Affidavit: Underage sex at temple

ELDORADO, Texas — The temple inside a polygamist sect's outpost in West Texas was used by husbands when they had sex for the first time with their new underage wives, according to an affidavit released Wednesday by Texas officials.

The search and arrest warrant affidavit said the temple at the YFZ (Yearn For Zion) Ranch "contains an area where there is a bed where males over the age of 17 engage in sexual activity with female children under the age of 17."

Texas law prohibits polygamy and the marriage of girls younger than 16.

Investigators also found documents in the temple that showed that one man had 20 wives in the same residence, the affidavit says.

The affidavit, signed by Department of Public Safety investigator Leslie Brooks, said investigators found evidence inside the temple that "at the initial time of marriage" the men would force the young girls to have sex.

Since a raid last Thursday, Texas officials have taken legal temporary custody of 416 children from the ranch about 4 miles outside the town of Eldorado.

An additional 133 adult women have voluntarily left the compound to be with the children at several hastily arranged facilities in San Angelo, the largest city in the area, about 45 miles from Eldorado.

Child Protective Services (CPS) officials said they plan to place all of the children in foster homes.

The women and children are being interviewed and cared for by 700 workers from CPS and other state agencies, officials said.

Investigators have refused to reveal how many men are being retained at the ranch.

Officials said they have not found the 16-year-old girl who triggered the raid when she made calls on a borrowed cellphone to a local family-violence shelter and said she had been sexually abused by her 50-year-old "spiritual husband."

"We are confident that she was at the ranch," CPS spokeswoman Marleigh Meisner said. "We know she exists."

Followers of the sect, the Fundamentalist Church of Latter Day Saints (FLDS), resisted investigators' efforts to enter the temple late Saturday, but eventually relented.

FLDS is a 10,000-member sect that broke away from the Mormon church in the 1930s.

Once inside the gleaming white structure that towers over the compound, investigators found "multiple locked safes, locked desk drawers, locked vaults, as well as multiple computers and beds," court documents said.

Department of Public Safety spokeswoman Tela Mange would not comment about what else investigators have found on the 1,700-acre ranch.

According to court papers also made public Wednesday, the girl said that she was the child bride of a man named Dale Barlow who "hits her and hurts her."

She claimed she had given birth to his child eight months earlier at age 15 and was pregnant again.

She also claimed that if anyone learned she was making the call, she would be locked in a room without food "for her disobedience."

Barlow, a registered sex offender who is on probation in Arizona for an unrelated crime with a minor, has been found in that state and claims he does not know his accuser.

He has not been detained despite a Texas warrant for his arrest.

Meisner said the mood at the San Angelo shelters housing the children and women from the compound was lighthearted Wednesday, as children laughed, played and became increasingly comfortable with staff.

"The last 24 hours in particular, they've really begun to open up," she said.

During a hearing Wednesday in San Angelo, attorney Gerald Goldstein, who is representing the FLDS, and Lyle Jeffs, a church bishop, said he expected "hundreds of boxes" of documents and computers to be examined by lawyers to determine if they contain information that would be covered by attorney-client privilege.

In a court motion filed by Goldstein seeking relief from the search warrants, he said FLDS members "James Jessop, Rulon Keat and Luke Jessop were present and praying as officers dragged them out of the way to gain entry to the temple. Officers also were observed firing weapons into the woods on the northwest corner of the temple as they entered the temple gates."

Goldstein contended in his motion that the temple was a "religious sanctuary" and that authorities violated the First Amendment rights of church members.

But 51st District Judge Barbara Walthers let the search warrants stand.

Goldstein also contends that a federal search warrant has been issued, but Kathy Colvin, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Attorney's Northern District, would neither confirm nor deny its existence.

FBI agents also have been at the compound, but Mange, the Department of Public Safety spokeswoman, said she didn't know what they were doing. She said the criminal investigation would remain under the control of Texas investigators.

Officials said their investigation at the ranch was finished late Wednesday.

The Texas investigation is the state's first of FLDS members, but prosecutors in Utah and Arizona have pursued several church members in recent years, including sect leader Warren Jeffs.

He is serving two consecutive sentences of five years to life for being an accomplice to the rape of a 14-year-old wed to her cousin in Utah. He awaits trial on other charges in Arizona.

Material from the Los Angeles Times, The Dallas Morning News and The Associated Press is included in this report.