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CLYDE, Texas -- Behind guarded, ornate gates at the end of a rural road, a self-proclaimed prophet warns his followers about the end of time and rails against a dangerous and unclean world outside their West Texas compound. The women are covered in long skirts and long-sleeve shirts. Many of the children have different mothers and share the same father. But this isn't the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints' ranch, which authorities raided last month in Eldorado after receiving reports that underage girls were being forced to marry much older men. This is the House of...

Richard Holm lived in a Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints community in Colorado City, Arizona, before the Eldorado compound was built in Texas. But in late 2003, Warren Jeffs, now serving jail time for being an accomplice to rape for arranging the marriage of a 14-year-old, took away Holm’s family in the span of a few days. His story shows the plight of men connected to the FLDS. “I guess I was excommunicated,” Holm says. “I had been gone on a trip with my wife; I had two wives at the time, both sisters. I had...

VANCOUVER — The United States has appointed a federal prosecutor to work with state and local authorities on bringing an end to lawlessness in polygamous communities, an investigation that may extend to finding a way to stop the so-called polygamy underground railway across the Canada-U.S. border. A senior prosecutor in the deputy attorney-general's office has been assigned to carry out the review in consultation with the Attorneys-General of Nevada, Arizona and Utah, Harry Reid, Majority Leader in the U.S. Senate, stated in correspondence released Thursday. Mr. Reid described the problem as an “epidemic of lawlessness in polygamous communities.” He found...

COLORADO CITY, Ariz. — As the supper dishes were being cleared away and the rice pudding brought out for dessert, Marvin Wyler’s two wives, along with some of their children and a group of friends, began poring over the list. The 44-page document, from a court in Texas, gives a glimpse of who is married to whom in the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, or F.L.D.S. — and in the hothouse world of religious polygamy, a list like that is a sort of Rosetta Stone to the usually hidden relationships of power, politics and piety. “We are...

Two prominent Utah legal minds say there is little members of the Fundamentalist LDS Church can do to stop the momentum of Texas' investigation. In other words: The train has left the station. The main reason is that states typically give broader powers to state officials regarding child welfare than criminal investigations. "We tend to view this as a criminal investigation, but the authorities down in Texas are involved in a child welfare action," said former federal judge and University of Utah law professor Paul Cassell. Cassell said when it comes to making sure children are safe, the court will...

SAN ANGELO, Texas -- A judge today ordered the Texas Attorney General's Office to appoint a special prosecutor to handle any criminal cases arising from the raid of the FLDS polygamous ranch in El Dorado. Two men were arrested on suspicion of interfering with police during the raid last month but have not been formally charged. Texas child protective services also say they found 31 teenagers at the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints ranch who were pregnant or who had already given birth.

As his polygamist followers in Texas undergo one of the most intensive child abuse investigations in the nation's history, sect prophet Warren Jeffs sits in a small jail cell in Arizona, emaciated and under a suicide watch, as he awaits trial on charges of criminal incest and sexual assault in a desert town that was once the home of Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh. Jeffs, 52, is alone in his cell 23 hours each day, allowed out only to shower and use the telephone. He is given two 30-minute visitation periods a week. Those who come to see him are...

A newly released "cultural awareness guide" says FLDS children in Texas state custody have made derogatory comments to "staff of color" and women wearing jewelry. The guide also indicates that boys taken from the YFZ Ranch have been "upset" over men with facial hair and men who aren't wearing long-sleeved shirts. The guide was posted Friday on the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services Web site. It lists unique cultural and behavioral practices and beliefs of the Fundamentalist LDS Church and is designed to help workers better understand and communicate with the children. Information for the guide was collected...

ELDORADO, TEX. — The Yearning For Zion ranch a few miles west of nowhere was built to keep the secrets of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints hidden from prying eyes. But the church's days of splendid isolation and impenetrable secrecy – only the top fringe of the temple's white limestone walls visible from a distant rural road at the edge of the 1,700-acre spread – are rapidly ending. The Texas Rangers raid of the secluded ranch in early April led to sensational allegations of grooming underage girls for marriage and sexual abuse. And the discovery...

Eldorado, TX - One of the biggest news stories in Texas and across the nation unfolded April third when lawmen raided a polygamist sect in Eldorado. A phone call from an alleged female victim of sexual abuse inside the Y.F.Z. ranch prompted the massive search. Texas Ranger, Captain Barry Caver received two days notice from state officials. He would be in charge of carrying out a search warrant and investigation to find a young woman who had placed a call of distress. Over 150 lawmen hit the massive FLDS compound in force. Rangers and other officers were prepared to take...

