The YFZ Ranch, also known as the Yearning for Zion Ranch,[1] is a 1,700-acre (7 km2) community which housed as many as 700 people just outside of Eldorado in Schleicher County, Texas, United States. It is owned by the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (FLDS). It is about 45 miles (72 km) southwest of San Angelo and 4 miles (6 km) northeast of Eldorado. The Ranch was settled by members of the FLDS Church who left Hildale, Utah and Colorado City, Arizona under increasing scrutiny from the media, anti-polygamy activists and law enforcement officials.[2]
In 2008, state authorities entered the community after Texas Child Protective Services (CPS) and other authorities received several calls from abused juveniles.[3] However, one or more of these calls were made by a Colorado Springs, Colorado resident Rozita Swinton masquerading as a YFZ ranch resident. In the call or calls, Rozita Swinton falsely identified herself as 'Sarah' and gave her age as 16. Rozita Swinton was later arrested in Colorado and the fictional 'Sarah' has not been shown to exist. However, officers removed nearly every child to state custody after alleging they were actual or potential victims of abuse.[4] The state determined that the minors had to be protected from alleged force or socialization into underage marriages. Since CPS considered the children to be residents of a single household in spite of the multiple residences, it was routine to remove all of the children. Residents and critics questioned if removing every child and infant and seeking to place them all in foster care violated the civil rights of the families just because of their religious beliefs about marriage. Those who believe that the families have been separated and housed in substandard shelters criticize the raid as unnecessarily putting the children at risk, and residents asked that the children be returned.
In May, 38 parents petitioned the Third Court of Appeals, in Austin for a writ of mandamus to overturn the removal of 126 of the children. The court ruled that the state had not presented sufficient evidence of immediate danger to remove the children. CPS then requested that the Texas Supreme Court overturn the Appeals Court ruling. The Texas Supreme Court declined to do so, advising the trial court to order the return of the children, but to issue orders to prevent abuse of them. On June 2, the media published photos and video of parents and children returning to the ranch, and Willie Jessop announced the FLDS church would not sanction underage marriage.[5] The total cost of the raid and the ensuing litigation was reported to be upwards of $14 million.[6]
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Speaking in Sunday Church services on August 10, 2003, Warren Jeffs declared that the blessings of the Priesthood had been removed from the community of Short Creek (Colorado City and Hildale). Following the sermon, Jeffs suspended all further religious meetings but continued to allow his followers to pay their tithes and offerings to him.[7] He then turned his focus to what he called "lands of refuge": secret communities that he had started to build up.[8] Jeffs referred to Yearning for Zion Ranch, one of the lands of refuge, by the code name R17.[9]
The YFZ Land LLC, through its president, David Allred, purchased the ranch in 2003 for $700,000[10] and quickly began development on the property.[11] When William Benjamin Johnson (who was fined for hunting without a license) purchased the property, he contended that the buildings were a corporate hunting retreat.[2] Later, ranch officials disclosed that the hunting retreat description was inaccurate; the buildings were part of the FLDS church's residential area.[12]
The ranch is home to approximately 500 people who relocated from Arizona and Utah communities, houses a temple, a waste treatment facility, a 29,000-square-foot (2,700 m2) house for FLDS church president Warren Jeffs, a meeting house, and several large log and concrete homes.[13] There are generators, gardens, a grain silo, and a large stone quarry that was cut for the temple. According to preliminary tax assessments, about $3 million worth of buildings have been built. The sect has been fined over $34,000 for environmental violations in connection with buildings on the ranch, mainly due to its failure to obtain the required permits for its cement-mixing operations.[14]
The temple foundation was dedicated January 1, 2005, by Warren Jeffs.[15]
On March 29, 2008,[16] a local domestic violence shelter hotline took a call from a female claiming to be a 16-year-old victim of physical and sexual abuse at the church's YFZ Ranch.[17][18] The girl who identified herself as "Sarah" was never found,[19] but investigators eventually established by tracing the calls that they were made by a much older woman, Rozita Swinton, who had been arrested for previous hoax calls posing as abused and victimized girls.[20][21] The call triggered a large-scale operation at YFZ Ranch by Texas law enforcement and child welfare officials, beginning with cordoning off of the ranch on April 3.[16] Law enforcement officers were armed with automatic weapons, SWAT teams with snipers, helicopters, and one county provided an M113 armored personnel carrier as backup, but they met with no armed resistance.[22] Authorities believed the children "had been abused or were at immediate risk of future abuse," a state spokesman said.[4] Troopers and child welfare officials searched the ranch,[21] including the temple's safes, vaults, locked desk drawers, and beds.[23] They found evidence leading them to believe that the beds were "in a part of the temple where 'males over the age of 17 engage in sexual activity' with underage girls."[23] A religious scholar later testified in court that he does not think sexual activity occurs in the temples of FLDS sects, and that temple service "lasts a couple of hours, so all the temples will have a place where someone can lie down."[24] CPS officials conceded that there was no evidence that the youngest children were abused (about 130 of the children were under 5), and evidence later presented in a custody hearing suggested that teenage boys were not physically or sexually abused.[25]
