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FORT WORTH, Texas: Police in Texas late Sunday had
removed some 219 women and children from the compound of a
polygamous sect, as they pressed ahead with an investigation into
possible child abuse, US media reported.
The Salt Lake Tribune newspaper
reported late Sunday that authorities were still only halfway
through their search of the compound, which was launched after
allegations that a 16-year-old girl there was forced to bear the
child of her 50-year-old husband.
The unidentified girl reportedly
called officials from the compound owned by the Fundamentalist
Church of Latter-Day Saints (FLDS), a breakaway group of the US
Mormon Church, and said she had given birth to a child months ago.
Under Texas law, girls younger
than 16 may not marry, even with parental approval, which suggests
that the baby’s father may have violated state sex and marriage
consent laws.
The teen’s complaints sparked a
massive police operation at the compound, which so far has spanned
three days. Special police units entered the temple late Saturday
without incident, following an hours-long standoff during which
temple leaders refused investigators access, US media reported.
While social workers interviewed
residents from the compound, authorities continued to search for the
teenage girl, her baby, and the infant’s alleged father.
The Utah-based Salt Lake Tribune
reported that 60 women and 159 children have been evacuated from the
isolated compound so they could be questioned in a less intimidating
atmosphere.
Social workers were trying to
determine if the young women removed from the compound had been
abused or were in immediate risk of future abuse.
The vast Texas ranch was bought
by the sect in 2003 and has been kept under surveillance by the
authorities.
The compound, in the town of El
Dorado about 414 kilometers (255 miles) southwest of Dallas, Texas,
is linked to polygamist leader Warren Jeffs, who is now behind bars
in connection with another polygamy case.
Jeffs is jailed in Kingman,
Arizona awaiting trial for four counts each of incest and sexual
conduct with a minor stemming from two arranged marriages between
teenage girls and their older male relatives.
Considered to be the sect’s
prophet, Jeffs was arrested near Las Vegas in 2006 and sentenced to
life in jail for being an accomplice to rape. He also faces federal
charges in Arizona and Utah.
The mainstream Mormon Church, the
Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, renounced polygamy more
than a century ago as a price of Utah’s admission to the United
States.
It now excommunicates members who
engage in the practice and disavows any connection with the FLDS
church.
Members of the FLDS church are
known to live in Utah, Nevada, Arizona, Texas, Colorado, South
Dakota and British Columbia.
--AFP
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