DAILY MAIL: Children rescued from a polygamist sect had their first taste of the outside world yesterday, as details emerged of the life they had endured on the Yearning for Zion ranch.
Many of the teenage girls were pregnant and some already had babies. Few of the 416 youngsters brought out of the sect in the Texas desert knew their full names, their birth dates or could even identify their own mothers.
Some had been beaten so badly they suffered broken bones and younger girls, some as young as 12 and 13, had been expected to have sex with much older men.
Ominously, a disproportionate number of the children, ranging in age from toddlers to 17-year-olds, had the surname Jeffs, as in Warren Jeffs, the leader and self-styled prophet of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, rumoured to have more than 80 wives and 250 children.
But yesterday, as the youngsters played with donated toys, social workers claimed the shadow of fear was finally lifting for the children of the Yearning for Zion Ranch.
A sinister picture of systematic underage sexual abuse and violence was emerging for the first time from interviews with the children and some of the 140 mothers with them following a police raid on the isolated compound in Eldorado, Texas. Inside the Weird World and the Palatial Churches of the Mormon Polygamist Sect By David Gardner | April 9, 2008
DAILY MAIL:
Hundreds of Women and Children in 19th Century Clothing Flee from Mormon 'Polygamy' Ranch of Dark Secrets By David Gardner | April 9, 2008
SYDNEY MORNING HERALD:
Young Girls in Sect Forced to Have Sex in Temple
The Dawning of a New Dark Age (Paperback)
The Dawning of a New Dark Age (Hardback)
