Warren Jeffs trial, July 26, 2011

The Prairie Chicken
July 26, 2011

Having been held in the El Dorado Texas jail for three years,  Fundamentalist Mormon leader Warren Jeffs has spent an average of 3K per month on phone calls paid for by phone cards. 

 Authorities say Jeffs has received money from his followers and that he uses much of it to buy phone time to deliver lengthy and elaborate sermons to disciples in Texas, Utah and Arizona.

 According to Schleicher County Sheriff David, Jeffs’ calls indicate that he is still running his church from behind bars.

 The Texas accusations arise mainly from a raid conducted by the Texas Rangers on an FLDS ranch a few miles from El Dorado. Authorities took hundreds of children away from the ranch for over two months before allowing them to return.

During the raid, Jeffs' diaries were confiscated, which included photographs of Jeffs kissing very young girls.  Some once-trusted aides of Warren Jeffs say he has betrayed his church’s principles and lost their loyalty by openly boasting of relations with girls as young as 12 or 13.  “And he’s confessed to doing some very terrible things, including molesting his daughter and sister and others,” said Willie E. Jessop, a former Jeffs associate.

Jeffs is represented by attorney  Jeff Kearney.

Jeffs was tried in St. George, Utah, after his arrest in 2006 and he was found guilty on two charges of being an accomplice to rape.  The conviction was overturned by an appellate court on a technicality; jury instructions were found to have been faulty.  Utah prosecutors decided not to re-try the case.

Jury selection for Jeff’s sexual assault trial began in Texas on Monday. He is charged with two counts of sexual assault on a child and one count of bigamy, to which he has pleaded not guilty.

Arvin Shreeve--Polygamous sect leader dies in state prison

Arvin Shreeve » He led the Zion Society, and was convicted of abusing a child.

By Lindsay Whitehurst
The Salt Lake Tribune
08/12/2009

...Arvin Shreeve, 79, died Monday of natural causes, said Utah Department of Corrections Deputy Director Mike Haddon. He had been convicted of child abuse in 1991...He was previously housed at the special service dorm for sex offenders since being imprisoned on Dec. 24, 1991.

Shreeve was the leader of the Zion Society, a cult whose religious teachings included group and lesbian sex instructions. At its height, the cult claimed about 70 followers, with about half of them children of the "sisters" of the Zion Society. He told his followers the world would soon be in chaos, but they would be saved.

Prosecutors said at least 10 children were molested by Shreeve and his followers, 10 of whom were later charged with child sex abuse.

Police raided the group's headquarters in 1991. They found guns, survival gear, hidden rooms and a bomb shelter stashed in a meticulously neat enclave of homes in northern Ogden. A retired landscaper, Shreeve was thought to have founded the cult about 10 years before the raid.

In November 1991, Shreeve pleaded guilty to two counts of sodomy of a child and two counts of sex abuse of a child. He was sentenced to a minimum of 20 years in prison.

read entire article here

one down...

More in polygamous communities seek help

Salt Lake City, Utah

May 7, 2009

sltrib.com

By Brooke Adams

The Salt Lake Tribune

Safety Net Committee » Coordinator says word is spreading.

In the first three months of the year, 80 people sought help from the Utah Safety Net Committee with problems ranging from a purported kidnapping to domestic violence and allegations of sexual abuse.

Pat Merkley, coordinator, said the calls for help have grown as word of services available through the committee has spread -- and trust has built that religious affiliation is not an issue.
"This last quarter was the highest victim-services hours and numbers we've had," Merkley said.
Merkley shared the latest tallies at the committee's monthly meeting in Salt Lake City. The committee, funded by the Utah Legislature, provides outreach services to polygamous communities in Utah and Arizona.

Between January and March, Merkley and caseworker Chelsea Gambles worked with 457 people in one way or another. The largest contact came through training sessions provided to two communities -- the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints and the Apostolic United Brethren.

They also provided family, individual or group counseling services to nearly 100 people.
Merkley said victim services included counseling a family where a disciplining situation with a teenager escalated into a physical altercation, assisting four women who left polygamous relationships, and helping a plural wife in an abusive situation get a protective order against her husband.

All fundamentalist Mormon groups were represented by those who sought help.
"This is no different than any other community I've worked with," she said. "Problems are problems. I am not claiming that the victims are different or that they are any more than any other population. I hope we can continue to maintain their trust, knowing that we will respectfully work with them."

During the quarter, Merkley also ran three support groups for women who have left or are still in polygamous relationships. Merkley took over management of the committee last summer. It had previously been overseen by the Utah Attorney Generals Office.

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I have to tell you though, I LOVE the series "Big Love".

FLDS teen disputes mom's book

Left, Carolyn Jessop, mother of Betty.

Betty Jessop, Right, is writing her own account.

By Brooke Adams
The Salt Lake Tribune
01/27/2009

Yearning For Zion Ranch, Texas »

Betty Jane Jessop's favorite phrase: "Good grief!" That's what Betty utters as she reads the new epilogue in her mother's best-selling book, Escape . In those pages, Carolyn Jessop describes her daughter's return to the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, calling her brainwashed.

"It just makes me want to laugh," said Betty, 19, shaking her head. Besides Carolyn herself, the character in Escape that most intrigues readers is Betty -- the second of Carolyn's eight children with FLDS bishop Merril Jessop. Why, they ask, did Betty return to the sect after four years in mainstream society, and is she OK?

Soon they may be able to read Betty's answer to those questions. Since April, the teenager has been working on a book about her experiences, aided by older sister Maggie Jessop.
Betty said she decided to write the book after watching news reports about Texas authorities' raid on the Yearning For Zion Ranch and her mother's "ridiculous" comments about the community. "It is time for the other side of the story to be told," said Betty, who will shop it to publishers this spring.

Carolyn Jessop, who will speak at the Sugar House Barnes & Noble bookstore at 7 p.m. today, declined an interview about her daughter, saying only that "Betty has the right" to share her views. In her book, Carolyn holds out hope Betty will return to her.

Based on several early chapters, Betty's book -- the first by an active FLDS member -- promises an intriguing perspective on her family, her view of mainstream society and the sect's beliefs.
Both Betty and Maggie Jessop said their father set several rules for the project: Tell the truth, let readers reach their own conclusions, and do not slam Carolyn.

