Deafening Silence: Marching From Zion

We're marching to Zion

Beautiful, beautiful Zion!

We're marching upward to Zion

The beautiful city of God...

Hymn written by Isaac Watts and Robert Wadsworth Lowry

They were prepared for a siege.

By the evening of Thursday, April 3, law enforcement had blocked all roads leading to the YFZ Ranch just outside El Dorado, Texas. State troopers guarded all ranch entrances. By Saturday morning, April 5, the airspace over the 1700-acre ranch had been shut down, save for a single helicopter monitoring events from above. Ambulances, K-9 units and even a SWAT team had been brought to the scene. Authorities were calling it the largest child-welfare operation in Texas history.

Don't mess with Texas.

By Wednesday morning, April 9, 534 women and children had been removed from the ranch and taken to holding facilities in and around San Angelo. Investigators from Child Protective Services, accompanied by law enforcement, had spent days interviewing ranch residents and searching for women and children in a compound big enough to hold over 1200 football fields. Originally thought to be populated by about 400 people, the ranch held over 400 children alone, and over 100 women.

Many of the females were young teens who were pregnant or appeared to have already given birth.

The removal of the women and children was remarkably peaceful. Footage and photos showed groups of women and children quietly boarding buses with tinted windows. Resistance was mostly passive; investigators reported that some of those interviewed gave false names or other misleading information about family relationships. Two men were arrested for attempting to destroy evidence or impede the investigation, but their actions were not called violent.

Who are these people and what have they done?

They called it the Center Place- 1700 acres purchased by David Allred on behalf of the Fundamentalist Church of Latter Day Saints in November, 2003. Initially, the sect told surrounding communities the property would only be used as a hunting retreat. It soon became clear, however, that an enclosed community was being constructed. By the time of this week's raid, numerous homes, manufacturing sheds, a medical facility, orchards and gardens had been built on the land. A massive limestone temple said to be 80 feet high dominated the property. A fence including surveillance towers and armed guards with night vision goggles surrounded it.

The ranch was meant to become entirely self-supporting. The most faithful of the FLDs- a sect already considered fanatical by outsiders-migrated to the YFZ ("Yearning for Zion") Ranch to build a perfect community and await the Apocalypse.

The trouble came with their definition of "perfection." Although the mainstream Church of Latter Day Saints had completely disavowed polygamy by 1904, the FLDs sect continued to practice it. They believe that in order to enter heaven and become a god, a man must take as many wives as possible and produce many children. Women must serve their husbands meekly, "keeping sweet" in all things, so that they in turn will be resurrected by their god-like husbands in the next life. In FLDs life, the commandment to "keep sweet" was often enforced with vicious beatings. When Warren Steed Jeffs took over leadership of the group in 2002, it also meant curtailing education. Textbooks were razored to remove passages referring to dinosaurs and moon landings, and formal instruction stopped at the 8th grade. Eventually, FLDs children were simply removed from the classroom altogether, and homeschooled. Homeschooling was the ideal option as Jeffs steadily lowered the age of matrimony for FLDs girls from 18 to 14.

No prying eyes to detect the girls suddenly missing from school.

Teen girls were awarded like prizes to men old enough to be their fathers- men who often already had upwards of 5 wives. Deprived of newspapers, television, the internet or any other communication with the outside world, the women were kept semiliterate and captive inside the fence. Shopping expeditions or even trips to the doctor were tightly controlled events taking place only with chaperones.

Their main duty was to "keep sweet" and produce children.

When Warren Jeffs was jailed as an acomplice to rape in November 2007, Merrill Jessop took over leadership of the ranch. Jessop is the ex-husband of Carolyn Jessop, who fled the FLDs stronghold of Hildale/Colorado City five years ago with her eight children. The book she wrote about her experiences, Escape, has become a bestseller. It describes Merrill Jessop as a volatile, controlling, violent man. In a recent television interview, Carolyn Jessop has claimed that her ex-husband even practised a kind of "waterboarding" on his own infants, beating them and then holding their faces under a running faucet when they cried.

Merrill Jessop was in charge of the ranch on March 29 and 30, 2008, when a local women's shelter received a cell phone call from inside the fence. A 16-year-old girl wanted to escape. The cell phone wasn't hers, she said. She was whispering. She said she had been sent to the ranch by her parents 3 years before, had been married at 15 and had a baby. She was wife number 7 to a man who beat her, breaking her ribs, and raped her. Now she was pregnant again, and had heard that her sister was being sent to the ranch as well. She wanted out. But she was afraid of being "found and locked up."

Merrill Jessop has condemned the raid in the press, saying that it "matches anything in Russia or Germany."

To date, authorities have not publicly identified the girl or found her among the 534 people removed from the compound. They hope she is simply using an assumed name.

References

FLDS Outposts/Brooke Adams-Salt Lake Tribune

Child Welfare Officials Have 18 Children in Custody/Nate Carlisle and Brooke Adams/Salt Lake Tribune

Update: Judge orders all children out of FLDS compound/Salt Lake Tribune

Texas Polygamist Compound Sealed off by Troopers/Miguel Bustillo-Los Angeles Times

Officials were expecting worst during action/Salt Lake Tribune

Siege on FLDS Intensifies/Brooke Adams-Salt Lake Tribune

219 Children, Women Taken From Sect's Ranch/CNN.com

400+ Kids Taken from Polygamist Compound/Michelle Roberts-AP

Texas Takes Legal Custody of 401 Sect Children/Cnn.com

Police Question Women, Children from Polygamous Sect/CNN.com

Detention of Nearly 300 FLDS Women and Children May Strain Texas Resources/Brooke Adams-Salt Lake Tribune