From Hunting Ground To Polygamist Ranch

The Yearning For Zion Polygamist Ranch Was Supposed To Be Corporate Hunting Retreat

(AP) 
"Them," Jessop went on to explain, was the FLDS, a renegade, splinter group of Mormons that by the 1930s were practicing polygamy (the ticket to heaven, followers believed) in secret ceremonies for "spiritual brides" that circumvented bigamy laws in the United States.

In recent years, sect members and their prophet, Warren Jeffs, were being investigated by authorities in the sister cities of Hildale, Utah, and Colorado City, Ariz., for allegedly marrying off girls as young as 13 to much older men with multiple wives. Women and girls who fled the sect - and boys who'd been forced out or abandoned - told stories of forced marriages, incest and abuse; some who left called the FLDS a destructive cult.

The March, 25, 2004 story atop the Success' front page - "Corporate retreat or prophet's refuge?" - sent shockwaves up and down Eldorado's dusty streets. Everyone wanted to know: Were these outsiders like the Branch Davidians, whose compound near Waco was stormed in 1993, resulting in the deaths of 80 people?

Would they kidnap their sons and daughters? Brainwash them? Would they try to conquer Eldorado by ballot, voting as a bloc for judges, commissioners and school and hospital board members sympathetic to their ways?

At the local library, paperback, cassette and hardcover copies of "Under the Banner of Heaven," an unsparing look at similar sects, suddenly were in demand. The local paper featured articles almost every week on the FLDS, and posted online audio clips of Jeffs ranting in a steely monotone about the Beatles being covert agents of a "Negro race."

Locals, buzzing regularly over the property in their planes, snapped photos of FLDS women in long, pioneer dresses tending gardens, men digging small graveyards, erecting 5-foot-thick walls around their temple, and building enough dwellings to establish a mini-city.

"They never shut down," says Gloria Swift, who runs the Hitch'n Post Coffeeshop with her husband, Jerry, in town. "Even when you drive by that ranch at night, you see this glow of lights from the highway. They're out there with heavy machinery, building, 24 hours a day."

The sect's members, meanwhile, shunned nearly all contact with outsiders, including the media, insisting they wanted to be left alone to practice their religious beliefs in peace. The women didn't shop in local stores; the children were home schooled on the ranch.

As a group, sect members bought most of their merchandise in the much larger city of San Angelo, 45 miles up the road past sun-baked fields of cotton and mesquite trees. There, they shopped in bulk for warehouse staples, and were often seen at the Lowe's home-improvement store hauling away dozens of appliances at a clip.

When drivers waved to the men, who occasionally came to town in their trucks to buy propane, housewares or tools, they didn't wave back. They did maintain a cordial, if not friendly, relationship with Curtis Griffen, who ran Eldorado's only fuel depot with his father.

"They were always nice, polite," Griffen says. They bought thousands of dollars in fuel each month, always paying their monthly bills on time, in cash. "From what I could gather, they had no intention of creating problems here in town. In all my dealings with them, them seemed like any other regular customer."

Most other Eldorado residents, however, remained wary. Owners of neighboring ranches were warned to keep an eye out for young girls fleeing the compound. Some days the sheriff, David Doran, stood at the gates, in view of the sect's sentries, peering at the group through binoculars. (As time passed, Doran established a rapport with the sect's leaders; he was one of a handful of outsiders ever allowed inside before the raid.)

State Rep. Harvey Hilderbran became alarmed by reports from Eldorado, former sect members and the Utah attorney general. In 2005 he pushed into law a bill that raised the legal age of consent to marry in Texas from 14 to 16.

"Every now and then you'd hear something about alleged child abuse, but there was never any hard evidence of it," says Mankin, publisher of Eldorado's local paper.

---

As the months passed without incident, the townspeople's' fear of the group morphed first into a generalized disgust of the sect's polygamous practices, then a morbid curiosity with the now-finished, gleaming white temple (which had 4-foot-thick outer walls of poured concrete), and its priesthood rites, marriage ceremonies and secretive ordinations.

