THE END RESULT OF POLYGAMY - THANK YOU JOSEPH SMITH.
March 1, 2006 — - Last summer was Laurene Jessop's first trip back to polygamist-run Colorado City, Ariz., since her escape from, what was, to her, an isolated and forbidding world 18 months earlier. She had no idea what to expect.
"I'm nervous," she said. "I want to be able to walk through town and not be handcuffed, and if the police officers decide to handcuff me, what to say?"
Laurene said she was taken by force to a mental institution three times for disobeying her husband. She finally got away with the help of an anti-polygamy activist, and won custody of her five children.
Laurene returned to Colorado City several months ago to prove to herself that the polygamist sect that runs this town no longer has power over her, and to confront the demons from her past, including sexual abuse by her father.
Even after all that, Laurene found it difficult to completely break free from her past life. Recently, her journey took a strange U-turn back to Colorado City.
People in Colorado City are taught from a very young age that outsiders are evil, Laurene said. They wear clothes from another century, and they run from "Primetime's" cameras as they documented Laurene Jessop's journey.
The people in Colorado City also submit fervently to the rules of Warren Jeffs, a man they call "the prophet."
Jeffs, a leader of the Fundamentalist Church of Latter Day Saints, is in hiding, wanted on charges of forcing underage girls to marry older men. FDLS is a breakaway sect of the Mormon Church of Jesus Christ Latter Day Saints. The Mormon religion banned polygamy in 1890.
Laurene's father had four wives and 56 children. She said it was an oppressive childhood, with the outside world completely shut out.
"I remember one time looking out the window just feeling like I was trapped and wishing that I was free," Laurene said, pointing to the house where she grew up.
At 19, she married Val Jessop, an older man the sect chose for her. Her sister, Marie, was already married to Jessop.
"I always felt like I was an intruder," Laurene said.
Laurene and her sister have eight children with Val Jessop --five by Laurene and three by her older sister.
But Laurene says Marie was bitterly jealous from day one, beginning from the time she and Val consummated the marriage. She said her sister was even present when they had sex.
"He invited her into our bed. She just hugged his back -- hugged him all the way through," Laurene said. "It was very strange ... painful. And I was very shy. I was scared. I didn't dare say -- like I should have -- this is our wedding night. We should go to a motel, or we should have our own privacy."
When Laurene finally spoke up about her "sister wife," Laurene said Jessop called the sect police, who forcibly removed Laurene from her home -- she says for not following the law that says plural wives must obey their husband.
"These are state-certified policemen who have been ordered by the prophet, or an elder, to come in there and arrest me," Laurene said.
She said she was handcuffed, put in a police car and taken to a mental institution in Flagstaff, Ariz., more than 200 miles away from her children.
Laurene returned home and said she was sent to the institution three more times. She says she found it impossible to be the perfect servant to her husband's every whim, even though it was the law of the land.
"I was trapped," she said. "I felt like I had done my very best in trying to live my religion. I was taught that the only rights a woman has is to be obedient to her husband."
That's the prevalent attitude of the community, captured by a frequently used slogan: "Keep sweet."
"That means ... don't show any emotion. Don't rock the boat. Don't make any trouble," Laurene said.
Laurene was desperate to escape, but there seemed to be no way to take her children with her -- until she met anti-polygamist activist Flora Jessop.
Having escaped from the polygamous community as a teenager, Flora now rescues others from the sect. With Flora's help, Laurene finally ran far away to Phoenix, where she found an apartment and won custody of her children -- daughters Luanne, Jennifer and Valene, and sons Anthony and Thomas.
"It's not only the fear of leaving. It's the fear of how do I take care of my children once I'm out there?" said Flora.
Flora said that Laurene's leaving the sect makes her a hero. And returning to Colorado City to confront her past also makes her a survivor.
Once she would cower before the police, but when she returned, she stood her ground when challenged by cops and even confronted one of the policemen who she says took her to the institution.
"I feel empowered," Laurene said. "I feel like I could stand there and look that man in the eyes."
But Laurene's journey had just begun. She couldn't truly leave her past behind until she confronted some dark secrets.
In Colorado City, Laurene says men wield absolute power over both wives and children. For Laurene, a much harsher indoctrination into the male-dominated culture began before she was even married. She said she was sexually abused by her father. "The sexual abuse started about the time I started developing," she said. "There was no safe place to go. There would be several of us girls in the room, and he would come into the house and go around and put -- kiss each one of the girls -- put his hand down your blouse, say, 'Oh, looks like you're getting bigger, you know, you're developing, you're coming along very well here.'"
Laurene and 12 of her sisters reported being molested, though they say the abuse stopped short of actual intercourse. In 1983 their father, Jack Cooke, pleaded guilty to sexual assault and went to prison for five years.
"He took my virtue," said Laurene. "And I think he should have got more than five years in prison."
Jack Cooke is now 76 years old and hasn't seen Laurene in 22 years. In an interview with "Primetime," with Laurene listening from a nearby room, Cooke admitted to abusing his daughters.
"I have committed -- uh, fondling and touching my daughters improperly, but I claimed ... on the same premise ... as our religion," he said. "I didn't know it was abuse. I didn't view it as abuse. ... It wasn't a sexual deal."
Cooke said he viewed the abuse as "no big deal." He also claimed that the contact was "consensual." "And every intimacy which I had with them, they understood perfectly that if I did anything they didn't like, to tell me and I would not do it," Cooke said.
After hearing her father say these things and upset that he would claim that she and her sisters ever consented to his actions, Laurene emerged from the room to confront him.
Finally, her father offered a sort of apology. "I'm not trying to minimize the sexual things," Cooke said. "All I can say right now -- with these things happening to you -- all I can say is I'm sorry."
After leaving the sect, Laurene and her children began a new life in Phoenix -- 400 miles away from Colorado City. In awarding custody of the children to Laurene, an Arizona judge concluded their polygamist community was dominated by abuse.
Activist Flora Jessop had been at Laurene's side almost constantly. She understood the struggle ahead for the family.
"When you have a second-grade education and five children, how do you feed them? How do you dress them? How do you give them a house? How do you put a roof over their heads?" Flora said.
Laurene and her kids lived in subsidized housing and received food stamps and other assistance from the government.
Meanwhile, her estranged husband, Val, lived alone in an empty house on the edge of Colorado City. For reasons he won't discuss, FLDS ex-communicated him and took away his other wife. He said he missed his children most of all.
Val denied asking the police to arrest Laurene for disobeying him, and he claimed she was mentally ill and violent. He maintained he was the true victim, because he lost his children, and he questioned the authority of the man-made laws that awarded Laurene custody.
Val Jessop defended his "plural marriage." "I was born Mormon, OK?" he said. "It's in my blood, you know? I'm not going to go be something else. I'm who I am."
When she confronted her father over the summer, Laurene wasn't ready to forgive him for her lost childhood or the other damage caused by polygamy. But six months after her meeting with her father, Laurene was ready to forgive. "I've been in communication with him, talked several times with him. I feel complete forgiveness toward him," she said.
