Bed Found In Temple For Sex With Underage Girls Right After Marriage, Authorities Say

The Los Angeles Times Reports (password required):

Authorities searching a remote polygamist compound for a 16-year-old girl who had claimed she was sexually abused discovered a bed inside a towering limestone temple and were told by a "confidential informant" that men used it to have sex with underage girls, according to a court document unsealed Wednesday.

The discovery of the bed, which was ruffled and contained what appeared to be a long strand of a female's hair, was disclosed in an affidavit that Texas Rangers used to obtain a second search warrant to expand their investigation of the YFZ Ranch, a 1,700-acre guarded complex outside the tiny West Texas town of Eldorado.

Watch a video about the search for the bed here:

Comments

[Xtine]

01:40 PM on 04/12/2008

Polygamy is illegal, so why weren't these nutters busted long before?
I can't help wondering what would happen if I bought a huge ranch with a tall fence, married a few of my male friends, and made them wear ugly clothes. I wager I'd be charged with bigamy (I bet there aren't many cops who can spell 'polyandry­,' let alone know what it means), go to jail, and be villified for all eternity as a "truly sick woman."

[eej]

10:47 PM on 04/10/2008

Everyone who thinks the mainstream Mormon church is perfect ought to google up "Scout's Honor Idaho" and see what comes up.

[rainey]

12:00 AM on 04/11/2008

...or "sex abuse + LDS"

[Mormondude]

10:48 AM on 04/11/2008

You two clearly have an axe to grind with Mormons, but I don't recall anyone here saying everyone in the LDS church is "perfect".

Don't you have better things to do than spend your evenings raging into the abyss?

[isis]

08:55 PM on 04/10/2008

Those are really ugly dresses. Modesty is not all it's cracked up to be.

[ladygreenslippers]

08:07 PM on 04/10/2008

Why is the media allowed to post pics of these children? don't they deserve to be protected like little Catholic girls (eg. of main stream religion) whose face would be blotted out?! aren't these kids humiliated enough? w saw cameramen chasing the bus to get pics when the buses were leaving of the faces of these children, now we have pics of babies and what i'm sure are teenage girls. disgusting­!

[rainey]

06:01 PM on 04/10/2008

...but kept on sealing plural marriages for another decade?

[eej]

10:46 PM on 04/10/2008

Regarding the sealing of a Mormon couple for all eternity:

If you change your mind, you just apply for a "cancellat­ion of sealing" and it comes back approved from Salt Lake City in about two weeks.

[dartagnan]

05:46 PM on 04/10/2008

Religious fanaticism and sexual perversion seem to go hand in hand, don't they. Wonder why ...

[MizJ]

05:16 PM on 04/10/2008

Does this den of inequity have tax exemption? If so, we need to revisit that doctrine which allows "churches" like this to hide behind freedom of religion. How does one man support 7 wives and 26 children? Has anyone priced a loaf of bread today?

[Rendon76]

04:54 PM on 04/10/2008

Simply a brainwashi­ng cult for older men who want to do anything they want sexually to women, young and otherwise, and have complete control over them as well.

[eej]

04:12 PM on 04/10/2008

All this makes it hard for McCain to pick Romney as his VP.

I know, I know, the LDS Church pretends to denounce this, but there's no getting around the fact that the LDS Church brought this practice to America, practiced it for decades, still worship the man who started it, and promise that there will be a return to polygamy some day. Romney's father was born in Mexico because the grandfathe­r had fled there to continue the practice.

[Durango]

04:47 PM on 04/10/2008

Hmmm, I thought many of the Plains Indians practiced polygamy? And they were here long before the Mormans ever settled the west.

And while no one has a lower opinion of Mitt Romney than I do, what do the "sins" of his father have to do with anything?

There are plenty of reasons to not like Mitt, but religious bigotry isn't one of them.

[MysticMichael]

05:30 PM on 04/10/2008

Thank you!

[rainey]

05:58 PM on 04/10/2008

Hmmmm...wa­s it the Fundamenta­list Church of Lakota Dating Sioux? I thought it was Latter Day Saints. Don't think no Plains Indians revealed any Reformed Egyptian documents of the Restoratio­n. Nope. Must have been that Joseph Smith guy with the herd of wives.

[stupidme]

03:52 PM on 04/10/2008

It's stories like these that lead me to believe that maybe we should just cut to the chase and elect some real religious zealots as President and VP. And please, don't give me any Reverend Wright stuff, I want the real end of the world, AIDS is God's punishment­, Katrina is God's Punishment types like that McCain supporting­, Reverend Hagee. Who, by the way, is also from the great state of Texas. . Let's let the Christians have the run of the house for a while. I'm serious. No more booze. Guns for everyone. Overt Government Censorship­. Mandatory Bible Study in Schools. Mandatory Public Prayer. Expansion of Capital Punishment­. Real Ayatollah kind of stuff. Even a new Constituti­onal Convention­! Ralph Reed can be the new Thomas Jefferson. Dobson can be the new Ben Franklin. Hagee, himself, could be James Madison. Rush could be the new Tom Paine. Come on guys, let's do it. Jesus will love us for it!

[Cardhu]

04:05 PM on 04/10/2008

Well said!

I happen to live about 50 miles north a hot bed of religious intoleranc­e: Colorado Springs, home of, among others lunatics, James Dobson and his Focus On The Family cult.

About once a month I see a car with a bumper sticker that says: Focus On Your Own Damn Family!

I get the urge to pull that car over and buy that person a beer.

Someone wise once said: All religion is just crowd control.

. . .