"He has specifically worked with Betty to forgive her mother and not express bad feelings about what happened to her," Maggie Jessop said. Merril Jessop oversees the sect's Texas ranch and has been indicted for conducting an illegal marriage involving a daughter who allegedly was spiritually married at age 12 to FLDS leader Warren S. Jeffs. Carolyn has said one reason she left the sect is she feared such a marriage for Betty.

Betty is slim, with strawberry blond hair, fair skin and a laugh that comes often. She was 13 in 2003 when her mother left and moved to Salt Lake City. As described in Escape -- and acknowledged by Betty -- she went kicking and screaming. Betty said traumatic years followed as she struggled to cope with mainstream society and fought with her mother.

Their arguments, she said, centered on her desire to live according to the sect's principles and her mother's determination to keep her from the faith, her father and her extended family.
"I was such a representation of everything she hated so much," Betty said.

On July 2, 2007, Betty turned 18. Two days later she returned to the sect, celebrating what she now calls her own independence day. "I just couldn't deny what was in my heart -- my belief in my religion and my love for my father and my family," she said. "I spent four years [in mainstream society], and there is nothing there for me.

"I would never trade my experience for anything in the world," she said. "It made my fire and determination much more intense." Betty has not married, though she said she looks forward to becoming "part of a home that is alive, never ending, growing." She spends about eight-hours most days on her book, splitting her time between San Antonio and the ranch. Betty also works in the community's sewing factory, helps with meals and spends time with her other siblings.
Betty said she has drawn from personal journals for details about her childhood, her parents' divorce and experiences living away from the FLDS community.

She expects former classmates at Midvale Middle School and West Jordan High School will be surprised by "how ornery and aggressive" she was at home given the quiet, calm facade she put on in public.

Betty said her mother's health problems -- Carolyn says in her book she was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder -- meant many household and child care duties fell to her, even on school days. Betty quips that resulted in her own "current-traumatic stress disorder."
"With the responsibility landing on me so hard every morning, I was an emotional wreck, and after a while, I hardened into a frazzled bundle of nerves," she writes. Betty said that after two years -- and ongoing threats to send her to foster care -- she moved in with an uncle who had also left the FLDS.

At public school, the "unbridled vulgarity and immorality" were a shock, Betty writes, and the pressure almost unbearable. It was hard "to see how students acted, their language and how teachers didn't do anything about it," Betty said. She focused on succeeding academically in part to disprove her mother's criticism of FLDS schools.

"I was constantly told I wouldn't do good in school and that I would be persecuted because of how I looked," said Betty, who graduated with honors. Despite the mocking and questions she got at school, Betty wore the sect's conservative, body-covering dresses, even in gym class.

There were other awkward moments. In one class, she was asked to share plans following graduation. College? A church mission? Work? "That was a tricky question on my part," Betty said. "How do I say what I want in front of all these people who already think I'm weird?"
Her answer? "I'm not sure," she said. The teacher pressed, but Betty kept silent. "I couldn't say I wanted to go home and be a mother in Zion," Betty said. "They wouldn't understand that."

She made some friends, but visiting their homes reinforced her desire to return to her polygamous community. "The feeling I got, it was so empty," she said. While her mother describes Merril Jessop as a cruel husband and father, Betty speaks of him as loving, kind and with an "unconquerable spirit."

Betty said she and her mother have not spoken since September, when she called to wish a younger brother happy birthday. "She doesn't call me and neither do my siblings," Betty said. "I miss [my siblings] so much and hope with all my heart they can survive."

Fire damages structures at Polygamist sect's Texas compound

Fire damages structures at sect's Texas compound

CLYDE, Texas (AP) -- A fire has burned four structures at the compound of a Texas sect whose leader is accused of performing polygamous weddings.

Firefighters in the town of Clyde say the cause of Monday's blaze at the House of Yahweh compound is unknown. No injuries were reported.

Fire Chief Billy Dezern tells the Abilene Reporter-News in its online edition that firefighters kept the blaze from spreading. A few vehicles were also burned.

The compound covers more than 40 acres near Abilene. Sect leader and self-proclaimed prophet Yisrayl (YIZ'-rah-yel) Hawkins is accused of having more than 20 wives and performing the weddings.

He faces trial next year.

Report Says Abuse At Texas Sect Widespread

12 Girls Believed To Have Been Abused
December 23, 2008thedenverchannel.com

SAN ANTONIO -- Texas child welfare authorities concluded in a new report that nearly two-thirds of the families living at a polygamist group's ranch -- targeted in a high-profile raid last spring -- had children who were abused or neglected.

The Department of Family and Protective Services released the report to The Associated Press on Tuesday, saying 12 girls, ages 12 to 15, are believed to have been abused.

Another 274 children were listed as neglected because the agency said the parents knew there was abuse in the household but did not move their children away.

Child welfare authorities conducted investigations into all the families of the 439 children taken from the ranch run by the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints in April.

Latest polygamist ranch indictment names leader

Frederick Merrill Jessop & wives

Monday, November 24, 2008

SAN ANTONIO

(AP)

An elder of a polygamist sect and two other church members surrendered to authorities Monday to face felony charges relating to the marriage of underage girls to older men.

Frederick "Merril" Jessop, 72, a leader of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints who oversaw its Yearning For Zion Ranch in west Texas, faces one count of conducting an unlawful marriage ceremony involving a minor.

One of his daughters was allegedly married to jailed sect leader Warren Jeffs at 12 and is now the only child from the ranch in foster care after her mother refused to cooperate with child welfare authorities.

In all, 12 FLDS men have been indicted since Texas authorities raided the ranch in April looking for evidence of underage girls forced into marriages and sex with older men. Hundreds of children were placed in state custody for weeks before they were ordered to be returned to their parents.

A grand jury in Eldorado, Texas, indicted Jeffs, Jessop, Wendell Loy Nielsen and Leroy Johnson Steed on Nov. 12. Only Jeffs' name had been released before Monday, when the other three men were booked and released after posting bond.

