Tex. Compound Was Considered A 'Holy Land'

Opening up these FLDS communities, authorities reasoned, would make it easier for the abuse of young girls to be discovered. But Utah Attorney General Mark L. Shurtleff and Arizona Attorney General Terry Goddard have said often that Jeffs's establishment of the ranch -- the FLDS bought the land in late 2003 and began constructing and populating the compound in 2004 -- was an attempt to escape the scrutiny the sect was getting in their states.

"It crossed our mind all the time . . . when they first moved to Texas . . . that some of the abusive practices that we were trying to quell and get witnesses to testify to in Arizona" might be practiced in Texas, Goddard said.

Jeffs is awaiting trial in Arizona on sex charges involving minors.

The mass action in Texas was reminiscent of the 1953 raid by Arizona police and the National Guard at Short Creek, now Colorado City, over similar child-abuse allegations. That event led to almost half a century of tense alienation of the FLDS and other polygamous communities from Utah and Arizona authorities.

While they are not critical of Texas authorities for moving on the girl's allegations, both Goddard and Shurtleff say they fear a setback in their efforts to gain the confidence of polygamist groups.

"We do fear that this raid is going to have an impact on those relationships," said Shurtleff's spokesman, Paul Murphy. "The polygamists I've talked to have been very traumatized by the raid, and it's causing them to rethink whether they want to talk to us. We know it's created a tremendous amount of fear."

The director of a pro-polygamy group called Principle Voices, based in Salt Lake City, agreed. Mary Batchelor, who said she considers herself an independent fundamentalist Mormon, has worked closely with Utah and Arizona authorities and nonprofit organizations in what is called the Safety Network. The cross-border effort is aimed at educating polygamous groups on what constitutes child and sexual abuse and domestic violence, and how to prevent and report those crimes.

"We've made a lot of headway with other groups who pledged to marry as adults and who took public pledges to discourage underage marriages," Batchelor said. "The FLDS was the only group that was not willing to agree to that."

She lauded the efforts of Utah and Arizona to focus not so much on the issue of polygamy but on crimes against minors, and she said she does not condone underage marriage among fundamentalist Mormons. But she predicted that the Texas raid will have a detrimental effect in that community.

"Our biggest fear was that we would have another raid," Batchelor said. "Our hope and all our work we've done was to avoid that. Now there is hurt and dismay."