CPS spokesman Darrell Azar stated, "There was a systematic process going on to groom these young girls to become brides", and that the children could not be protected from possible future abuse on the ranch. Interviews with the children "revealed that several underage girls were forced into 'spiritual marriage' with much older men as soon as they reached puberty and were then made pregnant."[19] After Judge Barbara Walther of the 51st District Court issued an order authorizing officials to remove all children, including boys, 17 years old and under, from the ranch,[26] eventually a total of 462 children[21][23][27] went into the temporary custody of the State of Texas.[17] The children were held by the Child Protective Services at Fort Concho and the Wells Fargo Pavilion in San Angelo.[28][29] Over a hundred adult women chose to leave the ranch in order to accompany the children.[19][30] Children under the age of four were allowed to stay with their mothers until DNA testing to identify family relations was finished; once DNA testing was completed, only children under 18 months were allowed to stay with their mothers indefinitely.[31]
A former member of the FLDS Church, Carolyn Jessop, arrived on-site April 6 in hopes of reuniting two of her daughters with their half siblings.[32] She stated that the actions in Texas are unlike the 1953 Short Creek raid in Arizona.[32] Jessop had been in Texas the prior month at a speaking engagement, where she said, "[i]n Eldorado, the crimes went to a whole new level. They thought they could get away with more" but "Texas is not going to be a state that's as tolerant of these crimes as Arizona and Utah have been."[33] By April 8, authorities had removed as many as 533 women and children from the ranch.[17][34] On April 10, law enforcement completed their search of the ranch, returning control of the property to the FLDS Church.[35]
On April 14, 2008, the women and children were moved out of Fort Concho to San Angelo Coliseum, where the CPS reported that the children were playing and smiling. Mothers had complained about the living conditions inside Fort Concho, sending a letter to the Texas Governor asking him to investigate the conditions. In the letter, obtained by the Associated Press, the mothers claim that their children became sick and required hospitalization. They wrote "Our innocent children are continually being questioned on things they know nothing about. The physical examinations were horrifying to the children. The exposure to these conditions is traumatizing." FLDS and mental health workers complained about subjecting children to interrogation sessions, invasive physical examinations, pregnancy tests and complete body x-rays. Women staying at Fort Concho shelter told the press that the temporary housing was "cramped, with cots, cribs, and playpens lined up side by side, and that the children were frightened."[36]
The FLDS described the separation of mothers from their children as "inhumane". When the children under 5 realized their mothers would be taken away, the children started crying and screaming, requiring CPS workers to pry many from their mothers.[37]
The children were placed in 16 group shelters and foster homes. Minors with children were sent to the Seton Home in San Antonio, older boys to Cal Farley's Boys Ranch in Amarillo. Some parents stated on the Today Show that they were unable to visit their boys due to a shortage of CPS staff. Newspapers released names of facilities caring for the FLDS children that have requested donations of specific items, help or cash.[38]
On April 16, 2008, several of the mothers appeared on Larry King Live to ask for their children and tell their story from their own viewpoint.[39] The program included a guided tour of the ranch by one of the mothers, showing where the children and families sleep and eat and stressing the loss felt with the children all now gone. The mothers declined to discuss the pending allegations of child abuse.[40] On the 17th, a custody hearing began in the Tom Green County Courthouse to determine whether the children would remain in state custody. Judge Barbara Walther heard testimony from State officials, experts called in by the State and witnesses for ranch members over a period of 2 days while hundreds of lawyers representing the children looked on and offered objections. State officials alleged a pattern of abuse by adults, including marriages between young girls and older men, while ranch residents insisted that no abuse had taken place.[41]
On April 18, 2008, after 21 hours of testimony, Judge Walther ordered that all 416 children seized be held in protective custody and that the DNA of the children and adults be tested to establish family relationships. Children younger than 4 were to be separated from their mothers over 18 after DNA samples were taken; older children had already been separated. Children were to be given individual hearings to determine whether they must be moved to permanent foster care or returned to their parents.[31][42] DNA testing of children and adults began on the 21st.[43]
On April 24, 2008, authorities stated that they believed 25 mothers from the YFZ Ranch are under 18.[44] On the 28th, authorities announced that of the 53 girls aged 14–17, 31 have children or are pregnant.[45] Under Texas law, children under the age of 17 generally cannot consent to sex with an adult.
