Sect members say they live 'normal' life on remote, polygamous church ranch in West Texas

Members of the embattled polygamist sect said life was relatively normal on their West Texas ranch at the center of one of the United States' largest child-custody cases.

The Yearning for Zion ranch is owned by the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints that state authorities raided two weeks ago in search of a 16-year-old girl who claimed her husband beat and raped her.

Child welfare officials have removed all 416 children living there from the custody of their parents. The 16-year-old has yet to be found.

Members gave a few tours Wednesday to show their lives _ isolated from what they regard as a hostile and sinful outside world _ center on family and faith.

A gleaming, white limestone temple is the center of the 1,700-acre (688 hectares) ranch with large, log-style homes, a school, a dairy, a rock quarry and a community garden planted with vegetables, fruit trees and a grape arbor.

Set back some three miles (about 5 kilometers) from a state highway, the ranch sits behind two locked gates, which outsiders and excommunicated members suggest is a symbol of the control church elders have over the lives of the faithful.

No one who lives here calls it a compound.

"All of us say the ranch. It's the ranch. It's home," said Rozie, a 23-year-old married member of the sect. Members won't allow their last names to be used because they worry about the effect on their children in state custody.

Each family begins and ends the day with prayer, said Dan, 24, whose wife remains housed in the San Angelo Coliseum complex 45 miles (72 kilometers) to the north with their 4-year-old daughter and 2-year-old son.

"It is lifeless here without our kids around here" he said.

On Thursday, a custody hearing starts in the Tom Green County Courthouse to decide whether the children, who range in age from six months to 17 years, will be in permanent state custody. State officials alleged a pattern of abuse by adults, including marriages between young girls to older men.

Sect members deny children were abused.

"It's the furtherest thing away from what we do here," Dan said of the abuse allegations. "There's nothing that's more disliked and more trained against.

Under Texas law, the Child Protective Services, an attorney for each child and attorneys for the parents must be given a chance to weigh in on whether the children should remain in state custody.

Typically, each child also is given a separate hearing, but given the number of cases, it's likely the judge will have the state, the children's attorneys and the parents' attorneys make consolidated presentations, at least initially, said Harper Estes, the president-elect of the state bar.

"You can't go one-by-one," Estes said.

A parade of attorneys appointed to represent each child _ many volunteers recruited by the bar association _ met with the children being housed in shelters and filed notices with the court on Wednesday. A separate group of attorneys arrived at the compound in Eldorado to meet with their parents.

The children have been held in shelters, first in Eldorado and then in San Angelo since they were removed from the sprawling compound nearly two weeks ago. All but the youngest children are being cared for by state workers and child care providers.

The FLDS came to West Texas in 2003, relocating some members from the church's traditional home along the Utah-Arizona border.

The faith traces its religious roots to the early theology of the mainstream Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which now denounces polygamy and excommunicates members found practicing it.

___

Associated Press writer Michelle Roberts contributed to this report from San Angelo.