"We've said all along we're not running. We're going to take it head on," said FLDS spokesman Willie Jessop. "The allegations they're making and what they're trying to do is nothing more than harassment."

Nielsen, 68, is charged with three counts of bigamy. The indictment includes few details, but church records released as part of a separate child custody case list 21 women married to Nielsen in August 2007.

Leroy Johnson Steed, 42, is charged with sexual assault of a child, bigamy and tampering with evidence. Church records show that Steed was married to a 16-year-old girl in March 2007.
Jeffs was convicted in Utah and is awaiting trial in Arizona on charges related to underage marriages of sect girls. He faces charges in Texas of sexual assault of a child and bigamy.

Church records and journal entries released in the custody case indicate several of Merril Jessop's daughters were married to men in the church when they were 16 or younger.

One of Merril Jessop's wives, Carolyn, fled the FLDS community on the Arizona-Utah line with her children in 2003 and wrote a best-selling book, "Escape."

Generally, teens younger than 17 cannot consent to sex with an adult under Texas law. Bigamy is also illegal. While the FLDS plural marriages are not legal marriages, Texas law forbids even purporting to marry.

Willie Jessop said the state is making criminal cases to justify what he called a botched child custody case. Child welfare authorities have dropped most of the cases involving the 439 children taken from the YFZ Ranch; only about three dozen remain under court oversight.

The child welfare case was prompted by calls to a domestic abuse hotline from someone claiming to be a teen mother who was abused. Those calls are now being investigated as a hoax.

The FLDS, which believes polygamy bring glorification in heaven, is a breakaway sect of the Mormon church, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The Mormon church renounced polygamy more than a century ago.

Salt Lake City: LeBaron brothers seek incest law changes

11/19/2008

Elend LeBaron says his suspicion of incest in his father's family was awful. But it was almost as difficult to learn a loophole in Utah law left prosecutors unable to do anything about it.

Now, he and two brothers are trying to get incest laws changed in Utah and two other states to broaden law enforcement's ability to go after the crime.

The legislature's criminal justice interim committee unanimously approved a bill proposed by Sen. Dennis Stowell , R-Parowan to apply the charge to a child conceived without sexual intercourse. It allows prosecutors to rely on genetic tests to build cases, and extends the reporting period for incest from four to seven years.

An amendment added Wednesday morning to the proposed bill clarifies that the law would not prohibit use of fertilized human eggs in surrogate pregnancies, as long as the sperm and egg came from unrelated individuals.

Stowell said Utah would be the first state to adopt such legislation if the bill is eventually approved.

Elend LeBaron of Delta told the committee that he and two brothers had long been suspicious about who was fathering children with two of their adult sisters. A year ago, they secretly obtained genetic samples that "transformed our suspicion into a very hard reality."

The tests found a high probability that two children, one from each sister, were fathered by their father and most likely another brother.

Elend LeBaron said they met with their father and siblings to confront them with the genetic evidence. During that meeting, one sister commented that artificial insemination was not illegal.
Prosecutors later confirmed that Utah law defines incest as sexual intercourse.

Troy A. Little, chief deputy Iron County Attorney, said his office interviewed Elend LeBaron's father and sisters but were unable to go forward with a prosecution because the family claimed the conceptions were the result of artificial insemination. Little said that a still unaddressed obstacle is how to prove jurisdiction for prosecuting the crime, which lawmakers also acknowledged was a problem.

"Incest isn't that difficult to figure out genetically but the location of the act is very difficult to figure out," said Steve Urquhart, R-St. George.

Elend LeBaron said before the hearing that it was embarrassing to disclose his family problems publicly.

"I am not real thrilled to go and tell everyone my dad does this," he said. "But after finding out what was going on, media coverage and legislation is the best hope in protecting my younger sister from this danger. What we are doing now will have no influence on the past. My objective is to change the law so that should more children be born, with DNA testing we can prosecute."

Their father is a member of the polygamous LeBaron clan, but broke away in the 1950s. In the 1970s, his uncle Ervil LeBaron murdered men he considered his rivals and later died in prison.
Elend LeBaron told the committee that incest has "been occurring in Utah amongst a number of polygamists for a very long time.

Girls in "some of these small religious organizations have been indoctrinated their entire lives to believe God wants them to marry and have children with their father, their brother or their uncle," he said.

The Utah Attorney General's Office has been investigating the polygamous Kingston clan for incest violations but has not filed any charges. The group has sanctioned marriages between half siblings and an uncle and niece in the past.

Elend LeBaron said his family members believe God "wants them to do this sort of thing" and that God will ensure no birth defects occur. He believes his father "fancies" that his younger sister and brother will together produce "the future leader's of God's kingdom.

"I believe in protecting religious freedom but incest of this nature crosses a very important line in as much as it is a crime against the unborn," Elend LeBaron said.

Mario Capecchi, a University of Utah professor and Nobel Prize-winning geneticist provided a written statement to the committee that said offspring of parent/child or brother-sister matings have a defect risk in the range of 25 percent to 50 percent. The genetic risk from first cousin matings -- legal in many states -- is approximately 6 percent to 8 percent.

John M. Opitz, a professor of pediatric genetics at the University of Utah told the committee first-degree relatives, such as a father and daughter, share 50 percent of their genes and thus have an "exponentially" greater risk of malformations, mental retardation and mortality.

Texas officials initially estimated 70 charges against FLDS

Right: Rulon Jeffs and two brides.

By Melinda Rogers
The Salt Lake Tribune

While Texas authorities were initially investigating 20 cases of sexual assault and 50 bigamy cases involving FLDS members, it's unclear how many of those cases remain open four months later.

Texas Department of Public Safety spokeswoman Tela Mange confirmed the number of cases -- outlined in an April e-mail -- was accurate in the month officials raided the Yearning for Zion Ranch near Eldorado.

But she can't confirm the current number of cases still being investigated. And Salt Lake City attorney Rod Parker, a spokesman for the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, thinks the numbers have more than likely drastically changed as the investigation has progressed.

So far, the Schleicher County grand jury hearing evidence against sect members has indicted six men, including sect leader Warren S. Jeffs, on charges of sexual assault, bigamy and failure to report child abuse. Parker said he wonders in particular about the volume of bigamy charges that had been predicted back in April.

