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Polygamist Mormon Sects

ramonmercado

CyberPunk
Joined
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Messages
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Eblana
Interestingly this is not an ex-cultist seeking money, he just wasnts to get in communication with his family again.

THe story probably should be on the Mormons thread but for some reason it wont take there.

Utah Man Sues Polygamist-Leader

Wednesday February 21, 2007 11:01 AM


By JENNIFER DOBNER

Associated Press Writer

SALT LAKE CITY (AP) - An 18-year-old man who says he was kicked out of his home and church filed a lawsuit seeking to force a church leader to help him get back in touch with his family.

Attorneys for Johnny Jessop sued Tuesday seeking a court order to force Warren Jeffs, head of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, to disclose the whereabouts of Jessop's 62-year-old mother, Elsie. Jessop has not spoken to his mother in more than 18 months, attorney Roger Hoole said.

Jessop says he was among several boys who were kicked out of the FLDS church in the past four years by Jeffs for being disobedient or because they were seen as competition to older men seeking young brides.

The FLDS practices polygamy and arranged marriages. The faith has an estimated 10,000 members, mostly in the border towns of Hildale, Utah, and Colorado City, Ariz. Jessop grew up in Hildale, Hoole said.

FLDS members consider themselves ``fundamentalist-Mormons,'' although the mainstream church disavows any connection. FLDS members also consider Jeffs a prophet of God with dominion over their salvation.

Jeffs, 51, is in jail on two felony-counts as an accomplice for his suspected role in a 2001 marriage between a 14-year-old girl and her older cousin. On the run for nearly two years, Jeffs was arrested last year in a traffic stop in Nevada.

He has led the church since 2004, and dissidents describe him as a heartless ruler who has fractured dozens of families, sending fathers and husbands away and reassigning their wives and children to other men.

Now living in Salt Lake, Jessop was forced out of his family five years ago, Hoole said. Essentially homeless, the youth ran into some minor legal trouble and was ordered several times by courts to return home.

Under threat of church punishment, though, his family turned him away, and Jessop ended up in Salt Lake City as a ward of a nonprofit organization that helps boys who say they were pushed out of the church, Hoole said.

For several years, Jessop maintained telephone contact with his mother, but that ended nearly two years ago, Hoole said.

Jessop believes that Jeffs ordered his mother to cut ties with him and that the leader knows where Jessop can find his mother, Hoole said. The young man says that he has written two letter to Jeffs, begging him to allow the family to reconnect, but that Jeffs has not responded.

Jeffs' attorney Wally Bugden also has not responded to requests for help, Hoole said.

A message left by The Associated Press after business hours at Bugden's office was not immediately returned Tuesday.

``The child/parent relationship is a protected relationship under the law,'' said Hoole. ``We need a court order that will force Warren Jeffs to tell Johnny where Elsie is. Then the lawsuit can go away.''

It was unclear whether Jessop might have sought help from other authorities in finding his mother.

Jessop is not seeking damages, Hoole said. No court date has been set.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uslatest/stor ... 40,00.html

Edit to amend title.
 
I saw this on TV--I think on CNN--just a couple of nights ago. "Eighteen-year-old man?" Well, legally he may be an adult, but he looked like a very sad and lonely boy to me. :( A boy who really loves his mom and wants to see her again.

Warren Jeffs is just plain evil. Throwing helpless children out in the desert (literally!) to fend for themselves--because the alpha males in the pack can't stand any competition--even from their own children!! :evil:

And I cannot fathom any parents who would tolerate their children being abused the way they are in that so-called "church". Forcing little girls to "marry" old men? Allowing favored men to collect a nice little harem for themselves? Throwing defenseless children out on the streets?

If you ask me, every adult in that cult belongs behind bars--and all the children desperately need to be placed in real homes with real families.

It was just plain pathetic, watching that boy talk about his struggle to survive on the streets with other lost children--and saying how much he missed his mother and how much he loved her.

Give me a few minutes alone with His Holiness Warren Jeffs--I'd find out where that kid's mom is in no time. :twisted:
 
Polygamist leader Jeffs still a force from jail
Wed Jun 13, 2007 2:30PM EDT
By Jason Szep

HILDALE, Utah (Reuters) - From a cell in the Purgatory jail 10 months after his arrest, fundamentalist Mormon leader Warren Jeffs is still God's voice on Earth to thousands of polygamists in this isolated community.

"Warren Jeffs isn't 'gone'. He doesn't have to be there to rule the place," said Enos Steed, a 21-year-old former member of Jeff's Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (FLDS), a polygamist sect that broke from the mainstream Mormon church 72 years ago.

To about 10,000 followers in the twin border communities of Hildale, Utah, and Colorado City, Arizona, Jeffs remains a spiritual leader who channels divine revelations and a feared prophet, even 25 miles away in Purgatory, a jail in the Utah city of Hurricane where he awaits trial.

"As long as he is alive he will be the prophet, unless he stands up before them and renounces the religion, denounces what he's been doing for the past decade. That's the only way, besides dying, he will not be the prophet," said Steed.

Steed is one of hundreds of so-called "lost boys," males who are exiled from the sect partly to reduce competition for young brides.