SAN ANTONIO — A judge ordered that the baby boy born to a girl taken from a polygamist sect's ranch in West Texas be placed in state custody, according to documents released Thursday. Texas District Judge Barbara Walther signed the order Wednesday giving the state custody of the 1-day-old infant born to a teen believed to be 15 or 16 years old. The girl has claimed to be 18, according to an affidavit signed by Ruby Gutierrez, a Child Protective Services caseworker, but officials believe she is younger and placed her in foster care with other children taken from the...

State authorities are investigating whether younger boys taken from a polygamist ranch in West Texas were sexually abused by older boys, not adults, a state official said today. Documents taken from the Yearning for Zion Ranch near Eldorado indicate that younger boys were molested by older boys at the ranch, the official, who asked not to be identified, told the Houston Chronicle. No other details about the abuse were available. On Wednesday, Texas Department of Family and Protective Services Commissioner Carey Cockerell revealed to a Senate panel that at least 41 of the 464 children in state custody had previously...

AUSTIN, Texas — Attorneys for 38 FLDS women filed a new appeal Wednesday seeking to have more than 400 children returned to their mothers. The petition alternatively asks the 3rd Court of Appeals to order the men to leave the YFZ Ranch and allow the children to return, or order mothers and their children to live elsewhere. "The trial court could order the men — the alleged perpetrators of abuse — to vacate the ranch, or it could order the women to live elsewhere with the children during the pendency of the investigation," says the petition filed by attorneys for...

AUSTIN -- At least 41 children taken from the polygamist compound in West Texas had suffered bone fractures, some of them multiple times, which suggested a pattern of child abuse, the head of the state’s Child Protective Services told a legislative panel Wednesday morning. Carey Cockerell, commissioner of the agency that oversees the agency tasked with providing emergency care for youngsters at risk of abuse, said that the monthlong inquiry that followed the seizure of more than 460 children from the Yearning For Zion Ranch near Eldorado has been hampered by a lack of cooperation from both children and adults...

Here's what's known about Dr. Lloyd H. Barlow: * He's licensed to practice medicine in Utah, in Arizona and - since June 2005 - in Texas. * He has no disciplinary actions against him in the states in which he's licensed to practice. * He operates a medical clinic at the YFZ Ranch of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Days Saints. What's not yet known is whether he has any knowledge that could deny or confirm allegations of widespread forced marriage and sexual abuse of children at the ranch. "There are certainly many allegations that are floating...

Children residing at Waco’s Methodist Children’s Home after their removal from a rural West Texas polygamist compound are anxious and homesick but doing the things many children do, home president Bobby Gilliam said Tuesday. Even so, new revelations have unfolded since about 50 children from the sect were relocated to Waco on Friday. One example: During a Waco outing the past few days, two small boys born at the compound near Eldorado, Texas, were left dumbfounded by an everyday device that transfixes and even transforms many youths from mainstream America — a televison. Gilliam offered insights into the children’s adjustment...

FT. WORTH, Tex. _American taxpayers have unwittingly helped finance a polygamist sect that is now the focus of a massive child abuse investigation in West Texas, with a business tied to the group receiving a nearly $1 million loan from the federal government and $1.2 million in military contracts. The ability of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, or FLDS, to operate and grow is largely dependent on huge contributions from its members and revenue from the businesses they control, according to a former accountant for the church, and government officials in Utah and Arizona, where...

Except for the two large white charter buses, three Texas Department of Public Safety patrol cars and the ambulance, Friday could have been any other day at the Hendrick Home for Children in Abilene. The weather was warm and breezy, birds happily flittered about and a Fed-Ex driver delivered packages, oblivious to the more than 10 children from the Yearning For Zion Ranch who disembarked from buses they had boarded less than two hours earlier. They were bused in from San Angelo, 90 miles away, where they had been staying before Child Protective Services began placing them in foster homes...

25 mothers taken from FLDS ranch now believed to be minors SAN ANGELO, Texas — Twenty-five mothers staying at a shelter for children taken from a polygamists' compound are now believed to be minors. Child Protective Services spokesman Darrell Azar says the girls initially claimed to be adults but are now believed to be under 18. The girls are in state custody. The discovery takes the number of children taken from the ranch controlled by the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints to 462. The number has been climbing since the state swept all the children off...

It will be "an international scandal from hell" if Texas officials determine that some of the Canadian children taken from the polygamous compound in Texas were taken there without their parents, says a former member of the fundamentalist Mormon group. And Carolyn Jessop believes that is "a very strong possibility." "I suspect that they [the FLDS] had a whole lot of kids there without their parents," said Jessop, who fled the community in 2003 with her eight children. At 18, she became the fifth wife of Merril Jessop, who is in charge of the Yearning for Zion ranch, from which...