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The mother of the notorious Waco sect leader David Koresh has been found stabbed to death at the house of a sister in Texas, police say. Bonnie Clark Halderman, who was in her sixties, was found dead at the home of Beverly Clark who has been taken into custody pending a court appearance. Police say they have no idea of a possible motive for her death.

Nuclear war will begin next Thursday, June 12, or sooner, according to the latest prediction of self-proclaimed prophet Yisrayl "Buffalo Bill" Hawkins, the founder of a religious sect in Abilene, Texas. "It could be turned loose before then," Hawkins told 20/20 for a report to be broadcast tonight. "You're going to see this very soon, really soon," he said.

The state's decision to put hundreds of children from a polygamist sect into foster care bogged down in legal maneuvers this week but, the criminal investigation is moving ahead unimpaired.

State may try to seize sect's assets AUSTIN — With the price care for the more than 400 children seized last month from the polygamist ranch in West Texas expected to reach into the tens of million of dollars, a legislative panel on Tuesday suggested that the state explore the possibility of garnishing the religious organization's assets to recoup the costs. "That compound didn't grow out of fairy dust," state Sen. Robert Deuell, R-Greenville, said after a Senate Finance Committee hearing where he urged state health officials to determine whether members of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter...

<p>The disturbing child abuse case unfolding in Texas raises difficult questions about two ideals we hold dear: Religious freedom and child safety.</p> <p>The state of Texas has been criticized by church members, lawyers and civil liberties groups for removing all of the children from a polygamist compound following a raid by Child Protective Services.</p>

SAN ANGELO, Texas (AP) -- More than half the teenage girls taken from a polygamist compound in west Texas have children or are pregnant, state officials said Monday. A total of 53 girls between the ages of 14 and 17 are in state custody after a raid 3 1/2 weeks ago at the Yearning For Zion Ranch in Eldorado. Of those girls, 31 either have children or are pregnant, said Child Protective Services spokesman Darrell Azar. He didn't specify how many are pregnant. "It shows you a pretty distinct pattern, that it was pretty pervasive," he said. State officials took...

Legal experts disagree over impact on future prosecutions With evidence suggesting the anonymous calls that triggered a massive raid on a West Texas polygamist compound could have been a hoax, legal experts disagree on the effect a fabricated story could have on future criminal prosecutions. Some lawyers believe any criminal charges of child sexual abuse would face tough legal scrutiny if the calls turn out to be phony, but some law school professors believe the state should prevail. Calls to a San Angelo crisis center from someone who said she was 16 and had been beaten and raped by her...

SAN ANGELO, Texas - In a swift end to a trying, emotional hearing, a Texas judge said Friday night that 416 children are better off in state custody than with their parents, who belong to a controversial polygamous sect. If the parents are ever to get their children back, they will have to provide a safe environment, 51st District Judge Barbara Walther told about 75 mothers and fathers of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. The Texas Child Protective Services used just four witnesses to persuade the judge that a polygamous community where underage girls sometimes...

How a hunting ground became polygamous nightmare AP Enterprise: A prairie town, a polygamist sect, a temple: A recipe for trouble in Texas By TODD LEWAN The Associated Press ELDORADO, Texas The guy didn't look much like a hunter. He was beanpole tall — scarecrow-ish, some might say, with a high, collegiate forehead and a reluctant handshake. Even in a pearl-snap shirt and jeans, this cowboy somehow seemed better suited for a college lecture hall than a saddle. Still, he wanted land — lots of it — for a corporate hunting retreat. Said he might build a lodge, to...

SAN ANGELO, Texas - After hours of lawyers popping up with similar objections and questions, a custody hearing for 416 children seized from a polygamist sect finally turned to whether they were abused: A child welfare worker said some women at the sect's ranch may have had children when they were minors, some as young as 13. The testimony came late Thursday, the first day of a court hearing to determine whether the children, swept up in a raid on the ranch two weeks ago, will remain in state custody. Child welfare officials claim the children were abused or in...