Jeffs, 51, was declared on May 28 mentally fit to stand trial in September, charged as an accomplice to rape for using his authority to order a 14-year-old girl against her wishes to marry and have sex with her 19-year-old cousin.

The mainstream Mormon Church, based in Salt Lake City, introduced polygamy before the Civil War but banned it in 1890 and now excommunicates any member who practices plural marriage. The FLDS, the nation's largest polygamist group, consider themselves Mormon purists.

POWER SHIFT

But despite Jeffs's lingering power, there's an air of change in the sandstone desert plateau where locals still wear 19th-century clothes even in stifling heat and are taught to shun outsiders, avoid newspapers, television and the Internet, and obey only the prophet, not the state.

Some authority is shifting to two of Jeffs's top deputies -- Wendell Nielsen and William Timpson Jessop -- whose pictures are appearing in the homes of members next to those of Jeffs, said Gary Engels, assigned by the Mohave County attorney to investigate Colorado City, Arizona.

"There's a little sense of change in the area. People who aren't members of the FLDS church anymore claim some of the people who are members are a little friendlier," he said, adding that illegal marriages of underage brides -- rampant under Jeffs -- seem to have slowed or stopped.

The Deseret Morning News, owned by the Mormon church, reported in April that Jeffs apparently told a judge he abdicated his role as prophet in jail. Local authorities say the news, if true, has not reached loyal followers.

Other changes are more subtle. In the past, outsiders were often followed by "church security" in cars with tinted windows, or not served in stores. But a Reuters correspondent recently walked the streets of Colorado City without being shadowed and bought a bottle of water from a store assistant who smiled as she handed over change.

"We're seeing more cooperation than we ever have with the police and other institutions in the community," said Bruce Wisan, a court-appointed accountant overseeing a trust holding $114 million of the sect's assets.

The United Effort Plan Trust, created 70 years ago by FLDS leaders who said it belonged to God, has been administered by Wisan since 2005. It holds virtually all land and buildings in Hildale, Colorado City and a FLDS community in Canada.

It once gave Jeffs and other sect leaders a powerful lever to command loyalty, keeping members in constant risk of losing their homes, with little recourse to local police who only recently have started to enforce the laws of the state.

'REAL POWER'

"Warren was rewarding loyalty and punishing disloyalty and that's what gave him the real power," said former sect member Richard Holm, whose lost his family in 2003 when Jeffs assigned his two wives and nine children to another man.

"The men that were fiercely loyal to him were generally motivated by desire for another wife," said Holm, 55, who has since renounced polygamy and organized religion. "To them, I am the worst kind of apostate. But I think you can get to heaven through monogamy."

Holm, a former town official, said if Jeffs has surrendered as prophet, his deputies may resist passing that on to thousands of followers who contribute at least 10 percent of their earnings a month to the FLDS.

"They have incentive to hush him up and carry on as though he is still dictating."

Two months ago, Holm became the first former sect member to receive a property deed from Wisan. "That's a milestone," he said. He has reclaimed the 1.3-acre (0.5-hectare) property.

"The only problem is the ice-cold relationship with the neighbors. There is the unsettling concern that if there is the need for emergency services or whatever, those are all operated by members who are fiercely loyal to Warren.

"They would rather see me dead than help. I know that."

But the number of those neighbors is dwindling. Many have scattered to FLDS strongholds in Eldorado, Texas, and South Dakota's Black Hills, local residents say. "His followers are moving out," said Ben Bistline, 72, who left the FLDS and wrote "The Polygamists -- A History of Colorado City".

"The political atmosphere is changing," he said.

Wisan has identified 42 former FLDS members living in homes they built who want titles to the land. "We're in the process of working through that right now," he said.

Utah Attorney General Mark Shurtleff has no plans to prosecute polygamists unless they commit other crimes. His top concern, he said, are thousands of children pulled from public schools by a generation of parents fiercely loyal to Jeffs.

"That is something we've got to work on," he said.

http://www.reuters.com/article/inDepthN ... 5820070613
 
I quibble over Reuters' use of the word "fundamentalistic" to describe Jeffs' sect.

Historic Christianity (Catholics, Anglicans, Methodists, Quakers, Baptists, Lutherans, Presbyterians and so on) rightly or wrongly regards Mormomism (in all its incarnations) as a cult, precisely because of all the "fundamental" Christian doctrines which Joseph Smith jettisoned from his new religion in the 1830s and 1840s.

So the term "fundamentalist" here is a meaningless buzz-word added for no other reason than to fill out line-length.

I expect better from Reuters.
 
Well, perhaps "official" Mormons refer to these guys as Fundies.

Just thinking that maybe the whole thread would be more at home in The Mormons thread.
 
I think the claim is that he's a fundamentalist Mormon rather than a fundamentalist Christian, Mr. Radio. Whether this description is accurate I have no idea, as I haven't read the Book of Mormon, though I've got it on the shelf.

The first story in the thread reveals, without actually mentioning, a serious gap in the protections afforded to minors under U.S. law. Prepubescent children who are separated from their parents are treated as victims, either of their own parents or of some other adult abuser, and are either returned to homes that are judged to be adequate or put into the foster care system - which, flaws and all, is better than living on the street, usually. (Do not let me get started on this topic.)