After the women regained custody of the children, one half of the families left the Yearning for Zion ranch and moved to another FLDS location.
Carey Cockerell, representing Texas CPS investigators, said on April 30 that they have identified 41 children with past diagnoses of fractured bones. FLDS spokesman Rod Parker attributes the fractures to hereditary bone disease and believes that the fracture rate was low, considering the children's physically active lifestyle. Additionally, two children broke bones while they were removed from the ranch, and one girl broke a bone while in custody.[46] CPS investigators also made new allegations of possible sexual abuse of boys, citing their diary notes.
On May 13, 2008, a San Antonio judge allowed a couple from the ranch to have daily visits with their children, and granted them a hearing in 10 days to decide their children's custody. Other challenges to the blanket order by Judge Walther were filed in courts in San Antonio, Austin, and San Angelo.[47][48]
In November 2008, 12 FLDS men were charged with offenses related to underage marriages.[49]
On December 22, 2008, The Texas Department of Family and Protective Services issued a 21 page final report on the raid entitled "El Dorado Investigation" The report found that "12 girls were 'spiritually' married at ages ranging from 12 to 15, and seven of these girls have had one or more children. The 12 confirmed victims of sexual abuse were among 43 girls removed from the ranch from the ages of 12 to 17, which means that more than one out of every four pubescent girls on the ranch was in an underage marriage." [50]
On May 22, 2008 an appeals court ruled there was not enough evidence at the original hearing that the children were in immediate danger to justify keeping them in state custody. The court added that Judge Walther had abused her discretion by keeping the children in state care. The court ruled "The department did not present any evidence of danger to the physical health and safety of any male children or any female children who had not reached puberty."[51] The children were to be returned to their families in 10 days. CPS announced they would seek to overturn the decision.[52] On May 29, the Texas Supreme Court declined to issue a mandamus to the Appeals Court, with a result that CPS must return all of the children. The court stated, “On the record before us, removal of the children was not warranted.”[53] The court also noted that although the children must be returned, "it need not do so without granting other appropriate relief to protect the children."[54]
On May 12–15, 2009, a hearing was held in Tom Green County, Texas regarding the constitutionality and legality of search warrants executed in April 2008 on the YFZ Ranch in Schleicher County, Texas. On October 2, 2009, Judge Barbara Walther issued a ruling denying a defense motion to suppress the evidence seized from the YFZ Ranch, stating:
The court finds that Defendants’ offer of proof of deliberate falsehoods contained within the probable cause affidavits to support the two warrants is unsupported by credible evidence.[55]
On November 10, 2009, Raymond Jessop was sentenced to 10 years in prison & fined $8000[56] for sexually assaulting a 16 year old girl on or about Nov. 19, 2004.[57] On December 18, 2009, Allan Keate was sentenced to 33 years in prison. He fathered a child with a 15-year old girl.
