ElDorado, USA — A 50-year-old man sought for arrest on a sexual abuse complaint that Texas authorities said had led them to raid a polygamist compound here is not in hiding but living in Arizona with three women and their 22 children and disavows any role in the case, his probation officer said Monday.
The officer, Bill Loader of the Mojave County Probation Department in Arizona, is in daily contact with the man, Dale Barlow, a plumber and carpenter who lives in Colorado City, Ariz., he said. Mr. Loader said he found Mr. Barlow’s denials credible and knew of no efforts by Texas authorities to seek his extradition.
A spokeswoman for the Texas Department of Public Safety, Tela Mange, said Monday at a briefing in San Angelo that the department had received reports that Mr. Barlow “may be outside of the state of Texas, but we have not been able to independently confirm that.”
The only arrest in the case was that of a man detained Sunday or Monday on misdemeanor charges of interfering with police operations, Ms. Mange said.
Mr. Barlow, on probation for fathering a child with an under-age girl, now one of three women he calls his wives, did not respond to numerous messages left on his home voice mail. “He doesn’t trust the outside world,” Mr. Loader said.
The conflicting accounts raised further questions about the basis of the large-scale law enforcement crackdown on the secretive compound, the Yearning for Zion Ranch of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, a breakaway sect not recognized by the Mormon Church.
Even as Texas authorities removed more children from the ranch on Monday, for a total of 401 so far, Ms. Mange said they had not identified the girl at the center of the abuse accusations. She described her as a 16-year-old whose telephoned accounts of her treatment set off the raid, which began Thursday afternoon. In two telephone calls last week, Texas authorities said, the girl reported that, in violation of Texas law, she had married Mr. Barlow and had a child with him.
An arrest warrant for a man identified as Dale Barlow named the 16-year-old girl and said she had a daughter about 8 months old. The warrant authorized officials to look for any documents and photographs relating to Mr. Barlow and the girl, as well as all computer records at the ranch.
A date of birth given for the suspect was the same as that for the Dale Barlow who lives in Colorado City. The warrant was first obtained by The San Angelo Standard-Times.
On Monday, investigators spent a fifth day searching the 1,691-acre West Texas compound and announced that a judge had now approved the removal of 401 children for possible foster placement, pending court hearings, because of suspected abuse or neglect.
Texas law officers and caseworkers with Child Protective Services are nearly finished but continue to search for any remaining children at the ranch, said an agency spokeswoman, Marleigh Meisner. Ms. Meisner said 133 women who chose to leave the compound to accompany the children to caseworker interviews at shelters were are cooperating with investigators but were free to leave.
The failure to locate the 16-year-old girl has been troubling, officials acknowledge.
“We’re always concerned every time we have a victim and we can’t find that victim,” Ms. Meisner said. But she said, “I am confident that this girl does indeed exist, and I am confident that the allegations that she brought forth are accurate.”
“Many of them have the very same name,” Ms. Meisner added. “The information has been sketchy. We have had somewhat cooperation from them at the ranch, but the situation at times has been tense.”
Mr. Loader, the probation officer, said Mr. Barlow visited his office last week to report that he was being sought in the Texas case and to protest that he did not know the girl named and had not been in Texas since 1977. He pleaded guilty to the sex charge in Arizona in April 2007, served 45 days in jail and as part of his probation had to seek permission to leave the state, Mr. Loader said.
“He has abided by conditions of probation to the letter of the law,” Mr. Loader said. “As far as his performance we know of, it’s been exemplary.”
He said Mr. Barlow was living with his first wife and two other women —including the 16-year-old, now 25, with whom he was convicted of engaging in sex — and their 22 children, “and reports in daily by phone and once a week in person.”
Warren Jeffs, the leader of the polygamist group, was sentenced last November in Utah to 10 years to life in prison for forcing a 14-year-old girl to marry her 19-year-old cousin and to submit to sexual relations against her will. Mr. Jeffs is in jail in Arizona awaiting trial on separate rape charges involving the arranged marriages of two teenage girls to older relatives.