Some of the phone calls to an abuse hotline in Texas that sparked one of the largest child-custody cases in U.S. history came from a cellphone previously used by 33-year-old Rozita Swinton of Colorado Springs, court documents confirmed Wednesday.
Some 437 children were seized in raids that began April 3 at a Texas ranch owned by the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, after a caller claimed to be a pregnant 16-year-old sect member who was being held and abused. The girl has not yet been found.
According to Swinton’s arrest-warrant affidavit, Texas authorities contacted Colorado Springs police on April 13 asking about two Colorado Springs 719-area-code phone numbers that were related to the calls that sparked the raids at the Yearning For Zion polygamist compound in Eldorado, Texas. One of those two numbers was connected to other cases involving Swinton.
The affidavit released Wednesday also lays out more than a half-dozen phony reports connected to Swinton since 2005.
Swinton has a history of making prank calls and false police reports, according to the affidavit, including claims in October to have been sexually abused by a pastor at New Life Church in Colorado Springs and, in another case, claiming that she was a 13-year-old Colorado Springs girl being abused by her father with sex and drugs.
The Texas hotline received calls from a woman claiming to be “Sarah Barlow” before and after the raids on the YFZ ranch.
Before the raids, “Sarah” claimed she was being abused by her 49-year-old polygamous husband, Dale. In one of the calls made after the raids, she claimed that “sisterwives” from the compound said workers at the shelter where the sect members were being held were trying to poison them with “food in shiny wrappers.”
Texas Rangers were present when Swinton was arrested April 16 by Colorado Springs police on what has been described as an unrelated false-reporting charge in the city.
A search warrant for telephone records showed Swinton also had called abuse shelters in Washington, Utah, Arizona and Florida.
Swinton was released from El Paso County Jail after posting a $10,000 bond on the misdemeanor charge. She has not been charged in the Texas case but has been identified as a “person of interest” by Texas authorities.
She has since gone into hiding.