When Jeffs, the self-styled prophet, predicted Armageddon in 2005, on Eldorado resident paraded in front of the ranch's outer gate in a grim reaper costume. Caps were sold in town with ELDORADO: POLYGAMY CAPITAL OF TEXAS stitched across them. A resident songwriter had a local hit with "The Plural Girl Blues," a tune about polygamy.

"People would stop each other on the street and ask, 'So, what's the latest on our polygamists?" recalls J.D. Doyle, the pilot. "They'd ask, 'How many houses do they have now? Or, 'Have you ever met one yet?' See, those people were like an itch on the back of your neck, and you needed a way to make light of it."

Gradually, interest waned, except for those times that reporters came to town, or when Jeffs (left) made headlines in Utah with his legal troubles; he was investigated for years for allegedly marrying off girls as young as 13. (Last year, he was convicted in Utah for being an accomplice to the rape of a 14-year-old girl for forcing her to marry her cousin.)

Indeed, the taxes the county collected from the YFZ ranch - the sect's property at one point was valued at $8 million - was a boon to a community of sheep and cattle ranchers and cotton farmers. And yet, the nagging doubts, the scuttlebutt and rumors about what was going on behind the fences and walls of the sect's compound wouldn't die.

A Mormon who had lived in town with his family for years moved away with his wife and children, after first writing a letter to the editor of the local paper which said the FLDS was not representative of mainstream Mormons.

"Those people came under false pretenses to our area," says Lynn Meador, 62, a local sheep and cattle rancher. "Even though they brought a lot of things to our community, I think people deep down were afraid this thing would end up like Waco. We were all just waiting for the other shoe to drop."

---

It came in late March, when a 16-year-old girl reportedly called a local domestic abuse hotline to report that a 49-year-old man had married her, impregnated her at 15, and beaten and choked her repeatedly, according to court documents.

In one of several phone calls to the hot line, the girl said her husband had broken her ribs. But church members had warned her to not to flee - otherwise she would be found and locked in a room, according to an affidavit signed by an investigator for the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services.

On April 3, hundreds of agents - a SWAT team, FBI agents, Texas Rangers, San Angelo police, highway patrol, and sheriff's department officers from four counties - raided the YFZ ranch, backed by an armored personnel carrier, K9 dog units and ambulances. For six days they searched the compound for evidence of child abuse and illegal marriages, hauling away a cache of computers, photographs, and birth and marriage records.

According to other affidavits, investigators saw numerous underage girls who were pregnant, and took statements from others who told of entering into polygamous marriages in their early teens. They described finding beds on a top floor of the temple, including one that had what looked like a long strand of female hair.

The long-feared bloody conflagration didn't materialize. Tela Mange, a spokesperson for the Texas trooper and Department of Public Safety, said agents had been much more "diplomatic" with the sect that they have been in other raids. "Not a shot was fired," she said, "and there wasn't even a twisted ankle in this one." (She declined to say whether weapons had been found on the ranch.)

But the sight of the confused, anxious faces of women and children gazing out the bus windows as they were transported to local churches, then mass shelters in San Angelo, was enough to shake Eldorado's townfolk, and stir a debate over whether the authorities may have gone too far.

Some were uncomfortable that the 16-year-old who reportedly called the child abuse hotline wasn't identified. Others wondered how it could be that her alleged abuser had not set foot in Texas in the last five years, as was later reported.

Others wondered if it was legal for the agents to keep the sect's men in their homes the first 24 hours after the raid, without charges. Later, at the group shelter in San Angelo, authorities took the cell phones away from mothers who remained in contact with their husbands back at the ranch.

Since the women hadn't been charged with a crime, folks asked, did the police have that right?

"A lot of people here are starting to ask those questions," says Griffin, the oil dealer. "If those women weren't under arrest, how could the police do that to them?"

Others were less bothered by it. "It's about time they went in there and busted that thing up," says Lisa Lopez, a 43-year-old homemaker. "I couldn't understand how people in Eldorado could sit back and let them have sex with underage girls for so long."

You've got it all wrong, say the people of the YFZ ranch, finding their voices after years of near silence. Children were not abused here. Eldorado - indeed, all the outside world - does not understand.

