Prayer request

I think we should pray for these girls.

ELDORADO, Texas — Child Protective Services and law enforcement on Sunday were still trying to locate and remove all the children living at a West Texas compound founded by polygamist leader Warren Jeffs.

Meisner said CPS officials are having difficulty locating the 16-year-old girl who phoned authorities to complain of abuse last week. Many of the girls are young mothers, and they share similar names — or are changing them, she said. Authorities are also having difficulty determining the girls' ages.

State troopers armed with a search warrant raided the compound to look for evidence of a marriage between the girl who complained and 50-year-old Dale Barlow.

Under Texas law, girls younger than 16 cannot marry, even with parental approval. The girl allegedly had a baby at 15. Her call was the first in Texas complaining of possible abuse, though Jeffs, Barlow and other members of the sect have faced prosecution in Arizona and Utah.

Jeffs is jailed in Kingman, Ariz., where he awaits trial for four counts each of incest and sexual conduct with a minor stemming from two arranged marriages between teenage girls and their older male relatives.

In November, he was sentenced to two consecutive sentences of five years to life in prison in Utah for being an accomplice to the rape of a 14-year-old girl who wed her cousin in an arranged marriage in 2001..

The thought is truly more than I can handle.