Several women from the polygamist retreat raided more than a week ago defended their lifestyle Wednesday in an exclusive interview with FOX News, calling it "a wonderful pure life," and saying government officials deceived them when they raided the ranch where they live. ***SNIP*** "I want the world to know that our children have been torn from us and that they need us," said Sally, a mother of nine. "They told us that they were going to put us on a bus and take us to where it was a bigger, better place to be — where our family could...

Hearing the FLDS mothers complain about having their families ripped from them is bitterly ironic to Richard Holm. "The families there have been stolen and kidnapped from their fathers," he told the Deseret News on Tuesday. Holm was kicked out of the church in 2003 by its leader, Warren Jeffs, and his two wives and children were told to leave him. They were placed with his brother. "They (FLDS leaders) are guilty of what they're accusing the authorities of doing," Holm said. Under Jeffs, dozens of men were told to "repent from a distance" for various sins. Some left the...

ELDORADO, Texas (AP) - State officials Tuesday defended their decision to suddenly separate mothers from many of the children taken in a raid on a polygamist ranch in West Texas. Texas Children's Protective Services spokeswoman Marleigh Meisner said the separation was made Monday after they decided that children are more truthful in interviews about possible abuse if their parents are not around.

SAN ANGELO, Texas (AP) — Texas officials who took 416 children from a polygamist retreat into state custody sent many of their mothers away Monday, as a judge and lawyers struggled with a legal and logistical morass in one of the biggest child-custody cases in U.S. history. Of the 139 women who voluntarily left the compound with their children since an April 3 raid, only those with children 4 or younger were allowed to continue staying with them, said Marissa Gonzales, spokewoman for the state Children's Protective Services agency. She did not know how many women stayed. "It is not...

Legal notices are being published in the Eldorado hometown paper, addressed to "all unknown parents, and any person claiming to be a parent of, any one or more of the children removed from the YFZ Ranch." The notices, filed by attorneys for the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services, announces the petitions for hundreds of children taken from the Fundamentalist LDS Church's Texas ranch. "You have been sued. You may employ an attorney. If you or your attorney do not file a written answer with the clerk who issued this citation by 10:00 a.m. on the Monday next following...

SAN ANGELO, Tex. — For years, the veiled world behind the doors of a fundamentalist Mormon polygamist temple tantalized local imaginations in the Hill Country south of here. On Thursday, a Texas ranger described in detail what occurred last week when law enforcement officers, responding to a call for help from a 16-year-old who said she was being sexually abused in the compound, sought entry. [...] “They opted not to do that because they would be aiding or assisting us in the desecration of their worship place,” Captain Caver said. [...] Finally, a SWAT team was called to apply brute...

SAN ANGELO, Texas — The man whose alleged actions prompted Texas officials to raid a polygamous ranch and seize all 416 of the children there says he could not possibly have done what he's accused of doing. "I do not know this girl that they keep asking about," Dale Barlow told the Deseret Morning News Wednesday night. "And I have not been to Texas since I was a young man back in 1977." A girl who said she was married to Barlow, indicated her last name was Barlow and lived at the YFZ Ranch in Eldorado, Texas, made several calls...

APRIL 8--Forced marriage and sexual abuse were "pervasive" inside the Texas compound of a polygamist sect raided last week by investigators, according to child welfare officials seeking custody of more than 400 children removed from the religious group's sprawling YFZ Ranch. In a harrowing District Court affidavit, a Child Protective Services investigator charged that the children were placed in risk of "emotional, physical and/or sexual abuse" at the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints facility, where female children were groomed to "accept spiritual marriages to adult male members of the YFZ Ranch resulting in them being sexually...

Some Key Definitions (multiple definitions to be added here) CHURCH: a conventional religious organization SECT: a deviant religious organization with traditional beliefs and practices. CULT: a deviant religious organization with novel beliefs and practices. Stark and Bainbridge, 1987: 124 1 In 1993 David Bromley and I edited a two-volume work entitled The Handbook of Cults and Sects in America. In our introductory essay to that volume we wrote as follows: "We have chosen to use the concepts "cults" and "sects" in the title of this volume for two reasons. First, the concepts do have more or less precise meanings as...

