Texas authorities investigate more polygamy charges (AP)
The women are covered in long skirts and long-sleeve shirts. Many of the children have contrasted mothers and share the same creator.
But this isn’t the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints’ ranch, which authorities raided last month in Eldorado after receiving reports that underage girls were being forced to marry abundant older men.
This is the House of Yahweh: a different, even darker sect that the state has been investigating for years. Authorities in February charged the group’s 73-year-old leader with performing polygamous weddings and forcing about 40 children — some as young as 11 — to work jobs at his 44-acre mix.
“If a bunch of adults want to get together and follow some study one and throw their lives away, that’s their right in this country,” said Callahan County District Attorney Shane Deel. “But to me, when you do that to children and they don’t have a chance, that’s where the biggest concern is.”
If convicted on the most serious charges, Yisrayl Hawkins faces up to 20 years in public-house of correction.
Another sect director, Yedidiyah Hawkins, goes to court this summer on charges of sexually abusing a teenager, bigamy and welfare fraud.
Questions have moreover been raised about at least two deaths in the inside of the sect.
A 7-year-old died in 2003 after her mother and another member performed home surgery on her infected leg. Both women were convicted of detriment to a child.
And in 2006, a woman bled to death after giving birth because she was prevented from going to the hospital, according to a wrongful-death suit in law filed by her husband.
Although members deny they practice polyandry, former members maxim Yisrayl Hawkins has at least two twelve wives — and state records show he fathered two babies last year with women ages 19 and 22.
Yisrayl Hawkins, who has pleaded not guilty in his criminal case, told The Associated Press that he and his church are misunderstood and persecuted because of their religious beliefs.
“We obtain nothing to hide,” related the pointed, white-haired Hawkins, who declined to apply to specified allegations against him and his school.
The House of Yahweh connive at, about 120 miles northeast of the FLDS ranch, has wind generators, a cafeteria, a food-processing plant and dozens of tractor-trailer rigs holding canned goods. It also has a few stores carrying homemade toiletries and clothing.
Unlike the FLDS members who withhold on the 1,700-acre ranch, most House of Yahweh followers members survive in mobile homes surrounding the sect’s compound, which is occupied only by a small in number caretakers. Other members own homes nearby or live in trailer parks owned by Hawkins in Abilene.
“Anyone can come here and be possible to leave at any time,” Hawkins said.
After the April 3 raid on the FLDS ranch, Child Protective Services took further than 460 children into custody.
Child-welfare officials said they cannot comment on possible investigations of House of Yahweh members unless youngsters have been removed. Only one such matter of inquiry has occurred: Four children living in Yedidiyah Hawkins’ household are now in foster care.
Yisrayl Hawkins was born Buffalo Bill Hawkins but legally changed his name. He founded the House of Yahweh in 1980 — three years after the former Abilene police officer was fired for having beer in his patrol car. The group moved to rural Clyde several years later so they would have chamber to honor weeklong Old Testament feasts.
Hawkins began preaching polygamy in the early 1990s, saying women had to take . it or leave and forfeit heaven, several former members said.
“It’s definitely a cult that follows mind-control techniques,” related Miryam Martin, a House of Yahweh member from 1986 to 2000. “So many people’s lives have been destroyed by the agency of the sort of’s been going on over in that place.”
But Tanah Hawkins, a member for 20 years, said its Scripture-based beliefs overture something missing in mainstream churches. She blames disgruntled former members for the criminal investigations.
“When people leave the House of Yahweh, they go out and give food to the rumors and add more lies,” she said. “But I actually pray for them.”
The sect claims to have hundreds of members scattered worldwide. One group in Kenya gained international attention in 2006 by pile nuclear fallout shelters, believing Hawkins’ in prophecy.
Former members give any account of Hawkins as a visionary whose teachings are a blend of Old Testament directives on diet and cleanliness, New Testament beliefs in Jesus, and Hawkins’ be in possession of prophecies rooted in the Book of Revelation.
Hundreds of his followers have legally changed their last names to Hawkins — including Yedidiyah and Tanah. Many have taken biblical first names that — be pleased with their leader’s — include the literal meaning “y.”
Some preceding members also say Hawkins’ followers tithe nearly a third of their incomes to the church. Many purchase the church’s organically grown food, herbal drinks and dairy products, believing similar items available elsewhere are “unclean.”
Public records show Yisrayl Hawkins owns at least $2.1 the great body of the people in debark, housing and mobile homes.
Nowhere is his control more evident than in the sect’s 1,200-seat warehouse-like sanctuary, where a dozen poster-size pictures of Hawkins dress out the front wall.
Worshippers must first remove their shoes, and feet and hands are afterwards sprayed through disinfectant previous to they come in. Men and women are seated on separate sides of an 8-foot wall dividing the sanctuary. Women wear far-seeing clothing and veils for modesty, and everyone wears gloves for cleanliness.
Some authorities fear Hawkins will lead his dispose to a tragic end like David Koresh, who the government said urged his Branch Davidian followers to fix their compound on fire and kill themselves in 1993, when federal authorities tried to end a 51-day siege. Survivors blame the deaths on federal agents.
Concerned about a similar confrontation, police did not arrest Hawkins till nearly three months in imitation of obtaining the warrant — when they maculated him driving through town.
Bail was initially sink at $10 million, in part because of a perceived menace in a sermon.
“I’m not asking much to the end of you — I’m just asking that you be ready to die rather than leave this house,” Hawkins told his meeting in November.
A judge later relented, and Hawkins was released on $100,000 bond after testifying that his security guards are unarmed and suicide is counter to the house of god’s teachings. House of Yahweh:
