Colorado Springs, USA - Texas authorities say they're still investigating a Colorado woman in connection with hoax phone calls that triggered a raid on a polygamous sect's ranch, contradicting statements made by the woman's lawyer.
David Foley, attorney for Rozita Swinton, said Wednesday Texas authorities don't believe his client had any "criminal involvement" in telephone calls to a domestic violence hotline that triggered a raid on the Yearning For Zion Ranch in Eldorado, Texas, in April 2008. Foley said Swinton won't face charges in that case.
"It's a big difference between a criminal activity and making phone calls. I can't say whether she made any calls," Foley said outside of court.
Jerry Strickland, a spokesman for the Texas Attorney General's Office, said in an e-mail to The Salt Lake Tribune that the state's "inquiry into Rozita Swinton and other aspects of this case is ongoing."
Authorities acknowledged more than a year after the raid on the ranch that the hot line calls were traced to Swinton and were fake. The ranch is home to members of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.
FLDS spokesman Willie Jessop said Texas is purposefully avoiding prosecuting Swinton.
"They knew full well there were credibility problems [with the calls] long before they executed the raid on the FLDS," he said Wednesday. "They absolutely were not going to let the truth get in the way of their agenda."
Texas has charged 12 FLDS men with crimes related to marriages to underage girls based on evidence found at the ranch. So far, two have been convicted and a third will stand trial later this month.
Swinton, 35, pleaded guilty in Colorado Springs Wednesday in an unrelated case of misdemeanor false reporting based on calls she made in February 2008 to an emergency line in Colorado Springs. In the calls Swinton claimed she was teenager trapped in a basement.
The judge gave her a deferred sentence, which means that if she follows court restrictions, the conviction will be erased. The sentence requires her to get medical treatment for an unspecified condition. Foley has said she has multiple personality disorder.
Swinton was also sentenced to 45 days in jail but was given credit for time served, so she faces no further jail time.
The judge limited her to one landline telephone and one cell phone and ordered her to give both numbers to the district attorney's office.
Officials have said Swinton has a history of multiple personality disorder and false reports to law enforcement. In the calls, she posed as a teenager who was being abused by relatives or other associates. Swinton used at least nine different identities in the calls; they included "Dana," who said she had been abused by a pastor and "April," who claimed she was being sexually abused by her father and an uncle.
Authorities said Swinton claimed in calls to the NewBridge Family Shelter in San Angelo, Texas, in late March 2008 that she was a 16-year-old plural wife named "Sarah Jessop Barlow" who had an 8-month-old baby and was pregnant again. She said she was being abused by her 49-year-old husband, whom she named only after being prompted by a shelter worker during one call.
The calls led Texas authorities to launch the largest child welfare investigation in U.S. history on April 3, 2008, at the Texas ranch, home to FLDS members. The state took 439 children into custody and kept them for two months before a court order sent them home.
Authorities never found the girl who allegedly made the calls, now considered a hoax, and the man alleged to have abused her was in Utah, not Texas.