Images show police armed for polygamist raid

Officials have yet to identify the 16-year-old whose call for help to a Texas domestic violence hotline triggered the raid.

About three dozen of the women who returned to the Eldorado ranch spoke out Monday. They said in interviews that police surrounded them Monday and gave them a choice between returning home or relocating to a women's shelter.

"It just feels like someone is trying to hurt us," said Paula, 38, who like other members of the sect declined to give her full name. "I do not understand how they can do this when they don't have a for sure knowledge that anyone has abused these children."

The renegade Mormon sect is led by Warren Jeffs, who was sentenced to prison in Utah for forcing underage girls into polygamous marriages and is awaiting trial in Arizona on similar charges.

Government contracts
A company founded and run by members of the church received more than $1.1 million in government contracts between 2003-2007, a federal online database shows. Most of that money was spent by the Department of Defense on aircraft wheel and brake parts.

NewEra Manufacturing's president and CEO is John Wayman, a sect member who runs the Las Vegas business. NewEra was previously known as Western Precision Inc. and based in Hildale, Utah, where thousands of church members live.

In a 2005 affidavit filed with a Utah lawsuit, former church member and Western Precision worker John Nielsen said workers were underpaid or not paid at all for work they did because they were told their time and earnings were being donated to the church.

Brenda and others were critical of the CPS, saying the agency misled them as to what was to happen Monday, weren't told why the children were removed from the compound and given inaccurate messages about opportunities to meet lawyers.

"We got to where we said, 'We cannot believe a word you say. We cannot trust you,'" she said.

Teen caller to be located
Officials said the investigation began with a call from a young girl who has yet to be located by the CPS. The women in the sect said they suspect she may be a bitter ex-member of the church.

The FLDS practice polygamy in arranged marriages, sometimes between underage girls and older men. The group has thousands of followers in two side-by-side towns in Arizona and Utah.

The church has repeatedly fought because of its lifestyle before. Men, women and children have been swept up in raids that took place in 1935, 1944 and 1953.

"It's been all through history, " said Brenda, the mother of two. "We were just here trying to live a peaceful, happy, sweet life. We don't understand why we can't do this freely."

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