Case for suspected FLDS 'Sarah' delayed
Court minutes indicate the hearing for Rozita Swinton, 33, was continued until Jan. 12, 2009 a week after a trial is scheduled in Colorado Springs on a misdemeanor charge of filing a false police report.
Swinton is accused of making a hoax call in Colorado Springs in February, claiming to be a drugged and sexually abused 13-year-old girl chained in a basement. She recently pleaded not guilty and her attorney told the court she was seeking a mental evaluation.
Swinton was on probation in Douglas County, Colo., for a 2007 hoax call where she pretended to be a pregnant teen who was going to abandon her baby and kill herself. She pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor false reporting charge and received a deferred sentence.
Swinton is also a "person of interest" in the call that sparked the raid on the YFZ Ranch in April. A phone number linked to her was used to call family crisis centers. In those calls, a 16-year-old girl named "Sarah" claimed to be pregnant and in an abusive relationship to a man named Dale Barlow.
Sarah has never been found. Barlow was never arrested. The Texas Attorney General's Office told the Deseret News the case remains under investigation.
Ben Winslow
