OUTSIDE the walls of Fort Concho, a former US cavalry station deep in the heart of Texas, a flock of slight young women were wailing and tearing at their long, pink and blue gingham dresses.

Inside the fort 400 children, removed last weekend from the nearby compound of a polygamy cult amid allegations of rape and child abuse, heard the commotion and cried out for the parents they had not seen for days.

Even for casehardened social workers flown in from Arizona and Utah to help soothe distraught children, ranging from infants to 17-year-olds, the scale of the distress was heartrending.

“We want to reunite the girls and boys with their mothers, but right now we don’t know who belongs with whom, so we’re asking for mothers to wait until we match up DNA samples,” said a spokesman for child protection services in San Angelo. “We understand how awful this is for everyone, but we’ll arrange supervised visits over the next few days.” Many of the teenage girls are pregnant after being forcibly married to strangers who treated them as servants. Cut off from the world, they have been brainwashed into believing they must obey husbands far older than them or face a beating as punishment.

Toys donated by the local Wal-Mart supermarket last week were dazzling to children for whom entertainment had previously revolved around needle-point sessions between grinding daily chores.

These tasks consisted largely of sweeping desert dust out of the polygamists’ imposing limestone temple, the massive centrepiece of the Yearning for Zion (YFZ) ranch 40 miles from San Angelo.

The 1,700-acre ranch was purchased in 2004 by followers of Warren Jeffs, a self-proclaimed prophet and leader of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latterday Saints. The group split from mainstream Mormons in the 1890s after they outlawed polygamy.

Jeffs and his followers believe men must “seal” as many wives as possible in “celestial marriages” so they can go to heaven and the women can be closer to God’s wife Gonhorra, who lives on a faraway planet.

Fundamentalist polygamy favours middle-aged men who chase away younger rivals with accusations of heresy and marry girls as young as 13. Their brides must be white, as Jeffs proclaimed that “the devil always brings evil unto earth through the black people”.

A few months after he appeared on the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted list, Jeffs was stopped during a routine traffic check in 2006. In his car police found $55,000, 16 mobile phones and disguises, including three wigs and 12 pairs of sunglasses. The 52-year-old preacher was jailed on two counts of being an accomplice to rape, with more charges pending, but is said to be running the cult from his prison cell.

Texas police, who were criticised last week for being slow to investigate the ranch, admitted they had been wary about provoking a siege like the one at Waco in 1993, when a routine search for guns escalated into a 51-day standoff between the FBI and another cult, the Branch Davidian. It ended in a pitched battle that cost 80 lives.

The Texas Rangers finally took action on the Yearning for Zion ranch after a desperate call from a young woman two weeks ago. She claimed she was 16, had been impregnated and beaten by a cult elder, and was in fear for her life.

The police obtained warrants based on her testimony, which included the suggestion that the elders had up to 20 wives each, mostly of whom had been married under the minimum legal age.

Police arrived at the ranch at 5.30pm on April 3 and pushed their way through a cordon of men in order to force open the doors of the temple, where they found safes stuffed with cash and a tousled bed, which they suspect was used for the consummation of “celestial” marriages.

Last week a total of more than 500 women and children were taken from the compound, but police have yet to find the distraught teenager who tipped them off. They fear that her 50-year-old “husband”, named as Dale Evans Barlow, may have absconded with her.

A man of the same name is said to be living across the border in Arizona, where he once served 45 days in jail for having sex with a 16-year-old minor. He admits having three wives and 22 children but claims not to know the girl the police are seeking.

Arnold Jessop, who says he is a friend of Barlow’s, said his teenage marriages “seemed to me to be very natural and proper, in the tradition of Abraham who also had multiple wives”.

Some who have escaped from polygamist communities hope the police will now stop turning a blind eye to a dozen other fundamentalist compounds in Utah, Arizona and Nevada, where up to 40,000 polygamists live.

Video: Footage of raids on Mormon camp in Texas

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