Final tally: 416 children removed

Legalities: Details come out in disturbing affidavit

SAN ANGELO, Texas — Light rain fell across this Texas town this morning, keeping most of the FLDS children seized by the state indoors.

Some children ran around in circles, playing and chasing each other with a ball and a jump rope, while a few mothers watched at their temporary makeshift shelter home at the historic Fort Concho.

Across town, no one appeared to venture into the parking lot outside the second shelter at the "Cattle Arena" annex of the San Angelo Coliseum. A group of 170 children and women were taken there Tuesday.

A team of a dozen attorneys for the FLDS Church has been preparing for a court hearing this afternoon, when they will "tell our side of the story," attorney Patrick Peranteau told the Deseret Morning News.

The hearing will be held before Schleicher County 51st District Judge Barbara Walther, who issued the search warrants authorizing Texas officials to gather evidence and remove all 416 children from the YFZ Ranch where they lived and place them into state custody. The judge is expected to hear arguments about the constitutionality of the warrants and possible requests to return certain seized evidence, Peranteau said.

A hearing to determine custody of the children won't be held until April 17.

Law enforcement officers remained at the ranch today in Eldorardo, 45 miles from here, gathering more evidence. That search is expected to wrap up soon.

Now that the search for children living at the remote polygamous ranch is over, other legal issues begin.

Texas child welfare officials say they've taken temporary legal custody of the children in order to protect them.

"We believe all of the children have now been safely removed from the ranch," said Marleigh Meisner, spokeswoman for the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services, Tuesday. "We believe every child at that ranch, if they were not abused or neglected, they were certainly at risk."

Details about the 16-year-old girl — whose phone call prompted officials to raid the 1,700-acre YFZ Ranch and remove all the children — were explained in a disturbing court affidavit released Tuesday afternoon.

The teenage girl living at the secluded ranch called a local family violence shelter March 29 to report that she was being abused by a man to whom she had been "spiritually married."

The girl, who said she was several weeks pregnant and the mother of an 8-month-old infant, requested assistance leaving the ranch, which is owned by the Fundamentalist LDS Church. The affidavit states that the girl called several times that day, expressing the "need to leave her current living situation." During the phone calls, the girl told shelter workers she was using someone else's cell phone and spoke quietly so she would not be overheard and "get in trouble," the affidavit states.

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