Teen-agers above a certain age (which varies with the jurisdiction), however, are assumed to be either runaways or criminals and the only long-term options offered to them are return to their homes or placement in detention facilities. Adult shelters, like the flophouse down the street from me, are not allowed to accept minors, and emergency shelters can only take them for limited periods. The "thrown-away" child, chucked out by an intolerant parent who rejects him or her for homosexuality, pregnancy, religious differences, or other noncriminal factors, has few legal and even fewer attractive options; nor does the law take into account the fact that a teen may have legitimate reasons for running away without pressing criminal charges against a parent. (If the sole income-provider in your family treats you as whipping boy but is good to every other family member, are you really going to bring criminal charges and risk impoverishing everybody?) Not old enough for employment, too old for most overstrained civic programs, constantly referred back to their families by the organizations they approach, what are they to do? Gangs and prostitution are often the only practical choices.

Some organizations address specific problems, such as homes for unwed mothers; but many laws, supposedly intended to protect minors, punish those who try to address some problems. Organizations that provide emergency services to homosexuals, for example, are often legally restricted from helping minors due to societal pedophilophobia.

Sounds like Utah needs a program to cope with religious thrown-aways, but I bet it'd draw lightning.
 
Sounds like Utah needs a program to cope with religious thrown-aways, but I bet it'd draw lightning.

There is but I don't know if it's state or privately maintained and funded.

I just realized that that information came from the February 21, 2007, news article with which Ramon opened this topic:

....Jessop ended up in Salt Lake City as a ward of a non-profit organization that helps boys who say they were pushed out of the church...."
 
Ah, how quickly I forget, riding my hobbyhorse all over the landscape...I know, let's blame that stupid voice that keeps telling me I've won a cell phone I don't want when I'm trying to surreptitiously read the board at work, shall we?
 
So, Jeffs is found guilty and gets 10 yrs to life.

A US polygamist sect leader has been sentenced to 10 years to life in jail as an accomplice to rape for forcing a 14-year-old girl to marry her cousin.
A Utah court said the state board of pardons would ultimately determine how much time Warren Jeffs would serve.

The 51-year-old was jailed for at least five years on two counts, with the sentences to be served consecutively.

The self-proclaimed prophet was found guilty in September of encouraging the girl to have sex against her will.

He spent 15 months on the run before his arrest in August 2006.

More at: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7104832.stm
 
10 years is nowhere near enough, in my opinion. Even a life sentence wouldn't really begin to touch the damage this man has done.

Also, are these the racist Mormons? The ones with disturbing views on, ahem, "negros".
 
jefflovestone said:
10 years is nowhere near enough, in my opinion. Even a life sentence wouldn't really begin to touch the damage this man has done.

Also, are these the racist Mormons? The ones with disturbing views on, ahem, "negros".

Yep, these are the racist ones. Although up until 1978 "coloureds" could not attain the highest ranks amongst the Mormon Elders. The Head Elder suddenly got a revelation from God that the line on "coloureds" had changed.

According to Jeffs:

The Negro race, which he calls the "seed of Cain," survived the flood of Noah because Noah's son Ham was married to "a wife of that seed" which he identified as being black. Jeffs claims it was necessary for the black race to be preserved "because it was necessary that the Devil should have a representation upon the Earth as well as God."

Jeffs also teaches us about rock and roll music. He says the Beatles were nothing until they learned at the feet of an unnamed homosexual black man who was a drug user, and then they became famous. Rock and roll music, he says,

will "rot the soul and lead the person to immorality, to corruption, to forget their prayers, to forget God. Thus the whole world has partaken of the spirit of the Negro race."

These sermons about race are ultimately more invidious because they go largely unexamined and, as free speech, are not illegal. His thousands of followers obviously believe what he says. It's the Kool-Aid that gets guzzled, and it then spreads like kudzu through the society.

Amazingly, black men couldn't be ordained into the church's all-male lay priesthood until a 1978 "revelation" by their president ended that policy. 1978! Original Mormon doctrine refers to all people who are not pale white as "Lamanites," including Polynesians, Hispanics, Africans, Asians with dark skin, etc. Certain categories of Lamanites, like Native American Indians, become Nephites (white) if they sufficiently embrace Mormon culture. This was all in "The Book of Mormon" by founder Joseph Smith, who invented the religion out of whole cloth in the 1820's. ...

Amazingly, black men couldn't be ordained into the church's all-male lay priesthood until a 1978 "revelation" by their president ended that policy. 1978! Original Mormon doctrine refers to all people who are not pale white as "Lamanites," including Polynesians, Hispanics, Africans, Asians with dark skin, etc. Certain categories of Lamanites, like Native American Indians, become Nephites (white) if they sufficiently embrace Mormon culture. This was all in "The Book of Mormon" by founder Joseph Smith, who invented the religion out of whole cloth in the 1820's.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jackson-w ... 66129.html
 
I think that people get the religion they deserve (Just read Tom Steels `the life and death of St Kilda` boy, what a bunch of losers!)

