Life on polygamist compound at once old-fashioned, modern

ElDorado, USA - As the buses swept children down a two-lane country highway and into another world, mothers calmed their young by singing a hymn of struggle and deliverance:



In the spirit of prayer! In the spirit of prayer!

That calls me from a world of care,

and bids me at my Father’s throne

make all my wants and wishes known.



As child-welfare workers removed the last of 416 children living at a West Texas polygamist compound Tuesday, the story of the four-day search and rescue operation unfolded.

It provides an unprecedented look at life – at once old-fashioned and modern – on the sprawling, isolated ranch that has drawn intense speculation since it was founded by a breakaway Mormon sect four years ago.

As told through court documents and interviews, the compound’s possible undoing began with a 16-year-old girl’s hushed phone call on a borrowed cellphone.

She had been forced to marry a 49-year-old man, she told a domestic violence shelter. She was wife No. 7. She’d had his baby and believed she was pregnant with another.

In a frightened tone, the girl, whom investigators still haven’t found, described repeated physical abuse at the hands of her husband – from rape to choking and beatings. The other wives would hold her infant, she said, while Dale Barlow attacked her.

On Thursday night and Friday morning, Child Protective Services caseworkers, state troopers and volunteer bus drivers arrived at the compound not knowing what to expect. Some were warned they might meet armed resistance, one participant in the operation told The Dallas Morning News. The participant, who spent parts of two days inside the compound, spoke on condition of anonymity because of the ongoing investigation.

Law enforcement officials had been asking for access to the compound for days and eventually had to use wire cutters to enter, search warrants in hand.

“We have felt like we’ve known what was going on out there,” the participant said. “Our assumptions have turned out to be true.

“When a 17-year-old girl has two children, you can do the math.”

Attorneys for the religious group did not return phone calls, but they said in court filings that the search is unconstitutional. Texas authorities have issued an arrest warrant for Mr. Barlow, but he has yet to be apprehended.

Most of those who took part in the search had never been near the compound, but they had heard well-documented rumors about what went on there, in part based on the sect’s activities in Utah and Arizona.

Inside, they found two worlds. One was of deep social conservatism – young girls in long, pastel prairie dresses, parents stressing discipline and obedience and good manners.

At the same time, children were locked in closets and deprived of food, and girls as young as 13 were forced into sexual relationships, investigators allege in court documents obtained Tuesday.

The other world was economically and technologically advanced, a nearly self-sufficient community with a doctor’s office, cheese factory and cement plant.

Manicured lawns surrounded enormous log-cabin-style multifamily homes, participants said. The group’s white temple loomed like a medieval fortress.

Homes were topped with antennas, linked to running water, a sewage system and electricity. Men carried cellphones and cameras, snapping pictures of the agents in their midst.

“They have built a community out there that has no equal,” said Eldorado Mayor John Nikolauk, who has visited the compound on city business. “Everything is brand new and kept that way.”

Over the weekend, the buses moved from home to home searching for kids. When a bus pulled up, women and children would emerge carrying bedding and toiletries and would solemnly board.

Few of the older men on the compound said farewells, the individual who participated in the removal said. Instead, there were mostly young men around, dressed in blue jeans, blue shirts and work boots. One kissed a woman goodbye as she boarded the bus with her children, the participant said.

None of the children were unattended, he said. Mothers went with them voluntarily.

Two of the adult men on the compound have been arrested, one for tampering with evidence and the other for obstructing law enforcement. But initial fears of violence were never realized.

“Part of the reason this didn’t turn out bad like Waco is because of the interaction they’ve had with the city and the sheriff’s office,” Mr. Nikolauk said of the sect’s members.

By Monday, hundreds of children – from infants to teenage mothers – had been bused from the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints compound to San Angelo, housed inside an old Army-fort-turned-museum.

On Tuesday, CPS officials finished their search of the compound as the criminal investigation continued. From a helicopter, mobile homes for law enforcement were visible on the site. The only sign that children had lived there were small wagons and tricycles.

But still unaccounted for was the 16-year-old who made the initial complaint, now perhaps too afraid to speak out.

At the ranch, she was being held against her will, she said in that first phone call, according to court documents. Sect members warned her that if she left the ranch, outsiders would “hurt her, force her to cut her hair, to wear makeup and clothes and to have sex with lots of men.”

Before hanging up, she said that she was “happy and fine” and that what she had told them should be forgotten.

Instead, her words have triggered a child-welfare operation like Texas has never seen.

On the buses over the weekend, there was no rejoicing. Many of the mothers – some of them young teens – showed little outward emotion as they moved into an unsettled future.

But they sang:

In seasons of distress and grief,

my soul has often found relief,

and oft escaped the tempter’s snare

by thy return, sweet spirit of prayer!