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Homeland Security - Refugee Staff
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tulsadPosted:
Tue Apr 29, 2008 8:33 pm
My Life in a Polygamist Compound
Carolyn Jessop's FLDS memoir, condensed.
By Torie Bosch
Posted Wednesday, April 16, 2008, at 1:18 PM ET
When Texas authorities seized 416 children in a raid on a compound of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Americans quickly learned that the religious group encourages polygamy and the marriage of young girls to older men. Escape, a memoir published last fall, offers a more detailed portrait of life with the FLDS. In the book, Carolyn Jessop, a sixth-generation polygamist describes her life as the fourth wife of Merril Jessop, who ran the recently raided Texas compound. Carolyn left Merril in 2003, before he moved to Texas, but her memoir sheds light on the man and on the beliefs and practices common within the insular community. Below, Slate flags Carolyn's most intriguing, strange, and heartbreaking allegations.
FLDS Beliefs
Page 17: The FLDS split from the Mormon Church more than 100 years ago, after the latter outlawed polygamy. Members, like 19th-century Mormons, believe that "[a] man must have multiple wives if he expects to do well in heaven, where he can eventually become a god and wind up with his own planet." Not every man marries multiple wives; being encouraged to take more than three signifies that you're considered important by the leaders of the community.
Page 25: In a favorite children's game, called Apocalypse, kids act out the FLDS vision of the end of the world. According to FLDS lore, Native Americans who were mistreated and killed in pioneer days will be resurrected in the end times, when God will allow them to wreak vengeance on those who wronged them (the presumably also-resurrected settlers). In return for this indulgence, "resurrected Indians" will also be "required to take on the job of protecting God's chosen people"—FLDS members—by killing FLDS enemies with invisible tomahawks that can sever a person's heart in half. Very cowboys and Indians!
Page 37: Carolyn, who grew up in the FLDS communities of Colorado City, Ariz., and Hildale, Utah, was educated in a "public school," but the teachers and students, like the rest of the area community, were almost exclusively FLDS members. They were taught that dinosaurs never existed and man never landed on the moon.
Page 157: Polygamy isn't the only way FLDS doctrine differs from that of the Mormon Church: "Many of us in the fundamentalist faith drank coffee, tea, beer, and wine, all of which is strictly forbidden in mainstream Mormonism."
Prophet Motives
Pages 72-73: The community's rules changed as different leaders—called prophets—established different priorities. When Carolyn was 18, the prophet was a man called Uncle Roy, who gave her permission to attend college, an honor granted to very few girls in the community. But there was one major caveat: In order to do so, Carolyn had to marry Merril Jessop, a 50-year-old man with a reputation for cruelty who already had three wives.
Page 313: When Uncle Roy died in 1986, a man called Uncle Rulon took over. But Rulon was elderly and frail, and his favored son, Warren Jeffs, held the reins for many years. Carolyn says that marrying off underage girls was relatively rare before Rulon: "When Uncle Rulon first came to power, girls didn't marry until they were over twenty. After his first stroke, the age dropped into the late teens. The sicker he got, the younger the brides in the community became."
Page 234: As the FLDS leadership became increasingly radicalized, Uncle Rulon began to discuss blood atonement, a draconian punishment for anyone who committed
"[i]mmoral acts for which there could be no forgiveness … such as fornication and adultery." Blood atonement, Carolyn explains, is "murder": The sinner submits to being killed as punishment for his or her crimes. The practice is rejected by the mainstream Mormon Church. Carolyn became terrified that the FLDS might adopt it.
Jessop's Marriage
As was the case with many FLDS unions, Carolyn and Merril's marriage was "spiritual," not official, to help avoid charges of polygamy. (Having technically single mothers in the community also helped bring in government benefits.)
Page 80: Carolyn was fearful of consummating her marriage: "Merril spread my legs apart but could not get an erection. I felt angry, humiliated, and embarrassed. Should I fight him? I began to try to free myself, and after a few minutes he released his hold on me." Though the couple eventually had sex, in their 17-year marriage, Carolyn never saw Merril fully nude.
Page 181: Merril became furious with Carolyn when she ordered shrimp, which he dislikes, at a restaurant: "A devout wife would never even desire to eat something her husband disliked."
Page 147: Carolyn and Merril eventually had eight children together, but that's hardly a big brood by FLDS standards: "Producing large numbers of faithful children was a way for a woman to gain favor not only with her husband but with God. It wasn't uncommon for a woman in the community to have as many as sixteen children, and most had at least twelve."
Bad Medicine
Page 189: FLDS leaders don't look kindly on modern medicine. During childbirth, "a doctor was never present, nor was pain medication ever used. Women were expected to be perfectly silent during childbirth. If a woman screamed or made loud noises she was criticized for being out of control. Sometimes she'd be reprimanded by her husband during her delivery."
Page 224: One woman Carolyn knows gave birth at home and "was given an episiotomy with sewing scissors and then stitched up with dental floss."
Page 231: Uncle Rulon "began preaching that anyone who needed medical help to heal was a person of little faith. A person in harmony with God could heal him- or herself with fasting and prayer." When Carolyn's sister-wife Ruth was diagnosed with skin cancer on her nose, she tried to heal herself with chemicals from a health-food store. The chemicals burned off her nose.
Page 275: Merril blamed Carolyn when their seventh child became gravely ill: "You can take him to every damn doctor you can find, but no one will be able to heal him. God is going to destroy his life because of the sins of his mother."
Warren Jeffs
Jeffs, who is currently in prison for arranging the marriage of an underage girl, exercised extraordinary control over the community even while Uncle Rulon was still the nominal prophet, and eventually became the prophet himself, when Rulon died in 2003.
Page 195: Some of Carolyn's stepdaughters were married to Jeffs, and she feared his temper. She writes: "One day he brought one of his wives into the [school] auditorium, which was packed with boys. Annette had a long braid that fell past her knees. Warren grabbed the braid and twisted and twisted it until she was on her knees and he was ripping hair from her head. He told the boys that this was how obedient their wives had to be to them."
Pages 216, 223, 231, and 234: As Rulon's deputy, Jeffs banned the color red; movies, television, and the Internet ("except for business purposes"); clothing with "large prints" or plaid; immunizations; and sex not for procreation.
Page 197: The Jeffs family had "a rigid rule … against becoming obese."
Page 307: The FLDS faithful didn't see anything wrong with the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. One of Carolyn's sister-wives "couldn't stop talking about how she and all the righteous people she knew saw the hand of God in the attacks. … Warren Jeffs had been preaching that the entire earth would soon be at war and all the worthy among the chosen would be lifted from the earth and protected, while God destroyed the wicked."
Pages 324-325: Jeffs began to kick young boys out of the community—"more than a hundred teenage boys" within a month's span, at one point—for crimes like "listening to CDs, watching movies, or kissing girls."
Time To Escape
Page 333: Carolyn decided to flee in 2003, soon after Jeffs finally became prophet. She took her eight children, including her profoundly disabled son, to Salt Lake City. As she and her family struggled to adjust to the outside world, Carolyn developed post-traumatic stress disorder. But as she worked to make ends meet, her polygamy background came in handy: An HBO costume director came to town, and Jessop says she made some money sewing costumes for Big Love, HBO's series about a suburban polygamous family connected to an FLDS-like cult.