On January 22, 2010, Michael George Emack pled no contest to sexual assault charges and was sentenced to seven years in prison. He married a 16-year-old girl at YFZ Ranch on August 5, 2004. She gave birth to a son less than a year later. On April 14, 2010, Emack also pled no contest on a bigamy charge and received a seven-year sentence that will run concurrently with the sentence he received for sexually assaulting a 16-year-old girl.[58]
On February 5, 2010, Arizona Judge Steven F. Conn approved a stipulation from the previous day between Mohave County prosecutor Matt Smith and Warren Jeffs' defense attorney, Michael Piccarreta, that evidence seized from the YFZ Ranch in Texas would not be used in any manner in Warren Jeffs' two criminal trials in Arizona.[59][60] Based on the agreement of the attorneys, Judge Conn issued an order adopting the stipulation.[61] Jeffs' first of two trials on charges of being an accomplice to sexual conduct with a minor is scheduled to begin November 2, 2010.[62]
On March 19, 2010, Merril Leroy Jessop was sentenced to 75 years in prison for one count of sexual assault of a child. Jessop was convicted of illegally marrying and then fathering a child with a 15 year old female.[63]
On April 15, 2010 Lehi Barlow Jeffs pleaded no contest to bigamy and sexual assault of a child, avoiding a trial that had been set for April 26. He was sentenced to eight years in prison.[58]
On June 22, 2010, Abram Harker Jeffs, was found guilty of sexual assault of a child.[64]
On August 9, 2011, Leader Warren Steed Jeffs was found guilty of one count of aggravated sexual assault of a child and one count of sexual assault of a child and sentenced to life in prison plus 20 years to be served consecutively.[65]
Rozita Swinton, a Colorado Springs woman who had previously made calls while pretending to be a young girl, was under investigation for posing as the caller "Sarah" who complained of abuse, but could not be found. FLDS women did not know of any such girl and assumed it was a prank call. Sarah was considered a real person by CPS until May when her court case was dropped, effectively acknowledging that she doesn’t actually exist.[66] Swinton has previously been responsible for hoax calls to authorities in multiple jurisdictions, setting off large emergency responses that sometimes involved dozens of police officers.[67] Flora Jessop recorded nearly 40 hours of Swinton's phone calls, both before and after the raid on the YFZ ranch.[68] Swinton posed alternately as "Sarah Barlow" and her sister Laura. She claimed that her 50-year-old husband beat and raped her and that his other wives tried to poison her.[69] Swinton herself was 33 at the time, unmarried, and childless.[70]
The Associated Press reported that Texas Ranger Brooks Long called Colorado officials about two phone numbers. One of the numbers "was possibly related to the reporting party for the YFZ Ranch incident." However, the CPS acted on additional evidence gathered while investigating this complaint, and Flora Jessop and some commentators have expressed gratitude to Swinton that her tip, even if false, allowed exposure of alleged child abuses.[71]
CPS has acknowledged that some ranch residents who were removed because they appeared to be minors may be older than first assumed. On May 13, Louisa Bradshaw Jessop gave birth to a son.[72][73] Louisa Jessop had been classified as 17 by CPS, although her husband had previously provided a birth certificate and driver's license to demonstrate that she was 22.[74] A CPS lawyer explained, "We can't just look at people and say, 'You're of age, you can go.'", although CPS had used appearance as one method of determining age. A spokesman for FLDS believed that CPS "just wanted to keep the mother in custody until they could get the baby." Jessop was one of 27 "disputed minors," or ranch residents about whom the CPS has inaccurate or conflicting information regarding age. Child Protective Services lawyers on May 13 told Judge Walther that Louisa and the mother of a boy born April 29 were no longer considered to be minors.[75] On May 22, CPS declared half of the alleged teen mothers to be adults, some as old as 27. One who had been listed as an underage mother had never been pregnant.[76]
Many FLDS members and supporters see the raid and the seizure of the children from their family as religious persecution[77] and have likened it to a witch-hunt.[78]
In May 2008, FLDS spokesperson Willie Jessop wrote a letter to President George W. Bush,[79] asking him to intervene, and outlining the harsh conditions that Jessop believed that the children and mothers were subjected to.[80] In the letter Jessop claimed that, contrary to statements from authorities that the children were being placed in a safe and secure environment, the mothers and children were actually crowded by the hundreds into Fort Concho, a military facility without adequate toilets, bathing facilities, or privacy.