Based on the number of men on the ranch in plural marriages, in order to file 50 bigamy charges against ranch residents, he said, prosecutors would likely need to charge women -- a departure from the typical bigamy suspect. He said women have typically been viewed as victims of bigamy, not perpetrators.


In Utah, for example, outspoken independent polygamist Tom Green was successfully prosecuted for bigamy, but none of his wives were charged. Green was convicted in 2001 and 2002 of bigamy, criminal nonsupport and child rape for fathering a child with his stepdaughter when she was 13. But generally, Attorney General Mark Shurtleff has said, Utah won't prosecute consenting adults who engage in polygamous relationships.

Texas officials have not ruled that out. While the e-mail's number of Texas investigations was current in April, it's hard to say how many people are still under investigation, or how many charges prosecutors will decide to pursue after the investigation is complete, Mange said. "I don't know what ultimately the team will decide to do, as far as possible charges filed," she said Tuesday.

The Schleicher County grand jury will reconvene next week. Jeffs and four men are charged with first-degree sexual assault; one of those men also is charged with bigamy. The sect's physician was indicted on accusations that he failed to report child abuse.

More than 450 of the sect's children were removed from the ranch amid a child abuse investigation. They were later returned to parents, after the Texas Supreme Court criticized the lack of evidence supporting the children's removal.

Rozita Swinton’s Bad Call

Police say her deception set off the FLDS raid. Prank or personality disorder?

By Arian Campo-Flores and Catharine Skipp NEWSWEEK
Published Jul 26, 2008
From the magazine issue dated Aug 4, 2008

When Flora Jessop answered her phone on the morning of March 30, a female caller spoke in a meek and frightened whisper. She said her name was Sarah, a child bride trapped on a polygamist compound in Texas.

She had apparently sought out Jessop because of the woman's work with abused kids as executive director of the Child Protection Project. Sarah claimed she had been assaulted by the older man she was assigned to marry and was often locked in a room with boarded windows. She described details, like names of elders, that only someone in the sect would likely know.

Around the same time, Sarah was also calling a shelter in San Angelo, Texas. After counselors there forwarded her abuse reports to law enforcement, authorities responded with a massive April 3 raid on the property where Sarah claimed to be held, the Yearning for Zion ranch of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (FLDS) in Eldorado, Texas.

In the course of the operation, officials said they discovered such a troubling pattern of sexual and physical abuse that they forcibly removed more than 400 kids. (All of them have since been returned to their families by court order; last week sect leader Warren Jeffs and four of his followers were charged with sexually abusing underage girls.) But Sarah was never found.

The reason, according to law enforcement: Sarah was not the blond, blue-eyed teen bride she claimed to be, but rather a 33-year-old African-American woman living in Colorado Springs, Colo., named Rozita Swinton.

It's not the first time Swinton has been accused of duping authorities. She's been arrested for false reporting in two separate cases in Colorado, allegedly setting off frantic manhunts by repeatedly impersonating abuse victims. But even as she now faces possible charges in Texas, Swinton remains an elusive and enigmatic figure.

As one woman who cared for her believes, Swinton might well be a victim of sexual abuse who fractured into multiple personalities to cope with the trauma. Others who've known her view her as a masterful manipulator with an insatiable appetite for attention.

In a brief conversation with NEWSWEEK, Swinton only added to the mystery. "There are so many lies about me that have been published," she said without elaborating.

The daughter of a convicted murderer, Swinton had a turbulent upbringing in Nashville. By the age of 14, she had run away from home so many times that she became a ward of the state.

In her senior year in high school, Rozita accused her father, Clarence Swinton, of sexually abusing her—an allegation she would repeat throughout her life. Though he was never charged with abuse, a restraining order against him—which cites Rozita's allegations—was issued in 1992.

In a recent conversation with NEWSWEEK, Clarence described Rozita as "the world's greatest con artist," and denied her accusations. "If there is any victim, it is me," he said. (Rozita didn't address the abuse allegations with NEWSWEEK, and her attorneys did not return repeated calls for comment.)

for complete article: http://www.newsweek.com/id/148992

Warren Jeffs is charged with child sex assault

ELDORADO, Texas (AP) -- Polygamist leader Warren Jeffs was indicted in Texas on a count of child sexual assault, a first-degree felony. Five members of the sect also face charges.

Attorney General Greg Abbott says four of Jeffs' followers are charged with one count of sexually assaulting girls under the age of 17.

One of the four faces an additional charge of bigamy.

Abbott says a fifth follower is charged with three counts of failure to report child abuse.

The charges follow an ill-fated child custody case in which more than 400 children were placed in foster care. The Texas Supreme Court ruled child welfare authorities overstepped in taking all the children from their parents even though many were infants and toddlers.

Abbott earlier Tuesday went into a small community building where a grand jury was meeting in the West Texas town of Eldorado.

Women and girls in prairie dresses, including a 16-year-old daughter of Jeffs, were escorted into the same building, while lawyers and members of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints crowded a bench in front of the courthouse.

The grand jury met for one day in June without issuing indictments in the case.

Weeks later, the Texas Supreme Court directed the judge overseeing the case to return the children to their parents, saying the state had overstepped its authority because it didn't show that any more than a handful of teenage girls may have been abused.

FLDS leaders have consistently denied that there was any abuse at the ranch and vowed not to sanction underage marriages.

Grand jury proceedings are supposed to be secret, but documents released as part of the separate child custody case involving the FLDS children have revealed some of the evidence collected by law enforcement during the weeklong raid of the ranch.

Among the hundreds of boxes of photos, documents and family Bibles, investigators found photos of Jeffs kissing and intimately embracing several apparently teenage girls.

A journal entry purportedly from Jeffs attached to a report by a child advocate indicates that he married his daughter to a 34-year-old man the day after she turned 15. The girl turns 17 on Saturday and has denied being married, though the child advocate report indicates that intimate notes between the girl and man were also found in the raid.

The girl, who playfully climbed a giant oak tree while waiting to be called to testify last month, left the community building frowning as she talked to her lawyer. The Associated Press is not identifying her because authorities believe she may be a sexual abuse victim.