Page 370: The transition to life outside the FLDS was toughest on Betty, Jessop's oldest daughter. After a visit with her father in FLDS-controlled Colorado City, Betty snapped. " 'You're an apostate, owned by the devil!' Betty said. 'He wants your soul and he wants ours.' " Two days after her 18th birthday, Betty returned to the FLDS fold.
Page 404: Jessop heard "rumors that children were being taken from their mothers and sent to the FLDS compound in Texas. … We heard they were being sent away to be raised the way Warren wanted them to be raised."
Page 409: Jeffs himself went underground to hide from the authorities after being accused of arranging the marriage of an underage girl to her cousin. Eventually, he was arrested—while in a car that was red, the color he forbade his followers to wear—and convicted. Still, "Warren's arrest was not the end of his power," Carolyn says. "They were not going to abandon their loyalty to him overnight because he was in the hands of the wicked." (Jeffs resigned as president of the FLDS in late 2007.)
By Rebecca Walsh
Tribune Columnist
Article Last Updated: 04/13/2008 01:33:31 AM MDT
In elaborate polygamy fantasyland, the idea of a haircut can keep a sheltered wife in line.
When the elders of YFZ Ranch in Texas tried to quash a 16-year-old bride's rebellion, they warned that the outside world would force her to have sex with "lots of men." Apparently equally important, she would have to cut her hair and wear makeup.
As threats go for a young woman in polygamy, a bob or a bit of blush seems minor. But the girl's terror about changing her appearance is heartbreakingly naive and very real.
The compound fence isn't the only cage for the women of polygamy. There is also a prison uniform - yards of pink and blue fabric, inches and inches of hair and ugly orthopedic shoes.
Utah and Arizona television stations and newspapers have been photographing the polygamy costume worn by Warren Jeffs' followers for years. But for the rest of the country, the billowing dresses and poofy French braids must look like a cotton-candy variation on 19th-century fashion or the voluminous folds of a burka.
Clothing and hairstyle distinctions between individual polygamous families and sects could fill an anthropology notebook.
"You can modify people's behavior just by putting them in a certain kind of dress," says Carolyn Jessop, a former spiritual wife of Merrill Jessop, the bishop of the Texas FLDS enclave. "It is a uniform. You have
nothing about you that's individual. You're just a part of a whole."
The homespun prairie styles - most can be traced to modest Mormon pioneer fashions - are intended to make polygamists stick out from the rest of us and band together.
"By dressing the same, you have this solidarity," says Janet Bennion, an anthropology professor at Lyndon State College in Vermont who has studied fundamentalist Mormon polygamists. "From their perspective, if you believe you're the people of God, that you're the chosen ones, the materialistic things of this world don't matter as much." Many independent fundamentalist Mormon families don't wear the polygamy uniform. The Salt Lake Tribune featured "Gary" and his three jeans and khaki-clad wives, the Salt Lake Valley model for the HBO series "Big Love." Clothing styles for the Apostolic United Brethren of Bluffdale run the gamut. Tom Green's wives wore a knee-length version of Jessica McClintock's Gunny Sack dress from the 1980s and their hair in curling waves down their backs. And the Kingston women are allowed to dress how they choose - including showing cleavage and wearing tight clothing.
"They're more overtly sexual than other women in polygamist groups," says Rowenna Erickson, a former wife in the Kingston clan. "For other groups, the clothing is all about control and power."
Women in the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints - in British Columbia, at the Utah-Arizona border and on the Texas ranch - cloister themselves through clothing.
After the Short Creek raid in 1953, polygamists who had dressed, for the most part, like the rest of America launched a retrenchment campaign that included new rules for dress - long sleeves, no hanging hair, no bangs.
"For them, the motivation is isolation," says Paul Reeve, a Utah history professor at the University of Utah.
Dress codes in the resulting polygamous communities have evolved differently. Centennial Park split from Hildale and Colorado City in the 1980s in part because of a disagreement over dress. Centennial Park elders allow women to show their ankles, wear pants (without a dress on top) and buy makeup and jewelry.
When Jeffs took over the other two border towns, along with banning television, fishing and basketball, he made the dress code even more restrictive: Everyone in the communities wears long white underwear year-round (including toddlers) modeled after Joseph Smith's original temple garments.
Clothing is supposed to cover the neck-to-ankle undergarments. Women yank on three layers of nylons in 100-degree heat to disguise the underwear. Color choices are limited to pastels (the spirit of God cannot reside in anything colorful). No black, no prints and no red (that hue is reserved for Christ). No sandals or pumps.
"You don't want to stand out. You don't want to be beautiful," says Pam Black, whose polygamous family moved to southern Utah in 1963, when she was 11. "You want to be invisible and do what your husband wants."
In the resulting time warp, hairstyles develop and stick for generations. Jeffs' female followers only let their hair down for their husbands in the bedroom. Older women still wear the textured "wave" or "sausage curl" that sits high on the forehead - the higher the wave, the more righteous the woman. The younger women of YFZ have developed a "poof," a pompadour reminiscent of the Gibson Girl.
Guidelines for men are much simpler. Long-sleeved, button-down shirts and long pants are required. Plaid is OK, but absolutely no pink. And no facial hair.
"For women, it's a real nightmare," says Jessop, who loaded her eight kids into a van and left her husband one night in 2003. She sewed replicas of the FLDS undergarments for "Big Love" and has written a book about her experiences, Escape.
"When Warren took over, my laundry went from four batches a day to 12. It's just so impractical."
Jeffs, of course, made an exception for himself. When he was captured outside Las Vegas in 2006 after being on the lam for 15 months, his skinny legs were in shorts. walsh@sltrib.com
Posted: Wednesday, April 23, 2008 8:15 AM
By Don Teague, NBC News Correspondent
Three weeks into covering the polygamous ranch raid story, I keep hearing from colleagues throughout NBC News who want to know more about how members of the sect live.
Much of what is interesting about their lives simply won’t fit into a two-minute television news story because the legal battle, charges and counter charges crowd out what many might consider intriguing information.
I spent several hours earlier this week speaking with parents at the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints ranch in Texas. It was my third long day on the ranch.
Here are some of the things members of the sect told me about life on the YFZ Ranch – which stands for Yearn For Zion – in Eldorado, Texas:
They drink coffee, which I know many mainstream Mormons don’t do. I was shocked when they offered me a cup, but happy to drink it (they avoid carbonated and sugary drinks, but have no problem with caffeine).
They won’t talk about what goes on inside their temple.
They do consider themselves Mormons. Yes, I know, their sect broke away from the Mormon Church more than a hundred years ago, and mainstream Mormons don’t consider FLDS Mormons. But FLDS members do consider themselves Mormons.
They consider jailed FLDS leader Warren Jeffs a prophet appointed directly by God. When I asked if he’s still their leader in jail, they laughed. "Of course," they said. Each public room on the ranch has a series of pictures hanging on the wall. They begin with Joseph Smith, then Brigham Young, and cover several decades of prophets…ending with a picture of their current prophet, Jeffs.
What’s up with the hair? Nothing, they said. I had heard there was some sort of class system among the FLDS, and you could tell certain things about the women by their hair. "Nope," they said. "We just like having long hair, but have to wear it up. Some of us braid it, or twist it into a bun, but there’s nothing more to it than that."
