FLDS!
Saturday, November 1st, 2008babybambambumkin asked:
Baby Bumkin on The FLDS, LDS and LOA.
ELDORADO, Texas (CNN) — Dozens more children and young women were removed Saturday from a Texas ranch that is home to members of a polygamist sect, as state workers investigated claims of physical and sexual abuse.
A total of 183 people — including 137 children — have been taken away since law enforcement officers raided the compound Thursday night, said Marleigh Meisner, a spokeswoman for the Texas Child Protective Services Division.
The children — most of them girls — were being interviewed by special investigators, she said.
“We’re trying to find out if they’re safe,” she explained. “We need to know if they have been abused or neglected.”
Eighteen of the girls have been taken into state custody.
Authorities believe that they “had been abused or were at immediate risk of future abuse,” said Child Protective Services spokesman Darrell Azar.
The others were taken to a nearby civic center. Meisner described them as doing “remarkably well.”
Authorities continue to search the 1,900-acre YFZ ranch, occupied by followers of imprisoned polygamist sect leader Warren Jeffs, and at least one man is being sought by police.
Law enforcement agencies raided the ranch Thursday night after receiving a report Monday that a 16-year-old girl had been “sexually and physically abused,” Azar said.
Jeffs, the 52-year-old leader and “prophet” of the 10,000-member church, was convicted in Utah last year and sentenced to 10 years on two counts of being an accomplice to rape, charges related to a marriage he performed in 2001. He faces trial in Arizona on eight charges of sexual conduct with a minor, incest and conspiracy.
Jeffs’ Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints bought the land near Eldorado four years ago and built the ranch, which they call the YFZ Ranch. The letters are said to refer to the words Yearning for Zion.
It is home to as many as 400 members who relocated from their Arizona and Utah compounds.
State and local law enforcement agencies set up roadblocks around the ranch Thursday evening, preventing journalists from seeing what was happening on the property, according to Randy Mankin, editor of the Eldorado Success weekly newspaper.
“This came totally out of the blue,” Mankin said.
There were no indications of violence around the ranch, he said.
Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (FLDS Church) is the largest Mormon fundamentalist denomination and one of America’s largest practitioners of plural marriage The FLDS Church emerged in the 1930s as an apostate offshoot of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church); the split occurred largely because of the LDS Church’s continued renunciation of polygamy and its decision to excommunicate practitioners of plural marriage in southern Utah and northern Arizona. There is no official connection between the FLDS Church and the LDS Church; they are distinct and separate denominations.
Since its inception, the headquarters of the FLDS Church have been in Hildale, Utah, which is a twin city with Colorado City, Arizona. However, news reports since 2004 have suggested a possible shift of the church’s headquarters to Eldorado, Texas, where a temple has been built by FLDS Church members. As of 2007, the church was being led by Warren Jeffs, who succeeded his father Rulon Jeffs in 2002. For nearly two years, Warren Jeffs had been wanted on sex-crimes charges; and from May 2004 until his arrest in August 2006 he was on the FBI’s Ten Most-Wanted List. On September 25, 2007, Jeffs was found guilty of two counts of being an accomplice to rape and was sentenced to ten years to life in prison.
Although news reports have circulated that Warren Jeffs had formally resigned as the president of the FLDS Church, the statement released by his attorneys reads as follows: “Mr. Jeffs resigned as President of the Corporation of the President of The Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, Inc., on November 20, 2007.” It is possible that Warren Jeffs is still heading the FLDS church, as the narrowly crafted statement by his attorneys does not state that he stepped down as prophet of the church. William E. Jessop, Jeffs’ first counselor in the FLDS church presidency, was named by Jeffs as his successor - even going as far as stating that Jeffs never was the leader of the FLDS, but this has not necessarily been accepted by Jeffs followers, many of which claim Jeffs is still leading the church. FLDS Compound.
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