Patrick Crimmins, a spokesman for the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services (DPS), said 401 children have been taken from the compound. However, he could not confirm local media reports that said all of the children had now been taken away from the ranch.

“Investigations at the compound are still continuing,” he said over phone.

He also said that 133 women had left the premises. Authorities have said an undisclosed number of men remain on the compound and have not been allowed to leave while the probe is in progress. Local TV footage showed young girls in long, conservative dresses boarding buses.

Lisa Block, a spokeswoman with the Department of Public Safety, said one person had been arrested for “interfering with the duties of a public servant” but no one has yet been arrested on charges related to the abuse probe.

Jeffs is jailed in Kingman, Arizona, where he awaits trial for four counts each of incest and sexual conduct with a minor stemming from two arranged marriages between teenage girls and their older male relatives.

Dirty record

In November last year, he was sentenced to two consecutive sentences of five years to life in prison in Utah for being an accomplice to the rape of a 14-year-old girl who wed her cousin in an arranged marriage in 2001. The investigation prompted by the girl’s call last week was the first in Texas involving the sect.

The FLDS church, headed by Jeffs after his father’s death in 2002, broke away from the Mormon church after the latter disavowed polygamy more than a century ago.