They remain evasive when the subject of underage marriage comes up. While they won’t confirm of knowing about more than one or two "possibly"16-year-old brides, they said brides younger than that are extremely rare. That is, if there are any, which they won’t confirm (evasive, remember?). What they do say is that all women/girls are given the choice of saying "no" to an arranged marriage. And most choose to wait until they’re at least 18 years old, if not older.
They don’t call them "arranged marriages." They call them "placement marriages."
Exactly who a woman/girl marries is decided by a combination of church leaders and their parents. They claim, again, the bride has the right to say "no" to the marriage.
While not confirming the existence of underage brides, they do express dismay that the state of Texas raised the legal marriage age from 14 to 16 years (with parental consent) after the YFZ ranch was established in 2004. By the way, the state of Texas considers a 16-year-old who marries on the YFZ ranch a victim of sexual abuse, because the state doesn’t recognize "spiritual marriage," or multiple wives as valid. Seventeen is the age of consent for a minor to have unmarried sex with an adult in Texas.
They admit to having multiple wives. It’s what they do (though there are some men who only have one wife).
Wives married to the same man call themselves "sister wives." The multiple children created by these families call all of the women "mother." That’s part of the reason Texas is DNA testing the children – because they’re still having a hard time sorting these families out.
They absolutely hate having the ranch called a "compound." "Do you see any walls here?" they asked. They call it a ranch. There are cattle (dairy) to prove it, and they hope to get a few horses someday.
Why do they talk like that? Robotic, drugged, hypnotized, brain-washed, creepy – all words other people told me came to mind when they first heard the women speak after returning to the ranch last week. I’m not sure what the answer is, but I’ve discovered the timid, methodical speech pattern goes away after the person you’re speaking with begins to relax a little. After a few minutes, speaking to a woman on the ranch is like speaking to any other somewhat reserved woman…except of course for the hair and the pastel prairie dresses.
So, what’s up with the pastel prairie dresses? They said they like pastel prairie dresses.
Are they really afraid of the color red? "We don’t wear red," one YFZ ranch woman told me. "But would your children think I’m the devil if I wore a red shirt?" I asked. She laughed at me. "No," she said, "but we don’t wear it." I had driven my red car onto the ranch (all three times in fact). "Is my red car a problem?" I asked. "It’s a car," was the answer.
It really irks ranch residents that we in the media keep saying they’re shut off and unfamiliar with the "outside world." I’ve spoken with ranch members who take their children to airports to watch the planes land, who snowboard, shop in stores, drive cars, etc. The FLDS sect has somewhere between 10,000 and 20,000 members across the country. They definitely keep to themselves, but most of them don’t live on closed-off "compounds" (I know, they hate that) like the YFZ ranch. Ranch residents said they move freely between YFZ and other communities throughout the country.
Women said they can leave at will. They said they can come and go at will and take their children with them. Some attend college and some have worked jobs in the "outside world."
I haven’t met anyone on the ranch who owns a TV. They said it’s not forbidden, but they don’t want to expose their children to the sex and violence.
Most families on the ranch have computers with Internet access. One of the fathers I spoke with said he doesn’t let his kids on the Internet for the same reasons he doesn’t have a TV.
The kids go to school on the ranch in a nice building, with separate classrooms for boys and girls. It’s not a year-round school – kids are basically on traditional school schedules.
Most families said they have family devotional time in the morning and the evening. They pray, and the parents talk to their kids about leading good lives.
When children come home from school, they do community-based chores. They work in the gardens, pick up litter from the roads, help out with the dairy cattle, etc.
The primary job for women is to do "housework." Cooking, cleaning, caring for the kids full-time.
Men work on the ranch. They build roads, buildings, tend fields, make furniture, and they’re in the process of installing a sewage treatment plant. They hope to pave the roads someday, eventually turning their collection of about 20 individual homes into a larger community. They think of it as a town, one that was growing rapidly until two weeks ago.
Where does the money come from? Labor is provided by men on the ranch. Also FLDS members from around the country to come to work on specific projects. The church and individual FLDS members provide operating funds. Many FLDS members own businesses that make plenty of money, which is given to the church broadly and the ranch specifically. One of the women who testified in a hearing last week said she had no idea who owns the home she lives in.
Men and women on the ranch said there is nothing more important to them than caring for and loving their children. Many have told me that they would do anything state authorities ask of them to regain custody of their kids. Despite saying they consider the ranch "Zion," and a peaceful, happy environment, they said they’ll leave and move wherever they have to if it means getting their children back. The ranch has even created its own website to show you pictures of their kids and how happy they say they are.
Much of the above sharply contrasts with the picture of alleged physical and sexual abuse painted by state investigators. The courts will ultimately decide which version of the truth is closer to reality. I can’t say whether what ranch residents tell me is true or not, but I thought you’d be interested in what they said.
ELDORADO, Texas — Texas authorities said Wednesday they have finished taking DNA samples from all the children removed from a polygamist compound more than two weeks ago.
Roughly 500 samples were taken at the San Angelo Coliseum where authorities have been holding the children. The state attorney general's office sent 10 technicians on Monday to begin taking court-ordered samples as child welfare officials try to sort out the complicated family relationships at the compound.
Spokeswoman Janece Rolfe said the testing at the coliseum was completed late Tuesday, but technicians are still taking samples from parents in Eldorado.
Child Protective Services moved 114 children from the coliseum on Tuesday to foster facilities. They've declined to say when the other children might be moved, but a half dozen buses arrived at the coliseum on Wednesday morning.
The children eagerly waved and smiled at television cameras, even as attorneys for the children complained they weren't warned their clients would be moved so quickly.
A hearing was scheduled for Wednesday afternoon for lawyers representing the children to air concerns about how the children will be cared for in foster homes.
The remaining 300 children were expected to be moved on Thursday, said Guy Choate, a state bar official who has been coordinating the attorneys brought from all over the state to represent the children.
State District Judge Barbara Walther signed the order Tuesday allowing the state to begin moving the children into temporary foster care while the state completes DNA testing and develops individual custody and treatment plans.
Technicians began testing children on Monday. The state added a testing site closer to the ranch, in the Eldorado courthouse square, on Tuesday.
Women in prairie dresses and men with shirts buttoned to their necks trickled into a stone building flanked by deputies to offer DNA samples. Results will likely take a month or more.
Arriving in pickup trucks and sport utility vehicles a few at a time, the parents came to allow technicians in lab coats to swab inside their mouths as they fight to regain custody of their children.
Their lawyers said many believe the testing is invasive and unnecessary.
"We've told them to cooperate, but there are a lot of people who are reluctant," said Cynthia Martinez, a spokeswoman for the Legal Aid attorneys who represent dozens of mothers. "There's a perception there that the state will be using it to separate them" rather than reunite them with their children.
David Williams, a former member of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, arrived from Nevada to give a DNA sample.
Clutching photos of his boys, ages 5, 7 and 9, Williams looked at his feet as he said his children were "taken hostage by the state."
"I have been an honorable American and father and I have carefully sheltered my children from the sins of this generation," Williams said. He denied the children living at the ranch were abused.
Susan Hays, an attorney for a toddler in state custody, said many of the fathers are reluctant and some may have left the state, fearing that the tests are really designed to help prosecutors make criminal abuse cases.