<p>Normally a person’s religious beliefs are no one else’s business.</p> <p>Unless, of course, it leads to the terrorist act that kills thousands of people in the collapse of two skyscrapers, or in the killing of dozens of others in subway bombings, hotel bombings, railroad bombings and international wars.</p>

Sect inspired 'leader of Sears Tower plot' By Toby Harnden in Washington (Filed: 25/06/2006) The alleged ringleader of a terrorist cell that planned to blow up the Sears Tower in Chicago was an adherent of an obscure black Islamist sect that was first investigated by America's Federal Bureau of Investigation in the 1950s, relatives said yesterday. According to an FBI indictment, Narseal Batiste, 32, wanted to build an "Islamic army" to "wage war against the United States government" and provide "material support to al-Qaeda". He and the six other accused lived in Miami. Narseal Batiste Relatives said that Batiste, described...

Why Polygamy Should Be Legalized Lately, with the FBI's decision to add polygamy sect leader Warren Jeffs to the Most Wanted list, many shows (Anderson Cooper, America's Most Wanted...) have extensively reported on this particular sect. Polygamy in the United States is forbidden. That, believe it or not, is what causes all the problems and what helps arise dangerous sects like the FLDS (Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints). How so? Well, Imagine you are a fundamentalist Mormon (NOT a member of that sect) and as such you believe that polygamy is right and you decide...

PLYMOUTH - Police charged a Plymouth woman with a hate crime after she allegedly jumped out of her car and repeatedly punched a 14-year-old girl, a member of the Twelve Tribes religious group, who was walking down the street with her mother and two siblings.

TONIGHT: Tuesday, March 22, 2004 10:00 p.m. Central Time (Milwaukee area)TITLE: "INSIDE THE LIVING CHURCH OF GOD" Inside the Living Church of God Tonight at live at 10:00,what really goes on inside The Living Church of God? A warning from former members, new tonight live at 10:00 on TODAY'S TMJ4.WTMJ TV investigative news reporter has done some in-depth investigation of the sect (mainline Christian denominations refer to it as a 'cult') which was the site, in a Brookfield, Wisconsin hotel, of a mass shooting by Living Church of God church member Terry Ratzmann earlier this month.Bump for those in...

The ultimate concern of this examination is to trace the history of Satanism from its emergence in the post World War Two era to the various threats this movement poses to society in the new millennium. In this regard a provisional definition of Satanism is necessary. Satanism may be defined as a belief system which seeks to venerate the Fallen Angel Lucifer either as a metaphor or as a metaphysical being. As will be demonstrated the fact that some Satanists see the Devil as merely a symbol and others as a real spiritual entity turns out to be irrelevant when...

BRUNSWICK -- Members of a religious sect who asked residents for opinions about their jailed leader's molestation case while marching in a city Christmas parade could face charges for lying on an application to participate in the event, a prosecutor says. United Nuwaubian Nation of Moors members who marched in Saturday's parade told the event organizer when they applied to participate that they were a Mason's group, officials said. Authorities are considering whether to charge the group members with submitting false information to a government agency, which is a felony, said Brunswick prosecutor Stephen Kelley. During the parade, Nuwaubians handed...

German authorities are investigating claims that members of an occult sect raped and murdered women and ate children in ritual ceremonies. According to a regional state prosecutor, several people are being investigated "for numerous offences of sexual abuse with an occult background" over the past 15 years. "We are aware of several perpetrators and witnesses who took part in black magic masses," a public prosecutor, Georg Jüngling, told the German television channel ZDF. Horst Roos, the head public prosecutor in Trier, said the inquiry was launched eight months ago, after several witnesses approached the police. "These proceedings are dealing with...

Prosecutors in South Korea have seized documents from a biotechnology company linked to a controversial sect which claims to have created the world's first cloned baby. After raiding the offices of BioFusion Tech Inc. in the southern city of Daegu, officials questioned members of staff to see whether they had taken part in the cloning project. Cloning is not illegal in South Korea, but prosecutors may be investigating whether staff have been carrying out medical research without a licence. Last week, scientists from Clonaid - a US-based firm linked to the Raelian sect - said that they had helped a...