But this is the US, where they are continualy hit with the propagandistic nonsense of `freedom` (it is nonsense of course, but that doesnt say it doesnt make people think)

surley these people have heard of this?

Also the primitive but not to be sniffed at notion of removing an unpopular leader?
 
Jury chosen for US polygamy trial
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/8327578.stm

Raymond Jessop is the first person to face trial relating to last year's raid
The sexual assault trial of a member of a US polygamy sect is to continue with a second day of jury selection at a Texas court.

Raymond Jessop, 38, faces up to 20 years in prison if found guilty of the charge related to his alleged marriage to an under-age girl.

It is the first criminal case stemming from a raid on the sect's ranch last year.

About 150 people, including members of the sect, were eligible for jury duty.

The Yearning For Zion Ranch was raided in April, and hundreds of children removed after one girl complained of abuse.

A total of 12 members of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints have been charged with crimes ranging from failure to report child abuse to sexual assault and bigamy.

Court documents stated that Mr Jessop's alleged wife gave birth to a daughter at the ranch when she was 16.



Sect members, in distinctive clothing, were among potential jurors
Prosecutors allege he has nine wives. His bigamy trial will be held later.

The sexual assault trial was expected to last two weeks, assistant Attorney General Eric Nichols was quoted by Associated Press as saying.

Two of Mr Jessop's alleged under-age wives, as well as former sect members, are due to give evidence for the prosecution.

In April 2008, US officials removed 416 children from the sect's ranch after receiving a report of sexual abuse.

A Texas court later overturned the decision to remove the children.

It said the state had overstepped its authority because of the lack of evidence about widespread sexual abuse.

The Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints is a breakaway sect of Mormonism that supports polygamy.

Their leader, Warren Jeffs, has already been imprisoned in Arizona for conspiracy to rape. He faces more charges in Texas.

The 10,000-strong sect, which dominates the towns of Colorado City in Arizona, and Hildale, Utah, split from the mainstream Mormon church more than a century ago.
 
Retrial ordered in Warren Jeffs polygamous US sect case
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-10780208

Warren Jeffs (l) at his rape trial in 2007 with his defence team Jeffs was convicted on two counts of rape in 2007

The Utah State Supreme Court has overturned the rape convictions of polygamous US sect leader Warren Jeffs and ordered a new trial.

Jeffs, 54, was convicted in 2007 of two counts of first degree rape after he had arranged the marriage of a 14-year-old girl to her 19-year-old cousin.

The court said jury instructions on the girl's consent had been "in error".

Jeffs was serving two consecutive terms of five years to life in Utah State prison.

He is the head of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, a breakaway sect of Mormonism and based on the border between Utah and Arizona.

He also faces criminal charges in Texas.

Before his arrest in 2006, Jeffs had been on the run for 15 months and was on the FBI's 10 "most wanted" fugitives.
 
Sect leader guilty of child sex abuse
http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/bre ... ing14.html

Fri, Aug 05, 2011

Polygamist sect leader Warren Jeffs is facing a possible life sentence after being convicted of child sexual assault.

The case stemmed from two young followers he took as brides in what his church calls “spiritual marriages”.

The head of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints stood stone-faced as the verdict was read out in the San Angelo, Texas, court.

Jeffs, who acted as his own lawyer, stood mostly mute for his closing argument, staring at the floor, for all but a few seconds of the half hour he was allotted. At one point he mumbled “I am at peace” and said no more.

Jeffs, 55, had claimed his religious rights were being trampled on and that God would seek revenge if the trial continued. He now faces up to life in prison.

The sentencing phase of the trial began after the verdict was announced, and Texas’ attorney general said it could take three days.

Prosecutors used DNA evidence to show Jeffs fathered a child with a 15-year-old girl and played an audio recording of what they said was him sexually assaulting a 12-year-old. They also played audio recordings in which Jeffs was heard instructing young women on how to please him sexually.

The cult, which has at least 10,000 members, is a radical offshoot of mainstream Mormonism and believes polygamy brings exaltation in heaven. They see Jeffs as God’s spokesman on earth.

Police raided the group’s remote West Texas ranch in April 2008, finding women dressed in frontier-style dresses and hairdos from the 19th century as well as seeing underage girls who were clearly pregnant.

The call to an abuse hotline that sparked the raid turned out to be a hoax and more than 400 children who had been placed in protective custody were eventually returned to their families.

But authorities brought charges against several men from the group, with Jeffs by far the highest-profile defendant.

As the sentencing began, prosecutors told jurors they would present evidence that Jeffs had 78 wives, in addition to his legal spouse, and that 24 of them were under 17.

Lead prosecutor Eric Nichols also said he would show that Jeffs either witnessed or performed hundreds of polygamist marriages, including 67 marriages involving underage girls.

Jeffs stood up and made several incoherent objections to what was being said.

“I object to anything pertaining to a religious manner,” he said at one point. “A constitutional guarantee involving things sacred must be invoked.”

Prosecutors have relied heavily on information seized from the compound, which is in the town of Eldorado, 45 miles south of San Angelo, and features a four-storey temple of white limestone. Much of the material was discovered in a vault at the end of a secret passageway in the temple and another vault in an annexe building.

