Sheriff Had Polygamy Informant For 4 Years
Texas Authorities Defend Handling Of Polygamist Sect, Say Their Hands Were Tied Until Now
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Schleicher County Sheriff David Doran, right, addresses a question during a news conference as Texas Rangers Cpt. Barry Caver, left rear, looks on in San Angelo, Texas, Thursday, April 10, 2008. (AP)
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A law enforcement official is seen as members of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints sit along the covered porch of a structure at the groups temporary housing, Fort Concho National Historic Landmark, in San Angelo, Texas, Tuesday, April 8, 2008. (AP Photo/Tony Gutierrez)
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Levi Barlow Jeffs, 19 and Johnson Steed, 41, who were arrested April 7, 2008 on charges of felony tampering with evidence in connection with the investigation at the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints near Eldorado, Texas. (AP/Texas Dept. of Public Safety)
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Adult members of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, stand around as children play with bottles of bubble water at their temporary housing, Fort Concho National Historic Landmark, in San Angelo, Texas, April 7, 2008. (AP)
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This aerial view shows the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints compound under construction near Eldorado, Texas, in this March 2, 2005 file photo. (AP Photo/Donna McWilliam, file)
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Informant Explains Polygamy
Texas authorities have revealed that an informant inside a polygamist community has been cooperating with them for four years. Hari Sreenivasan reports.
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Prosecutors Target Polygamists
Legal proceedings have begun against a polygamist sect in Texas from which over 400 children were removed amid allegations of sexual and physical abuse. Hari Sreenivasan reports.
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Polygamy Sect Kids Questioned
The 401 children removed from a polygamist compound in Texas are being questioned individually. Authorities believe that all of them have been abused or neglected. Hari Sreenivasan reports.
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Photo Essay
Polygamist Compound Raid
Secret calls from alleged abuse victim lead to raid of religious sect's compound.
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But authorities say their hands were tied until last week, when they finally obtained the legal grounds to move against the group.
The trigger for the raid was a hushed phone call from a terrified 16-year-old girl to a family-violence shelter to report that her 50-year-old husband had beaten and raped her. State troopers put into action the plan they had on the shelf to enter the 1,700-acre compound, and 416 children, most of them girls, were swept into state custody because of suspicions that they were being sexually and physically abused.
The state is now scrambling to find shelter for the women and children, reports CBS News correspondent Hari Sreenivasan.
On Thursday, state and local law enforcement authorities defended their decision to leave the sect alone for four years after it moved in.
"We are aware that this group is capable of" sexually abusing girls, Sheriff David Doran said. "But there again, this is the United States. We are going to respect them. We're not going to violate their civil rights until we get an outcry."
Doran said it was not until after the raid began that he learned that the sect was, in fact, marrying off underage girls at the compound and had a bed in its soaring limestone temple where the girls were required to immediately consummate their marriages. Also, investigators say a number of teenage girls there are pregnant.
Authorities in Texas suspected there would be trouble ever since members of the renegade Mormon splinter group - the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints - bought an exotic game ranch in Eldorado in 2004 and began building the ranch.
Warren Jeffs, the sect's prophet and spiritual leader at its longtime headquarters in the dusty, side-by-side towns of Hildale, Utah, and Colorado City, Ariz., was charged in 2005 and 2006 with forcing underage girls into marriages there. He was convicted in September in Utah of being an accomplice to rape and is serving up to life in prison.
According to tax documents, the ranch paid more than $400,000 in taxes in 2006, reports Sreenivasan. In addition to a cement plant and cheese factory, the hundreds of women and children could be another source of income.
Doran had been making occasional visits to the Eldorado compound - he even called to tell members of Jeffs' capture in 2006 - but he said he saw nothing to warrant a criminal investigation. Most of those milling around the compound would scatter when he and a Texas Ranger visited, he said.
"You can only press someone so far without having a criminal investigation going on," the sheriff said. "This group doesn't openly talk and they do not openly answer questions."
Doran said he had an informant who was "instrumental in teaching me the group's ways." But he declined to say whether the informant, a former sect member, was in Texas, or Utah or Arizona.
Barry Caver, a Texas Ranger who sometimes went with Doran to the compound, said a general welfare check wouldn't have produced much. "They would allow us on the property to the extent that we could talk to the main three or four people" only, Caver said.
Texas Attorney General Gregg Abbott said that despite other states' investigations into Jeffs and FLDS, Texas authorities had to wait until they had evidence of wrongdoing in this state to act. He said authorities handled the case properly.