[expatsteve]

04:50 PM on 04/10/2008

"...maybe we should just cut to the chase and elect some real religious zealots as President and VP."
Isn't that what we have with Bush? Cheney is just some evil bastard, but Bush probably believes that AIDS is God's punishment and the Armageddon and prayer in school and guns for eveyone and the expansion of Capital punishment­, etc.

[mommadona]

03:10 PM on 04/10/2008

"Where's the sheets?"

[LightningJoe]

02:49 AM on 04/11/2008

What are "sheets?"

[obamy]

03:10 PM on 04/10/2008

I am not saying I support this odd sect of fundamenta­lists. But it is clear that they are not in the same category as child molestors and kidnappers­. They just don't fit in to this culture. The whole thing would be solved if the Sect followed the state age law for marriage which I believe is 18 in that state but lower in other states. The idea of breaking up all of the families in the sect is cruel.

Clearly, the stories are deeply slanted while the media ignores the preverse stuff pushed on kids on MTV VH! and elsewhere.

[eej]

04:13 PM on 04/10/2008

"Breaking up the families" may be necessary to save the children who are at this stage completely brainwashe­d.

[M.S. Bellows, Jr.]

04:15 PM on 04/10/2008

If they were merely polygamist­s, I wouldn't really have a problem with them. (As my wife once joked with friends when the idea of hiring a young blonde Swedish au pair was brought up, "It's OK, so long as she sleeps with my husband and takes care of all my chores"). But this sect raises women to believe that their primary function on Earth is to have, quite literally, as many children as possible; that they must be married and become pregnant as soon as they start menstruati­ng; and that it's better in God's eyes to die in childbirth than to commit the sin of having fewer children. (Mormonism teaches that souls in heaven need bodies on Earth, and so encourages people to have large families; this sect takes that preference and makes it a rigid commandmen­t.) And those 12, 13, 14 y.o. girls are married to much older men (30s, 40s, 50s), not to boys their own age -- so the adult men have all the wives, and the boys generally get squeezed out of the community once they become competitio­n.

So there are destroyed young girls, and lost young boys, and this cult is just as bad as any other child molesters and rapists -- even worse, maybe, because they're doing it in God's name, and brainwashi­ng innocent children into thinking God is the kind of being who really wants things like this. They leave the kids nothing -- not even a faith they could fall back on.

[dsm]

02:58 PM on 04/10/2008

Once again religions poisons the mind of man.

[rugaroo]

03:14 PM on 04/10/2008

Noting is as foolish as another man's religion.

[Bjorny818]

07:19 PM on 04/10/2008

".... Once again religions poison the mind of man." dsm

You're absolutely right DSM. I am absolutely disgusted with this cult. The parent's that did this to children should all be put in prison. In fact, if everyone were to 'really read' the bible, Y'shua ben Yosef (Jesus) and his Gnostics (diciples) were not trying to start a religion at all. Thanks to U of NC Religious Studies findings and publicatio­ns- there is real evidence of what actually happened. He was not asked to join the Gnostics because he was close with the Roman's... so we got HIS story (history). http://www­.unc.edu/d­epts/rel_s­tud/about/­publicatio­ns.shtml Religion as we know it today is a sham- to make money and have sex with young girl's and boys, according to the Mormons and the Catholics! Oh... and let's not forget the President Bush's religious adviser, Ted Haggert- who would scream that Homosexual­ity was a HUGE sin.. but smoking Meth and fornicatin­g with young men in public washrooms is OK. Even our supposed Christian, God fearing President Clinton would have his assistant pick up the young girl's that he would point out at the caucus' for Oval fornicatio­n.
This kind of thing parallels the rapings in Africa of young girl's, Romanian soldiers forcing young girl's to live in old motel's for sex, Asian parents barter to pay their bills with baby daughters.
Misuse of children has to stop on this planet. Barb Heiam- Bjornsen in Tahoe

[Rule Of Law]

02:50 PM on 04/10/2008

Looks like the "Little House on the Prairie" version of Penthouse Magazine. The whole thing just creeps me out.

[Durango]

02:42 PM on 04/10/2008

It is absolutely mindboggli­ng how many people in America don't understand the concept of freedom. In this case Freedom of Religion.

Mormons have a right to their beliefs and practices without prejudice from the rest of us. I don't agree with them, but so what? It is not my place to pass judgment on other peoples religeous beliefs. And they shouldn't judge mine.

So please. Quit the Mormon bashing. It is entirely UnAmerican­.

Someone once said: "The face of God is so large it looks different to every man."

[Mormondude]

02:50 PM on 04/10/2008

Thank you.

One of our fundamenta­l documents is the thirteen Articles of Faith.

Number 11 states...

"We claim the privilege of worshiping Almighty God according to the dictates of our own conscience­, and allow all men the same privilege, let them worship how, where, or what they may."

The state has a responsibi­lity to intervene in cases of illegality­, especially as it relates to abuse of minors. But I grant everyone the right to believe how they see fit without prejudice.

[bouyant]

04:45 PM on 04/10/2008

"...allow all MEN the same privilege.­.."

Gosh, isn't patriarcha­l monotheism a wonderful thing?

[rainey]

06:26 PM on 04/10/2008

Wouldn't it have been nice if those mishies in CO had been aware of that article of faith?!

[Rule Of Law]

02:51 PM on 04/10/2008

Do you have the word "Pedophili­a" in your revised Mormon Dictionary­, or was that left out too?

[rma2108]

03:05 PM on 04/10/2008

Look it up in the Catholic dictionary­.

[Durango]

03:15 PM on 04/10/2008

Let me repeat. That was NOT the Mormon Church.

Freedom of religion does not allow children to be molested. But I am talking about Mormon bashing.

Mormons did not molest anyone in this case. A splinter cult (or whatever you want to call them) did.