By Jennifer Litz
Editor
May 8, 2008
On March 29, Child Protective Services allegedly received a phone call from a 16-year-old girl inside the polygamist compound called Yearning for Zion Ranch at Eldorado, Texas. The compound, built under the direction of Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints incarcerated leader, Warren Jeffs, housed hundreds of women, children, and men recruited from polygamist camps in Utah and Arizona.
The still-anonymous caller claimed abuse from her 50-year-old “husband,” who she claimed beat, choked, and sexually assaulted her. CPS officials needed backup to raid the heavily guarded compound, so state officials helped them infiltrate. Once inside, officials saw evidence of rampant underage marriage, pregnancies, and abuse. According to several reports, compound men recruited underage “spiritual wives,” not recognized by Texas law.
District Judge Barbara Walther signed a warrant to investigate further. By the end of the raid, the state took custody of hundreds of children, moving them and some mothers to San Angelo’s Fort Concho. Many of the children are now in foster homes across the state, and litigation is ongoing. Among the issues are whether girls were “spiritually married” to men before the legal age in Texas, which is 16. And DNA tests will reveal true mothers and fathers—and hold those mothers accountable as accomplices to rape if they knowingly allowed an underage marriage.
Our Interview with Randy Mankin, publisher of The Eldorado Success
Randy Mankin says the last thing he could imagine is having throngs of corporate media descend on his little town of 3,000 inhabitants, chasing the story about the ongoing tragedy at the Fundamentalist Latter Day Saints (FLDS) compound just north of town. When Mankin’s newspaper, The Eldorado Success, first broke the news in 2004 that the polygamist cult was building a large, self-sustaining village in their midst, no one outside of Eldorado seemed to care.
But in April 2008, when Texas Child Protective Services, the Texas Rangers, and legions of SWAT teams, the local sheriff, and even an armored personnel carrier borrowed from Midland County Sheriffs’ Department swarmed the compound to rescue 462 children from the FLDS compound, every media person wanted to be Mankin’s best friend.
He was the man with the background and the story. “Well actually, my wife Kathy is the biggest expert on these people,” Mankin says. Kathy is. She has everything, from pictures to facts, and articles searchable on her personal computer. Ask her about any character in this sordid mess and she’ll let you know everything about them.
Randy has a degree in political science from Texas Tech University. “So I could go back into the oil fields after I graduated on the eight-year plan,” he jokes. But with an eye for news and the writing ability to report it, he and Kathy purchased Eldorado’s only newspaper in 1994. In 2005, they added the Big Lake Wildcat newspaper to their portfolio.
The Mankins take all of the exposure in stride, and add a little humor. You (and your prospective brides) can purchase an official Eldorado Polygamous Marriage Certificate at the newspaper’s offices. “We also sell the legal instrument needed for a divorce,” Mankin jokes, as he holds up a stick of whiteout.
Yet Mankin is very serious about allegations against what he calls a cult that decided to settle in Eldorado. We whisked him out of his reporter role for a few moments and this is what he shared with us.
You’ve covered the story since the compound was built in 2004. Did you ever suspect something unlawful was going on in the compound?
We all suspected it from the beginning. A leper can’t change it’s spots; it [polygamy] had been rampant in Short Creek, which is what they call Colorado City and Hilldale [The FLDS communities on the Arizona/Utah border]. They refer to it as ‘Short Crik’—they say ‘crick,’ we would say creek. Everyone suspected it, but you can’t go [into the compound] on a suspicion. You have to have a complaint, or someone with first-hand knowledge. And that didn’t happen until this raid.
What has been the attitude of Eldorado citizens these four years since the compound has been built? Has it always been a hot topic of conversation, or did its urgency to locals ebb and flow with your coverage?
It’s been a topic—when they first got here, there was a lot of concern, and it would die down, and there would be another development. The media would stream in, and all along, we were all trying to stay up with the events. We started our job here to inform ourselves and then inform the public, and try to find out who this group was, where they were from, and what they believed. Opinions here have run the gamut from both extremes. One extreme was to go in and run ‘em out, chase ‘em back to Utah, and the other extreme was, “hey, different strokes for different folks.”
Do you believe law officials should have intervened before they did? Do you know of any missed chances they had, where they could have had cause for a warrant, but didn’t pursue it?
