This week marks the ten year anniversary of one of the biggest police raids in Texas history, Newsradio 1200 WOAI reports.
On April 3, 2008, state and federal forces, including the Texas Rangers, armed with automatic weapons, helicopters and an armored personnel carrier, surrounded the Yearning for Zion Ranch in Eldorado which, at the time, was run by a breakaway sect of the Mormon Church that believed in both polygamy and child brides.
The cult leader, Warren Jeffs, was eventually arrested and convicted of child abuse, but one decade later, one of his former wives, Flora Jessop, says he's still in control.
"He's the one issuing the orders. He's still moving families around. He's still dictating lives. He's still destroying lives," she explains.
The 2008 raid was based on what, at the time, police thought was a legitimate call for help. A woman, pretending to be a polygamist wife, called 911, claiming she escaped the ranch. That was later determined to be a fraud but when law enforcement entered the ranch with Child Protective Service agents, they found many teenager girls who were pregnant.
The children were removed from the ranch and placed across the state, including some in San Antonio at Baptist Child and Family Services, but eventually, all of those kids were sent back. Jessop says many are still in the cult.
"It still is very hard to comprehend that the system sent all of those children back."
Jeffs remains in prison. On August 9, 2011, he was convicted on two counts of sexual assault of a child in a trial where he acted as his own attorney.
The ranch, which is now vacant, remains up for sale.