The cry for help came late at night and it came in a whisper.

Speaking in a low voice so not to be overheard, the 16-year-old girl— mother of an eight-month-old baby and pregnant with a second child— sketched out chilling tales. She spoke of teenage girls, some as young as 13, being forced to have sex with older men for the purpose of bearing their children. She said she was the seventh “spiritual” wife of a 49-year-old man. She described beatings by him as so vicious that one time several of her ribs had been broken.

The March 29 phone call, and one the next day from the compound run by an insular and secretive splinter sect of the Mormon Church, prompted raids by authorities; they took 416 children into protective custody, the largest child removal in Texas history. The children, mostly girls, ranged in age from infants to 17. Several have babies or are pregnant.

The girl’s harrowing tale and the subsequent investigation provided for the first time a glimpse of life inside the compound. It was an existence so removed from mainstream society that many female inhabitants did not know how to spell their last name and many children could not state their birth date.The ranch was built outside of tiny West Texas town of Eldorado in 2004. It was just a few years after allegations against the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, as the sect is known, of child abuse, forced marriage and fraud in Utah and Arizona.

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