The state won the right to put the children in foster care on suspicion that FLDS members pushed underage girls into marriage and sex and that all the children raised in the church are in danger of being victims or becoming predators.
The children have been removed from the Yearning For Zion Ranch, the renegade Mormon sect's compound in Eldorado; they stayed at historic Fort Concho in San Angelo before being moved to the larger coliseum last week.
CPS spokesman Darrell Azar said child welfare officials want to move the children to a more homelike setting.
"They need to be out of the limelight," he said. "Children can't get into a normal routine in a shelter."
CPS said in its placement plan — attached to Walther's order — that it will try to place mothers under 18 with their children and to keep sibling groups together. Some of the families may have dozens of siblings.
Boys ages 8 and older will likely be placed in a setting similar to that where dozens of teen boys were taken last week, a Boys Ranch near Amarillo in the Texas Panhandle some 250 miles from Eldorado.
The CPS document lists facilities all around Texas — as far as Houston, about 500 miles away — where the children may be placed in what is one of the largest custody cases in U.S. history.
Walther ordered that the children taken from the compound be given DNA tests after child welfare officials complained they couldn't identify the children and parents. The judge ordered any known or suspected parents to also get tested.
All the children are supposed to get individual hearings before June 5 to help determine whether their parents may be able to take steps to regain custody or they'll stay in state custody.
FLDS spokesman Rod Parker said at a news conference Tuesday in Salt Lake City that Texas doesn't know how to handle sect children, and that efforts to keep them from being moved have been ignored.
"These people are not equipped to handle these children," said Parker. "They don't know anything about these children."
437 kids scattered into Texas foster homes; ‘there’s going to be problems’
SAN ANGELO, Texas - Many of the children have seen little or no television. They have been essentially home-schooled all their lives. Most were raised on garden-grown vegetables and twice-daily prayers with family. They frolic in long dresses and buttoned-up shirts from another century. They are unfailingly polite.
The 437 children taken from the polygamist compound in West Texas are being scattered to group homes and boys' and girls' ranches across the state, plunged into a culture radically different from the community where they and their families shunned the outside world as a hostile, contaminating influence on their godly way of life.
The state Children's Protective Services agency said it chose homes where the youngsters can be kept apart from other foster children — for now.
"We recognize it's critical that these children not be exposed to mainstream culture too quickly or other things that would hinder their success," agency spokeswoman Shari Tulliam said. "We just want to protect them from abuse and neglect. We're not trying to change them."
The children were swept up in a raid earlier this month on the Yearning for Zion Ranch run by the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, a renegade Mormon splinter group that believes in marrying off underage girls to older men. State child-welfare authorities said there was evidence of physical and sexual abuse at the ranch.
The youngsters will be kept in 16 temporary facilities around Texas — some as far away as Houston, 500 miles off — until individual custody hearings can be held.
Those hearings could result in a number of possibilities: Some children could be placed in permanent foster care; some parents who have left the sect may win custody; some youngsters may be allowed to return to the ranch in Eldorado; and some may turn 18 before the case is complete and will be allowed to choose their own fates.
Children raised on the FLDS compound must wear pioneer-style dress and keep their hair pinned up in braids, reflecting their standards of modesty. For the same reason, they have little knowledge of pop culture. They must pray twice a day. They tend vegetable gardens and raise dairy cows, and must eat fresh food. And they are exceedingly polite, always saying "please" and "thank you."
In contrast, many other children in foster care have a certain worldly swagger, and are there because they have used drugs or committed other crimes.
Experts, lawyers: Foster care will change them
"These children who have lived in a very insular culture and are suddenly thrust into mainstream culture. There's going to be problems," said Susan Hays, who represents a toddler in the custody case. "They are a throwback to the 19th century in how they dress and how they behave."
Ken Driggs, an Atlanta lawyer, has long studied and written about the FLDS, said that if kept away from their parents' culture long enough, the children may begin to emulate those around them.
Tulliam said the temporary foster care facilities have been briefed on the children's needs. "We're not going to have them in tank tops and shorts," she said.
CPS has sent instructions to feed the youngsters fresh fruits and vegetables, chicken, rice and other foods that may have been grown on the 1,700-acre ranch.
"They don't eat a lot of processed food and we're not going to encourage that," Tulliam said, but noted that if the children want to eat processed or junk food, no one is going to stop them.
Those who cling to the old traditions may also pose another problem for the state — they might run away. Driggs said polygamists' children have fled foster homes before because "they want to go home, and they want to go to people and circumstances they're used to."
The children have been educated in a schoolhouse, using a home-school curriculum, on the compound, and may actually be ahead of public-school students their ages, lawyers and CPS officials said.
Hays and Tulliam said the children will continue to be home-schooled by the temporary foster-care providers instead of being put through the trauma of trying to fit into big schools, where they could be bullied because of their differences.
While their diets, dress and prayers can be accommodated with a little planning, other experts said their emotional needs may be trickier to deal with.
Dr. Bruce Perry, a child psychiatrist who testified for the children last week, said FLDS children may be easily taken advantage of by outsiders because of the strict control church leaders have over their daily lives.
People who have left the sect "felt emotionally incapable of decision-making," he said.
Sect Members Aspired To Live at Raided Site
By Sylvia Moreno
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, April 14, 2008
ELDORADO, Tex., April 13 -- The secretive and insular community established near this West Texas town by a radical offshoot of the Mormon Church is considered by the sect's members to be a holy shrine populated by its most fervent adherents and is propped up financially by members of the group living in other states, according to law enforcement officials and former members.
Interviews with law enforcement authorities and former members of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints depict the Yearning for Zion Ranch, which was raided last week by Texas authorities, as an outpost whose adult residents were considered the sect's elite. They were handpicked by the church's leader, Warren Jeffs, who was convicted last year in Utah of being an accomplice to rape for arranging the marriage of a 14-year-old girl to her cousin.
Jeffs dubbed those chosen for the ranch as the "elect" or "heart's core," selected to live in the "holy land," as he called the compound. The adults were his most loyal followers and the young children were the least "contaminated" by the outside world, former church members say. According to court documents, adherents living at the ranch practiced the most extreme tenets of FLDS doctrine, including forcing girls as young as 13 to "spiritually marry" older men for the purpose of bearing their children.
The community near Eldorado was financially supported by FLDS members in Arizona and Utah, said former member Richard Holm. Donations to support the ranch would help make the giver more worthy, said Holm, a former Colorado City, Ariz., resident now living in Hurricane, Utah.
"They wanted to be holy enough to be called there themselves," said Holm, who was kicked out of the sect by Jeffs in 2003.
The ranch is also the location of the sect's only temple, an 80-foot-tall limestone edifice that looms above the scrub brush. When Texas authorities appeared at the ranch last week to search for an allegedly abused girl, residents linked arms to form a human chain around the temple, hoping they could prevent its desecration.
The FLDS community on the 1,700-acre ranch remained largely off the radar screen of Texas officials until a girl, 16, made calls to a domestic abuse hotline on March 29 and 30. She alleged that she had been forced to marry a man three times her age who regularly beat her and that she was being kept at the ranch against her will.
Texas officials said last week that without a complaint or evidence of a crime, they were prohibited from entering the privately owned compound. The "outcry," as officials call it, that gave them cause to act came with the girl's phone calls.
