What is yfz ranch

More than children were taken into temporary custody by the state. They were returned seven weeks later after the Third Court of Appeals ruled the state had not met its burden for an emergency removal. Still, the evidence obtained, including DNA from the children, led to indictments of Jeffs and 11 other men on charges of bigamy and sexual assault.

In August , Jeffs was convicted of aggravated sexual assault of a child and sexual assault of a child. His victims were 12 and 15 years old. He was sentenced to life in prison plus 20 years. In April , the last polygamists left peacefully and Texas authorities took possession. Johnny Griffin, 74, who was county judge through , still thinks the state was wrong to forcefully remove more than children. It was a political stand for then-Attorney General Greg Abbott. He was going to run for governor.

He also disagrees with the state using the criminal convictions of a handful of polygamist men to justify seizing the Yearning for Zion Ranch, and forcing everyone who lived there to leave.

Former County Commissioner Matt Brown, however, thinks that state officials handled the situation appropriately. There was a lot of turmoil and unrest in the county. Schleicher County Sheriff David Doran is the most eager for the story to end. Bigamy, sexual assaults Before the YFC Ranch turned this town upside down, people here talked more about cotton, cattle and high school sports.

It later After slow start, city climate plan may be gaining traction. Devine man faces capital murder charge in double slaying. Why did they take the girls? What are they going to do to us when they get here? I remember this very clearly, because it scared me, but I was just wandering through the halls. It was so empty. Everything was just desolate, and it was just quiet. I was walking through the halls, and I came around the corner, and all of a sudden, there was a gun in my face, just a big old muzzle, and I swear I probably peed a little.

Having spent two months in a shelter, Edson Jessop's young sons Zachery, Ephraim and Russell Jessop wanted nothing more than to see an end to the persistent media coverage and return to their quiet family life on the ranch.

They let us go out there and run around a little bit, but other than that … just sat there. I remember this one time I dropped my doll … and this woman, she had a long ponytail, long black ponytail. We would wake up early. It was one of those big metal doors, and we went into the bathroom and we would wait for each other, and she would hold the door for me when I was going back out. And she slammed the door on my foot … on my big toe, and I had to go get stitches.

They especially coached the younger children to do that. All of a sudden, in one room, police brought a baby and asked the mother if that was her child. The mother denied it. They eventually got around to us. The whole place, it was like 9 in the morning and they just came in and had all the mothers.

It was heaven for us, because they had bicycles. They had toys. They had everything that we got rid of down on the Texas ranch, so we literally had everything a kid would want on that place.

At least for me, I got to ride my bike. There was toys. There was swings. I remember, there was always something to do. It was just heaven. The next day, we were taken to a private school on the campus. They gave us eye appointments and stuff. Mostly people there were taking care of us until the courts decided what they were going to do.

Except for the fact that, you know, you really hated that they took us away from our parents, but you know, saying in the case that our parents just died, it would be really decent. But yeah, I remember. We got really excited. Seven of the girls married under 15 had children of their own. In all, confirmed minors, including two born after the raid, were eventually placed in foster care until the state Supreme Court ruled on May 29, , that the state had overstepped its bounds and ordered the children be returned to their parents.

For some in the FLDS church, what they saw and learned during the raid and subsequent criminal trials prompted them to break with the sect. But for an unknown number of others, some of whom are in hiding, their beliefs a decade later remain strong. The state stopped tracking nearly all of the children that year.

Only Merrianne remained in foster care longer than June, but Dusek does not know where she is now. Before the raid, little was known about the large complex that was being constructed outside Eldorado by members of an off-shoot of the Utah- and Arizona-based FLDS, which split from the Mormon Church decades ago after it renounced polygamy.

Members were sometimes spotted in town, the women in their prairie dresses, but they largely kept to themselves. When he got the CPS call, based on a tip to a shelter from a teenager who never was located, the sheriff felt the situation was urgent, but he knew they had a good line of communication.

He predicted they would resolve the situation quickly. When the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services finalized its report in December , it determined children had been subject to neglect. Of the parents, were deemed perpetrators. To help resolve the problems, 29 safety plans were signed, parents attended eight hours of parenting classes, and 50 girls took four hours of education sessions on underage marriage and sexual abuse.

Separately, law enforcement saw 12 grand jury indictments of men that year, according to the report. He declined a request for an interview, according to a Texas Department of Criminal Justice spokesman, but former members say he continues dispensing orders from a lock-up in Palestine. The details of the life he created at the ranch were — and remain — shocking.

To be invited was viewed as a great honor, even if it meant separating from family. Wallace Jeffs was exiled from the church — an experience that devastated him — then brought back before the raid. But he felt strange about the ranch.

He was relieved when three invitations to go there fell through. Only when Jeffs was cast out again in , and he began to investigate what had happened at the ranch, did he find his suspicions confirmed. Rachel Jeffs, a daughter of Warren Jeffs, first went to the ranch because her mother was there, dying.