“You might have asked yourselves,” Mr Nichols told jurors during closing arguments, “a lot of people may ask, why would someone record sex? ... This individual considers himself to be the prophet. Everything he did, hour after hour, he was required to keep a record of that.”

On one of the tapes played at the trial, Jeffs made a reference to “drawing close” or “being close”, which authorities said was how church members referred to sex. Two female voices said: “OK.”

“A good wife is trained for her husband and follows the spirit of peace,” Jeffs was heard saying.

Another audio tape included Jeffs and the younger girl from a recording made in August 2006 at the Texas compound, according to evidence from Nick Hanna, a Texas Ranger involved in the 2008 raid.

Played in court, it was difficult to decipher, but Jeffs and a female voice are heard. He says: “I perform this service in the name of Jesus Christ, Amen” then mentions the alleged victim by name. When she says something, he responds: “Don’t talk while praying.” Several minutes of heavy breathing followed.

Jeffs represented himself after sacking seven lawyers in the six months leading to the trial. He broke his courtroom silence with an objection marked by a nearly hour-long speech defending polygamy and twice threatened the judge and the court with warnings of punishment from God.

He refused to cross-examine the state’s witnesses and delayed giving an opening statement until he began presenting his own defence.

Eleven other FLDS men were charged with crimes including sexual assault and bigamy. All seven of those who have been prosecuted were convicted, receiving prison sentences of between six and 75 years.

AP
 
Warren Jeffs, polygamist sect leader, gets life in jail
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-14468085

Religious head Warren Jeffs received maximum sentences on both counts

Related Stories

US sect leader arraigned in Texas
Sect leader to face Texas charges
Retrial of US sect leader ordered

Polygamist sect leader Warren Jeffs has been sentenced to life in prison for sexually assaulting two underage followers he took as brides.

The Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints leader was handed the maximum sentence possible.

Last Thursday, the 55-year-old was found guilty of forcing two girls into "spiritual marriages" and fathering a child with one of them.

The charges followed a raid on a remote west Texas ranch in 2008.

Jeffs stood quietly in a Texas court on Tuesday as the jury's decision, which only took 30 minutes, was read.

Pregnant underage girls
He would be eligible for parole in 35 years, said the Texas Department of Criminal Justice.

Jeffs had referred to himself as a prophet, and the Mormon breakaway sect he leads believes polygamy is the path to heaven.

Continue reading the main story

Start Quote

If the world knew what I was doing, they would hang me from the highest tree”

Warren Jeffs
During the trial, prosecutors presented DNA evidence to show Jeffs had fathered a child with a 15-year-old girl, and an audio recording of him sexually assaulting a 12-year-old.

The jury heard other tapes in which Jeffs was heard instructing his young wives on how to satisfy him sexually, which he said would please God.

Jeffs, who insisted on acting as his own legal defence during the earlier part of the trial, argued he had been prosecuted because of his religious beliefs.

The sect leader refused to speak during the sentencing portion of the trial, with a defence lawyer telling the judge his client had instructed his legal team not to speak for him.

Jeffs, who had stood expressionless and silent before the jury for nearly half hour during his closing arguments, called only one defence witness to the stand - a man who read from Mormon scripture.

Prosecutors said the religious head had spent years travelling around North America and avoiding arrest, ultimately landing on the FBI's 10 Most Wanted list.

An FBI agent said during the trial that fathers who handed over their daughters to Jeffs were rewarded with young brides of their own.

"If the world knew what I was doing, they would hang me from the highest tree," Jeffs wrote in notes, seized from his Texas ranch.

When police raided the Texas ranch they found women dressed in frontier-style dresses and underage girls who were clearly pregnant.

The 10,000-strong sect, which dominates the towns of Colorado City in Arizona, and Hildale, Utah, split from the mainstream Mormon church more than a century ago.
 
Justice Department files bias suit against towns home to polygamist sect
http://www.newsdaily.com/stories/bre85l ... -polygamy/
By Lily Kuo
and Jennifer DobnerPosted 2012/06/21 at 11:49 pm EDT

WASHINGTON/SALT LAKE CITY, June 21, 2012 (Reuters) — The Justice Department sued two polygamist-dominated towns on the Utah-Arizona border on Thursday, citing religious discrimination and saying they had operated for two decades as an arm of a breakaway Mormon sect.

Polygamist leader Warren Jeffs, who heads a breakaway Mormon sect, is pictured in this Texas Department of Criminal Justice prison mug shot, released to Reuters August 10, 2011. REUTERS/Texas Department of Criminal Justice/Handout

The complaint accuses the cities of carrying out the "will and dictates" of now-imprisoned sect leader Warren Jeffs, who is serving a prison term of life plus 20 years in Texas for raping two underage girls he wed in "spiritual marriages."

Most of the more than 8,800 residents of the twin towns of Colorado City, Arizona, and Hildale, Utah, are members of Jeffs' Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, which experts estimate has 10,000 followers in North America.

The suit, filed in U.S. District Court in Arizona, said the police agency serving the two towns had sometimes deployed deputies to confront people about their disobedience to sect rules or to tell them to report to the sect leadership.