The calls and subsequent interviews of people at the site in Texas prompted authorities to remove 416 children -- most of them girls -- from the ranch, the largest child-removal case in the state's history.
On Sunday, Texas officials confiscated cellphones from women who had voluntarily accompanied the children from the ranch. Lawyers appointed to represent 18 of the children sought a judge's order to confiscate the phones, fearing witness tampering, said Marissa Gonzalez, a spokeswoman for Texas Child Protective Services.
The extremism practiced at the West Texas ranch took place during a time when authorities in Arizona and Utah were engaged in outreach to polygamist groups in their states that had broken with the Mormon Church over the issue. As part of the effort, authorities engaged in a tacit agreement with these sects: They would not crack down on polygamy so long as underage girls were not involved.
While FLDS leaders never officially forswore forcing teenage girls to marry older men, the sect did come out of the shadows. Its communities of Hildale, Utah, and Colorado City, Ariz., allowed some local and state offices to be set up. Utah and Arizona authorities hold periodic town hall meetings there, as well as training sessions on what constitutes sexual abuse of children. A hotline created to report such problems is advertised widely and has been used occasionally, according to authorities.
Opening up these FLDS communities, authorities reasoned, would make it easier for the abuse of young girls to be discovered. But Utah Attorney General Mark L. Shurtleff and Arizona Attorney General Terry Goddard have said often that Jeffs's establishment of the ranch -- the FLDS bought the land in late 2003 and began constructing and populating the compound in 2004 -- was an attempt to escape the scrutiny the sect was getting in their states.
"It crossed our mind all the time . . . when they first moved to Texas . . . that some of the abusive practices that we were trying to quell and get witnesses to testify to in Arizona" might be practiced in Texas, Goddard said.
Jeffs is awaiting trial in Arizona on sex charges involving minors.
The mass action in Texas was reminiscent of the 1953 raid by Arizona police and the National Guard at Short Creek, now Colorado City, over similar child-abuse allegations. That event led to almost half a century of tense alienation of the FLDS and other polygamous communities from Utah and Arizona authorities.
While they are not critical of Texas authorities for moving on the girl's allegations, both Goddard and Shurtleff say they fear a setback in their efforts to gain the confidence of polygamist groups.
"We do fear that this raid is going to have an impact on those relationships," said Shurtleff's spokesman, Paul Murphy. "The polygamists I've talked to have been very traumatized by the raid, and it's causing them to rethink whether they want to talk to us. We know it's created a tremendous amount of fear."
The director of a pro-polygamy group called Principle Voices, based in Salt Lake City, agreed. Mary Batchelor, who said she considers herself an independent fundamentalist Mormon, has worked closely with Utah and Arizona authorities and nonprofit organizations in what is called the Safety Network. The cross-border effort is aimed at educating polygamous groups on what constitutes child and sexual abuse and domestic violence, and how to prevent and report those crimes.
"We've made a lot of headway with other groups who pledged to marry as adults and who took public pledges to discourage underage marriages," Batchelor said. "The FLDS was the only group that was not willing to agree to that."
She lauded the efforts of Utah and Arizona to focus not so much on the issue of polygamy but on crimes against minors, and she said she does not condone underage marriage among fundamentalist Mormons. But she predicted that the Texas raid will have a detrimental effect in that community.
"Our biggest fear was that we would have another raid," Batchelor said. "Our hope and all our work we've done was to avoid that. Now there is hurt and dismay."
Warren Jeffs, the man who the FLDS members still hold as their spiritual leader:
Warren Steed Jeffs (born December 3, 1955, in San Francisco, California) was the leader of a controversial Mormon fundamentalist polygamist sect known as the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (FLDS Church) from 2002 to 2007.[3] Jeffs' position in this organization was reportedly that of absolute ruler.
Jeffs gained international notoriety in May 2006 when he was placed on the FBI's Ten Most Wanted List for unlawful flight to avoid prosecution on Utah state charges related to his alleged arrangement of extralegal marriages between his adult male followers and underage girls. He was arrested in August 2006 in Nevada, and agreed to be taken to Utah for trial. In May and July of 2007 the State of Arizona charged him with eight additional counts—including sexual conduct with minors and incest—in two separate cases.[4] His trial, which began early in September of 2007 in St. George, Utah, lasted less than a month, and on September 25 the verdict was read declaring him guilty of two counts of rape as an accomplice.[5] On November 20, 2007 he was sentenced to imprisonment for 10 years to life and has begun serving his sentence at the Utah State Prison.[6]
Jeffs resigned from the presidency of the FLDS Church on the day he was sentenced.[7] There are also reports that Jeffs admitted his position of prophet in the FLDS church was false in a conversation to William E. Jessop, and declared that "Brother William E. Jessop has been the prophet since [my] Father's passing" in a conversation to his brother Nephi Jeffs, though Jeffs' attorneys have claimed he misspoke.[8]
Sex crime allegations and FBI's Most Wanted In July 2004, Warren Jeffs' nephew, Brent Jeffs, filed a lawsuit against him alleging that in the late 1980s his uncle sodomized him in the Salt Lake Valley compound then owned by the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (FLDS). Brent Jeffs said he was five or six years old at the time, and that Warren Jeffs' brothers, also named in the lawsuit, watched and participated in the abuse. Two of Warren Jeffs' other nephews also made similar abuse claims against him. One of the alleged victims, Clayne Jeffs, committed suicide with a firearm after accusing Warren Jeffs of sexually assaulting him as a child.[23]
In June 2005, Jeffs was charged with sexual assault on a minor and with conspiracy to commit sexual misconduct with a minor for allegedly arranging, in 2002, a marriage between a 14-year-old girl and a 19-year-old man who was already married. The girl, known as "Jane Doe IV" (Elissa Wall)[24] testified that she begged "Uncle Rulon" to let her wait until she was older, or choose another man for her. Rulon Jeffs was apparently "sympathetic", but Warren Jeffs was not, and she was forced to go through with the marriage. The man that she was to marry was apparently her first cousin. The 14-year-old alleged that her new husband raped her repeatedly, starting on their wedding night. She eventually left her husband and is now married to another man.[25] Jeffs faced the above charges in Mohave County, Arizona. In July 2005, the Arizona Attorney General's office distributed wanted posters offering $10,000 for information leading to Jeffs' arrest and conviction.
In late 2005, Jeffs was put on the FBI's most wanted fugitive list, offering $60,000 for information leading to his arrest. Shortly after being placed on the FBI list, Jeffs was featured on the television program America's Most Wanted.
