Five polygamous sect followers surrender

AUSTIN, Texas, July 29 (UPI) -- Five members of a polygamous sect in Texas who were indicted with their leader have surrendered to face sexual assault charges, authorities said.

Four of Warren Jeffs's followers were each charged with one count of sexually assaulting a girl under the age of 17 while a fifth was charged with three counts of failure to report child abuse, CNN reported.

Jeffs was charged last week with sexual assault of a child, said Dirk Fillpot, spokesman for Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott. Jeffs, 52, is the leader of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, a breakaway sect of the Mormon church.

Abbott said in a statement the arrests "reflect nearly a weeklong effort by the Texas Rangers and Texas Attorney General's Office to arrange for the defendants' arrests," the Deseret News in Salt Lake City reported.

FLDS followers practice polygamy at their Yearning for Zion Ranch near Eldorado, Texas, and in two Utah-Arizona border towns. In April, Texas child welfare workers seized more than 400 children, who later were returned after the Texas Supreme Court ruled the state had no right to remove them.

Jeffs is jailed in Kingman, Ariz., awaiting trial on charges of sexual misconduct as an accomplice, the Salt Lake City newspaper said. Last September he was found guilty in Utah of being an accomplice to rape and was sentenced to 10 years to life in prison.