Secretive Texas sect under scrutiny

By Matthew Price
BBC News, Texas

To get to the Yearning for Zion compound, you have to turn off the main road in Eldorado.

You drive past fields of cactus and cattle and out - it feels - into the middle of nowhere.

The FLDS compound is at the centre of a child abuse investigation

Behind the trees that flash past you, there are glimpses of a huge white temple on the horizon.

You come to a padlocked gate off to the left, and behind it there's a track which leads to the focus of what is now a massive child abuse investigation.

In the space of an hour, three cars leave the compound, presumably carrying sect members.

Investigators left on Wednesday. The gate is now unlocked, and then chained up again as each car drives through, by a man who looks to be in his 20s - one of the sect members.

He is wearing wrap-around shades, a chequered lumberjack shirt and a cap.

"There are lots of rumours out here, can you give us some facts?" I ask. No reply.

"How are people doing in there?" There is a pause. He looks up in the air slightly, as if considering whether he should say anything at all.

"We're at peace," he responds.

Frightened call

Until this week very little was known about what was going on inside the compound.

Now investigators say they have evidence of emotional, physical and sexual abuse of young children.

They also say they have evidence that there is a bed inside the sacred temple where young girls were forced to have sex with older men.

The ranch and compound are owned and run by the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.

It is a sect which broke away from the Mormon Church when it banned polygamy more than 100 years ago. Inside the ranch they still practice polygamy.

It was a frightened, whispered call from a 16-year-old girl that led to the police raid on the compound last week.

In police papers, she is referred to as "Sarah", and she is reported to have told investigators that she had been beaten, and forced to have sex with her 50-year-old husband.

"Sarah" has identified her husband as Dale Barlow, a registered sex offender.

'Humanitarian situation'

In the past week, more than 400 children have been removed from the compound.

Drive north for about an hour from Eldorado, and you get to where they are being looked after by social services.

Police have sealed off the roads near where the sect members are staying

It is an old fort in the town of San Angelo, a throw-back to a previous era - a bit like the people being housed there now.

Tourists are normally welcome. "We're closed," the man at the ticket office says. "We've got a humanitarian situation on our hands."

The police have sealed off the roads around the area. As we drive around one raises his binoculars, and checks us out.

The police say most of the sect members who have left the ranch (the children were removed and more than 100 women went with them) are not communicating much with their investigators.

That might make any large scale prosecution difficult, although it has been revealed that investigators have had an informant inside the compound for the past few years who presumably has been gathering evidence.

Persecution claim

For now the women and children are hidden well away from prying eyes. Pictures taken earlier in the week show them wearing long, old-fashioned dresses, with high necklines.

As long as they minded their own business, people were okay with them Matthew Batchelor Local resident

The only clue as to life inside the compound comes from former sect members.

Flora Jessop is one. Even her name seems from another age.

"I know that what this girl is saying is the absolute truth," she says. "She is in imminent danger. They do lock you up. They whip you, brutalise you and psychologically destroy you."

Back at the end of the lane that leads to the ranch, we find Matthew Batchelor, who comes from a town nearby.

"We didn't think anything of them before. As long as they minded their own business, people were okay with them. Now, though, it's not good."

"Now that we're finding out more, we just want them all to disappear."

Behind the gates, the sect says it is being persecuted.

The men who remain cling on to their beliefs. But their days may be numbered.