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416 children removed from polygamist ranch


Dozens of children removed from polygamist ranch Story Highlights
NEW: 18 girls in protective custody; 52 children removed from FLDS compound

NEW: Authorities served search, arrest warrants to members of polygamist sect

Ranch home to hundreds of followers of Warren Jeffs

Jeffs in Arizona jail awaiting trial; sentenced to 10 years in prison last year



ELDORADO, Texas (CNN) -- Authorities say they removed 52 children, ages 6 months to 17 years, from a West Texas ranch occupied by followers of imprisoned polygamist sect leader Warren Jeffs.

1 of 3 Eighteen girls have been placed in the temporary custody of the state under a court order, said Child Protective Services spokeswoman Marleigh Meisner.

Authorities said they continue to search the 1,900-acre YFZ ranch, and at least one suspect is being sought by police.

Meisner said troopers and child welfare officials arrived at the secluded ranch Thursday evening with arrest and search warrants. They were responding to a report of "physical abuse" and neglect involving a 16-year-old girl. At this point in the investigation, she added, the abuse does not appear to be sexual. Watch an Eldorado neighbor talk about the raid »

Another Child Protective Services spokesman, Darrell Azar, said the 18 girls were placed in state custody because it appeared that they "had been abused or were at immediate risk of future abuse."

Law enforcement and child welfare officials were at the ranch all night Thursday and throughout Friday. Meisner said the search was expected to continue into the night.

No arrests had been made by early Friday evening, a Texas Department of Public Safety spokesman said in a recorded message.

The children were taken in two borrowed church buses from the ranch to a civic center near Eldorado.

The people living at the ranch are cooperating, authorities said.

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Jeffs' Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (FLDS) bought the land near Eldorado four years ago and built the ranch, which they call the YFZ Ranch. The letters are said to refer to the words Yearning for Zion.

It is home to as many as 400 members who relocated from their Arizona and Utah compounds.

Jeffs, the 52-year-old leader and "prophet" of the 10,000-member church, was convicted in Utah last year and sentenced to 10 years on two counts of being an accomplice to rape, charges related to a marriage he performed in 2001. He faces trial in Arizona on eight charges of sexual conduct with a minor, incest and conspiracy.

State and local law enforcement agencies set up roadblocks around the ranch Thursday evening, preventing journalists from seeing what was happening on the property, according to Randy Mankin, editor of the Eldorado Success weekly newspaper.

"This came totally out of the blue," Mankin said.

There were no indications of violence around the ranch, he said.

When CNN crews have visited the ranch, it was guarded by armed men equipped with night vision gear and other high-tech surveillance tools to prevent intruders.

When CNN flew over the ranch in a small plane last year, the crew saw a massive temple, the three-story housing units where Jeffs' chosen followers live, the water tower, the school and community center, the dairy and cheese factory and a massive concrete mill.

The FLDS church openly practices polygamy in two towns straddling the Arizona-Utah state line -- Hildale, Utah, and Colorado City, Arizona -- but members living on their Texas ranch rarely venture into Eldorado, four miles to the south.

Critics of the sect say that it arranges marriages for girls as young as 13 and that competition for brides may be reduced through exiling young men. If male followers are excommunicated, the critics claim, their wives and children can be reassigned to someone else

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