Deputies also failed to arrest sect members who committed crimes against non-members such as destroying their crops or trespassing, the suit added.

"City governments and their police departments may not favor one religious group over another and may not discriminate against individuals because of their religious affiliation," Thomas Perez, assistant attorney general for the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division, said in a statement.

The suit said that at one point, when Jeffs issued an order for a sect member to return a runaway underage bride to her new husband in 2000, three deputies confronted the person to demand he return her to sect leaders, unaware he had already done so.

At another point, when Jeffs banned dogs from households in 2001, deputies went house to house to round up the animals, then shot and killed them in a slaughter pit, the suit said.

Additionally, the lawsuit accused the cities of refusing to issue building permits to non-sect members, and said the utilities delayed water and electric service to non-members.

The lawsuit seeks unspecified damages for discrimination victims, fines against both towns and court orders barring harassment of non-FLDS members.

LAWYER CALLS MOVE 'HEAVY-HANDED'

Phoenix-based lawyer Jeff Matura, who represents Colorado City, and Salt Lake City-based attorney Peter Stirba, who represents Hildale, said the cities denied the allegations in the suit and that they were not new.

Matura called the move a "heavy-handed" federal attempt to accomplish what Utah and Arizona officials had been unable to do for decades: dismantle the FLDS communities for their religious practice of polygamy.

He said Justice Department officials approached the towns more than six months ago, not to discuss the allegations in the lawsuit, but essentially seeking to dismantle and rebuild the city governments and police department.

"We've been talking to them trying to avoid a lawsuit," Matura said. "They literally wanted to put the towns under receivership. ... We declined."

He said that raids on the two communities dating back to the 1930s by state and federal authorities in both states had been unsuccessful and that most legal actions brought against city officials in the past had also failed.

The sect, which Jeffs still leads despite his 2011 child sexual assault conviction, practices polygamy and believes plural marriage brings exaltation in heaven. Jeffs is revered by followers as a prophet who communicates directly with God.

The mainstream Mormon church, which has no affiliation with the FLDS, abandoned polygamy in 1890 and excommunicates members engaged in the practice.

"It's a rehash," Stirba told Reuters. "At this point, there has been no adjudication by any court or in any other proceeding that found there had ever been any discriminatory behavior."

In 2008, for example, a federal judge in Utah tossed out a lawsuit from a former church member alleging religion-based discrimination by police, Stirba said. A 2007 probe by police academies in both states ended with four of the department's six officers cleared of allegations of wrongdoing. Two resigned.

The attorneys general in Arizona and Utah welcomed the federal move, with Utah's top prosecutor, Mark Shurtleff, saying it would finally establish the rule of law in the twin towns.

"We have offered our full cooperation and collaboration with the Department of Justice to aggressively investigate and address these complaints," he said.

Both Arizona and Utah tried unsuccessfully to pass legislation last year to block the sect from controlling law enforcement in the towns. Two weeks ago, Arizona Attorney General Tom Horne announced his office would provide $420,000 to the Mohave County Sheriff office for overtime pay so officers could patrol Colorado City 16 hours a day.

(Reporting By Lily Kuo and Jennifer Dobner; Writing by Cynthia Johnston; Editing by Peter Cooney)
 
Warren Jeffs, Polygamist FLDS Cult Leader, May Be Directing Doomsday Plot (VIDEO)
T
Infamous polygamist and leader of the break-off Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints sect has predicted that the end of times is near, prompting some to worry about violence this New Year's Eve. Warren Jeffs is currently serving a life sentence in Texas for abusing underage girl "brides," but authorities say he has been issuing missives to his 10,000 followers from his prison cell, the New York Daily News notes.

Sam Brower, a private investigator who represents former FLDS members, told CNN that law enforcement officers will be monitoring known FLDS communities as the new year approaches. “The consensus seems to be that Warren is indicating that by the end of the year, the end of the world will be here," Brower said.

A CNN reporter dispatched to the community's main enclave in Colorado City, Ariz., and Hildale, Utah, was rejected by FLDS members who refused to speak to him. Meanwhile, the abrupt closing of the area's only grocery story and "central gathering" point for the community has added to fears Jeff's followers are gearing up for doomsday, according to the report.

This is not the first time the cult leader has predicted the end of the world, however.

As recently as Nov. 12, Jeffs issued a warning to his followers that the world would end on Dec. 23. He told them they should prepare themselves for the reckoning. According to KUTV, Jeffs warns FLDS members to “be ready” for a “disastrous cleansing.”
Former FLDS member Isaac Wyler told the station that Jeffs told his flock to “make these grey or blue backpacks, 2x2x1, pack them with essentials,” he said. “Be ready to go at a moment’s notice.” When the world did not self-destruct, Jeffs blamed his followers’ “lack of faith," according to The Independent. Jeffs has also told officials that if he and his fellow FLDS leaders remain in jail, the world will be subject to terrible plagues and natural disasters, Time reports.

While much of Jeffs' predictions seem like the mere rantings of a man who will not have the opportunity for freedom until his 93rd birthday, former member Wyler said the continuing obedience of some in the FLDS community is unpredictable and frightening in its strength.

