YFZ Ranch
The Yearning for Zion Ranch, or the YFZ Ranch, was a Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints cult community of as many as 700 people, located near Eldorado in Schleicher County, Texas, United States. In April 2014, the State of Texas took physical and legal possession of the property. As of 2019, the property was in the process of being sold to the Dallas-based firm ETG Properties LLC, who were already leasing it for use as a military and law enforcement training facility.
Background
The YFZ Ranch was situated southwest of San Angelo and northeast of Eldorado. The Ranch was settled by members of the FLDS Church who left Hildale, Utah and Colorado City, Arizona under increasing scrutiny from the media, anti-polygamy activists and law enforcement officials.Creation of property
Speaking in Sunday church services on August 10, 2003, Warren Jeffs declared that the blessings of the priesthood had been removed from the community of Short Creek. Following the sermon, Jeffs suspended all further religious meetings but continued to allow his followers to pay their tithes and offerings to him. He then turned his focus to what he called "lands of refuge": secret communities that he had started to build up. Jeffs referred to Yearning for Zion Ranch, one of the lands of refuge, by the code name R17.Image:FLDS 4323.jpg|thumb|right|300px|Aerial view of the FLDS ranch
The YFZ Land LLC, through its president, David S. Allred, purchased the ranch in 2003 for $700,000 and quickly began development on the property. When he purchased the property, he declared that the buildings would be a corporate hunting retreat. Allred stuck with the deceptive story even after William Benjamin Johnson, a Hildale man, was alleged to be shooting all the white-tail deer on the ranch and, after an investigation, was fined for hunting without a license. Later, ranch officials disclosed that the hunting retreat description was inaccurate; the buildings were part of the FLDS Church's residential area.
The ranch was home to approximately 500 people who relocated from Arizona and Utah communities. It housed a temple, a waste treatment facility, a house for FLDS Church president Warren Jeffs, a meeting house, and several large log and concrete homes. There were generators, gardens, a grain silo, and a large stone quarry that was cut for the temple. According to preliminary tax assessments, about $3 million worth of buildings had been built. The sect was fined over $34,000 for environmental violations in connection with buildings on the ranch, mainly due to its failure to obtain the required permits for its concrete-mixing operations.
The temple foundation was dedicated January 1, 2005, by Jeffs.
April 2008 raid
On March 29, 2008, a local domestic violence shelter hotline took a call from a woman, identifying herself as "Sarah", and claiming to be a 16-year-old victim of physical and sexual abuse at the church's YFZ Ranch. Investigators eventually established by tracing the calls that they were placed by a much older woman, Rozita Swinton, who had been arrested for previous hoax calls posing as abused and victimized girls. The call triggered a large-scale operation at YFZ Ranch by Texas law enforcement and child welfare officials, beginning with cordoning off of the ranch on April 3. SWAT teams, tactical vehicles, and police helicopters were deployed to the ranch in anticipation of armed resistance from the church members, but there was none. Authorities believed the children "had been abused or were at immediate risk of future abuse", a state spokesman said. Troopers and child welfare officials searched the ranch, including the temple's safes, vaults, locked desk drawers, and beds. They found evidence leading them to believe that the beds were "in a part of the temple where 'males over the age of 17 engage in sexual activity' with underage girls". A religious scholar later testified in court that he did not think sexual activity occurs in the temples of FLDS sects, and that temple service "lasts a couple of hours, so all the temples will have a place where someone can lie down". Child Protective Services officials conceded that there was no evidence that the youngest children were abused, and evidence later presented in a custody hearing suggested that teenage boys were not physically or sexually abused.CPS spokesman Darrell Azar stated, "There was a systematic process going on to groom these young girls to become brides", and that the children could not be protected from possible future abuse on the ranch. Interviews with the children "revealed that several underage girls were forced into 'spiritual marriage' with much older men as soon as they reached puberty and were then made pregnant". After Judge Barbara Walther of the 51st District Court issued an order authorizing officials to remove all children, including boys, 17 years old and under, from the ranch, eventually a total of 462 children went into the temporary custody of the State of Texas. The children were held by the Child Protective Services at Fort Concho and the Wells Fargo Pavilion in San Angelo. Over a hundred adult women chose to leave the ranch to accompany the children. Children under the age of four were allowed to stay with their mothers until DNA testing to identify family relations was finished; once DNA testing was completed, only children under 18 months were allowed to stay with their mothers indefinitely.