She now believes that sexual abuse of children was accepted -- and rampant -- in Colorado City, and that her father was made a scapegoat by the polygamous sect.
"He's the only one that was really held accountable for what he did. And other men were doing the same thing," she said. "But what it did was shut the women up, the girls up, from telling. ... And I think he, he's paid the price for what he did."
Meanwhile, all was not well in Phoenix, where one of her two sons was depressed and brooding. Anthony said he would do almost anything to get back home and even admitted he talked about blowing up his school in Phoenix.
Laurene had come a long way, but she also admitted to a frightening inner conflict -- and a strange force pulling her back to Colorado City and Val Jessop, the husband she shared with another wife.
Laurene told "Primetime" she was terrified of the community and determined never to return. But months after meeting her father, she got into her car alone and drove six hours to Colorado City to see her ex-husband, Val Jessop.
"I was really scared because I didn't know how Val would be," said Laurene.
Laurene said her former husband had "mellowed. And he was nice to me. And the children wanted him," she said.
After that meeting, Laurene agreed to bring the children home -- under the condition that Val not take any additional wives.
"He has said he wouldn't," Laurene said. "If he does, I will leave. I won't live in polygamy again."
Two years after helping Laurene escape, anti-polygamy activist Flora Jessop says she's not surprised that women who escape polygamy sometimes go back.
"Even when they come out, they find it difficult not to be drawn back in," Flora said. "They're all trying to overcome an entire lifetime of intense control and indoctrination."
The reunited Jessop family now lives in a rented house just outside Colorado City, and they all seemed happy to be back together. Anthony, the son who had talked about blowing up his school in Phoenix, seemed transformed.
"It's a miracle, absolute miracle that they're holding hands," Anthony said of his parents.
And Laurene is convinced Val will not take another wife.
Yet when pressed, Val admitted he still believed that the fugitive sect leader, Warren Jeffs, is the one true prophet of God.
"I don't have the option," Val said of plural marriage. But he also said another marriage had not been revealed to him "through the legitimate authority" -- the prophet, Warren Jeffs. If Val's intention seems uncertain, Laurene said she would take her chances and stay -- as long as she remains the one and only woman of this house. "And I've forgiven him. I know the Lord loves us, the children, and he wants us to be a family," she said.
But Laurene was adamant that she wouldn't live a life of polygamy again. "It's too much pain that way."
Bookbuyer Finds Rare Mormon Texts
Friday, 20 Jul 2007
By JENNIFER DOBNER
Associated Press Writer
SALT LAKE CITY -- It's a book collector's dream -- rifling through the shelves of a secondhand store and finding a valuable text for a bargain price.
It happened Jan. 31 to a man who plunked down $40 and took home eight books of sermons and writings from elders of a secretive and polygamous Mormon breakaway group, the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.
Adding interest to the find -- the books are inked in red with a property stamp from Purgatory Correctional Facility, the jail in Hurricane where FLDS church president Warren Jeffs is awaiting trial on charges of rape by accomplice.
The volumes are rare and likely worth much more than the purchaser paid, say booksellers who trade in early writings from leaders of the mainstream Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. It's still a mystery how the books made their to the thrift store.
"Those books are unbelievably scarce," said Tom Kimball, a collector and seller. "They could be worth thousands. It's every Mormon book nerd's fantasy."
Members of the FLDS live intensely private lives and shun most interaction with outsiders, including members of their own families who leave the faith. For decades, members have lived in the remote twins towns of Hildale, Utah, and Colorado City, Ariz., dressing in 19th century-style clothes, rejecting the trappings of modernity and striving for perfect obedience to God.
Drawing on the early theology of the Mormon church, the sect continues to practice polygamy, believing that plural marriage brings exaltation in heaven. They consider church president Jeffs a prophet who communicates with God.
While some fundamentalist works are available, the nature of the various polygamous groups usually means printed materials circulate only internally, said Ken Sanders, owner of a rare books store in Salt Lake City.
"It's very, very rare," said Stan Larson, curator of manuscripts at the University of Utah's Marriott Library. "We would be very glad to have them."
The volumes were produced between 1994 and 2006 by the Twin City Courier Press, of Hildale, a company owned and operated by a member of the fundamentalist church.
Each of the 8 1/2-by-11 books is hard-bound in a black cover with its title printed in gold leaf. Depending on the volume, publishing credits are either awarded to Jeffs or his predecessor and father, Rulon Jeffs.
Six of the books are the collected sermons of former FLDS President Leroy S. Johnson, who led the fundamentalist church from 1955 until his death at age 98 on Nov. 25, 1986. The sermons begin in 1950 and each reflects the occasion or location where it was delivered, including the southern Utah communities originally called Short Creek, Salt Lake City and a small FLDS enclave in Canada.
Some of the writings appear to be from Johnson's own hand, imparting his personal stories, reflections or anecdotes. Others draw primarily on scriptural references from either the Bible or the Book of Mormon, and cite sermons or speeches from early leaders including Joseph Smith, Brigham Young and John Taylor.
Two of the books are collections of "Zion's Light Shining," a monthly FLDS newsletter that originated with Rulon Jeffs, who assumed leadership of the church in the 1980s. The newsletters, each about 40 pages, date back to February 1999 and contain similar material, along with writings from various FLDS elders.
"With Every Breath, Keep Sweet, No Matter What" and "Perfect Obedience Produces Perfect Faith," the newsletter masthead reads, reinforcing two key tenets of FLDS faith.
Ben Bistline, a former FLDS church member and a historian who has written two books about the FLDS, said the volumes are likely reprints of books first published about 1980. Then the collected works of Johnson were churned out in paperback for church members' personal use.
"But you had to get permission of the prophet to buy one," recalled Bistline, of Cane Beds, Ariz. "They published the books to promote polygamy and their way of thinking."
Bistline questions whether the volumes are a complete record. If memory serves, he said, FLDS leaders selected the teachings they thought would be most useful to members.
Although some of the writings tout the practice of plural marriage and others warn of government persecution from the states of Utah and Arizona, there's not much fire and brimstone.
The collector, a fundamentalist from St. George, in southwestern Utah, who spoke only on condition that his name not be used, said he bought the volumes because of his interest in early Mormonism and because of his own beliefs. He let a reporter and a photographer from The Associated Press look at the books, but said he had no immediate interest in selling or donating the books.
"An interesting find for me," he wrote in an e-mail about the books.
It's unclear when or how the books made their way to the jail, said Washington County sheriff's Lt. Jake Adams.
Jeffs, 51, is charged with two felony counts of rape as an accomplice for having forced a religious marriage between a 14-year-old follower and her 19-year-old cousin in 2001. His trial is scheduled for this September, roughly a year since he was first jailed.
Canada won't prosecute FLDS members
The Associated Press
08/02/2007
VICTORIA,
British Columbia - No charges will be filed against members of a polygamist
community, but the province may determine the validity of the law against
multiple marriages by referring it to the British Columbia Court of Appeal, the
attorney general said Wednesday.
Provincial Attorney General Wally Oppal said he has reviewed a report by
special prosecutor Richard Peck and agrees no charges should be pursued against
members of a fundamentalist Mormon sect in Bountiful, British Columbia.
