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Wednesday, March 17, 2010

Eldorado polygamist raid

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The Eldorado polygamist raid is a 2008 event where state child welfare workers raided a West Texas polygamist ranch, taking 400 kids in custody over allegations they were being sexually abused and forced into underage marriages. To date, all of the seized children have been returned to their parents. 

Several men from the Yearning For Zion ranch, part of the Utah-based Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, were arrested after the investigation, charged with sexual abuse and bigamy. One was sect leader Warren Jeffs, who was already in prison in Arizona on charges related to marrying underage girls to older men.

After the raid, authorities learned that the abuse hotline call that sparked the state's largest-ever child welfare investigation was a hoax. But they said they saw enough pregnant teenagers and young mothers on the 1,700-acre ranch to prove minor girls were being married to much older men.

Jeffs founded the West Texas ranch in 2004 for his most fervent adherents, who built a sacred temple, communal residences, factories and working farms on the ranch. 

Though the Attorney General's Office was able to file charges against several sect members, the removal and subsuquent return of the ranch children -- many of whom had never been off of the ranch -- was largely seen as a Child Protective Services fiasco.

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