“There’s always that fear that Warren would see how far he could take them,” Wyler told KUTV. “I’ve got a brother-in-law who once told my sister ‘if the prophet told me to I’d slit your throat without even thinking about it."
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/12/3 ... weird-news
 
If you’re anything like me, you do your best not to spend the night at any old hotel when you’re on the road. Well-worn travelers know foregoing the peace of mind that comes with a chain hotel can open up some of the best kinds of adventures. What that weird old bed and breakfast lacks in comfort, it will more than make up for in stories. Well, stories don’t get much better than this: you can now spend the night in jail polygamist leader Warren Jeff’s Mormon fundamentalist compound. Welcome to America’s Most Wanted Bed & Breakfast. ...

http://weekinweird.com/2015/05/25/p...-rent-a-room-in-warren-jeffs-mormon-compound/
 
Two women who grew up inside one of Utah's most well-known polygamous families have little patience for reality TV shows like "Sister Wives" and "My Five Wives."

Andrea and Jessica were emotionally and physically abused by their polygamist father, John Daniel Kingston. In 2004, they made headlines when Andrea, then 12, and Jessica, then 15, ran away from home and were eventually removed from the custody of their father and mother, Heidi Mattingly Foster — one of Kingston's polygamous wives.

Andrea, Jessica and their half-sister Shanell — who no longer have the Kingston last name — are at the center of LMN's new reality show "Escaping Polygamy." It's 180 degrees from other shows that attempt to normalize plural marriage, as it shows the three women helping members of "The Order" get out of the Kingston clan.

"We talked about how, if we did this, we could actually show people what's really going on in polygamy," Andrea said in an interview with The Salt Lake Tribune. "And show people it's not a bunch of happy women with these obedient, beautiful children following this one man and everyone's happy. That's not really how it is."

Jessica told The Tribune she congratulates the women on "Sister Wives" and "My Five Wives" "if they've figured out how to live [polygamy] positively."

But she questions whether it's real.

"If you just look at the other aspects of their lives, they're not physically healthy. They don't look emotionally healthy. And yet they're sitting there smiling on TV trying to say they're happy as can be," she said. "That's great for them if they want to keep telling themselves that. But I just think if somebody doesn't want to live like that, they shouldn't have to." ...

http://www.sltrib.com/home/2704496-155/kingston-clan-exposed-in-escaping-polygamy
 
There was no bigger winner than Bountiful, B.C., polygamist Winston Blackmore last month when the Canadian government sent out cheques for the expanded Universal Child Care Benefit.

Blackmore, who is awaiting trial on a single criminal charge of polygamy, has 133 children ranging in age from babies to adults.

For every child under the age of six, Canadian parents received $520, and for every child aged seven to 18, they received $420, with no restrictions on how the money could be spent.

Using the best information available from several sources, the 58-year-old fundamentalist Mormon leader has as many as 98 children who are 18 or younger, and as many as 20 of those are seven and younger.

What makes it easier to determine the Blackmore children’s ages is that his offspring were often given names that started with a specific letter of the alphabet depending on which year they were born. There was the year when most (if not all) had names starting with O. Other years, there were the Rs, the Ms, the Ns, the Ps, followed by the As, then the Ws (although, surprisingly, no Winston), the Ss and the Hs.

Do the arithmetic of 20 children under seven and 78 between the ages of seven and 18 and it adds up to a $43,160 payday for Blackmore and his wives.

http://news.nationalpost.com/toront...-bonanza-for-b-c-polygamist-with-133-children
 
US Labor Department sues FLDS Church, others for oppressive child labor and other violations; seeks to enforce $1.9M in penalties
Department also seeks back wages for 1,400 employees


SALT LAKE CITY — For most children, fall begins a new school year full of possibilities to learn and prepare for their lives ahead and future jobs. Unfortunately, for hundreds of children in southern Utah and northern Arizona, the season is a time for hard work harvesting pecans by hand for commercial sale.

A multi-year investigation by the U.S. Department of Labor's Wage and Hour Division revealed that the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, FLDS Church Bishop Lyle Jeffs, Dale Barlow, Brian Jessop, and Paragon Contractors Corp. employed young children illegally to harvest pecans.

Today, the department took administrative action to collect $1.9 million in civil money penalties from Paragon, Jessop and Barlow associated with child labor violations from the 2012-2013 pecan harvest. The department also filed a lawsuit against the church, Jeffs and Barlow seeking back wages, and initiated a contempt of court action against Jessop and Paragon for violating a 2007 court order that restrained them from violating child labor laws.

In its investigation, the Wage and Hour Division found FLDS leaders directed schools in Hildale, Utah, and nearby Colorado City, Ariz., be closed so that children and adult laborers could work collecting pecans. During the 2012-2013 harvest, investigators found that at least 175 children under the age of 13 worked harvesting pecans. At least 1,400 FLDS children and adults worked in the fields for no compensation. ...

http://www.dol.gov/opa/media/press/whd/WHD20151660.htm
 
Eleven members of a polygamist Mormon sect have been arrested in the US on suspicion of food stamp fraud and money laundering.

The suspects, including several senior members of the sect, were detained in the states of Utah and South Dakota.

Prosecutors allege that they diverted funds from Utah's food aid programme.