The group is part of the southern Utah-based Fundamentalist Church of Jesus
Christ of Latter Day Saints, known as the FLDS and headed by Warren S. Jeffs.
Oppal said the government could find no witnesses on the sexual-assault
allegations because investigators were told that all consented to the acts that
took place.
More serious allegations of sexual exploitation of young women also could
not be substantiated, Oppal said.
He said he was surprised by the number of young women who told police they
were the aggressors and wanted to have sex with the older men.
Church doctrine that touts plural marriage as a path to exaltation in heaven
is rooted in the early Mormon theology. Mormons, however, abandoned polygamy in
1890.
CanWest News Service
August 21, 2007
VANCOUVER - The B.C. government has reached a negotiated settlement with a number of people who complained to the B.C. Human Rights Tribunal over the polygamous community of Bountiful.
Two days of mediation late last week resulted in the agreement, details of which were released Monday.
Under the agreement, the government will provide funds for basic crisis intervention training for interested members of the Bountiful community, maintain the current level of services to the Bountiful community and work to refine the way those services are delivered to residents of the closed and secretive community.
Judith Doulis, the complainants' lawyer, called it a positive outcome in a "very difficult situation where no one can say you have to do this or you have to do that."
"They (the complainants) did what they could and hopefully it will assist people (in Bountiful) who want to make a lifestyle change," she added.
Bountiful is the 60-year-old community of about 1,400 fundamentalist Mormons. The group is a breakaway sect of the mainstream Mormon church, which disavowed polygamy in 1890.
John Dougherty, St George, Utah
New York Times
September 15, 2007
THE prosecution's star witness in the trial of the fundamentalist Mormon polygamist leader Warren Jeffs has testified that she was taught to obey church leaders without question or face dire consequences.
"We would forfeit our chance at the afterlife" by disobeying religious leaders, said the woman who, in 2001 at the age of 14, married her 19-year-old first cousin in a religious ceremony performed by Jeffs.
Identified as Jane Doe, the woman told the jury that the fundamentalist Mormon religious leaders were considered by church members to be "gods on Earth". How much control Jeffs had over the girl is crucial to the outcome of the case, which has drawn international attention to the Mormon community based in the adjacent towns of Hildale, Utah, and Colorado City, Arizona. Jeffs, 51, is charged with rape as an accomplice.
The prosecution says he coerced the girl to unwillingly consummate a "spiritual marriage", while the defence argues that she was not raped and that Jeffs never encouraged her to submit to sexual relations.
Jeffs is the self-proclaimed prophet of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, a breakaway sect of the mainstream Mormon Church with about 10,000 followers in the western states of the US. The sect practises polygamy in defiance of state and federal laws and adherents believe a man must have three wives to reach heaven's highest realms.
The mainstream Mormon Church disavowed polygamy in 1890 in a political compromise for Utah to obtain statehood. Jeffs could face life in prison if convicted.
Prosecutor Brock Belnap said Jeffs had told the girl, after she asked not to be married, that "her heart was in the wrong place and it was her duty to go forward" with the marriage.
Mr Belnap said Jeffs "commanded" the couple "to multiply and replenish the Earth".
The couple did not immediately engage in sexual relations because the girl resisted. Mr Belnap said Jane Doe again asked Jeffs to be released from the marriage, but, once again, Jeffs ordered her to return to her husband. "He told her to repent," Mr Belnap said. "Go home. Give yourself mind, body and soul to your husband."
A defence lawyer, Tara Isaacson, told jurors the state had failed to prove that Jane Doe was raped by her husband. She also said there was no evidence that Jeffs had anything to do with the couple's sexual conduct.
She told the jury that the victim never told her friends and her family that she had been raped, and that her cousin would also testify that he never raped her. The cousin has not been charged with rape.
Polygamy leader says was "immoral" with sister
Wed Oct 31, 2007
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - U.S. polygamist sect leader Warren Jeffs, convicted of being an accomplice to rape, renounced his role as prophet while awaiting trial because he had been "immoral" with a sister and a daughter 30 years ago, according to a court document.
The newly released document showed that Jeffs, 51, made the statements in several conversations from his Utah jail with family and members of the breakaway Mormon sect earlier this year.
Jeffs, revered by followers as the leader of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, or FLDS, will be sentenced on November 20. He was convicted in August in Utah on two counts of being an accomplice to rape by forcing a 14-year-old sect member to marry her first cousin.
The trial riveted Utah, the Western state with a majority Mormon population, many who consider polygamy to be a thorn in the side of their faith. The FLDS, whose estimated 7,500 members live in an enclave along the Utah-Arizona border, is not part of the mainstream Mormon church, which has long renounced polygamy.
While in jail awaiting trial, Jeffs made a series of phone calls recorded by authorities in which he said he "had been immoral with a sister and a daughter" when he was 20 years old, a court document released on Tuesday showed. Jeffs did not elaborate on the nature of the conduct.
"He renounced his role as prophet, explaining that the Lord revealed to him that he was a wicked man and has not held the priesthood since he was 20 years old," the document said.
He later retracted his renouncement in another recorded telephone conversation after being treated for depression, according to the document. The audio and video recordings were not presented at Jeffs' trial on the grounds they would prejudice the jury.
Jeffs' word was considered God's will to his followers. Women were taught to be submissive and "keep sweet," while dissent led to exile and religious damnation, witnesses testified at the August trial.
Jeffs, who pleaded not guilty, had been on the run for 15 months and was on the FBI's most wanted list before being arrested in August 2006. After being sentenced in November to a possible 10 years in prison, he is expected to stand trial on similar charges in Arizona.
Author delves into life in Bountiful
March 26, 2008
SAANICH News
Exploring polygamy
Author delves into life in Bountiful
Religious extremism seems worlds away from Victoria.
However, the southern part of our province is a hotbed of religious extremists. A tiny communal town with less than 1,000 people, Bountiful, B.C., is one of North America’s well-known settlements for the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, who openly practice polygamy — the practice of taking multiple wives.
The tiny community recently gained national attention when Utah’s Warren Jeffs, the former leader of Mormon fundamentalist polygynist sect who had close ties to the town, was arrested and convicted of being an accomplice to rape after he arranged an extralegal marriage between an adult follower and underage girl.
Winston Blackmore, the leader of Bountiful, B.C., once a follower of Jeffs and close confident, has since denounced the former leader as a “false prophet.” Blackmore currently has around 22 wives (at last count) and has allegedly fathered more than 100 children and allegedly impregnated 15 year olds.
Vancouver Sun columnist Daphne Bramham has been covering Mormonism and polygamy in both Utah and Bountiful for close to five years. She recently released The Secret Lives of Saints: Child Brides and Lost Boys in a Polygamous Mormon Sect, an in-depth account of Blackmore’s operation and some who have fled faith.
She started writing about Bountiful in 2004 while delving into the issue of human trafficking and met Blackmore in person some two years later.
“He’s quite charming and quite funny,” said Bramham, who will speak in Victoria April 5. “And like some religious or political leaders, from the moment he meets you he’s looking for your weaknesses and looking at ways that he can expose them and exploit them.”