A former member of the FLDS Church, Carolyn Jessop, arrived on-site April 6 in hopes of reuniting two of her daughters with their half siblings. She stated that the actions in Texas were unlike the 1953 Short Creek raid in Arizona. Jessop had been in Texas the prior month at a speaking engagement, where she said, "n Eldorado, the crimes went to a whole new level. They thought they could get away with more" but "Texas is not going to be a state that's as tolerant of these crimes as Arizona and Utah have been." By April 8, authorities had removed as many as 533 women and children from the ranch. On April 10, law enforcement completed their search of the ranch, returning control of the property to the FLDS Church.
Mandamus of Judge Walther
Represented by Texas RioGrande Legal Aid, mothers of the removed children sought a writ of mandamus against Judge Walther for her rulings because parents in Texas cannot simply appeal an emergency removal. Mandamus is available only when it is abundantly clear a state official abused his or her power.On May 22, 2008, an appeals court issued a writ of mandamus to Judge Walther and found that there was not enough evidence at the original hearing that the children were in immediate danger to justify keeping them in state custody. The court added that Judge Walther had abused her discretion by keeping the children in state care. The court ruled, "The department did not present any evidence of danger to the physical health and safety of any male children or any female children who had not reached puberty." The children were to be returned to their families in 10 days. CPS announced they would seek to overturn the decision. On May 29, the Texas Supreme Court declined to issue a mandamus to the Appeals Court, with a result that CPS was required to return all of the children. The court stated, "On the record before us, removal of the children was not warranted." The court also noted that although the children must be returned, "it need not do so without granting other appropriate relief to protect the children".
On May 12–15, 2009, a hearing was held in Tom Green County, Texas, regarding the constitutionality and legality of search warrants executed in April 2008 on the YFZ Ranch in Schleicher County, Texas. On October 2, 2009, Judge Barbara Walther issued a ruling denying a defense motion to suppress the evidence seized from the YFZ Ranch, stating:
On November 10, 2009, Raymond Jessop was sentenced to 10 years in prison and fined $8,000 for sexually assaulting a 16-year-old girl on or about November 19, 2004. On December 18, 2009, Allan Keate was sentenced to 33 years in prison. He fathered a child with a 15-year-old girl.
On January 22, 2010, Michael George Emack pleaded no contest to sexual assault charges and was sentenced to seven years in prison. He married a 16-year-old girl at YFZ Ranch on August 5, 2004. She gave birth to a son less than a year later. On April 14, 2010, Emack also pleaded no contest on a bigamy charge and received a seven-year sentence that will run concurrently with the sentence he received for sexually assaulting a 16-year-old girl.
On February 5, 2010, Arizona Judge Steven F. Conn approved a stipulation from the previous day between Mohave County prosecutor Matt Smith and Warren Jeffs' defense attorney, Michael Piccarreta, that evidence seized from the YFZ Ranch in Texas would not be used in any manner in Warren Jeffs' two criminal trials in Arizona. Based on the agreement of the attorneys, Judge Conn issued an order adopting the stipulation. A Utah court found Jeffs guilty of two counts of rape as an accomplice in September 2007. He was sentenced to imprisonment for 10 years to life but while serving this sentence at the Utah State Prison, Jeffs' conviction was reversed by Utah's Supreme Court on July 27, 2010, because of a flaw in the jury instructions. Jeffs was extradited to Texas, to face trial on charges facing him there. The Texas jury found him guilty of sexual assault and aggravated sexual assault of children. He was sentenced to life in prison plus twenty years, to be served consecutively, and a $10,000 fine, for sexual assault of both 12 and 15-year-old girls.
On March 19, 2010, Merril Leroy Jessop was sentenced to 75 years in prison for one count of sexual assault of a child. Jessop was convicted of illegally marrying and then fathering a child with a 15-year-old female.
On April 15, 2010, Lehi Barlow Jeffs pleaded no contest to bigamy and sexual assault of a child, avoiding a trial that had been set for April 26. He was sentenced to eight years in prison.
On June 22, 2010, Abram Harker Jeffs was found guilty of sexual assault of a child.
On August 9, 2011, leader Warren Steed Jeffs was found guilty of one count of aggravated sexual assault of a child and one count of sexual assault of a child and sentenced to life in prison plus 20 years to be served consecutively.