Investigators sent into polygamists’ ranch
Sylvia Moreno and Adam Kilgore; 10/4/08
The cry for help came late at night — at 11.32 — and it came in a whisper. Speaking so not to be overheard, the 16-year-old girl — mother of an eight-month-old baby and pregnant again — spoke of teenage girls, some as young as 13, forced to have sex with older men for the purpose of bearing their children. She said she was the seventh “spiritual” wife of a 49-year-old man and described beatings by him so vicious that several of her ribs had been broken. The March 29 phone call, and one the next day from the compound of an insular, secretive splinter sect of the Mormon Church, prompted raids by authorities, who took into protective custody 416 children, the largest child removal in Texas history. The children, mostly girls, ranged in age from infants to 17. Several have babies or are pregnant.