State troopers were holding an unknown number of men in the compound until investigators finished executing a house-to-house search of the 1,700-acre ranch, which is like its own city, with a gleaming temple, doctor's office, school and factories.

They initially had difficulty getting access to the 80ft white limestone temple that rises out of the brown scrub, but were searching it yesterday.

In the compound, five miles off the highway, beyond a double gate, the group's members live lives that are isolated, even for the scruffy West Texas prairie. It was founded by the jailed polygamist leader Warren Jeffs, of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints – a breakaway Mormon group.

"Once you go into the compound, you don't ever leave it," said Carolyn Jessop, who was one of the wives of the alleged leader of the Eldorado complex, but left the sect before it began moving to its current base in Texas in 2004.

Ms Jessop, 40, who wrote an autobiography entitled Escape, said that the women dedicated so much time to raising children and their tasks because the community emphasised self-sufficiency: members believed the apocalypse was near, and they would have to start again when the world was destroyed.

They were not allowed to wear red – the colour Jeffs said belonged to Jesus – and were not allowed to cut their hair. They "were born into this", said Ms Jessop. "They have no concept of mainstream society; and their mothers were born into and have no concept of mainstream culture. Their grandmothers were born into it."

Marleigh Meisner, of Texas's children's protective services, said each child would get an advocate and a lawyer But she said they would have a tough time adjusting to modern life if they were permanently separated from their families.

Tela Mange, from the state's department of public safety, said a criminal investigation was still under way, and that charges would be filed if investigators determined children had been abused.

Still uncertain is the location of the girl whose call initiated the raid. 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 Dale Barlow, a convicted sex offender.

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

The authorities hoped to determine whether the girl was among the church members being interviewed at the 150-year-old fort.

Lawyers for the church have filed motions asking a judge to quash the search on constitutional grounds, saying the Texas state authorities did not have enough evidence and that the warrants were too broad.

A hearing on their motion is scheduled for today.

How they get round laws on polygamy

THE Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (FLDS), headed by Warren Jeffs after his father's death in 2002, broke away from the Mormon church after the latter disavowed polygamy more than a century ago.

The group is concentrated along the Arizona-Utah line, but several enclaves have been built elsewhere, including in Texas.

In 2003, the church paid $700,000 (350,000) for the Eldorado property, a former exotic animal ranch, and began building the compound, as the authorities in Arizona and Utah began increasingly to scrutinise the group.

Only the 80ft white temple can be seen from Eldorado, a town of fewer than 2,000 surrounded by sheep ranches nearly 200 miles north-west of San Antonio.

Polygamy is outlawed everywhere in the United States, but the male followers of sects such as the FLDS typically marry one woman officially and take others as "spiritual wives".

This makes the women single in the eyes of the state, which can entitle them and their children to various welfare benefits.

Jeffs is is prison in Kingman, Arizona, where he is awaiting trial on 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.