From WNYC in New York, this is NPR's On the Media. I'm Brooke Gladstone.

And I'm Bob Garfield.

Winston Blackmore won't say how many children he's got, but it's widely believed to be more than 100.

He's got two dozen or so wives.

Franklin, do you know how many sisters and brothers you have?

Yeah, about three dozen.

Is there that brainwashing to this degree?

Do you have pity on these women?

Polygamy, an outlaw sect of Mormons,

possibly abused children at the yearning for Zion Ranch.

It's the kind of story nobody could ignore,

especially as the coverage continued for a fourth week.

The news from this strange corner of Hidden in Plainside America

continues to take surprising twists,

not least when the fundamentalist church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints

began to mount a modern online PR campaign in their own defense,

in which the key pitchmen are the mothers.

Those women in their little house on the prairie costumes, perhaps innocence, perhaps victims,

perhaps criminals in their complicity, are demanding to nurse their babies and in so doing

striking a cord.

She walked right up to the lady and said, please let my mother come, and they would not let her.

As the removal of more than 400 children from their family's custody triggers controversy in Texas and around the world,

...