"We are all Heavenly Father's children," says an FLDS mother of two boys, ages 11 and 14, who identified herself only as Brenda. "You have your religion. I have mine. You choose to live how you want. I choose how I live mine. Is this not freedom? Can't we choose?"

[gunownerdan]

SAVE OUR HUNTING LANDS!
For the sake of our children.

[beehive21-2009]

Lets us all dance , dance all over
the Bill of rights and The Constitution of the United States of America,dumb donkeys in Texas, are a National disgrace.Hope you all have lots of $$$$$$$$$ you have just made the perverts as you call them millionaires.Why ? ,cause you violated the rights that were all guaranteed ,Sorry idiots,don''t mess with the citizens of the USA .

[cpaide]

ha, and there is still NOTHING good proof and evidence of ANYTHING of this allegations made by the KLK (krazy lesbians kult) social workers, but clean good proof of this false police reports by that 30-year-old woman who is saying she is 16-year-old girl who is raped by nasty old mormans, but this 50-year-old man is living in arizona--not in texas! do not believe what this KLK is telling you!

[cpaide]

why you not arrest this filthy pope and put him in the rodeo arena in texas with the lustful old mormans men, and free this poor humble clean mormans womens and children?

[sincebyjake]

Just more of the same disregard for the law, individual civil rights, and religious freedom on the part of our government. They decide something might be bad (we can only guess what''''''''s going on there) ... make up an excuse to bring in the troops (the missing complainant Sarah) ... then justify your actions by demonizing them in the press to sway public opinion (expert testifies the sect is abusive). Our government lies to us (justify war with Iraq), ignores international law (torture terror detainees), ignores our own laws (illegal wiretaps), snubs their nose at congressional investigations (lying under oath), and who knows what else. Our government is out of control.


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Posted by cbsn9000 at 07:44 AM : Apr 19, 2008
+ report abuse

Don''t be a moron. There is no way you can honestly believe these people are doing no wrong. Did you even read the article? The fact that the guy who started this "ranch" lied in the first place about it''s purpose is a 100-foot wide red f-u-c-k-i-n-g flag posted up in front of the "temple". Just shoot yourself. Really.

[joyous88]

the people running this place are criminals

they just happen to be hiding behind a church

we have all seen it before

[mcvet]

Just more of the same disregard for the law, individual civil rights, and religious freedom on the part of our government. They decide something might be bad (we can only guess what''''s going on there) ... make up an excuse to bring in the troops (the missing complainant Sarah) ... then justify your actions by demonizing them in the press to sway public opinion (expert testifies the sect is abusive). Our government lies to us (justify war with Iraq), ignores international law (torture terror detainees), ignores our own laws (illegal wiretaps), snubs their nose at congressional investigations (lying under oath), and who knows what else. Our government is out of control.


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Posted by cbsn9000 at 07:44 AM : Apr 19, 2008
+ report abuse

Can I ask you what should have been done? A Girl calls the POLICE saying she''s being abused. The PEOPLE abusing them... well their LEADER is in PRISON for setting up the RAPE for minor Girl. The GROUP has a LONG history of such things and worse. Just what should the judge have done? Ignored the call? Waited until the Girl who is calling about abuse manages to escape? You FreakEvanglist are WORSE, do you folks out there here me? They are WORSE than the Taliban! Sieg Heil and Amen

[grumpas]

If they wanted to have plural wives most of us wouldn''t say much about it. I could care less what they do. But, when you get into underage girls, forcing young boys out of the flock because they are seen as a threat to old men''s reproducing, pregnant 13 year olds, girl''s who are only seen as owned livestock able to reproduce, children forced into marriage. Then it becomes a whole different ball of wax.

[tkarb40]

It is apalling to me how people break the laws of the land in the name of religion.

[joyous88]

Yet, we can say with certainity that any group that
isolates human beings from the outside world, be it
the catholics, the christian sects and cults that abound, or small little husbands that want to enslave their wives, any group or person that isolates human beings is up to no good, they are hiding their dirty
little secret and need to be found out.

[joyous88]

Now we are useing a moron like warren jeffs and U-Tube

for references - get real!

