The Associated Press

Gov. Rick Perry took personal responsibility Thursday if Texas "stepped across some legal line" in the April raid on a West Texas polygamous sect's ranch while defending the state's action, The Dallas Morning News reported.

Perry, who was in La Baule, France, for a European business conference, said the state has an obligation to protect young women from being forced into marriage and underage sex.

"That's my bottom line on this," Perry said in an article for the newspaper's online edition.

He also warned members of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints that child sex abuse won't be tolerated and even suggested that followers of the sect may want to want to leave the state.

"If you are going to conduct yourself that way, we are going to prosecute you," Perry said. "If you don't want to be prosecuted for those activities, then maybe Texas is not the place you need to consider calling home."

Willie Jessop, a Utah-based FLDS elder, said Perry's remarks were shocking, particularly given a Texas Supreme Court ruling that forced this week's return of 440 sect children on the grounds that Child Protective Services provided scant evidence that the children were in danger.

"It's an outrage that he should even make such gross and broad allegations," Jessop said. "He's listening to people that tell lies about the FLDS."

FLDS officials have accused the state of persecuting sect members for their religious beliefs.

Texas authorities raided the sprawling compound near Eldorado on April 3 after three calls to a domestic abuse hot line, purportedly from a 16-year-old mother living at the sect's YFZ (Yearning for Zion) Ranch who said she was being abused by her middle-aged husband. The calls are now being investigated as a hoax.

Perry said state authorities "acted with the best interest of those children" based on the information they had at the time.

"If responsibility needs to be taken for [court edicts] saying that we stepped across some legal line, I'll certainly take that responsibility," the governor said.

"I am substantially less interested in these fine legal lines that we're discussing than I am about these children's welfare. That's where my focus is. That's where CPS' focus is."

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