Reader comments
Search warrants challenged

Actually it wasn't 19 homes it was about 89 homes based on the number of mothers and the fact that those 19 buildings were duplexed. Hopefully the FLDS lawyers will point out the correlation between the definition of household already defined by Walther as a mother and her children in their apartment in the civil case and the criminal case. Not one of those mothers was presented a search warrant to enter their living space, and I hope that unwarranted intrusion is addressed.

You can't base the number of 'homes' on the number of mothers. They're polygamists so often many women (and their children) share the same living areas.

Have you seen the videos from inside YFZ? Picture long hallways with rows of doors on each side and lots of bunk beds - up to eight beds in a single room. It looked like a barracks or dormitory, and the 'living room' looked like an ER waiting room.

In any case, YFZ is one single property, with a single mailing address, owned and controlled by one man. The people who were chosen to stay there were reminded that they could be told to leave at a moment's notice and should keep their bags packed in the closet. It's one giant household, no matter how many people were crammed into the buildings.

These lawyers would be remiss if they didn't protest everything about the case.

From what I understand, the rangers did not know that the girl was not present. They did gather all of the girls that were about her age and they noticed that many were victims of statutory rape because they were married to older men and they had children.

The large number of obvious victims warranted the search warrants of the ranch. There were 12 current crime victims who came from 12 homes and ended up at 12 other homes. There were other female crime victims who had since reached adulthood. It was unclear where on the ranch, the girls resided and the rapes occurred. There were even beds in the temple. Wives and children were removed from husbands and fathers and reassigned to other males. Children were allegedly being shuffled through the buildings. The accounts of which children belonged to which adults were inconsistent because if two children had two different mothers and one father, that was an indication of polygamy and the FLDS wanted to hide evidence of polygamy as was apparent through their television interviews.