Around this time, Warren Jeffs' brother, Seth, was arrested under suspicion of harboring a fugitive. During a routine traffic stop on October 28, 2005, in Pueblo County, Colorado, police found nearly $142,000 in cash, about $7,000 worth of prepaid debit cards, and Warren Jeffs' personal records. During Seth Jeffs' court case, FBI agent Andrew Stearns testified Jeffs had told him that he did not know where his older brother was and that he would not reveal his whereabouts if he did. He was convicted of harboring a fugitive on May 1, 2006.[26] On July 14, 2006, he was sentenced to three years' probation and a $2500 fine.[27]
On April 5, 2006, the state of Utah issued an arrest warrant for Jeffs on felony charges of accomplice rape of a teenage girl between 14 and 18 years old.[28] Shortly after, on May 6, 2006 the FBI placed Jeffs on its Top Ten Most Wanted Fugitives list.[29] He was the the 482nd fugitive listed on that list. In addition, the bounty on his head was raised to $100,000, and the public was warned that "Jeffs may travel with a number of loyal and armed bodyguards".[30]
The updated posters warned that Jeffs had ties to Utah, Arizona, Texas, Colorado, South Dakota, British Columbia, Canada, and Quintana Roo, Mexico. There was also information that he had ties to some rural farms run by some of his followers near Pioche, Nevada, as well as construction companies in Mesquite, Nevada.[31]
On May 27, 2006 Bruce Wisan, the court-appointed accountant in charge of the FLDS' trust fund, filed civil suits against Jeffs. Wisan claimed that Jeffs is responsible for "fleecing trust assets". Along with church leaders, former trustees Truman Barlow, Leroy Jeffs, James Zitting, and William Jessop were also named as defendants. "We feel that they’ve taken things from the trust," Wisan said. "Their actions have caused harm to the trust."[32]
On June 8, 2006 Jeffs returned to Colorado City to perform more "child bride" marriages. Nearby citizens pointed out a mobile home where the weddings had allegedly taken place.[33]
[edit] Arrest, trial and conviction
On August 28, 2006 around 9 p.m. Pacific time, Jeffs was pulled over on Interstate 15 in Clark County, Nevada, by Nevada Highway Trooper Eddie Dutchover because Jeffs' red 2007 Cadillac Escalade's temporary license plates were not visible. One of Jeffs' wives, Naomi, and his brother, Issac, were with him, and Jeffs had four computers, 16 cell phones, disguises (including three wigs and twelve pairs of sunglasses), and more than $55,000 in cash.[34][35]
In a Nevada court hearing on August 31, 2006 Jeffs waived extradition and agreed to return to Utah[36] to face two first-degree felony charges of accomplice rape.[28] Each charge carries an indeterminate penalty of five years to life in prison. Arizona prosecutors are next in line to try Jeffs. He was held in the Washington County, Utah, jail pending an April 23, 2007, trial on two counts of rape as an accomplice for his role in arranging a 2002 marriage between a 14-year-old girl and her 19-year-old cousin.[37]
Jeffs was believed to be leading his group from jail, and a Utah state board expressed dissatisfaction in dealing with Hildale police, believing that many had ties to Jeffs, and as such, did not cooperate.[38] In May and July of 2007, he was indicted in Arizona on eight counts, including sexual conduct with a minor and incest.[39]
Jeffs' trial ran from September 11 to September 25, 2007. The trial was held in St. George, Utah, with judge James L. Shumate presiding. Jeffs was housed in Utah's Purgatory Correctional Facility in solitary confinement for the duration. At the culmination of the trial, Jeffs was found guilty of two counts of being an accomplice to rape[40] on September 25, 2007. He was sentenced to imprisonment for 10 years to life and has begun serving his sentence at the Utah State Prison.[6]
Jeffs is now scheduled to be tried in Arizona.[41] Jeffs entered a not guilty plea February 27, 2008, to sex charges stemming from the arranged marriages of three teenage girls to older men.[42]
There is a list of factual accounts re: FLDS at the end of this wiki.
Warren Jeffs Pleads Not Guilty to Charges of Arranging Teen
Warren Jeffs Pleads Not Guilty to Charges of Arranging Teen Marriages in Arizona
Wednesday, February 27, 2008
KINGMAN, Ariz. — Polygamist sect leader Warren Jeffs pleaded not guilty Wednesday to sex charges stemming from the arranged marriages of two teenage girls to older men.
Jeffs, the leader of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, was convicted in Utah last year of rape as an accomplice in the arranged marriage of a 14-year-old girl and her 19-year-old cousin. It was his first court appearance in Arizona, where prosecutors filed charges against him even before he faced charges in Utah.
Jeffs, flanked by three law enforcement officers, wore an orange and white striped jail uniform and ankle and wrist cuffs. He had a slight smile when he walked into the courtroom and talked in hushed tones with his lawyers.
The only thing he said during the hearing was "yes" when Superior Court Judge Steven Conn asked him if he was Warren Jeffs. Otherwise, he sat quietly with his hands folded in his lap.
The Arizona charges stem from the arranged marriages of a man in his early 50s to his 17-year-old relative and the marriage of the same teenagers that led to the Utah conviction.
Prosecutors in Arizona said that doesn't prevent them from bringing charges here.
Jeffs' lawyer, Mike Piccarreta, entered the not guilty plea on his behalf. Piccarreta plans to ask Conn for a change of venue, saying Kingman is too close to St. George, Utah, the site of Jeffs' first trial, for him to get a fair trial here.
"If people want to give Mr. Jeffs a fair trial, we have to hold it in an area as far away as practical from the other case in Utah," Piccarreta said Tuesday, when Jeffs was returned to Kingman from Utah, where he had begun serving his prison term for his conviction there.
Jeffs is charged in Arizona as an accomplice with four counts of incest and four counts of sexual contact with a minor in an indictment issued last year. He also was arraigned on two additional counts of sexual conduct with a minor and one count of conspiracy to conduct sexual conduct with a minor from a case filed in 2005.
Mohave County Attorney Matt Smith has said the trial should be held in his county because that's where the crimes allegedly occurred.
Conn ordered Jeffs held in the Mohave County jail without bond and scheduled a hearing for March 19. He was returned to Kingman on Tuesday from Utah, where he had begun serving his prison term for his conviction there.
The Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints is based in Colorado City, Ariz. and nearby Hildale, Utah.
The mainstream Mormon church, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, renounced polygamy more than a century ago, excommunicates members who engage in the practice and disavows any connection with the FLDS church.
Jeffs was a fugitive for nearly two years and was on the FBI's Most Wanted list when he was arrested during a traffic stop outside Las Vegas.
Weddings at Nevada Motel Backdrop to Trial of Polygamist Sect Leader
Monday, November 20, 2006
CALIENTE, Nev. — Room 15 seems like an unlikely place for a wedding.
There are no flower-covered arbors, pews or unity candles waiting to be lit. It's just an apartment-style motel room with a bed, a dresser, table and a couch. A door off the kitchenette leads to small patio with a fire pit.
But there were dozens of weddings here at the quaint, quirky Caliente Hot Springs Motel, "world famous" for its warm, therapeutic waters.
Dozens of religious unions arranged between underage girls and men from a polygamist church whose leader, Warren Jeffs, now stands accused of rape as an accomplice for marrying a 14-year-old girl to her older first cousin.
The leader of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, Jeffs, 50, will be in a Utah court Tuesday for a hearing to determine if prosecutors have enough evidence to try him on two first-degree felony charges.
If there's a trial and Jeffs is convicted, the man some 10,000 followers revere as a prophet could spend the rest of his life in prison.
Prosecutors allege the bride, who is referred to in court documents as Jane Doe No. 4, told Jeffs she didn't want to marry — she believed she was too young. Later, she begged to be released from the union, saying she didn't like marital relations.
But Jeffs said the marriage was her religious duty and threatened her with the loss of her salvation, court documents state.
That threat may have been what she was thinking when she stood dressed in white and said, "I do," sealing the spiritual marriage with a secret handshake.
FLDS weddings in Caliente came in bunches, said Carolyn Jessop, a former FLDS member, who ran the motel for a year. Once or twice a month, beginning in the spring of 1999, Jessop would get a telephone call, telling her to plan for a weekend of weddings — some say as many as 10 in one day.