In 2004 Bramham was invited by the wives of Bountiful to come and explore the community. But when she arrived, Bramham found the wives mysteriously were unwilling to speak to her.
South of Cranbrook and Creston right beside the Washington State border, Bountiful is a picturesque town. Bramham made several trips there while penning her book and found the men very secretive.
“All the time while I was talking to the women they were always getting phone calls and I presume it was from Winston. Calling them, telling them what to say, the women really become the public face in a way because the men are so scared of being arrested. And these women, they’re so well-trained to tell you that they’re happy in this sort of sweet way.”
A columnist for the Sun since 2000, Bramham also interviewed the ‘lost boys’, young men who had either been kicked out, or left the sect. Uneducated, untrained and unfamiliar with the outside world, many of the boys fall into deep drug and alcohol addictions.
“The ones who were kicked out really are in no position to be dependable on their own and that’s what they’re faced with.”
Within The Secret Lives of Saints is commentary on why the provincial and federal government seem inept at prosecuting men such as Blackmore.
“I don’t believe they should be allowed to continue, it’s antithetical to Canadian society. People should be able to practice religion as they choose, but it should not be able to go above and beyond the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.”
Top court must decide polygamy issue, government told
Senior lawyers agree charges would be unlikely to survive an appeal
Andy Ivens, The Province; with a file from Reuters
Published: Tuesday, April 08, 2008
The provincial government will have to decide whether to send to the courts the question of the legality of practising polygamy in Bountiful, after a decision by a senior lawyer was made public yesterday.
Leonard Doust, a senior member of the B.C. bar, agreed with the conclusions of a special prosecutor last year -- that having the state pursue polygamy charges against members of the breakaway Mormon sect in the Creston Valley enclave near the U.S. border would likely fail.
Special prosecutor Richard Peck was appointed by Attorney-General Wally Oppal last year to submit a legal opinion on polygamy.
Section 293 of the Criminal Code prohibits "any form of polygamy [or] entering into a conjugal union with more than one person at the same time." The maximum penalty is five years in prison.
But Peck found the law likely would not survive a challenge under the Charter of Rights and Freedoms on the ground it infringes the constitutional guarantee to freedom of religion.
Oppal asked for another opinion from Doust, who agreed with Peck. His view was released yesterday.
"The serious misconduct in Bountiful will likely continue until the constitutionality of Sec. 293 is authoritatively decided by the Supreme Court of Canada," wrote Doust.
". . . Given both practical considerations and concerns about fairness, a reference [to the B.C. Court of Appeal] rather than a prosecution is the most appropriate way to proceed at this time," he said.
Doust also said that if the high court finds the law unconstitutional, its reasons "will force and assist the government of Canada to consider other, constitutional solutions to the problem of polygamy."
Despite the legal hurdles the judges and lawmakers would have to clear, Doust said he feels it would still be "the swiftest, most effective and fairest way of beginning to address . . . the problems in Bountiful."
The Bountiful residents are part of the Fundamentalist Church of Latter Day Saints, a breakaway sect of the Mormon church, which banned polygamy in the 1890s.
The polygamous community sprang up in Bountiful in the late 1940s.
Home to about 1,000 residents, it is part of the sect led by jailed U.S. polygamist leader Warren Jeffs that saw its Texas ranch raided last week in an investigation into allegations of abuse by a young woman at the compound.
52 Girls Are Taken From Polygamist Sect’s Ranch in Texas
The New York Times
Published: April 5, 2008
HOUSTON — Responding to an accusation of sexual abuse of a 16-year-old girl, Texas enforcement officers and child welfare investigators raided a West Texas ranch founded by the convicted polygamist sect leader Warren Jeffs and removed 52 children, officials said Friday.
All were girls. Eighteen of the children, ages 6 months to 17 years, were believed to have been abused or at risk of abuse and were placed in foster care by Child Protective Services, said Darrell Azar, communications manager for the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services. Thirty-four were taken to a nearby civic center for questioning, Mr. Azar said.
There were no immediate arrests and no resistance, officials said. But state troopers, Texas Rangers and other investigators with search and arrest warrants late Friday were still inside the 1,700-acre compound, the Yearning for Zion Ranch of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, a breakaway Mormon sect. The compound is in Eldorado, roughly 160 miles northwest of San Antonio.
An armored police vehicle stood by in case officers had to be evacuated quickly. Roads to the compound were sealed off by police roadblocks.
Tela Mange, a spokeswoman for the Texas Department of Public Safety, said an undisclosed number of people, but fewer than 10, were named in the arrest warrants. Investigators with the department, Ms. Mange said, “were able to talk to the folks they wanted to talk to.”
Mr. Azar said the raid, which began late Thursday, stemmed from a complaint to child and family services on Monday that a 16-year-old girl at the ranch had been sexually and physically abused. On Friday, he said, child welfare investigators workers “legally removed” 18 girls and transported 34 for questioning to the civic center.
“We haven’t talked to any boys yet,” he said. “We will be interviewing boys, too.”
Mr. Azar said the girls were removed “because we had reason to believe they had been abused or were at immediate risk of future abuse.”
The ranch was built in 2003 by followers of Mr. Jeffs, who was sentenced last November in Utah to 10 years to life in prison for forcing a 14-year-old girl to marry her 19-year-old cousin and to submit to sexual relations against her will. Mr. Jeffs is in jail in Arizona awaiting trial on separate rape charges involving the arranged marriages of two teenage girls to older relatives.
Local authorities monitored the compound over the years. But aside from a few traffic tickets, there were no problems with sect members, said Raymond Loomis, the Schleicher County attorney.
The Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints — with an estimated 10,000 members in the West — split from the mainstream Mormon Church after church leaders in 1890 repudiated the polygamy prescribed by its founding prophet, Joseph Smith, and excommunicated members practicing plural marriage. The breakaway group continued to teach that a man must have three wives to reach heaven’s highest realms.
Mr. Azar said religion and lifestyle played no part in the action. “Our only interest,” he said, “is in protecting children from abuse and neglect.”
FORT WORTH, Texas (AFP) — Police in Texas late Sunday had removed some 219 women and children from the compound of a polygamous sect, as they pressed ahead with an investigation into possible child abuse, US media reported.
The Salt Lake Tribune newspaper reported late Sunday that authorities were still only halfway through their search of the compound, which was launched after allegations that a 16-year-old girl there was forced to bear the child of her 50-year-old husband.
The unidentified girl reportedly called officials from the compound owned by the Fundamentalist Church of Latter Day Saints (FLDS), a breakaway group of the US Mormon church, and said she had given birth to a child months ago.
Under Texas law, girls younger than 16 may not marry, even with parental approval, which suggests that the baby's father may have violated state sex and marriage consent laws.
The teen's complaints sparked a massive police operation at the compound, which so far has spanned three days. Special police units entered the temple late Saturday without incident, following an hours-long standoff during which temple leaders refused investigators access, US media reported.
While social workers interviewed residents from the compound, authorities continued to search for the teenage girl, her baby, and the infant's alleged father.