Under Texas law, a girl younger than 17 cannot generally consent to sex with an adult. Bigamy is also illegal in Texas, although FLDS members in plural marriages did not get Texas marriage licenses.

In addition to discussions of the girl's marriage, the Jeffs journal entry indicates that he blessed marriages of two other underage sect members.

The FLDS, which believes that polygamy brings glory in heaven, is a breakaway sect of the mainstream Mormon church, which officially renounced polygamy more than a century ago.
Jeffs, who is revered as a prophet, is jailed in Arizona awaiting charges related to the marriages of young girls. He was convicted in Utah of rape as an accomplice for his role in the marriage of a 14-year-old last year.

The Teachings of Warren Jeffs, in his own words

Intelligence Report Spring 2005

Right: Warren and Rulon Jeffs

FLDS 'prophet' Warren Jeffs offers up some harsh opinions on blacks, women, gays, violence and the end of the world.

On Blacks:

"The black race is the people through which the devil has always been able to bring evil unto the earth."
"[Cain was] cursed with a black skin and he is the father of the Negro people.

He has great power, can appear and disappear. He is used by the devil, as a mortal man, to do great evils."

"Today you can see a black man with a white woman, et cetera. A great evil has happened on this land because the devil knows that if all the people have Negro blood, there will be nobody worthy to have the priesthood."

"If you marry a person who has connections with a Negro, you would become cursed."

"I was watching a documentary one day and on came these people talking about a certain black man. ... And then it showed the modern rock group, the Beatles. ... And so the manager of the group called in this Negro, homosexual, on drugs, and the Negro taught them how to do it. And what happened then, it went world wide... . So when you enjoy the [rock] beat ... you are enjoying the spirit of the black race and that's what I emphasize to the students. And it is to rock the soul and lead the person to immorality, corruption, to forget their prayers, to forget God. And thus the whole world has partaken of the spirit of the Negro race, accepting their ways."

(Download an MP3 audio file to hear Jeffs' full comments on the Beatles.)

Download an MP3 audio file containing Jeffs' further comments on "Negroes" and the biblical story of the flood.

On the Role of Women:

You can't go to heaven and be a god unless you have more than one wife." "Don't go that sad road, young ladies. Don't be wooed and tricked by the cute and cool and cunning boys or men that try to get you to like them."

"I have been instructed that any young man who will not leave our girls alone is to be sent away and not allowed to be among us, even before they destroy the girl." Download an MP3 audio file in which Jeffs further explains the role of women in marriage.

On Homosexuality:

"The people grew so evil, the men started to marry the men and the women married the women. This is the worst evil act you can do, next to murder. It is like murder. Whenever people commit that sin, then the Lord destroys them."

On Violence:

"I want to remind you what the prophets have taught us, that whenever a man of God is commanded to kill another man, he is never bloodthirsty."

The End of the World:

"For our God has a controversy with the nations, and He is about to stretch forth His hand and sweep the wicked off this land."

"Today the Lord rules over this people through President Jeffs (Warrens father, Rulon), yet we're under the bondage of the gentiles here in America. Soon the Lord will overthrow our nation and the priesthood people will rule over this land because the priesthood people will be the only ones left."

"Your only survival will be to be lifted up. It will be the greatest earthquake ever to come on the earth. The great war before the earthquake will kill 2 billion and the earthquake will kill quite a bit of those that are left — besides diseases and other things."

"When we finally go to Zion, then another planet is going to crash into this earth."

Polygamist Leader Warren Jeffs Released From Vegas Hospital

Right: Smug bastard Warren Jeffs
before his hunger strike, hanging
incident and rag doll act.

LAS VEGAS — Polygamist sect leader Warren Jeffs was released from a Nevada hospital Wednesday, a day after he was found "convulsive," weak and feverish in an Arizona jail cell, a sheriff's spokeswoman said.


The 52-year-old leader of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints was released around 5 p.m., police Officer Jose Montoya said. He said he did not know where Jeffs was transported to.




Calls to the Mohave County Sheriff's Department, which had custody of Jeffs, were not immediately returned.


Earlier Wednesday, a sheriff's spokeswoman said Jeffs was conscious but in a "weakened state of health, acting in a convulsive manner, shaking, and running a fever" when he was found Tuesday his solo jail cell in Kingman, Ariz.


That led jailers to move Jeffs from the Mohave County Jail to Kingman Regional Medical Center. He was then flown about 100 miles to Sunrise Hospital and Medical Center in Las Vegas.
"We're not told what his diagnosis is," sheriff's spokeswoman Trish Carter said. "But based on our observations from jail staff, it does not appear to be life-threatening."


During his hospitalization, Jeffs was under heavy guard while being treated in Las Vegas for an unknown medical condition, the Police Department said in a statement.


Jeffs' Arizona lawyer, Mike Piccarreta of Tucson, acknowledged that Jeffs was hospitalized but refused to say why.


"I really don't want to comment on his personal medical condition," Piccarreta said. "I think anyone that was being incarcerated as a result of persecution for his religious beliefs would not be in good health."


Jeffs has been in custody since his August 2006 arrest outside Las Vegas. He had been on the run for more than a year, and made the FBI's Most Wanted List before his capture.


Utah court documents show that Jeffs lost 30 pounds in jail awaiting trial in St. George, Utah, and that he was hospitalized for treatment of a self-imposed fast, dehydration and sleep deprivation.


A clinical social worker who interviewed Jeffs in April 2007 reported that Jeffs attempted to hang himself in January 2007 at the Washington County jail, and was seen several days later throwing himself against walls and banging his head. What? But he was such a big guy when he was screwing girls and teenagers, and rearranging families as though he was some kind of creepy god. Do prophets hang themselves? Do prophets throw themselves against walls and bang their heads?


Jeffs was convicted by a Utah jury last year of two counts of first-degree felony rape as an accomplice. He was sentenced to two consecutive terms of five years to life in prison for his role in the 2001 marriage of a 14-year-old follower to her 19-year-old cousin.


Records show that Jeffs was treated in a Utah prison infirmary in February 2007 for health problems attributed to refusing to eat. A year later, Utah authorities say, the 6-foot-3 Jeffs weighed 145 pounds when he was moved to Arizona. Carter said she did not immediately know how much Jeffs weighed when he was hospitalized Tuesday.