Don’t know how they could have. [They] did not have a complaint. I don’t want anyone coming to my house and kicking my door down because [of suspicion]. No—none [missed chances]. And I have followed this more closely than anyone else in the news media. As much as the media would love to say cops screwed this up—quite frankly that’s the vibe I’m getting from you, I don’t know what else they could have done. Our sheriff has been in this compound time and time again, trying to make inroads in. But it is a closed society.
Tell me about some of the escaped critics of FLDS you’ve interviewed over the years. Can you quickly profile them? What have been their stances on the sect?
Flora Jessup; she’ll tell you all types of things, but she never gives you proof. Show me the proof; show me something I can hang my hat on. Richard Holm, he’s more level-headed . . . I know lots of people like that—but none of these people has ever been at the YFZ Ranch. It’s one thing to say we know this is going on—but it happened in Hilldale, Utah, or Colorado City, Arizona. The only ones who came here were the most loyal followers…they are hand-picked; they are Warren Jeffs’ most loyal foot soldiers; the ones who have given him the least trouble and most money, and these are the least likely to reach out to outsiders.
Why did those overseeing the Eldorado compound’s construction lie about the compound being a hunting retreat? What prompted them to come clean about it?
I think to escape the scrutiny as long as they could; we just kept hammering them with our stories about who they were, where they were from. And our coverage promoted others in the media to pay attention. For five or six weeks, they lied.
What are some of the rumors you’ve heard circling around about the compound that you don’t believe to be true? One I’ve heard is that they have incinerators on the compound…
Oh, heinous rumors. Rumors that there’s a crematorium; I’ve heard rumors of baby sacrifice; they’re coming from everywhere. I bet I got 20 e-mails from people accusing them from everything of cannibalism to white slavery. I mean just all over the map.
I could tell you, yes, I fully suspect they were doing a lot of what they were doing, but a suspicion will not get you a warrant.
On the national coverage the compound has now gotten:
We’ve just done our job. Had we not reported this, no one in San Angelo would have known about it. The San Angelo Standard-Times [newspaper] certainly wasn’t going to do it. Someone’s got to draw it to their attention before they come out and cover it. Just like anyone else in the media, they say, ‘bring me up to speed,’ and I say, ‘Do some investigating like we’ve done.’ It’s the herd mentality.
This story has everything; sex, drugs, and rock ‘n roll. It has all the elements of a story that sells: underage girls, older men, it has the cult connection, a group that’s all around one personality.
On the comparisons to Waco:
I didn’t think they were warranted at first, and I don’t think they were warranted at the end. Everyone kept trying to drag that [Waco] up. Law enforcement learned a lot from Waco: The feds—had Waco been left to the local sheriff, he could have arrested [Branch Davidian leader David Koresh] on a county road sometime when he was out jogging. But The feds got involved. Fortunately here, The feds stayed out of it. These crimes that are being alleged [now] are not federal crimes, they are state crimes. The feds can get involved in very specific areas.
[In this case it was an] outcry for help from a girl; whether she’s coming forward or not and identifying herself, CPS felt they had a legit concern in Eldorado and San Angelo. When CPS gets a cry for help, they can drive right up and knock on the door. They couldn’t do that here. You can’t approach any direction here without being confronted; [the whole compound is on] lockdown. So CPS asked the feds for assistance to get them on the compound. And that’s what happened. I bet they haven’t slept much since then. Once they got on the compound they saw evidence of other crimes; i.e., young girls that were pregnant, and they went back to judge Walther and got the warrant expanded, and that gave them power to go into every building on the ranch, and they did.
On the special plight of men in the polygamist sect:
I would like to point out a couple of things: There have been more children removed form their parents by Warren Jeffs and the FLDS Church than the state of Texas had ever thought about… he routinely kicked men out of this group and told them to go repent from a distance. He would take their wives and children and reassign them to other men. I’ve talked to the men. They’re out there. One of them is named Richard Holm. I’ve been to Short Creek. Certainly the Standard-Times could have been there. But there are people out there who will talk . . .
There’s a private investigator, Sam Brower, he is in San Angelo right now, he was down here [recently]. He has birth certificates from these men trying to find their children. So where is the moral outrage when Jeffs and this cult do this to their own people without a court hearing, without due process and law, without a search warrant, with nothing?
