US News
Two arrests in polygamy case as state seeks custody of 417 children
Apr 9, 2008, 8:32 GMT
Washington - The Texas state child-welfare agency went to court Tuesday to seek custody of 417 children removed from a remote compound where an obscure religious sect practiced polygamy.
Texas Child Protective Services Division filed papers in state court, arguing that a 'pervasive pattern' of sexual abuse and forced marriage involving underaged girls justified its custody request, the Standard-Times of San Angelo, Texas, reported on its website.
The agency has already removed all 417 children over the last several days from the Yearning For Zion Ranch, in Schleicher County in West Texas, about 300 kilometres north-west of San Antonio. The compound is populated by members of the Fundamentalist Church of Latter-Day Saints, a renegade branch of the Mormon Church, which has banned polygamy for more than a century.
Another 139 women, many of them mothers rejoining their children, have left the ranch, a protective services spokeswoman Marleigh Meisner said.
Earlier Tuesday, police announced the arrests of two men in connection with the investigation at the ranch.
Leroy Johnson Steed, 41, and Levi Barlow Jeffs, 19, were arrested Monday on suspicion of tampering with evidence and interfering with state officers. Jeffs was later released on bail.
The investigation was launched in late March, when a 16-year-old girl told a domestic violence shelter that she was forced to marry a middle-aged man, who had beaten and raped her repeatedly over more than a year. She has already given birth to his child and is pregnant by him again.
The alleged husband, Dale Barlow, 50, is now wanted by police and is considered a fugitive.
All the children removed from the ranch have been interviewed by Texas child-protection investigators, and their statements indicate that 'there are more victims,' Meisner said.
FLDS members began settling the compound about four years ago, mostly moving from mountain states where the sect is based.
The group's leader and self-proclaimed prophet, Warren Jeffs, was convicted last year in Utah of being an accomplice to rape, and was sentenced to 10 years to life in prison. He coerced a 14-year-old girl in an FLDS community there to marry and have sex with her 19- year-old cousin.
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Older Talkback
page: 1
The freedom of the free country has a free hand to attack nor catholic religions freely.
IT IS THEIR RELIGION, THEY SHOULD BE ALLOWED TO FOLLOW!!!!
It's not an issue of exercising freedom of religion or of free speech (although I can't see how the latter has any relevance at all to this particular case). Those are category mistakes. This is an issue of what is legal or illegal in the United States. Religous freedom is a right we have in America as long as it remains within the limits of the law of the land. No religion is above nor can be above the law.
If some people think they should defy the laws of the land for their conscience's sake then they had better be ready to pay the consequences for their choice, or else submit to the law. I suppose a third option would be to immigrate to another country where their choice of actions would not be illegal.
In the United States having sex with children is against the law in all cases ans as far as I can tell, has been since the very start of our country. Polygamy has never been acceptable and was never really an issue until the Mormon sect was founded. And very shortly after that it was openly declared to be illegal by the Supreme Court, and has remained illegal ever since.
These Law enforcment officers and state agencies have done the right thing here.
What happened to freedom of religion?
Well I'll be damned so-called United States is suppressing religion in its own hinterland??
What a hypocritical country the US is!
Where are Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and National Endowemnt for Democracy now, huh?!?
That's right they are created by the white christian devil to promote evil ideas around the world. Never mind the fact that they themselves don't practice what they preach.
I know a lot of Jewish people with more than one wife, why they are not forbidden?
BECAUSE NOBODY IN THE OPPRESSIVE STATES OF AMERICA CAN WIN AN ELECTION WITHOUT THEIR SUPPORT.
For those who disagree tell me one candidate who won elections in US, and the person was anti-Jewish?
page: 1
bevApr 9th, 2008 - 16:55:08
i see nothing wrong with this
these young girls deserve it
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