"Our job is to ensure he's in good health and ready to go to trial," Carter said. "If he has any medical conditions, we are going to have deputies and detention officers make sure he's safe and healthy."


Jeffs is charged in Arizona as an accomplice with four counts of sexual conduct with a minor stemming from the marriages he allegedly arranged between underage girls and older men.
He also had been charged with four counts of incest as an accomplice, but those charges were dropped last month after Mohave County Superior Court Judge Steven Conn found Arizona's incest law does not apply to the arranged marriages of teenage girls and their older male relatives.


Carter said Jeffs has been jailed in protective custody — alone in his cell 23 hours a day, and allowed one hour of recreation segregated from other inmates.


Jeffs was named in 2002 as the president, or prophet, of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, an insular sect with nearly 6,000 followers that practices polygamy in arranged marriages that have sometimes involved underage girls.


Many FLDS members live in the twin border towns of Colorado City, Ariz., and Hildale, Utah, about 160 miles northeast of Las Vegas. Another FLDS ranch was raided in west Texas in April, setting off a lengthy legal battle over the custody of hundreds of children.

Polygamist Sect Women Sell Clothing Online

These people are kidding, right?

SALT LAKE CITY -- The women of a polygamous sect are selling their distinctive handmade children's clothing online.

The enterprise was started to provide Texas Child Protective Services with clothes for the 440 children seized in an April raid on the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints' ranch at Eldorado, Texas.

Now, the polygamous sect's women hope to earn a living from the site.
FLDS member Maggie Jessop tells The Salt Lake Tribune there has been a lot of interest.

The sect is offering many items of clothing including dresses, overalls, shirts, pants, nightclothes, onesies for babies and ankle-to-wrist underwear. Women's apparel could be added if there is demand.

FLDS custody case resumes in San Angelo, Texas

In San Antonio, child welfare officials agree to reunite parents with their children under state supervision
By Brooke Adams

The Salt Lake Tribune
05/23/2008

Photographs submitted into evidence in a Texas court hearing Friday showing FLDS leader Warren Jeffs with a young girl. The photos are dated July 27, 2006. The Salt Lake Tribune blurred the girl's face. (Trent Nelson/The Salt Lake Tribune)

Posted: 4:51 PM- SAN ANGELO, Texas - Polygamous sect member Louisa Bradshaw today spent two hours on the witness stand in a custody case involving her newborn baby, giving halting answers when she was questioned by a state attorney.

The state is seeking to gain custody of Bradshaw's infant, who was born a week ago. Her toddlers, ages 2 and 3, are now under state supervision.

Earlier today, state child welfare authorities in San Antonio agreed to reunite 12 children with their parents until the Texas Supreme Court rules on an overarching appeal involving the state's seizure of more than 450 children from the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints' ranch in Eldorado last month, The Associated Press reported.

Texas Child Protective Services agreed to allow the parents to live with their children in the San Antonio area under state supervision. It was unclear how many families were involved.

In the San Angelo case, state attorney Ellen Griffith asked Bradshaw how long she had been at the ranch, who lives in the building where she lives, and whether she had seen any inappropriate relationship there.

Bradshaw often simply responded, "I don't know."

At one point, Griffith showed Bradshaw photographs of imprisoned FLDS President Warren S. Jeffs with young females. The attorney said the state believes one of them was 13, adding that one photo showed Jeffs kissing her "as a husband would a wife."

Asked if the kiss was inappropriate, Bradshaw said it was.

Griffith would not divulge the origin of the photos, and said bishop's records seized at the ranch during a raid that began April 3 indicated the female was 13.

In other questioning, Randal Stout - a guardian ad litem for Bradshaw's infant - asked her whether the living conditions on the YFZ Ranch were appropriate, who had provided medical care during her pregnancy and whether she had failed to act in the presence of underage marriage.

"I don't know," Bradshaw replied. She did offer that she would never allow her daughters - she has two other children, ages 2 and 3 - to marry at age 14, and that she would abide by Texas laws that set the age of marriage at 16.

The hearing resumed late this afternoon.

Polygamist community faces rare genetic disorder

Reuters

June 14, 2007

By Jason Szep

Colorado City, Arizona -- In a dusty neighborhood under sheer sandstone cliffs studded with juniper on the Arizona-Utah border, a rare genetic disorder is spreading through polygamous families on a wave of inbreeding.

The twin border communities of Hildale, Utah, and Colorado City, Arizona, have the world's highest known prevalence of fumarase deficiency, an enzyme irregularity that causes severe mental retardation brought on by cousin marriage, doctors say.

"Arizona has about half the world's population of known fumarase deficiency patients," said Dr. Theodore Tarby, a pediatric neurologist who has treated many of the children at Arizona clinics under contracts with the state.

"It exists in a certain percentage of the broader population but once you get a tendency to inbreed you're inbreeding people who have the gene there, so you markedly increase the risk of developing the condition," he said.

The community of about 10,000 people, who shun outsiders and are taught to avoid newspapers, television and the Internet, is home to the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (FLDS), a sect that broke from the mainstream Mormon church 72 years ago over polygamy.

The group, who wear conservative 19th-century clothing, is led by Warren Jeffs, who was arrested in August and 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.

Doctors in the area declined requests for interviews and families refuse to talk to reporters. But former FLDS members, independent doctors and authorities say the disorder appears to have struck at least 20 children in the past 15 years.

"The disease itself is very rare in the rest of the world," said Dr. Vinodh Narayanan of Arizona's St. Joseph's Hospital & Medical Center and Barrow Neurological Institute. Doctors worldwide had only studied about 10 cases just a decade ago.

"Once you get people within in the same community marrying, then the chances grow of having two people carrying the exact same mutation."

'Closed door'

Local historian Benjamin Bistline said 75 to 80 percent of people in the area are blood relatives of two men -- John Y. Barlow and Joseph Smith Jessop -- who founded the sect on the remote desert plateau in the early 1930s.

"There aren't any new people coming in. It's a closed door and that gene just keeps getting passed around," said Bruce Wisan, a court-appointed accountant overseeing a trust of the sect's assets.