And when you think about polygamy—when a man loses his family, he loses more children than the women, because the man is married to many women. So for every woman at the YFZ with her children removed, [you] can produce more men who had more children removed. But nothing’s being said about that.
The attorney out here, Mr. Rod Parker from Salt Lake City [who represents the FLDS], is putting on a dog and pony show. I saw the same scripted statements from them all [the Eldorado women]; and when you’d try to jog them off their story, they wouldn’t talk about polygamy or how many times they’d been reassigned, all they had to do was try to portray it the way they wanted it. So that’s what I would add to the story. It is a lot deeper than anyone realizes. The crimes [being asserted] are the tiptop of the iceberg.
I am astounded by the public’s willing ignorance on this matter and cannot understand why they are so easily mislead even in the face of such damning evidence. Please allow me to post that evidence with reference links.
We know that last week, Texas Authorities dropped their warrant for Dale Barlow, who was the accused rapist by the now debunked hoax caller, Rozita Swinton, who claimed to be a 16 year old being raped by her father at the Yearning for Zion Ranch. This was the call which initiated the storming of the polygamist community by armed militia and the abduction of 463 children.
Here is a link concerning the hoax caller and a link regarding the statement by Texas Authorities who dropped the warrant.
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=61963
http://www.kvue.com/news/state/stories/050308kvuepolygamist-jj.c4de3865....
Texas Authorities also now admit cover up and possible disciplinary actions to their own when admitting that a growing number of girls who they claimed were minors and who had children while in state custody are actually adults, some as old as 22. Authorities also seem to admit to having the birth certificates all along.
http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5iIdMpRHjN4hpNKBhfYyAsR4DDo4QD90N2T8G0
In what could be said to at least ‘appear to be suspect’ concerning the timing of the report coinciding with falling public support, Texas authorities then claimed they found 41 broken bones among these children. A claim now however, they seem to quickly be retreating from.
Quote from the Texas CPS website as of April 29th and maintained as of May 18th: “We do not have X-rays or complete medical information on many children so it is too early to draw any conclusions based on this information, but it is cause for concern and something we'll continue to examine”
http://www.dfps.state.tx.us/About/News/2008/2008-04-30_Eldorado_Senate.a...
After that retreat and seeming to feel the public heat, the next claim by Texas authorities was that a new revelation was just uncovered that young boys were being molested. A story by the way sharply denied by the young boys themselves.
http://news.sky.com/skynews/article/0,,30200-1312929,00.html
Are you beginning to see a pattern here? I imagine the next claim will be that they were boiling down infants and turning their fat into ritual candles.
I am saddened by what I see in many of my former Texas neighbors. I lived in Dallas from 1984 through 1992 and found the people to be quite sincere. But how they could support this event after watching our friends in Waco burn to death along with their children is beyond me. For years, those of us who had friends in the Waco area or knew people who knew some of these good folks, tried to tell their story; only to be mocked and scorned. Years after fooling many of you, (not me), the FBI quietly admitted to starting the fire; though most citizens are completely ignorant of this admission.
http://www.cnn.com/US/9908/25/fbi.waco/index.html
I believe some of those who spread the government’s stories concerning Waco deserve some of the blame for those young children dying. You may not have lit the match, but you certainly helped fan the flames, just as I believe some of you educated people who now spread the government’s stories concerning these parents in Utah should also share some of the blame for what is happening to these children.
The still-anonymous caller? Oh please. Anyone who’s not dead knows this is Rozita Swinton. What they may not appreciate is that Rozita was calling Texas authorities a week before her supposed first call to the shelter, and that Texas is not admitting it. They knew Sarah was a hoax. As for abuse, read what Texas social workers had to say about CPS treatment of the mothers and their children: http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/headline/metro/5770183.html
===
Be aware of Texas FALLACIES.
==
The following is a great resource on polygamy from the Utah Attorney General.
"The Primer- Helping Victims of Domestic Violence and Child Abuse in Polygamous
Communities"
http://www.attorneygeneral.utah.gov/polygamy/The_Primer.pdf
The FLDS are just one of many groups that practice polygamy. Many have problems with abuse (emotonal, physical and sexual) and fraud (welfare, food stamps, etc). It is sad that groups like this exist. One bad apple can spoil the whole bunch.
