SAN ANGELO, Texas—Their pioneer-style dress, multiple marriages and cloistered ways may be unusual, but church lawyers argued in court Wednesday that the polygamist sect has a right to its faith and privacy.

Gary Goldstein, a San Antonio lawyer representing the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, told a judge that the search of the temple in the sect’s West Texas compound is analagous to a law enforcement search of the Vatican or other holy places.

He urged authorities to handle any documents seized with respect.

Prosecutor Allison Palmer countered that the purpose in seizing the documents was to uncover evidence of criminal activity, not to malign a religion.

State troopers and child welfare officials began a search of the FLDS compound in Eldorado last Thursday after a 16-year-old girl in the compound called a local family violence shelter to report her 50-year-old husband beat and raped her. The search warrant covered all documents related to marriages among sect members.

Authorities have issued an arrest warrant for church member Dale Barlow, a 50-year-old convicted sex offender believed to be in Arizona.

Authorities were looking for documents, family photos or even a family Bible with lists of marriages and children to determine whether the girl was married to Barlow, who was sentenced to jail last year after pleading no contest to conspiracy to commit sexual conduct with a minor. He was ordered to register as a sex offender for three years while he is on probation.

Child welfare investigators said their interviews with 416 children and 139 women who have been removed from or left the compound since the raid began revealed that girls were required to enter into a ‘spiritual’ and polygamous marriage—recognized by the church but forbidden by Texas law—with much older men for the purpose of producing children. Boys were raised to perpetuate the cycle.

The affidavits signed by chief investigator Lynn McFadden detail the 16-year-old’s hushed phone calls, but days after raiding the West Texas compound, officials still aren’t sure where the girl is.  She is not named among the children in initial custody petitions by the state.

Texas authorities have legal custody of the 416 children, all of those believed to have lived at the ranch, Child Protective Services spokeswoman Marleigh Meisner said Tuesday.

Court documents said a number of teen girls at the 1,700-acre compound were pregnant, and all the children were removed on the grounds that they were in danger of “emotional, physical, and-or sexual abuse.”

“Investigators determined that there is a widespread pattern and practice of the YFZ Ranch in which young, minor female residents are conditioned to expect and accept sexual activity with adult men at the ranch upon being spiritually married to them,” McFadden’s affidavit read.

An unknown number of men and women were at the ranch while authorities completed the search of the gleaming 80-foot-high temple, a cheese-making plant, a cement plant, a school, a doctor’s office and housing units. Tela Mange, a spokeswoman for the Department of Public Safety, said Tuesday the adults were not being held, but if they left the compound, they could not return while the search continued.

At least two FBI agents were seen entering the back entrance of the temple on Tuesday.

Spokesmen for the FBI and DPS declined comment.

Authorities were trying to determine the identities and parentage of many of the children; some were unwilling or unable to provide the names of their biological parents or identified multiple mothers.

The Texas investigation is the state’s first of FLDS members, but prosecutors in Utah and Arizona have pursued several church members in recent years, including sect leader Warren Jeffs, who is serving two consecutive sentences of five years to life for being an accomplice to the rape of a 14-year-old wed to her cousin in Utah. He awaits trial on other charges in Arizona.

Two men in the compound have been arrested and charged with interfering with the search.

Some of the children taken from the compound could, authorities say, end up in Houston.