Dr. Leslie Biesecker, chief of the Genetic Disease Research Branch at the National Institutes of Health, said the bad gene could have been introduced after the original founding families settled there. "Any person who joined that community could have brought that mutation with them," he said.

Tarby, who has recently retired, said he first observed the problem when an FLDS couple came to a Phoenix clinic about 15 years ago with a 10-year-old boy suffering from a degenerative condition. He sent a urine sample to a lab in Colorado for analysis and was stunned by the diagnosis.

Since then, increasing numbers of children in the community have been stricken with the disease, which causes unusual facial features, frequent epileptic seizures, episodes of coma and possibly early death.

In the disorder, brain cells fail to receive enough fuel to grow, multiply and function properly because of a missing enzyme needed to generate energy from food, causing severe mental retardation and muscle control problems.

Tarby met with about 150 FLDS members in November, explaining that the disorder was not caused by tainted drinking water as rumored but by cousin marriage.

But even with that knowledge, it is still hard for people to leave the sect, said Brenda Jensen, 55, who fled the FLDS several years ago and now works for the Utah-based HOPE Organization, which helps women leave.

"If they are willing to marry their cousin, or unwilling but do it anyway, or even in a relationship that is closer than that, it can be very hard for them," Jensen said. And local habits, are deeply ingrained, authorities say.

"They will tell you if that's what God wants for you than that's what you will get," said Gary Engels, an investigator assigned to Colorado City by the Mohave County attorney's office. "They don't think too much about marrying cousins and things like that."

Texas seizure of polygamist-sect kids thrown out

By MICHELLE ROBERTS

Associated Press Writer

SAN ANGELO, Texas (AP) -- A Texas appeals court said Thursday that the state had no right to take more than 400 children from a polygamist sect's ranch, a ruling that could unravel one of the biggest child-custody cases in U.S. history.

The Third Court of Appeals in Austin ruled that the state offered "legally and factually insufficient" grounds for the "extreme" measure of removing all children from the ranch, from babies to teenagers.

The state never provided evidence that the children were in any immediate danger, the only grounds in Texas law for taking children from their parents without court approval, the appeals court said.

It also failed to show evidence that more than five of the teenage girls were being sexually abused, and never alleged any sexual or physical abuse against the other children, the court said.

It was not immediately clear whether the children scattered across foster facilities statewide might soon be reunited with parents. The ruling gave Texas District Judge Barbara Walther 10 days to vacate her custody order, and the state could appeal.

FLDS spokesman Rod Parker said sect members feel validated, having argued from the beginning that they were being persecuted for their beliefs.

"They're very thrilled. They're looking forward to seeing the children returned," he said.
The appellate decision technically applies only to 38 of the roughly 200 parents who challenged the seizure. But their lawyer, Julie Balovich of Texas RioGrande Legal Aid, said she expected attorneys for all the other parents to seek to join the ruling.

"It's a great day for Texas justice. This was the right decision," said Balovich, who was joined by several smiling mothers who nonetheless declined to comment at a news conference outside the courthouse here.

Every child at the Yearning For Zion Ranch in Eldorado was taken into state custody more than six weeks ago, after Child Protective Services officials argued that members of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints pushed underage girls into marriage and sex and groomed boys to become adult perpetrators. Only a few dozen of the roughly 440 children seized are teenage girls; half were under five.

The appeals court said the state was wrong to consider the entire ranch as an individual household and that the state couldn't take all the children from a community on the notion that some parents in the community might be abusers.

"The existence of the FLDS belief system as described by the department's witnesses, by itself, does not put children of FLDS parents in physical danger," the court said in its ruling.

The court said that although five girls had become pregnant at age 15 or 16, the state gave no evidence about the circumstances of the pregnancies. It noted that minors as young as 16 can wed in Texas with parental consent, and even younger children can marry if a court approves it.
Balovich said the appeals court "has stood up for the legal rights of these families and given these mothers hope that their families will be brought back together."

CPS spokesman Patrick Crimmins said department attorneys had just received the ruling and would make any decision about an appeal later. "We are trying to assess the impact that this may have on our case," he said.

Even before Thursday's ruling, the state's allegations of teenage girls being pushed into sex appeared to be deflating. Of the 31 sect members CPS once said were underage mothers, 15 have been reclassified as adults - one was 27 years old - and an attorney for a 14-year-old girl said in court that she had no children and was not pregnant, as officials previously asserted.

Five judges in San Angelo, about 40 miles north of Eldorado, have been hearing CPS's plans for the parents seeking to regain custody. Those hearings, which began Monday, were suspended after the appellate ruling Thursday.

The custody case has been chaotic from the beginning. The hearing in which Walther ruled that the children should all enter state custody ran two days.

Hundreds of lawyers crammed into a courtroom and nearby auditorium, queuing up to voice objections or ask questions on behalf of the mothers who were there in their trademark prairie dresses and braided hair.

CPS has struggled with even the identities of the children for weeks and scattered them across foster facilities all over the sprawling state, with some siblings separated by as much as 600 miles.

The sect children were removed en masse during a raid that began April 3 after someone called a domestic abuse hot line claiming to be a pregnant abused teenage wife. The girl has not been found and authorities are investigating whether the calls were a hoax.

The FLDS, which teaches that polygamy brings glorification in heaven, is a breakaway of the Mormon church, which renounced polygamy more than a century ago. Members contend they are being persecuted by state officials for their religious beliefs.

FLDS shun Texas officials twice at ranch

The polygamous sect was told of an allegation that five children are there, including a boy with Down syndrome

ELDORADO, Texas -

Texas child welfare officials returned to a polygamous sect's ranch twice Wednesday because they had "new information" that children were there but were not allowed on the property. Two Child Protective Service (CPS) workers, accompanied by a Schleicher County Sheriff's deputy, first asked to be let on the YFZ Ranch shortly before noon Wednesday.

The workers told Guy Jessop, who met them at the gate, they were "looking for more children" but he refused to let them enter without a search warrant.

News of the visit reached the Tom Green County Courthouse, where the third day of status hearings for about 450 FLDS children was under way. Several FLDS spokesmen - and media - made a mad dash to the ranch, whose residents are members of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.