"You cannot go in and bust in someone's house if there's not probable cause to do so," Abbott said.
Jonathan Turley, a George Washington University law professor who has written about polygamy, said even Jeffs' conviction was not enough to barge in on the sect in Eldorado.
"You cannot use stale evidence," Turley said. "They would need a contemporary statement or evidence at trial that an individual at the compound is practicing polygamy."
The man alleged to be the 16-year-old girl's husband, Dale Barlow, is a registered sex offender who pleaded no contest to having sex with a minor in Arizona.
"I do not know this girl that they keep asking about," he told Utah's Deseret Morning News on Wednesday. "And I have not been to Texas since I was a young man back in 1977."
Officials still have not identified the 16-year-old girl among the children and the 139 women being held at two sites in Texas.
"When you're dealing with a culture like this, they're taught from very early on that they don't answer questions to the point," Doran said. "All of that is certainly being sorted out right now."
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See all 51 CommentsShut it ALL down, shut it down NOW!!!
Posted by shammock112
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Most religions ARE cults.
Christianity is certainly one such given it''s preoccupation with worshipping a man, Jesus, as a god.
http://www.merriam-webster.com/cgi-bin/dictionary?va=cult
You really have issues. To say someone is Christian is to say they believe Jesus%u2019 teaching. Jesus was put to death because he was fighting the corruption of the church leaders of that time. In his time children and women were second class citizens, but not in his eyes. Mankind is corrupt, and you can%u2019t follow any religion blindly.
Some men have used his name in corruption, while many others used their knowledge of his teaching for good. William Wilberforce inspired by Jesus fought peacefully for the abolishment of slavery in Britain. If all a person did was read ancient history, and the four gospels they would have a pretty good idea of what Christ was about. He consciously gave up his life to fight corruption in his own religion. Oh by the way a historian at that time did record the time of his death and the death of a few of his disciples. This historian did not know Jesus personally, and did not have any idea the influence he would have. A person doesn%u2019t even have to be a Christian to use Jesus%u2019 teaching. Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi used the sermon of the mound to change the world%u2019s thinking.
I''m sorry for what may have been done to you, but it wasn''t the teachings of Christ that would have done it.
By the way, where were the young men and boys of this "community"? Oh yes, young men (immediate competition for the old farts) and boys (future competition for the old farts) are callously forced to leave FLDS, and fend for themselves on the streets alone! So as not to distract the little girls from their potential grandfather-husbands, the young males are exiled! Ridicule these perverted, loser, old farts! Parade them out in the public square naked-- with their shriveled, sagging pee-pees swingin'' in the wind...The next perverted community to out is Islamic society. Start publicizing the proliferation of Islamic bloodthirsty "honor killings" of their subjugated female population! Fight against Islamic socially-embedded pedophilia, supported by Sharia Law. Stop the madness! Reform Islam now! Disband FLDS now!
Posted by shammock112 at 07:48 PM : Apr 10, 2008
Please explain the difference. To me the only difference is numbers. Every religion was a cult when it started.
Posted by dude1988 at 09:50 PM : Apr 10, 2008
Don''t you mean "moms and dad"?
These dirty pedophiles are about to reap what THEY sowed!! I''m sure there are some lifers at the local prison who will be glad to see them! Even cons don''t like pedophiles.
Posted by dude1988
The people at Waco killed themselves. They were obviously breaking the law too and they chose to put up a fight, unlike the cult in San Angelo. The kids the officials kidnapped are the moms.
"Informant was sharing info on polygamyst group for four years but sheriff says, "We''re not going to violate their civil rights until we get an outcry."
Please- it''s ok to rape children until there is an "outcry?"
Posted by jinjimbob at 09:54 PM : Apr 10, 2008
If you''re so *** sure of this why don''t you write a book about it. Self-righteous bigot that you are.
Posted by fersur at 09:36 PM : Apr 10, 2008
''Move the girls back''?! Are you drinking the Kool-aid again?
Religious nuts.
And men wonder why women don''t trust them.
Frederick McLean is one of the most-wanted fugitives in the United States
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21917798/
The Sheriffs comment,
"We are aware that this group is capable of" sexually abusing girls, Sheriff David Doran said. "But there again, this is the United States. We are going to respect them. We''re not going to violate their civil rights until we get an outcry."
?? who is " their?" the men? to rape and kidnap and brainwash and abuse?
THE LAW WAS BROKEN!! THEY KNEW IT AND DID NOTHING! THEY ARE THE ENEMY!