The Utah-based Salt Lake Tribune reported that 60 women and 159 children have been evacuated from the isolated compound so they could be questioned in a less intimidating atmosphere.
Social workers were trying to determine if the young women removed from the compound had been abused or were in immediate risk of future abuse.
The vast Texas ranch was bought by the sect in 2003 and has been kept under surveillance by the authorities.
The compound, in the town of El Dorado about 414 kilometers (255 miles) southwest of Dallas, Texas, is linked to polygamist leader Warren Jeffs, who is now behind bars in connection with another polygamy case.
Jeffs is jailed in Kingman, Arizona awaiting trial for four counts each of incest and sexual conduct with a minor stemming from two arranged marriages between teenage girls and their older male relatives.
Considered to be the sect's prophet, Jeffs was arrested near Las Vegas in 2006 and sentenced to life in jail for being an accomplice to rape. He also faces federal charges in Arizona and Utah.
The mainstream Mormon church -- the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints -- renounced polygamy more than one century ago as a price of Utah's admission to the United States.
It now excommunicates members who engage in the practice and disavows any connection with the FLDS church.
Members of the FLDS church are known to live in Utah, Nevada, Arizona, Texas, Colorado, South Dakota and British Columbia.
400 children saved from Mormon sect amid allegations of abuse
James Bone in New York
The London Times
April 9, 2008
Hundreds of children taken by the authorities from the compound of a polygamist sect in Texas had their first glimpse yesterday of the outside world — which they have been taught to view as evil and whose food they cannot eat.
The children, in 19th-century dresses, were bussed out of the Yearn For Zion (YFZ) ranch after a raid on the breakaway Mormon sect of Warren Jeffs, the jailed polygamist leader.
“They are like aliens — or we are like aliens to them,” Helen Pfluger, a volunteer at a local Baptist church who helped to care for the children, told The Times. “They know nothing of the outside world. The children and their mothers did not know what to do with crayons. Our food makes them sick because they are not used to processed food.
“It was like talking to people from 1870. Their clothing needs were the most difficult to fulfill. They need a dress for a four-year-old. They specified the dress should be long down to the ankles, have long arms, a loose waist, and be a solid color in a pastel shade. I don’t think there is a place in Texas you can get a dress like that.”
Authorities raided the remote 690 hectare (1,700 acre) compound on Saturday after a teenage mother called a hotline to complain she had been beaten and raped by her husband. The 16-year-old girl, who has an eight-month-old daughter, was 15 when she allegedly married sect member Dale Barlow, 50, to become his seventh wife. In 2005 Texas raised the legal age limit for a girl to marry from 14 to 16 after concern about the sect.
The 10,000-strong Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints broke away from the Mormon Church in the 1930s after Mormon leaders outlawed polygamy.
Concentrated along the Utah Arizona border, the sect bought a ranch outside Eldorado, Texas, in 2003 and built a four-story temple and a small town on the site that is now the YFZ ranch.
The operation that began on Thursday was the largest since the Short Creek raid on the sect in 1953, when 400 fundamentalists including 236 children were taken into custody. A number of men were being held at the ranch while officials searched for evidence of abuse and whether the under-age girl was married to Barlow, a convicted sex offender. He pleaded no contest last year to conspiracy to commit sexual conduct with a minor and is currently on probation.
Investigators said girls as young as 13 were groomed for sex. “There is a pervasive pattern and practice of indoctrinating and grooming minor female children to accept spiritual marriages to adult male members of the YFZ ranch resulting in them being sexually abused,” Lynn McFadden of the Texas family protection services, said.
The children, ranging from infants to teenage mothers, are being housed at an old army fort in San Angelo. About 133 women voluntarily accompanied them, and they are likely to be placed in foster homes unless their mothers agree to move out of the compound. Ms Pfluger said they seemed frightened by the outside world. “They had no TV, magazines or newspapers,” she said. “They did warm up with us, so they would smile and say a few words about their needs.”
ET Mormons Say Sect Suffers Delusions
AP Photo By Trent Nelson
ESCORTED OUT: An FLDS woman and children walk with two Texas Child Protective Services workers (right) at Fort Concho in San Angelo on Monday. More than 400 children, mostly girls in pioneer dresses, were swept into state custody from a polygamist sect in what authorities described as the largest child-welfare operation in Texas history.
By PATRICK BUTLER
Religion Editor
Texas State Troopers raided the world's largest polygamist compound in Eldorado
this week, taking more than 400 children of polygamists into custody. A
16-year-old girl called a local shelter for help, saying she had been forced
into an unwanted marriage, prompting the raid.
The children at the compound are offspring of those who still adhere to Prophet Joseph Smith's teaching of "The Principle of Multiple Marriage." The members of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints contend they are faithfully practicing "The Principle" as originated and taught by the prophet in the early 19th century. The "apostate" Mormons - just one sect of Smith's original church scattered when he died in 1844 - discarded "The Principle" in 1890 over a matter of convenience, say FLDS leaders. At stake was admission to the Union and FLDS leaders say Mormons disobeyed Smith, jeopardizing their own eternal rewards.
Smith was married to 34 women, some as young as 14 years old and some who were already married, according to Web site wivesofJosephSmith.org. Large polygamist FLDS communities are located today in Northern Arizona and Southern Utah. Some estimate that the largely hidden church has up to 40,000 members in North America.
The Fundamentalist Church purchased 1,500 acres in Eldorado in 2004, a West Texas town of 2,000 about 50 miles south of San Angelo. Schleicher County Sherriff David Doran said to the Tyler Morning Telegraph in 2006, "We made it clear to them what Texas law said about marriage, that we would be enforcing the law and if there was a violation, we'd come after them."
APOSTATES
The two groups descended from Smith have had little to do with each other for
more than 100 years. Even today there is little love between them.
"God wants us to stop patronizing businesses of the apostates (Mormons)" said FLDS leader Warren Jeffs in a 2004 speech. "Stop doing business with them, strengthening their hand by your labors to fight our prophet."
The FLDS is the one suffering from delusion, said East Texas Mormons.
"We've been fighting this battle for more than a hundred years," said Laura Mikulecky, a public affairs director for the Tyler Stake of the Mormon Church. "Mormons disavowed polygamy in 1890. It was a condition for Utah to become a state. At that time, the Prophet of the Church, Wilford Woodruff, declared polygamy was not to be a part of Mormon Church. We adhered to that and these others (the FLDS) did not."
Mrs. Mikulecky is the public affairs director of the Athens and Tyler Stake of the nicknamed "Mormon" segment of a church that splintered into various sub-sects after the death of Smith in 1844.
There are an estimated 8,500 Mormons in East Texas, she said, and about 2,500 in the Tyler Stake. In a 2006 special report by the Tyler Paper, she explained polygamy was ordained by God in Smith's church.
"When the Lord says something is all right, it's all right," she said, speaking of Smith's Principle of Multiple Marriage doctrine. "When it's not all right, it's not all right."
Woodruff heard from God decades after Smith introduced polygamy, she said.
"When that time was over and the new prophet (Woodruff) gave us the new rules, those were the rules the church then went by. The prophet heard from God and polygamy was stopped."