The topic of the FLDS children has sparked much debate. Thank you for a common sense article from those who live close to the situation.
I am afraid this is a lose-lose situation, in which there can be no winners.
I wonder why the men who have been kicked out, who have had their wife's leave them to be reassigned to another man, and have taken his children with them, have not used the law to try and get their (the fathers) kids back?
Biological parents have rights to be with or visit their children.
I would imagine that not ALL these men are marrying teenagers, or are bad men.
Nobody's guilty simply for belonging to this religion. Allowing (and even encouraging) your children who are under the age of 18 to have sexual relations with adults over the age of 18 is sexual abuse. Knowing that children around you are being allowed (and encouraged) to have sexual relations with adults, and subsequently not doing anything about it, is also sexual abuse of children. "Two wrongs don't make a right" doesn't apply here. Men and women who encourage and allow their 14-year-old daughters to become "wives" of 35-year-old men, and give birth to those 35-year-old men's children, are in the wrong. Hiding child sexual abuse behind religion doesn't make it okay, or didn't you know that when numerous Catholic priests around the country got arrested? Where's the constitutional authority that protects those who encourage and allow child sexual abuse?
Two wrongs don't make a right. There's no doubt there were some innocent monogamous families who've had their children take away from them indefinitely by the state. Where's the justice for these innocent fathers and mothers? Or are they guilty by association, guilty for belonging to this religion? Where's the constitutional authority for punishing the innocent in order to get the guilty?
Texas law requires that when CPS removes one child from a household because sexual abuse is happening in that household it remove all the children in that household. This is generally a good idea. Most child sexual abusers reoffend and it makes sense to protect all the children in the household from abuse, not just the one who is abused. It may not make the most sense in this case (since nobody is suggesting that children under 12 were at risk of immediate "marriage"/sexual abuse) but sometimes laws do that.
The problem here seems to be that CPS and other legal authorities found difficulty defining different households within the community and figuring out which children belonged to which household. Some of this has reportedly been because the adult residents of the Yearning for Zion ranch hid children and changed stories about names and ages, giving multiple different answers for the same child. This alone would be enough to raise suspicion of any of us. Can you imagine going to your kid's new school (if you don't have kids, pretend for a minute) and telling the principal "This is Bobby, and he's ten,"; telling a teacher "This is Tommy, he's 11," and then the librarian "This is Joey, he's nine." That'd would raise red flags for anyone. How fast would someone call the cops to make sure that this is your kid and confirm who he is? It also makes it very difficult to know which children belonged to which household.
Another challenge is the communal nature of the ranch. Given the size of most of the buildings it seems clear that each building is home to many mother-child family units and very likely the wives and children of more than one man live in many of those homes. With no way of accurately knowing who lives where, who lives with someone who is an alleged offender, the only legal choice CPS had was to remove all the children.
The crime here is child abuse, not polygamy. If monogamous adults knew of a "spiritual bride" too young to consent and did nothing then they are not innocent. Equally, if an adult in a polygamous relationship there didn't know anything then they are innocent. However, the state does have the right and responsibility to remove the children during a sexual abuse investigation. Anything less would open it to legal liability.
Nobody is getting punished yet. So far the children have been removed. This isn't punishment, this is for the protection of the children. If this goes so far as to get someone convicted and sentenced, that will be punishment.
to anonymous2 -
Do you really think it is within a parent's rights to:
Confine their children within a compound and never let them out?
Tell them on a daily basis that everyone and everything outside the walls is evil and if you go outside the walls you are damned to hell?
Teach them that their place in life is to do exactly what their "prophet" tells them?
Regardless of the issues most people are bringing up (underage sex and marriage, polygamy, throwing out the young boys, abuse at a young age, etc) - even ignoring all of that - should these children be so brainwashed that they cannot lead a life of their own choosing?
Do you really think that is within a parent's rights? I don't.
Write a new law then. As it stands, parents have the right to shield their kids from an outside world they deem to be evil. The families who didn't engage in child abuse, were not breaking the law. You don't like the reclusive life-style, press for legislation to change it. But lifestyle choices and shielding, as it stands are not enough to terminate one's parental rights. Any attempt to do so is an infringement on the parents' civil rights.
Post new comment