Mental health workers who worked at the shelter testified similarly to state officials, also citing lack of privacy, only military cots for sleeping and poor-quality food, with no communications and threatened arrest if mothers waved to friends. "The CPS workers were openly rude to the mothers and children, yelled at them for trying to wave to friends... threatened them with arrest if they did not stop waving"[81] Workers took notes on everything the "guests" said. In many of the testimonies it was compared it to a prison or concentration camp. Others testified the children were "amazingly clean, happy, healthy, energetic, well behaved and self-confident," while the mothers were "consistently calm, patient and loving with their children."
The Christian legal group Liberty Legal Institute believes the state of Texas should be required to prove that the children taken from the ranch were actually abused or were in imminent danger, warning of possible damage to religious liberties and the rights of all Texas parents. Home-schooling families are also fearful opponents could file similarly false complaints against families to force attendance in government-run schools.[82]
Utah Attorney General Mark Shurtleff disagreed with the removal:
"Let's say you're a 6-month-old girl, no evidence whatsoever of any abuse. They're simply saying, 'You, in this culture, may grow up to be a child bride when you're 14. Therefore we're going to remove you now when you're 6 months old,"' he said. "Or, 'You're a 6-month-old boy; 25, 30 years, 40 years from now you're going to be a predator, so we're going to take you away now."[83]
Texas requires public education for children not in private or home schooling.[84] Although the children have not been schooled while in state custody, a Texas Education Agency spokesman has stated that "there's a point at which their educational input is secondary" to their emotional well-being.[38] CPS anticipates that the children will continue their education on the campus of their foster placement. There are no plans for the children to attend classes on any public school campus.[85]
The ACLU maintains that the raid was prompted by a single, unsubstantiated allegation of abuse, and they allege that all children at the ranch were believed at risk solely because of exposure to FLDS beliefs regarding underage marriage. But, the ACLU contends, "exposure to a religion's beliefs, however unorthodox, is not itself abuse and may not constitutionally be labeled abuse." The ACLU pointed out that parents were separated from their children without individual hearings and without particularized evidence of abuse, and that DNA testing was ordered without evidence that parentage was in dispute. Such actions, the ACLU asserts, "should not be indiscriminately targeted against a group as a whole – particularly when the group is perceived as being different or unusual."[86]
Barbara Lane Walther is the American judge in 51st District Court of Texas who ordered the removal the children. The Texas 3rd Court of Appeals later ruled two separate opinions that Walther had abused her discretion in allowing CPS to remove the children of some mothers.[87]
Judge Walther is a graduate of Southern Methodist University School of Law. She graduated in May 1977.[88]
During custody hearings, Walther refused to accept birth certificates offered by FLDS women as proof of their age or their status as a parent, accepting CPS determinations that "disputed minors" were underage. All were later determined by CPS to be adults, married or both.[89]
Attorneys for the women asked the judge to consider letting nursing mothers remain with their children after negotiations with CPS on the issue stalled. They asked the judge to let the mothers stay until DNA results were in, likely to take up to 40 days. Walther acknowledged the nutritional and bonding benefits of breast-feeding. "But every day in this country, we have mothers who go back to work after six weeks of maternity leave," she said. "The court has made a determination that the environment those children were in was not safe," said Walther, adding that there is a shortage of suitable placements for infants in Texas.
At the beginning of May, National Review's columnist John Derbyshire called the raid the "atrocity of the [previous] month", but said he had seen only one editorial critical of the removals.[90] The Los Angeles Times editorially endorsed the appeals court decision, saying CPS "was overzealous in its efforts".[91]
Several commentators compared the raid with the Short Creek raid of 1953, which was also a government raid on an FLDS community, and which led to a popular backlash against the raid.[92][93][94][95]
A year after the raid, two thirds of the families are back at the ranch and sect leaders have promised to end underaged marriages. Twelve men, not all apparently from the ranch, have been indicted on a variety of sex charges, including assault and bigamy.[96] One child, a 14-year-old girl, remains in foster care. She was married to jailed leader Warren Jeffs when she was 12.
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