Children of polygamist clan big challenge for foster care

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They dress like characters from the days of Laura Ingalls Wilder, their old-fashioned clothing covering them from neck to ankle. They've never eaten processed food or watched television. They've been trained to fear and mistrust outsiders.

They've also been conditioned to believe it's normal for men to have multiple wives and for a young girl to marry a much older man as soon as she reaches puberty.

It would have been difficult to find foster homes for even a dozen such children. Now caseworkers with Texas Child Protective Services (CPS) must place 416 girls and boys removed by authorities last week from the YFZ Ranch in Eldorado, Texas, the polygamist compound run by the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

"This has never been done before on this scale," said Rowena Erickson, co-founder of Tapestry Against Polygamy in Salt Lake City.

Texas law enforcers met yesterday in Utah with the man accused of abusing the 16-year-old girl whose call for help triggered a raid on the compound, the Associated Press reported.

Dale Barlow, 50, of Colorado City, Ariz., has denied allegations of physical and sexual assault made in a whispered March 29 telephone call to a Texas domestic violence hot line.

Mrs. Erickson applauded Texas officials for removing the children from the compound but warned that caseworkers would be wading into uncharted waters as they try to place hundreds of children into an alien culture.

"They're going to be so fearful of the people, the technology," said Mrs. Erickson, who was born into a polygamist clan in Utah and married at 16.

"Some of them didn't even know what Crayolas were. But you know what? You have to start somewhere," she said.

The only case that comes close is the Branch Davidians one in Waco, Texas, where 21 children were placed in homes after their parents were killed in a fire that engulfed their religious compound in 1993 after a 51-day standoff with the FBI.