"Room 15 would have to be cleared out the day before and cleaned," she said. Jessop would scurry to see if guest reservations could be changed or canceled. When it wasn't possible, the weddings would wait.
Wedding parties and church elders would arrive in a caravan of cars about midmorning, not long after checkout for guests.
"They did not want anybody on the property," said Jessop, whose husband Merrill Jessop owned the 18-room motel with her father, Art Blackmore, for seven years until he sold it in 2004.
Each wedding was different, but girls usually arrived with their parents, including "other mothers," their father's plural wives.
The groom might bring his own plural wives. In some ceremonies, the first wife might even hold the young bride's hand, placing gently in the groom's as a symbolic gesture that she accepted the new wife into the family.
"You would only bring the wives you have confidence in," Jessop said. "The ones who would keep the secret."
After the ceremony, FLDS elders would share a meal cooked by some of the women. Back then Jeffs, was still a prophet-in-waiting to his father Rulon Jeffs.
But Rulon, who died in 2002, was ill and fading.
"So Warren [Jeffs] would arrange for the crime, and then perform the crime," said Jessop, who left the sect and her husband in 2003. "I can't imagine the trauma that some of these younger girls must have gone through."
The drive between Caliente and Hildale, Utah, one of the twin border towns where most FLDS members live, is 160 miles — most of it on the two lane State Route 56 through Utah's Antelope Mountains and across the Escalante Desert. Travelers pass Modena — population 13 — just before crossing the Nevada state line.
Why go all that way?
Because the states of Utah and Arizona were passing legislation to address underage marriage and threatening prosecutions, including putting some young girls in jail, Jessop said.
"The leaders thought [Caliente] was a way to go under the radar screen. It was a safe place," she said.
Warren Jeffs and other church leaders refused when asked directly by authorities to abandon the practice of placement marriages for young girls, she said.
Utah's Attorney General Mark Shurtleff took office in 2000 and met with FLDS leaders, his spokesman Paul Murphy said.
"They said 16- and 17-year-olds were a gray area," said Murphy. "Their logic is that if you're monogamous, you can legally marry at 16 or 17. Our position is that you can't engage in an illegal marriage or have sex at 16 or 17. That applies to polygamous marriages and non-polygamous marriages."
Utah later passed a child bigamy law making it a felony to arrange a marriage between a minor and an older, already married person. Included in the law is a provision for the kind of spiritual ceremonies that seal FLDS marriages. Arizona has since passed a similar law.
It's unclear when Utah or Arizona authorities knew the FLDS were crossing into Nevada to wed. But Jeff's under-the-radar approach seems to have worked in Caliente.
"It was common knowledge that the [polygamists] owned the motel, but we never heard anything about marriages," said Lincoln County sheriff's office Sgt. Kerry Lee, who's been in the area 17 years. "The first time I heard of it was on the national news. If we had gotten a complaint, we would have done something."
Distinctive Doctrines
The church teaches plurality of wives as a general requirement for the highest eternal salvation of men. It is generally believed in the church that a man should have three wives to fulfill this requirement. Critics of this belief say that its practice leads unavoidably to bride shortages and likely to child marriages, incest, and child abuse.
The church currently practices "The Law of Placing" under which all marriages are assigned by the prophet of the church. Many outside of the church, and some inside, view this practice as unduly authoritarian though it helps address by edict the problem of wife shortages. Under the Law of Placing, the prophet elects to give or take wives to or from men according to their worthiness.
Fumarase Deficiency afflicts 20, is linked to marriages of close kin
Wednesday, Feb. 8, 2006
It's one of the darkest secrets of the Warren Jeffs polygamist community.
An especially severe form of birth defect is on the rise and may mushroom in coming generations.
"I don't want to describe it in too much detail," said Isaac Wyler, who was related by marriage to some of the victims. "It's not a real pretty sight."
According to experts and former Jeffs followers, the cause of the birth defect is clear: Intermarriage among close relatives is producing children who have two copies of a recessive gene for a debilitating condition called Fumarase Deficiency.
They predict the scale of the problem will increase dramatically in the future. Wyler, who has lived in the polygamist community most of his life, said he expects residents to continue marrying close relatives.
"Around here," Wyler said, "you're pretty much related to everybody."
Fumarase Deficiency is an enzyme irregularity that causes severe mental retardation, epileptic seizures and other cruel effects that leave children nearly helpless and unable to take care of themselves.
Dr. Theodore Tarby has treated many of the children at clinics in Arizona under contracts with the state. All are retarded. "In the severe category of mental retardation," the neurologist said, "which means an IQ down there around 25 or so."
Until a few years ago, scientists knew of only 13 cases of Fumarase Deficiency in the entire world. Tarby said he's now aware of 20 more victims, all within a few blocks of each other on the Utah-Arizona border.
The children live in the polygamist community once known as Short Creek that is now incorporated as the twin towns of Hildale, Utah, and Colorado City, Ariz. Tarby believes the recessive gene for Fumarase Deficiency was introduced to the community by one of its early polygamist founders.
According to community historian Ben Bistline, most of the community's 8,000 residents are in two major families descended from a handful of founders who settled there in the 1930s to live a polygamist lifestyle.
"Ninety percent of the community is related to one side or the other," Bistline said.
For many years, Bistline was a member of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (FLDS), which today reveres fugitive polygamist Warren Jeffs as a prophet.
"They claim to be the chosen people, the chosen few," Bistline said. "And their claim is they marry closely to preserve the royal bloodline, so to speak."
Wyler, who says Jeffs kicked him out of the FLDS group two years ago, has observed some of the "Fumarase children" in their home environment.
"I've seen some children that can talk and communicate a little," Wyler said. "And I've seen others that are totally laid out. They have no movement. They can't do anything by themselves. Literally, if they're 8 years old, it's like taking care of a baby."
Tarby saw the first "Fumarase child" in the community 15 years ago. He said the oldest victim is now about 20 years old. In March 2000, Tarby co-authored an article in the medical journal "Annals of Neurology" describing eight new cases of Fumarase Deficiency in the Southwest. It has now grown to 20 known cases in the polygamist community on the Utah-Arizona border.
Tarby said children suffering from Fumarase Deficiency have unusual facial features and frequent "grand mal" epileptic seizures. The children require constant care from parents and close relatives. "In some ways, they are really kind of remarkable people," Tarby said. "They do treat these kids pretty well."
Wyler agreed that the parents and close relatives are loving caregivers. He said it's partly because they believe it's a calling from God. "They would just assume they've been given a test and they need to pass this test," Wyler said. "And it's their lot in life to take care of a child like this. And they'll give it everything they've got. And they'll do a good job. Very good job."
Tarby said the early founder who brought the recessive gene into the community had numerous children, so copies of the gene were passed on to children and grandchildren. When cousins or other close relatives marry, two copies of the gene can be passed on to a single child, triggering the disease.
In the FLDS community, marriages with cousins and even closer relatives are common, according to Bistline. "There are people that have married their nieces," Bistline said. "People who have married their aunts."
It's all part of the community's religious system, according to Wyler. "Well, around here, of course, when you get married, you're told who to marry and when to get married and things like that. So, that's really not going to change, I don't believe."
