On March 29, 2008, a local domestic violence shelter
hotline took a call from a woman, identifying herself as "Sarah", and claiming to be a 16-year-old victim of
physical and
sexual abuse at the church's YFZ Ranch. Investigators eventually established by tracing the calls that they were placed by a much older woman, Rozita Swinton, who had been arrested for previous hoax calls posing as abused and victimized girls. 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. Authorities believed the children "had been abused or were at immediate risk of future abuse", a state spokesman said. Troopers and child welfare officials searched the ranch, including the temple's safes, vaults, locked desk drawers, and beds. 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".
Child Protective Services (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. 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". 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, eventually a total of 462 children went into the temporary custody of the State of Texas. Over a hundred adult women chose to leave the ranch to accompany the children. 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. 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. She stated that the actions in Texas were unlike the 1953
Short Creek raid in Arizona. By April 8, authorities had removed as many as 533 women and children from the ranch. On April 10, law enforcement completed their search of the ranch, returning control of the property to the FLDS Church.
Mandamus of Judge Walther Represented by
Texas RioGrande Legal Aid, mothers of the removed children sought a writ of
mandamus against Judge Walther for her rulings because parents in Texas cannot simply appeal an emergency removal. Mandamus is available only when it is abundantly clear a state official abused his or her power. On May 22, 2008, an appeals court issued a writ of mandamus to Judge Walther and found that 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." The children were to be returned to their families in 10 days. CPS announced they would seek to overturn the decision. On May 29, the Texas Supreme Court declined to issue a
mandamus to the Appeals Court, with a result that CPS was required to return all of the children. The court stated, "On the record before us, removal of the children was not warranted." 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". 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: On November 10, 2009, Raymond Jessop was sentenced to 10 years in prison and fined $8,000 for sexually assaulting a 16-year-old girl on or about November 19, 2004. 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 pleaded 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 pleaded 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. 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. Based on the agreement of the attorneys, Judge Conn issued an order adopting the stipulation. A Utah court found Jeffs guilty of two counts of rape as an accomplice in September 2007. He was sentenced to imprisonment for 10 years to
life but while serving this sentence at the
Utah State Prison, Jeffs' conviction was reversed by Utah's Supreme Court on July 27, 2010, because of a flaw in the jury instructions. Jeffs was extradited to Texas, to face trial on charges facing him there. The Texas jury found him guilty of sexual assault and aggravated sexual assault of children. He was sentenced to life in prison plus twenty years, to be served consecutively, and a $10,000 fine, for sexual assault of both 12 and 15-year-old girls. 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. 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. 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.
Controversy Rozita Swinton Rozita Swinton of
Colorado Springs had previously made calls pretending to be a young girl. She was under investigation for posing as the caller "Sarah" who complained of abuse, but she could not be found. FLDS women did not know of any such girl and assumed that 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 does not actually exist. 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.
Flora Jessop recorded nearly 40 hours of Swinton's phone calls, both before and after the raid on the YFZ ranch. 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. Swinton herself was 33 at the time, unmarried, and childless. The
Associated Press reported that Texas Ranger Brooks Long called Colorado officials about two phone numbers, one of which "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 child abuses.
Age dispute and Child Protective Services 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. 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. A CPS lawyer explained, "We can't just look at people and say, 'You're of age, you can go. 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. 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.
Other criticism Many FLDS members and supporters see the raid and the seizure of the children from their family as
religious persecution and have likened it to a
witch-hunt. In May 2008, FLDS spokesperson
Willie Jessop wrote a letter to President
George W. Bush, asking him to intervene, and outlining the harsh conditions that Jessop believed that the children and mothers were subjected to. 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. Workers took notes on everything the "guests" said. In many of the testimonies it was compared to a prison or
concentration camp. The Christian legal group
Liberty Legal Institute took the position that the state of Texas should be required to prove that the children taken from the ranch were actually abused or were in imminent danger. Liberty Legal warned of possible damage to religious liberties and the rights of all Texas parents. Home-schooling families were also fearful that opponents could file similarly false complaints against families to force attendance in government-run schools. 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" ... 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." Texas requires public education for children not in private or home schooling. Although the children had 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. CPS anticipates that the children will continue their education on the campus of their foster placement. There were no plans for the children to attend classes on any public school campus. 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".
Commentary At the beginning of May,
National Review columnist
John Derbyshire called the raid the "atrocity of the [previous] month", but said he had seen only one editorial critical of the removals. The
Los Angeles Times editorially endorsed the appeals court decision, saying CPS "was overzealous in its efforts". 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.
Post-raid events 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". 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. DNA testing of children and adults began on the 21st. On April 24, 2008, authorities stated that they believed 25 mothers from the YFZ Ranch were under 18. On the 28th, authorities announced that of the 53 girls aged 14–17, 31 have children or were pregnant. 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. 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. In November 2008, 12 FLDS men were charged with offenses related to underage marriages. 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."
Resolution A year after the raid, two thirds of the families were back at the ranch and sect leaders had promised to end
underaged marriages. Twelve men, not all apparently from the ranch, had been indicted on a variety of sex charges, including assault and bigamy. One child, a 14-year-old girl who was married to jailed leader
Warren Jeffs when she was 12, remained in
foster care. The following summer, 2009, she was sent to live with a relative and ordered not to have contact with Jeffs. ==Seizure==