ELDORADO, Texas — A polygamist compound with hundreds of children was rife with sexual abuse, child-welfare officials allege in court documents, with girls spiritually married to much older men as soon as they reached puberty and boys groomed to perpetuate the cycle.
The documents released Tuesday also gave details about the hushed phone calls that triggered the raid, made by a 16-year-old girl at the West Texas ranch who said her 50-year-old husband beat and raped her. Days after raiding the compound, officials still aren’t sure where the girl is.
Officials have completed removing all 416 children from the ranch and have won custody of all of them, Child Protective Services spokeswoman Marleigh Meisner told reporters.
Court documents said a number of teen girls at the 1,700-acre compound were pregnant and that all the children were removed on the grounds that they were in danger of “emotional, physical, and/or sexual abuse.” Another 139 women left on their own.
The compound is run by the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, a sect that broke away from the Mormon Church more than a century ago.
“Investigators determined that there is a widespread pattern and practice of the (Yearn for Zion) Ranch in which young, minor female residents are conditioned to expect and accept sexual activity with adult men at the ranch upon being spiritually married to them,” read the affidavit signed by Lynn McFadden, a Department of Family and Protective Services investigative supervisor. McFadden said the girls were spiritually married to the men as soon as they reached puberty and were required to produce children.
An unknown number of men and women were staying at the ranch while authorities completed the search of it. Tela Mange, a spokeswoman for the Department of Public Safety, said Tuesday the adults were not being held but that if they left the compound, they could not return while the search continued.
Church lawyer Patrick Peranteau did not immediately return a phone message seeking comment Tuesday.
The compound was raided Thursday after the 16-year-old girl called a local family- violence shelter March 29 and 30, using someone else’s cellphone and speaking in hushed tones to avoid being overheard, McFadden’s affidavit said.
The girl said she was not allowed to leave the compound unless she was ill. She told the shelter that her husband would “beat and hurt” her when he got angry, including hitting her in the chest and choking her while another woman in the house held her baby.
The girl also said her husband sexually assaulted her and that she was several weeks pregnant. Authorities have issued an arrest warrant for church member Dale Barlow, who is believed to be in Arizona, but the girl’s husband is not identified in the court documents released Tuesday.
The girl told the shelter she was being held against her will. If she left, church members told her, “outsiders will hurt her, force her to cut her hair, to wear makeup and (modern) clothes and to have sex with lots of men.”
Investigators said some of the children were unwilling or unable to provide the names of their biological parents or identified multiple mothers.