CPS officials spoke with FLDS member Willie Jessop after being rebuffed and were told he would allow them on the ranch, according to spokeswoman Marleigh Meisner.

Investigators returned to the ranch at about 6 p.m. but Willie Jessop met them at the gate and turned them away, she said.

Willie Jessop said ranch residents would allow authorities to investigate any legitimate claims of abuse. "If they have an honest complaint, we'll be honest, but we were lied to," he said, noting that authorities have never produced the teenage girl whose allegations of abuse led the state to remove all children from the ranch in April.

Jessop said he does not know whether there are children at the 1,700-acre property, which includes 19 separate residential buildings. If there are, they would have arrived with parents who came to comfort relatives in the wake of the April raid, he said.

Meisner said she did not know what action CPS might pursue next in its effort to search the ranch. Meisner would not comment on the new information the agency has received. She said CPS, which does not conduct criminal investigations, never uses search warrants.

"These attempts are part of our ongoing investigation," she said.

A search warrant was used when Texas Rangers and CPS workers raided the ranch in April. Rod Parker, a sect spokesman, said CPS officials told Willie Jessop that an informant claimed there are five children at the ranch, including a boy who has Down syndrome.

A 5-year-old boy with Down syndrome was among the children previously taken from the ranch, though it is not clear if CPS officials are looking for a different boy with that same condition.

Meisner would not confirm any information about children CPS believes may be at the ranch or say when the agency received the information. The timing of the account was unclear and it could be weeks old, Parker said.

This marks the first time investigators have returned to the ranch since completing a raid and weeklong search that began April 3. CPS said it found evidence of a pattern of abuse - such as sex with underage girls - that justified removal of all the sect's children.

Former under-age polygamous bride tells all in book

Elissa Wall launched the case against Warren Jeffs
By Brooke Adams
The Salt Lake Tribune
05/14/2008

Months after helping to send Warren S. Jeffs to prison, Elissa Wall is telling her story in a book she hopes will lead women and girls to leave his polygamous sect. Stolen Innocence debuts amid a child custody battle in Texas involving the polygamous lifestyle and marriage practices of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints...

... Wall covers the same ground laid out in her testimony during Jeffs' trial about her failed efforts stop her marriage to Steed and the miserable months and years that followed.

Wall describes Steed as boorish and odd; she was disturbed that he put clear polish on his fingernails and was put off by his constant sexual advances. Wall writes that she and Steed fought often and "he'd slap me or push me up against the wall."

Working at a restaurant in 2003, she met Lamont Barlow, with whom she eventually started an affair that led her to leave her husband and the sect.

Wall writes that she was encouraged by her sister, Rebecca Musser, and a brother - identified as "Kassandra" and "Craig" in the book - and Lamont Barlow's uncle, Jethro Barlow, in 2005 to meet with law enforcement.

"They were working hard to remove Warren from power, and I was viewed as someone who could help them," Wall writes.

But Jeffs' conviction seems to have had little effect on the FLDS, Wall said.

"To my disappointment," she writes, "little has changed in the community, and life continues on much as it did under Warren."

Attorneys for Jeffs and Steed had not yet seen Stolen Innocence but are worried about its effect.
"It is obvious that Ms. Wall has determined that obtaining publicity is more important than Mr. Steed obtaining a fair trial," said Jim Bradshaw, a Salt Lake City attorney who represents Steed.
Michael Piccarreta, an Arizona attorney representing Jeffs, said he sought to have the book delayed until after his client's trial but never got a response.

"She will be the one witness in the courtroom with a financial interest," Piccarreta said, adding that, "It will be difficult if not impossible to get a jury for a fair trial."

Hoole, who also is representing Wall in a multimillion dollar lawsuit against Jeffs and the FLDS church, called those worries nonsense.

The book "doesn't change any of the facts," Hoole said. "Nobody on the jury will have read this book" - meaning that any potential jurors who are familiar with the book will be disqualified from the panel.

Hoole said Wall, now 21, is trying to empower other FLDS girls. "I personally hope that every FLDS girl gets a copy," he said.

Second FLDS mother gives birth while in Texas custody

By Brooke Adams

The Salt Lake Tribune
05/13/2008

An FLDS woman whose age is disputed by Texas officials gave birth in Austin around noon today to a son - and hours later her attorney won a ruling preventing authorities from moving her immediately to San Antonio.

Austin State District Judge Orlinda Naranjo granted a temporary restraining order to prevent the Texas Department of Family and Protective services from moving Louisa Jessop and her newborn to San Antonio this evening, according to Rod Parker, an FLDS spokesman and Salt Lake City attorney.

Louisa Bradshaw Jessop maintains she is 22, but the department has her classified as 17. She has two other children, ages 3 and 2, and is in state custody with them after an April 3 raid on her home, the YFZ Ranch in Eldorado.

Texas officials raided the ranch, home to members of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, to investigate an abuse claim.

Child welfare officials say they found evidence of a pattern of abuse at the ranch, including sex with underage girls, that justified removal of all children. The birth brings the number of children in custody to 465.

Jessop's husband, Rulan Danial Jessop, 24, filed a habeas corpus petition in Austin last Wednesday that argues his wife is being improperly detained by the state. The couple provided a birth certificate, driver license and other documents as proof of Louisa Jessop's age.

Patricia Matassarin, who represents Louisa Jessop, is scheduled to appear again in court on the matter Thursday. Parker said the plan to move the mother and infant was a "forum shopping maneuver" that would have allowed the state to file custody papers on the baby in San Angelo.

"Why else would they move a 6-hour-old baby halfway across Texas in the middle of the night when they have dozens of FLDS children in shelters in Austin?" Parker said.

Texas DFPS spokesman Patrick Crimmins said the agency would not comment on the issue. The agency filed a similar petition two weeks ago to take custody of another baby born to a woman also deemed to be a minor.

The raid was triggered by a San Angelo shelter that said it had been contacted by a caller claiming to be a 16-year-old abused by her polygamous husband at the ranch. The caller has never been located among the children and the calls are now being investigated as a possible prank by a Colorado woman.