In an unprecedented display of public emotion and openness, the women spoke in small groups or individually with reporters, who took pictures and video. FLDS men, both young and old, watched the event unfold, listening as the women described how their children were taken from them.

Phyllis, a grandmother of some of the children, said she was horrified at what was happening. None of the women were allowed to ask questions when the authorities told them they were being separated to receive some "important information."

"I could never have dreamed this," she said, adding she has a daughter with a 2-month-old child now at the coliseum.

Another woman, 21-year-old Vilate, said she had a sick feeling that the authorities would "do something" when they began to load them into the buses.

"Everyone was telling us we'd all be together today. How could somebody do that?" she asked. "Who is going to be holding the little 3-year-old boy I was caring for? They would just tell you one thing and then do another."

Many of the women spoke of meeting a few people over the past 10 days who were kind to those being held by the state.

"But it seemed like as soon as we found someone we liked and who we could talk to, someone who was kind and sympathetic, they reassigned that person," said Vilate, whose dark eyes clouded as she spoke. "We need help so bad."

Esther, 32, said she tried to stay with her children even as the authorities told her if she didn't leave she would be arrested.

"They told the children, 'Come, come play with us,' and the children said, 'No, I want to go with mother,"' said Esther, who has two girls, 6 and 8, now in state custody. "The children are all crying now. I told my daughter earlier, when they were putting us in different rooms, to be brave and to keep praying."

Nancy said authorities have told her 22-year-old daughter that she can't possibly be that old, that she is lying.

"We are American citizens. We are legal, law-abiding and a peaceful people. We have tried to cooperate the best we could, and we were promised we would get our children back," she said. "We have literally been terrorized."

Another mother, Monica, said Texas authorities pursued the children after receiving an unsubstantiated allegation that an underage mother was pregnant and trying to escape the YFZ Ranch. The girl has not been found.

"Now they are trying to get another girl to confess that she is the girl they are looking for. That girl doesn't exist," said Monica, who earlier was barred from seeing her children because she wasn't at the ranch the day the state raided it.