Court documents, unsealed Tuesday, detailed evidence that prompted Texas officials to evacuate 416 children from the YFZ Ranch, near Eldorado, Texas, built by the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, The Los Angeles Times said.

Court papers said investigators, responding to a 16-year-old girl who said she was sexually abused, beaten and threatened at the ranch, found many girls either pregnant or had given birth.

Lynn McFadden, a Texas Department of Family and Protective Services investigator, said in the affidavit there was a "widespread pattern and practice" among young girls to enter into "spiritual marriages" arranged by the polygamist sect and begin having sex with older men and having babies as young as 13.

Men were "having sexual relationships with a number of women, some of whom are minors," she said.

In a separate affidavit, investigators said children were deprived of nutrition as punishment and forced to sit in closets.

Church elders said Texas is engaging in religious persecution.

"There needs to be a public outcry that goes far and wide," Merrill Jessop, compound overseer, told the Salt Lake Tribune. "The hauling off of women and children matches anything in Russia or Germany."