Posted by DaVicar2
Terrorist commit genocide and Democrats like DaVicar2 blame America. Isn''t it perfectly normal for Democrats to read this story and blame the actions of nuts on this Country or Christianity in general. Of course we know, that Democrats are Anti-American Atheists who have seexx with children, animals and major appliances so this is not about ***, its about hate for anything American. I bet you will never see a Democrat talk about todays CBS stroy: John McCain is polling ahead of O''bama and Hitlery in national polls. And the polls show the number one reason. The American People are tired of the Democrat Hate for American, Hate for Christianity, Hate for Capitalism, Hate for the Miltary, Hate for White People, Hate for Family Values, Hate for the Ameircan Flag and on and on and on. This is the new "Change for America" that Democrats promised us.
you obviously have some hate issues of your own. this has nothing to do with being democratic or republican. you are mixing apples and oranges. instead of showing a little concern for the women and children who were taken advantage of so heinously in this situation, you prefer to spew your hatred and completely off base opinion and force them on the people that actually care about what happens to innocent human beings. your comment had nothing to do with the subject at hand. and your outlook was mediocre at best. i pity you for your opinion because not all democrats are black or a minority, as i recall hillary clinton is caucasian so what gives you the right to say that democrats have a hatred for white people? u have issues that need to be resolved immediately.
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The people are a bunch of nuts but they are ruled by a bunch of nut cases who make up their own rules about church and God and what ever they want to.
They have been brained washed just like the Iraq government brained washed their people.
Is their anything anyone can do about the mess (No they can''t until someone complains.
This is not a church it is a bunch of uneducated mess of people out their listening to a bunch of uneducated nuts.
Like in any place do not give the people a chance to get an education and you can control them anyway you want. The south did the same thing to the blacks in slavery Don''t educate them and you call tell them anything they want to know and they will do it .
years of therapy for the kids to unscrew their heads.
Posted by Displeased at 10:28 PM : Apr 10, 2008
You are wrong. Janet Reno, the ATF, National Guard and yes even the Clintoons killed those people.
How about breaking the Posse-Comitatus act, US National Guard Troops and equipment were used against the people at Waco? Why did the Feds wait until the people were bunkered in, when they had met with Koresh in town? Why did the feds refuse when Koresh invited them back out to the ranch/compound to inspect the weapons? Why in any crime scene, meticulous care is taken to preserve evidence, but here the dozers and tanks kept pushing in the rubble onto the fire to destroy it? Why on video can you see jets of flame shooting out the front of the "gas canister insertion tank"?
It''d be great if the government and the Supreme Court actually read the Constitution. Perhaps that is asking too much.
dont show your intellegence with a stupid comment like this, these people are not the mormons.
These people appear to be pedophiles and if charged and found guilty, should be put in jail for a very long time.
I will pray for the women who were held against their will and for all the children involved in this horror.
These people just want to be left alone. Muslims want to kill people. That''s the difference.
Their are four constitional guarantees in the Federal Constitution that are extended to every state:
1. The power to tax.
2. The power to police.
3. The power to pursue enterprise.
4. The power of eminent domain.
The power to police at the state level is where the statutes exist, which outlaw polygamy in Texas and many other states.
All First Amendment rights yeild to the power of police specified in Article Four.
Article Six specifies that Federal Laws prevail over State laws and the two shall not legislate to contradict with each other. Under this Article, Religious freedoms are subject to both Federal and State powers of police.
Several areas exist that conflict between the power of police against religious beliefs: Divorce, polygamy, marriage, employment discrimination, employment termination, emancipation, corporal punishment, and education accreditation.
you need to change your diaper and then learn some manners.
Under the TEXAS PENAL CODE, Title 6, Chapter 25.01 Bigamy is clearly defined and not legal. You can''t even be married and live with another person and "appear to be married to that person" or know that a person you live with is married to someone else and "appear that you are married" to that person.
Someone might argue that polygamy is not the same as bigamy, but in Texas, just "appearing to be married" to more than one person at any time, is enough to break the law.
Posted by dude1988
The people at Waco killed themselves. They were obviously breaking the law too and they chose to put up a fight, unlike the cult in San Angelo. The kids the officials kidnapped are the moms.
Posted by Displeased
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You been drinking the koolaide,too. Those people at Waco never killed themselves, the US Government was responsible for that debacle, and the tanks that tore the house to pieces were responsible for starting the fires. Even the few people who were fortunate to escape have always maintained that to be true. I suggest you take the time to watch the video, "Rules of Engagement," and then I challenge you to rethink you position.
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