Just because it is on TV or the Internet or even in

your bible does not make it the truth or even real.

In fact during the Bush administration you have had

to learn to really very carefully vet all information

to weed out the propaga lies, and greed driven

evangelical misformation.

[cnjcc]

Just more of the same disregard for the law, individual civil rights, and religious freedom on the part of our government. They decide something might be bad (we can only guess what''s going on there) ... make up an excuse to bring in the troops (the missing complainant Sarah) ... then justify your actions by demonizing them in the press to sway public opinion (expert testifies the sect is abusive). Our government lies to us (justify war with Iraq), ignores international law (torture terror detainees), ignores our own laws (illegal wiretaps), snubs their nose at congressional investigations (lying under oath), and who knows what else. Our government is out of control.

[pfd572]

You can''t completely change the law for your purposes. When there is a suspicion of child abuse, especially when backed up with evidence, in this case obviously underage pregnant girls, the law states the child is to be removed from the abusive ''home'' and parents. Most of the mothers returned to the ranch, with the men who are the reported abusers. The moms are brain-washed enablers. They were abused and continued the abuse with their children. In these cases, the children are separated from both parents until or if the situation is unproven or resolved. Hopefully it won''t take as long as authorities fear and the children will be able to see their mothers. The cycle has to be broken. I applaud Texas for being another state, with Utah and Arizona, that finally took a stand against the alleged abuse. We have some negative experience with Jeffs and his leadership. It isn''t just human abuse, but even though the community has assets in the millions, woman were not allowed to name their children''s father so they could collect assistance from the state: food stamps, money, etc. Its widespread abuse.

[irliberal]

"From hunting ground to polygamist ranch". Hmm looks like some territory is just bound to be doomed. Figures it would be in Texas.

[excoachken]

Ironic that "claims" of child abuse and "sexual exploitation" led to the raid. I am glad the State of Texas did it, but I am curious why none of our states have ever raided even one of the Catholic Church''s where, at last count, thousands of boys and girls have been sexually abused by pedophiles masquerading as Priest''s. It seems to be the only business where criminal action can be avoided just because the "boss" has said he has handled it "in house." Are we supposed to believe that the problem "magically" disappears by writing a check to victims? Or, are we to rely on "Devine intervention" for those perps who seem to be "above" the law?

[wlmrtpatriot]

Another O supporter. Egads.

[wlmrtpatriot]

Reverend Wright was a racist too.

[wlmrtpatriot]

I didn''t believe this in the beginning. The media has played this as if were a circus, and yes, I thought it was another Waco. I don''t believe in people being burned alive,,,,I believe in due process. I know what the government can be capable of doing and in some cases people are totally "set up" at least that''s what I''ve read. One poster on this message board stated "Janet Reno had it right and she should have set a match to these freaks too."
Ms Reno, did some really insane things in her career, which I don''t agree with. She was under the Clinton adm. and the Clintons are shady themselves, but then people have come to expect that from their elected officials. For those who want to read something that is probably true google F-LDS Lost Boys.
In this case I see all these rich people, who have been raised in a total lie, a discouraging dark lie. I believe these young children should stay with their mothers.

[fincenmib]

Warren Jeffs Teachings on the Negro Race

Warren Jeffs Negro Race Part 1

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=nSgZzTkYiz4

Part 2 http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=eVzQZm75Nco

part 3 http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=nXo8qNxUlCU

part 4 http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=L6TNp63ZCZ0

part 5 http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=BSKHLbxkkec

part 6 http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=x7YI3Q6U4Bw

part 7 http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=8GUEpNbPxx4

Warren Jeffs Explains POLYGAMY

Warren Jeffs Explaining POLYGAMY

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=fbudqrmFSDs

Warren Jeffs #2 Cont. on Polygamy

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=RkXA2JxGrJw

Warren Jeffs #3 Continued on Polygamy

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=JWzXCdehMI4

Warren Jeffs Jail House Confession

Warren Jeffs Confession part 1

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=9fePt8-VndY

Part 2 http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=MQoknKRBqhw

Part 3 http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=u4t1EpxEsvg