(Agencies)
Updated: 2008-04-11 14:30

BEIJING -- Texas Department of Public Safety investigator Leslie Brooks said he has found a document indicating marriages between one man and more than 20 wives who resided at a west Texas polygamist compound.

But there were "no record of divorce or death of a spouse found," he added as quoted by media reports Friday.

The local authorities searched the compound in response to a 16-year-old girl who claimed that she was sexually abused by her 50-year-old husband.

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Texas health officials found in addition to a number of pregnancies among girls younger than 18, a dozen of the children have chickenpox.

In the sect, girls as young as 13 were "spiritually married" -- a process that has no legal binding -- to middle-aged members of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints at the Yearn For Zion (YFZ) ranch temple in Eldorado.

Investigators said they have even discovered a bed inside its temple building that was reserved for men to have sex for the first time with their underage "wives" after they were united "spiritually."

YFZ was built by the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, a 10,000-member sect that broke away from the Mormon Church in the 1930s after it banned polygamy.

The 16-year-old girl who triggered the initial complaint has yet to be found, though authorities believe she may be among the more than 400 children removed from the compound.