On April 3, life changed dramatically and irrevocably for a generation of children being raised at the West Texas compound known as the Yearning For Zion Ranch.
That was the day Texas authorities raided the compound in response to a phone call from “Sarah.” The girl said she was 16 and had been beaten and raped by the 50-year-old man she was forced to marry under the tenets of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. More than 400 children were removed from their homes — to protect them from their parents, child welfare officials say.
Since then, the young people have been housed at a coliseum in nearby San Angelo. Their mothers, except for the ones who are children themselves, have been sent back to the ranch. The children will be parceled out to foster families, where they’ll remain for at least 60 days. By then, state officials must return them to their parents or present a plan to terminate parental rights so the children can be offered for adoption.
The YFZ Ranch is the home of the most fervent followers of Warren Jeffs, now in prison for forcing a 14-year-old girl into a marriage with her 19-year-old cousin. Jeffs is a control freak who got nervous as authorities turned up the heat on FLDS communities in Utah and Arizona that were marrying young girls to older men. He bought a former exotic animal farm near Eldorado in 2003 and built a walled compound for the most faithful.
Most of what authorities know, or think they know, about the isolated sect has come from former members. They describe a patriarchal culture in which it’s common for a man to have several wives and dozens of children, all in the same household. Women and their children are sometimes “reassigned” to a different man according to Jeffs’ whims (or “revelations”). There’s no TV, no Internet, no boisterous laughter and lots of hard labor. Members dress like the cast of “Little House on the Prairie” and are expected to spend all of Sunday in church, listening to recordings of Jeffs’ sermons or his singing. (The Yearning For Zion Ranch takes its name from a song he wrote.)
Actual members have provided little additional information, except to insist that they — and their children — are very happy at the ranch, thank you. Their defenders say the raid was an overreaction and violated their civil rights. They also say the remedy for the “problem” is worse than the problem itself.
Church members acknowledge that young girls are subjected to what outsiders and the law consider sexual abuse. They also willingly admit to polygamy, which was outlawed under the federal Morrill Anti-Bigamy Act in 1862. Members say they are only following their faith.
The American Civil Liberties Union has questioned whether the raid infringed on members’ rights to be secure in their homes, to worship as they please and to raise their children as they see fit “absent evidence of imminent danger.” A lawyer for the church argues that evidence suggesting one child was abused doesn’t mean every single child is in danger. There’s also evidence that the phone call that started it all came from outside the sect.
Meanwhile, the children are warehoused in the coliseum awaiting placement. State officials say they’ll try to keep siblings together, but these are big families. The foster-care-to-adoption path has no guaranteed happy ending. And Texas’ overtaxed child welfare system will be enormously strained by the largest custody case in U.S. history.
The kids have been torn from their homes and thrust into a world they don’t know and have been taught to fear. Are they truly better off? Sadly, yes.
It’s undisputed that FLDS girls are expected to marry when and whom they are told, and to start having babies as early as age 13. Though Texas authorities first reported they’d taken custody of 416 children and 139 mothers, they revised the numbers after learning that 21 of the mothers weren’t adults. Child welfare officials haven’t released a head count by gender, but attorneys assigned to represent the children say the older children are overwhelmingly female. This supports former members’ claims that the church routinely expels adolescent boys to ensure adult men their pick of wives.
Based on all of this, child welfare officials argued — and the judge agreed — that the children were all in danger. That’s a prudent call. It’s irresponsible to suggest that an environment that promotes underage sex, teenage pregnancy or child abandonment is safe for children who haven’t yet been victimized. Especially when their parents see nothing wrong with this picture.