In 2011 the sect's leader Warren Jeffs received a life sentence for sexually assaulting two underage followers he took as brides.

The head of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (FLDS), an offshoot from the mainstream Mormon church, was handed the maximum sentence possible.

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-35645780
 
RAPID CITY, S.D. — A U.S. magistrate judge ordered the alleged South Dakota leader of Warren Jeffs' polygamous sect to remain behind bars because there is a serious risk he would flee before a trial over what prosecutors say was a multi-million-dollar food stamp fraud scheme and money laundering.

Seth Jeffs was one of 11 sect members indicted last week on allegations that leaders diverted at least $12 million worth of federal benefits by telling hundreds of members to buy things and give them to a church warehouse or by using the food stamps in sect-owned stores without actually getting anything in return.

Jeffs, 42, had a detention hearing Monday, and U.S. Magistrate Judge Daneta Wollmann ordered him held in custody because she determined he is a serious flight risk. U.S. Attorney's Office spokeswoman Melodie Rydalch in Utah said Jeffs, who is being transported to Utah, could appeal the decision to the trial judge.

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/crime...eth-jeffs-to-be-jailed-until-trial/ar-BBqajeg
 
Slick escape: polygamous sect leader uses olive oil to slip free of FBI tracker

A leader of the polygamous Utah sect of the Mormon church, who is facing federal fraud charges, escaped from a GPS tracking device using olive oil or another kind of lubricant, according to the FBI.

Lyle Jeffs of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (FLDS) was released from jail on 9 June pending a trial on charges that he and others swindled the federal government out of millions of dollars in food stamps.

Less than two weeks after a judge released him, Jeffs violated his house arrest, according to the FBI in Utah, which issued a warrant for the 56-year-old’s arrest.

Now, federal investigators say they believe Jeffs escaped the FBI’s monitoring by pouring olive oil or a similar substance onto his ankle to allow him to remove a bracelet that was tracking his whereabouts. ...

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/crime...ve-oil-to-slip-free-of-fbi-tracker/ar-BBuglc0
 
Slick escape: polygamous sect leader uses olive oil to slip free of FBI tracker
Apparently ankle trackers are both loose enough that it's possible to get around the ball of the ankle, and ankle trackers don't detect that they are in contact with someone like a fitbit or other fitness tracker does?
 
For a polygamous sect, homes have gone and ‘apostates’ have come
By NATE CARLISLE | The Salt Lake Tribune
First Published Apr 09 2017 07:00 AM • Last Updated Apr 09 2017 07:00 am

Brielle Decker pulled a latch hidden underneath a shelf on the back wall. Suddenly, the shelves slid and opened a doorway to a secret room.

The room, in the basement of a house that once belonged to Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints President Warren Jeffs, is about 6 by12 feet. A fluorescent light fixture on the ceiling shined a yellowish glow on shelves and an old, open safe about the size of a dorm room refrigerator.

"We think this is where they kept the priesthood records," Decker said.

Now the house, and any secrets it can still reveal, belong to Decker, who says she used to be Jeffs' 65th plural wife.

In November, Decker obtained Jeffs' former home and two other residences sitting on the same parcel via the United Effort Plan. It is a land trust once controlled by the polygamous FLDS. In the past 2½ years, the "UEP," as everyone here calls it, has remade Hildale.

The UEP once owned the vast majority of homes and commercial properties in Hildale. Now, about 85 percent of those properties have been sold or are in the process of being sold to private owners, according to figures provided by Jeff Barlow, the UEP's executive director.

While the UEP doesn't ask about religion any more, none of those owners is believed to still be loyal FLDS members. The results are visible.

Walls and gates erected by the FLDS to shield outsiders' views have been torn down. There are more people in conventional clothing — FLDS women are known to wear prairie dresses and while men don long-sleeved monocolored shirts — and more people waving to one another as they drive down the red dirt streets.

"When you own the property, you see a whole new attitude," Barlow said. "You start seeing fences coming down and remodels going up. ...

http://www.sltrib.com/news/4843521-155/for-a-polygamous-sect-homes-have
 
Tip leads to arrest of polygamist Mormon sect leader Lyle Jeffs, FBI says

(CNN)Bishop Lyle Jeffs, leader of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, was living out of his car for two weeks before his arrest in Yankton, South Dakota, an FBI official said Thursday.

Jeffs, who had been on the run from authorities for almost a year, did not resist arrest late Wednesday and is being held in Minnehaha County Jail in South Dakota. He appeared in court Thursday afternoon and didn't answer reporters' questions as he was brought in.
"The long arm of the law will eventually catch up with you and bring you back to justice," John Huber, the US Attorney for the District of Utah, said earlier. "Undoubtedly, the flight from prosecution and his fugitive status will play a part (in the upcoming court case)."
The FBI received a tip from a citizen Tuesday, which included a partial description of Jeff's vehicle. The tip was instrumental to tracking down Jeffs, said Eric Barnhart, special agent in charge of the FBI's Salt Lake City, Utah, bureau. ...

http://edition.cnn.com/2017/06/15/us/fbi-arrests-flds-leader-lyle-jeffs/index.html
 
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