But some church splinter groups, most notably the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints founded by Joseph Smith III, opposed polygamy at its inception decades before Mormons renounced it by the "revelation" given to Woodruff.
"When the Mormons came West (after Smith's death) and so many men died there were a lot of women who did not have husbands," said Mrs. Mikulecky. "The Lord told (Mormon leader) Brigham Young that some of the men could covenant to be married to more than one wife." (Webmaster Note: Doctrines and Covenants Section 132 was the formal announcement of polygamy to the Mormons by Joseph Smith in 1844. Polygamy had been practiced for years prior to this announcement within the inner circles of Mormonism. Laura Mikulecky either is ignorant of Mormon history or is a liar. Mormon public affairs directors are not to be trusted.)
Young married 27 women, including 15-year-old Clarissa Decker and Lucy Bigelow, 16. After The Principle was renounced, Utah was admitted to the Union. There are more than 100 "faith communities" that consider themselves the "true successor" to the church founded by Smith, according to religoustolerance.org
The Mormons are the true church, said Mrs. Mikulecky.
"We believe the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormons) is the only true living church upon the face of the whole earth," she said. "We believe every person born on earth will receive immortality, but if you leave the church, you are no longer entitled to the blessings it can afford you."
SALT LAKE CITY (AP) — The neighbors knew Anne Wilde as a divorcee with three children, but she had a secret: She was married to a polygamist, a man who divided his time among his various wives, visiting her once a week at her house in the suburbs.
"We'd play games — he'd park his car at a grocery-store lot and I'd pick him up" so that other people wouldn't see his vehicle parked in front of her home overnight, said Wilde, now a 72-year-old grandmother whose husband died five years ago.
The neighbors had their suspicions, but they never questioned her.
While the raid on the West Texas sect earlier this month has focused attention on polygamists who live in communal fashion and dress like 19th-century pioneers, many polygamists are very much part of the modern world, and live right next door in cities, suburbs and small towns across the West.
At least 37,000 men, women and children live in polygamous families from Canada to Mexico, with most of them in Utah, according to Wilde, who has become an activist for plural marriage. Law enforcement agencies do not dispute her figures.
While some men in rural Utah build large barracks-style houses with separate entrances to accommodate multiple wives, many of the state's polygamists are unattached to any particular sect or clan and live almost invisibly, under rather conventional-looking circumstances.
Each wife gets her own house; the men sneak around, often without a home to call their own. Mothers hold themselves out as single parents to PTA or school officials if they have to explain. But that is not usually a problem in a state where many lifelong residents can trace polygamy in the family tree, and where law enforcement authorities rarely prosecute the offense.
Carlene Cannon, a 37-year-old homemaker who lives in the Salt Lake City area, talks about polygamy without actually uttering the word, referring to it as her "lifestyle choice."
"I'm in a very committed relationship, that's what I tell people," she said. If pressed, she will add that she is not legally married. "In today's society, you don't really need to explain how it works, because there's so many single mothers," she said.
Sometimes the truth comes out. Garrett Kelsch grew up outside Park City in one of two nearby households kept by his polygamous father. As a high school freshman, he tried to keep the family's secret from his new classmates. One thing or two gave him away.
Kelsch, now a 34-year-old manager of a door-manufacturing shop, said he had a half-brother of the same age in the same class. "At first the others thought we were cousins," he said, "but they eventually asked about polygamy and we said, `Yeah.'"
Kelsch said he never actively concealed his father's polygamy, but "we weren't going to advertise it."
Wilde and just about all other practitioners of plural marriage in the West consider themselves followers of the true Mormon faith. But the mainstream Mormon church renounced polygamy more than a century ago and strongly disavows any connection to them.
Many of Utah's polygamists draw a sharp distinction between themselves and the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, the polygamous sect raided by Texas authorities earlier this month because of allegations of physical and sexual abuse. By Wilde's estimate, about 15,000 of Utah's polygamists belong to no group at all.
According to law enforcement authorities in Utah and Arizona, many other polygamists are divided among about 11 communities, societies or orders, though Wilde said some of those groups have faded away, have few members or lack religious legitimacy.
Most Utah women in polygamous marriages are indistinguishable from other women. They take jobs or work from home to help support their families. Wilde, for example, helped run a Mormon publishing house from her home. They don't wear prairie dresses or put their hair in braids or a bun, the style consistent among FLDS women.
In black dress pants and a white blouse with a charcoal-colored jacket, Heidi Foster looks like any other 36-year-old suburban Salt Lake City mom, albeit with 10 children in her home. The youngsters' father is an occasional visitor who acknowledges another woman as his only legal wife.
Foster belongs to the Kingston clan, a 1,500-member group based in the Salt Lake City area but scattered across the Intermountain West. The group has legitimate and widespread business interests worth an estimated $150 million by some published reports, including pawn shops, a trash collection company, dairies and coal mines.
Polygamist John Daniel Kingston — Foster is careful not to call him her husband — helps support her family.
Court papers from a custody battle involving two of their rebellious teenage daughters say Kingston has at least a dozen other wives. When asked about it, Kingston has invoked his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination. He is believed to have more than 100 children.
Even outside the FLDS, women in polygamous relationships tend to marry young — around 17, according to research conducted at the University of Utah. The men usually wait 10 years after a first marriage to start accumulating more wives.
In the cities and suburbs, the polygamist husbands are usually nomads, said Irwin Altman, a psychology professor at the University of Utah.
"Typically, the guy doesn't have his own place. His clothes are spread all over. For privacy, some said they had to take a drive in their car," said Altman, co-author of the 1996 book "Polygamous Families in Contemporary Society."
Altman found that the men earnestly cling to early Mormon beliefs that polygamy is key to eternal salvation.
Ex-sect members escape polygamy but not pain
Thu April 17, 2008
By Eliott C. McLaughlin
(CNN) -- Long after she escaped a polygamist Colorado City, Arizona, community in 1986, Flora Jessop found another way to escape: cocaine.
"It killed the pain. It killed the hurt," she said. "I didn't have to hurt so bad because I missed everything I knew."
Once she fled the fundamentalist Mormon sect, she was an apostate. She believed God hated her. Her parents and siblings thought she was wicked. Worst of all, she knew she was damned to hell, Jessop said.
Jessop, then 17, began hitchhiking across the country, almost killed herself with cocaine, worked as a topless dancer and eventually became pregnant, she said.
Fearing that church members would hunt her down, she looked over her shoulder for five years, she said. She occasionally drank alcohol -- she liked tequila best -- but preferred to use cocaine because it kept her alert.
"When you're running for your life, you can't afford to get to the point you cannot run," she said.
It was a need to protect her daughter that finally convinced her there was more to life, she said.
Today, Jessop, 38, escapes by freeing others trapped unwillingly in polygamist sects: 84 to date. She finds particular solace in rescuing women and children, some of whom are child brides like she was. It was a marriage to her first cousin Philip that prompted Jessop to run.
Her story strikes a common theme among those who have left the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, a Mormon offshoot that disavowed the mainstream church in 1890 when it abandoned polygamy as a pathway to the highest level of heaven.
