West Texas Ranch Raided a Decade Ago

SAN ANTONIO — It was ten years ago this week that a small army of state and federal law enforcement descended upon a sprawling West Texas ranch, making international headlines. The Yearning for Zion Ranch in Eldorado, at the time, was run by a breakaway sect of the Mormon church called the FLDS, which promoted polygamy and child brides. The sect’s spiritual leader, Warren Jeffs, was eventually sent to prison in East Texas for abusing little girls. One of his former wives, Flora Jessop, says a decade later, he’s still in charge. According to Jessop, “He’s the one doing the orders, he is still moving families around, he is still dictating lives, he is still destroying lives.” The only difference, she says, is that Jeffs is not mobile. He’s stuck in a prison cell at the Louis C. Powledge Unit near Palestine. Meanwhile, that ranch is still up for sale.

Jeffs has engaged in lengthy hunger strikes, which his doctors and attorneys have claimed were for spiritual reasons. In August 2009, Superior Court Judge Steve Conn ordered that Jeffs be force fed. Thereafter, Jeffs was fed through a stomach feeding tube. In August, 2011, Jeffs was taken to East Texas Medical Center in Tyler, and hospitalized in critical condition under a medically induced coma after excessive fasting. He was later flown to the Texas prison hospital at Galveston.