The FLDS has strict rules, especially for girls: no pants, haircuts, drugs, booze or boys; just "keep sweet" and obey. So young women who leave often delve into worldly pleasures once outside, indulgences as innocent as blue jeans and as destructive as heroin and prostitution, survivors and an expert say.
Jenny Larson experienced such urges in 1946, when her mother, Berna, left a polygamist household in Glendale, Utah, with seven of her nine children. In those days, however, rebellion bore a different hue.
Larson, 73, recalls how "you wouldn't have caught me wearing a long-sleeve blouse" after leaving Glendale.
"I think I was one of the first girls in the seventh grade to wear lipstick. I put henna in my hair to make it red. I wasn't going to look like a little 'polyg' kid," she said, using the slang "polyg" with all the contempt of a racial slur.
Larson -- who goes by Aunt Jenny to the dozens of girls she's helped escape and who wrote the book "Brainwash to Hogwash: Escaping and Exposing Polygamy" -- concedes it's rare that young women can shed the sect's psychological shackles.
So how did she know polygamy wasn't for her? Larson recalls seeing her father, Vergel, smack her mother for expressing jealousy over his second wife, Mae.
"There was no way in hell I was going to live that way," Larson said.
And Larson quipped of the men hounding her for her hand in marriage when she was 11: "Some of them were so ugly I wondered how they could have sex without putting a sack over their head, but I'm being mean."
Larson's and Jessop's escapes are not typical. Many women don't want to leave, ex-sect members and an expert said.
The purportedly rescued women often return to polygamy. An example is the 1953 raid at Short Creek (now Hildale, Utah, and Colorado City), where dozens of women and more than 260 children were placed in state custody.
Three of the then-children taken in the raid recently said that they eventually returned to polygamist lifestyles, including Fawneta Caroll, who was 7 when she was taken from her family. She remembers clearly what she felt 55 years ago, and it wasn't relief, she said.
"We knew that the object was to take us away, adopt us out and we would never be back to our homes," she said.
Religion -- the reason these women say they stay -- is also used to validate the brainwashing and, in some cases, physical abuse employed to keep women and children submissive, said Marci Hamilton, author of "Justice Denied: What America Must Do to Protect Its Children."
The women are wholly dependent on the patriarchal community, Hamilton said. They often lack education and marketable skills, and they're told of "terrible forces outside the compound," namely evil people who wish them harm, she said.
And there's always the prospect of eternal damnation, said Hamilton, a professor at Yeshiva University's Cardozo School of Law who has studied polygamist sects for 10 years.
"It's not only physically dangerous to leave, you're also risking your soul," she said. "Staying in the compound, even though they're being abused, may look like a smarter choice to a lot of these people."
Joni Holm has taken care of four children who escaped Colorado City, and she concurs that youngsters who leave the community have trouble shaking their indoctrination.
"You literally have to take them, deprogram them and reintroduce them to society," she said.
Flora Jessop brought Fawn Holm, 16, and Fawn Broadbent, 17, to Joni Holm's Sandy, Utah, home in 2004.
Fawn Holm, Joni's sister-in-law, feared that she was about to be married to now-imprisoned FLDS "prophet" Warren Jeffs, who is serving time in Utah for being an accomplice to rape. Broadbent's name had just been placed in the church's "Joy Book," meaning she could be married off any day, and probably without warning.
The "two Fawns" were smart, Joni Holm said, but had elementary school education levels. They had bizarre mannerisms and wouldn't look people in the eye. They would sometimes jump off elevators because "they were taught they could never be alone with a man," she said.
Fawn Holm began using drugs and alcohol, and Broadbent dabbled in drinking, Joni Holm said.
It's a common phenomenon, Larson said. "When you're held down and can't have any freedoms, they go the opposite way when they get out: drinking, drugs, sex. They're going to hell anyway; they just jump headfirst in."
Joni and husband Carl's greatest challenge, however, was teaching the teens to trust. So entrenched was their distrust of "outsiders" that they needed even the simplest things proved to them, especially examples of how the FLDS "twisted" the Book of Mormon, said Joni Holm, a mainstream Mormon.
"You have to show them factual stuff, because this is what their dad has taught them all their lives," she said.
When Texas authorities seized 416 children from the FLDS Yearning for Zion compound in Eldorado this month, there were similar signs of indoctrination, said Helen Pfluger, whose Baptist church in nearby San Angelo volunteered to help feed and clothe the children and their mothers.
"They were very quiet and didn't want to look us in the eye," she said. "We never knew for sure which child belonged to which mother. It was very communal."
They refused to play board games. Clothes had to be cotton and plain, no patterns and no red, "the color of the devil," Pfluger said. The children shunned processed food, white bread and sodas, and essentially subsisted on yogurt, fruit and lots of almonds, she said.
"Another San Angelo church had brought some coloring pages and crayons," she said. "They didn't know what to do with them, and their mothers didn't either."
Learning to color will be one of many challenges the children will face if they're permanently removed from YFZ ranch.
Joni Holm said it takes five to 10 years for a sect child to learn how to live a life society would deem "normal." Larson said it could take longer. Jessop said she might never be normal.
But Jessop said she would rather wage the battles she faces on "the outside" than live a life of submission and abuse. She reckons many FLDS children would feel the same way if given a choice, she said.
It was difficult to give up the life she was taught was her only path to salvation. But she had to do it to get away from a culture that she felt was backward and malevolent, she said.
"The pain got so bad in heaven that I was willing to damn myself to hell to escape it," she said.
SAN ANGELO, Texas (AP) — Girls in the west Texas polygamous sect enter into underage marriages without resistance because they are ruthlessly indoctrinated from birth to believe disobedience will lead to their damnation, experts for the state testified Friday at a custody hearing for 416 youngsters.
The renegade Mormon sect's belief system "is abusive. The culture is very authoritarian," said Dr. Bruce Perry, a psychiatrist and an authority on children in cults.
But under questioning from defense lawyers who lined up in the courtroom aisles to have a turn at each witness, the state's experts acknowledged that the sect mothers are loving parents and that there were no signs of abuse among younger girls and any of the boys.
The testimony came on Day 2 of an extraordinary mass hearing over an attempt by the state of Texas to strip the parents of custody and place the children in foster homes away from the compound inhabited by members of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.
A witness for the parents who was presented by defense lawyers as an expert on the FLDS disputed the state's contention that a bed in the retreat's gleaming white temple was never used to consummate the marriages of underage girls to much older men.
Instead, W. John Walsh testified, it is used for naps during the sect's long worship services.
"There is no sexual activity in the temple," Walsh said.
The children were seized this month in a raid on the desert compound because of evidence of physical and sexual abuse, including the forcing of underage girls into marriage and childbearing.
Texas District Judge Barbara Walther boiled it down this way: "The issue before the court is: Can I give them back?"
Attorneys for the children and the parents appeared to be trying to show in cross-examination that their children were fine and that the state was trying to tear families apart on the mere possibility that the girls might be abused when they reach puberty several years from now.
Only a few of the children are teenage girls. Roughly a third are younger than 4 and more than two dozen are teenage boys. But about 20 women or more gave birth when they were minors, some as young as 13, authorities say.
The judge controlled the hundreds of lawyers with a steelier hand Friday than she did the day before.
Under cross-examination, state child-welfare investigator Angie Voss conceded there have been no allegations of abuse against babies, prepubescent girls or any boys.
But her agency, Child Protective Services, contends that the teachings of the FLDS — to marry shortly after puberty, have as many children as possible and obey their fathers or their prophet, imprisoned leader Warren Jeffs — amount to abuse.
"This is a population of women who appear to have a problem making a decision on their own," Voss said.
In response, the FLDS women, dressed in long, pioneer-style dresses with their hair swept up in braids, groaned in chorus with their dark-suited attorneys.
Walsh disputed that young girls have no say in who they marry.
"Basically, they're into match-making," he said of the sect, adding that girls who have refused matches have not been expelled.
"I believe the girls are given a real choice. Girls have successfully said, 'No, this is not a good match for me,' and they remained in good standing," he said.
Perry testified that the girls he interviewed said they freely chose to marry young. But he said those choices were based on lessons drilled into them from birth.
"Obedience is a very important element of their belief system," he said. "Compliance is being godly; it's part of their honoring God."
Perry acknowledged that many of the adults at the ranch are loving parents and that the boys seemed emotionally healthy when he played with them. When asked whether the belief system really endangered the older boys or young children, Perry said, "I have lost sleep over that question."
Under questioning, Perry also conceded the children would suffer if placed in traditional foster care.
"If these children are kept in the custody of the state, there would have to be exceptional and innovative programmatic elements for these children and their families," he said. "The traditional foster care system would be destructive for these children."
At that, dozens of FLDS parents applauded.
Eugene Volokh, a UCLA law professor, said courts have generally held that a parent's belief system cannot, in itself, justify a child's removal. He said, for example, that a parent might teach his child that smoking marijuana is acceptable, but only when he helps the child buy pot does he cross the line.
"The general view of the legal system is until there is an imminent risk of harm or actual harm, you can't" take the children, Volokh said.
The raid was prompted by a call from someone identifying herself as a 16-year-old girl with the sect. She claimed her husband, a 50-year-old member of the sect, beat and raped her. Investigators have yet to identify her among the children seized.
Jeffs is in prison for being an accomplice to rape. He was convicted in Utah last year of forcing a 14-year-old into marrying an older man.
Walsh testified that the renegade Mormon sect did not promote underage marriages until imprisoned leader Warren Jeffs took over as the sect's "prophet."
"He encourages marriage," Walsh said. "In some ways, he's indifferent to their age."
Associated Press writer Jennifer Dobner contributed to this report.
Two Polygamist Sect Survivors Tell Their Stories
"When I Thought of My Dad, I Thought of Him Being God"
by JEN
PEREIRA, KIRAN KHALID and EMILY YACUS
July 7, 2008
There's been a lot in the news recently about polygamist groups, but what is it really like for the children who grow up in them? Amber Dawn Lee and Estephania LeBaron are two women who spent their childhoods in two very different -- and very troubled groups -- and later escaped.
The women shared with "Good Morning America" what it is like to live in and to survive the secret society of a renegade polygamist sect.
"The children were all taught that if we were ever to talk about what happened sexually inside the group, that we will go straight to hell," Lee said of her time spent inside the Zion Society.
After she was abandoned by her mother, Lee was adopted and her new parents joined the Zion Society, a group led by a retired landscaper and excommunicated Mormon named Arvin Shreeve.
"I always had a feeling that something wasn't right. That it wasn't normal," said Lee.
Shreeve divided the women into groups called Sister Councils in which it was their job to sew lingerie to sell to local strippers. But first they had to model the lingerie. Shreeve reportedly even hired strippers to train his wives for the sect's fashion shows.
Lee, who as part of a Sister Council learned to sew at a young age, said that she "hoped that I could stand out somehow to Arvin, and that he'll notice that I'm here too."
Lee also said that the children suffered repeated physical and sexual abuse. "A 15-year-old girl would be instructed to teach the 9-year old girl how to sexually satisfy a man or woman," she said.
"Arvin sort of came out of nowhere. There are a lot of independent polygamists," according to senior reporter Mike Watkiss at KTVK in Phoenix. "That's what they call themselves, and they're just guys who basically put their hands up and say, 'I'm a prophet.'"
Estephania LeBaron said she knew about the horrors from a different sect. She is the daughter of polygamist Ervil LeBaron, founder of the Church of the Lamb of God.
"When I thought of my dad, I thought of him being God," she told "GMA." "I just had a huge feeling of awe." She also feared that if she deviated from her father's sect, she "might not get into heaven."
Although neither the Zion Society nor the Church of the Lamb of God were affiliated with the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Ervil came to be known as the Mormon Manson, for allegedly ordering the death of 22 people. And in 1979 he was convicted of ordering a hit on rival polygamist leader Rulon Allred.
"Ervil LeBaron was crazy," said Watkiss of KTVK. "He was a bad man, and really, I think really, intoxicated with his own alleged connection to God."
His daughter Estephania was one of 52 children, and her mother was one of 13 wives. Growing up in Mexico, she was forced into marriage twice at age 13. Those who attempted to leave the group risked death, a practice Ervil called "blood atonement."
"I had my aunt and my younger sister who were blood atoned. And I was 11 years old, and it was traumatizing," Estephania said while trying to hold back her tears. "Anybody that threatened to go to the police, or young mothers who wanted to leave with their children, those were grounds to kill them."
When asked how the two women survived their cult experiences, Lee said that it took some time. "I did a lot of drugs. I felt like I couldn't fit in. I felt different in the group and outside the group."
LeBaron said it was consoling to realize "that others had it much worse. Like with Hitler, and they went on."
Celestial polygamy
Public Forum Letter
Salt Lake Tribune
05/09/2008
I am a mainstream Mormon. Thomas S. Monson is
the president of my church, headquartered in Salt Lake City. Yet I am a
polygamist with the blessing of the First Presidency of The Church of Jesus
Christ of Latter-day Saints.
I married my first wife in the temple. I married my second wife in the
temple while still temple-married to my first wife. I was divorced on Earth, but
not in the next life. My second wife has asked the church to cancel my first
wife's marriage to me, but they say it isn't necessary because my first wife
needs the blessings of a husband. They say I can have two wives. My second wife
asked why her marriage to her first husband was canceled by the church but mine
wasn't. She was told that only men can have more than one spouse in the church.
In heaven I will have two wives; maybe more if I am worthy. Mormon men know they
will have more than one wife in the celestial kingdom. It's doctrinal.
Why does the church distance itself from polygamy? Why do they say they
don't teach it or believe in it anymore? Polygamy started with Joseph Smith and
is going strong with Thomas S. Monson. I wish the church would be honest.
Dana Miller
Idaho Falls, Idaho
The following are organizations that help women looking to flee polygamy.
www.helpthechildbrides.com
www.childpro.org
www.justiceforchildren.org