"As long as they've got the leadership they've got," Bistline said, "they'll never change."
It's believed that more than half the residents carry the recessive gene. That means the number of cases will likely grow. Tarby said there could be hundreds of victims in coming generations. "No, it wouldn't surprise me," Tarby said. "Wouldn't surprise me."
Wyler hopes FLDS leaders will change their marriage practices. "Now that they know there's a problem," Wyler said, "they need to quit sweeping it under the rug and pretend there's not a problem. And (they should) say, 'OK, now you know when you cross these certain lines together, then this happens.' And they need fresh blood."
Tarby has suggested to community residents that they undergo genetic screening before marriage. They've ignored the suggestion, Tarby said. "I really doubt that if we could tell them, you know, 'This male has the condition and this female has the condition; you shouldn't mate,' that wouldn't stop them."
On one occasion at an Arizona clinic, Tarby explained to one of the fathers the reason he had a Fumarase child. "You and your wife are related," Tarby said he told the man.
The father replied, "Up there we're all related." Tarby said he was not sure if the man meant "up there in Colorado City or up there in heaven."
Tarby said the children are a financial burden on taxpayers, although he's not sure how much. In Arizona, the children frequently receive medical services at state expense, Tarby said. He believes some Fumarase children live on the north side of the border and receive some of their medical care in Utah, presumably at taxpayer expense. Officials in both states say they can't reveal data because of privacy laws.
When asked if he considered the situation wrong, Tarby said, "Wrong? I've given up trying to sort those things out. I don't think they're going to change much."
In the course of investigating the problem, KSL-TV learned the names of some victims and their parents but chose not to reveal them. Through intermediaries, KSL offered parents a chance to speak, but they did not respond.
Helping Victims of Domestic Violence and Child Abuse in Poly
62.4% of the population of the state of Utah belongs to the LDS (Mormon) Church; 9% of Arizona residents are LDS. The LDS church wants to disassociate and distance itself from polygamy (there are approx. 150,000 LDS polygamists in the US who are living independently of any group,) and the extremist polygamous groups such as FLDS. The state governments of Utah, AZ, TX, NV, and others with a significant populations of polygamous communities have to figure out how to ensure the safety of the members if need be. In 2006, the attorneys general of Utah and AZ created a powerful tool to be used toward that end.
The Primer - Helping Victims of Domestic Violence and Child Abuse in Polygamous Communities
Updated June 2006
In 2006, both states' attorneys general, concerned over the effects of the widespread but illegal practice of polygamy, jointly released a 57-page primer on the topic for use by "human services professionals, law enforcement officers and others" (excepts below and on the following six pages). The training manual says FLDS has 10,000 members (Page 6) and calls Jeffs' sect "the most restrictive and isolated" (Page 7) of all Mormon fundamentalist groups. Former FLDS members report being taught that "the Holocaust never existed and that the government fabricated the story of man landing on the moon in order to hide tax money" (Page 7).
Page 42
Child Abuse and Polygamy
Children and parents from fundamentalist communities often fear governmental authority and some are told they need to lie to protect the family. The safety of the family is their first responsibility. Many of these children may believe that if they leave their family or religious community they will be condemned to hell. These families often exist in very closed
communities. They often believe that the only reason you are showing up in their lives is that they practice polygamy. Polygamy is often a core belief and deals with concepts of salvation for members of these communities.
• Spend more time developing rapport with the child and/or family.
• It may be difficult for these children to talk about different aspects of their family and life experience
• Parents may not trust what they are told. There is a need to fully disclose appropriate parent information, possible implications and expectations.
• Understand that every statement these children give to you about their family may bring up guilt and shame issues.
• These children may already blame themselves and believe that they have sinned by contacting someone outside the family or community.
• Often these children have not been exposed to "mainstream" society. They may use different terms to describe their family and community.
• These children may not have skills to cope with the intervention process. Again spend more time with the child and family.
• Acknowledge to the child and family that you do not understand their culture and ask for their help in clarifying issues. Be very candid about your limited knowledge regarding their culture.
• Understand that if there is violence in the home these children may not recognize it as such or they may believe that it is necessary for their salvation.
• Understand that many of these families do not believe in or have access to traditional healthcare systems.
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Child Abuse in Polygamous and Authoritarian Groups
A summary of findings in “Child Protection in an Authoritarian Community; Culture Clash and Systemic Malfunctions”
By Livia Bardin, M.S.W.
Bardin, a clinical social worker with a background in child welfare and a specialty in problems of cult involvement, investigated allegations that Child Protective Services (CPS) avoids intervention in fundamentalist Mormon communities (FMCs). She conducted a limited survey of
former members of FMCs to get information about their personal childhood experiences of abuse and neglect and any interactions they had with CPS. She also interviewed CPS workers who had interacted with FMC members.
Thousands of isolated, authoritarian, religious or philosophical groups operate in the US today. Though differing widely in ideologies, such groups, among them FMCs, share a common structure and dynamic. Similarities include isolation from mainstream society; rigid boundaries
between “insiders” and “outsiders;” authoritarian leaders; members who refer all questions (personal, political and religious) to the leaders; and loose internal boundaries with many dual and ambiguous relationships, creating such excessive dependency that members may feel they cannot function outside the group. These traits echo those that researchers have identified in families as conducive to violence: patriarchal leaders, intense involvement, closed systems, and extreme dependence on the leader.
Bardin explains that women in isolated, authoritarian groups may suppress their own instincts and sanction a leader’s mistreatment or even removal of their children. Political groups may demand such sacrifices for the “cause,” therapy groups for the mother’s “personal growth.” Religious groups see the leader as God’s representative whose purity and direct connection with God justifies all his actions and entitles him to unquestioning obedience.
Fundamentalist Mormon communities have a hierarchical structure with a dominating male leader who is sometimes assisted by a small inner circle. Leaders claim a direct connection with God. Followers therefore accept the leader’s rulings as God’s commands and obey unquestioningly. Disobedience incurs God’s wrath. Leaving the community condemns the individual to hell. The FMCs’ commitment to polygamy, an illegal practice, bolsters fear of outsiders. Fear of consequences within the group may also prevent members of these communities from reporting abuse, as leaders may punish unauthorized contact with “outside” government workers. Leaders may tap phones, intercept mail or forbid television and other media sources in order to control the flow of information into and out of the community.
Bardin’s study made no attempt to establish the incidence or prevalence of abuse in FMCs and she cautions that those who leave their groups are likely to have had negative experiences within the group. Most, though not all, participants in the study reported ongoing abuse during childhood.
Physical abuse included regularly being kicked, whipped, beaten, shaken, shoved off balance or
Page 44
knocked down. Most respondents judged that their FMCs considered such punishments acceptable or appropriate disciplinary measures. Most participants also reported experiences of neglect, such as being left in the care of someone unable to protect them adequately and being emotionally deprived or shunned. Many thought their communities considered such practices acceptable or appropriate. Respondents, many of whom reported experiences of childhood sexual abuse, mostly stated that they did not know how the community viewed sexual abuse, as
sexual behavior was never talked about. Even though all respondents had repudiated FMC beliefs, most did not identify marriage of teenage girls to much older men as sexual abuse, regarding it rather as curtailment of choice.
Bardin found that loyalty to the FMC outweighed professional obligations under secular law. When FMC members in Bardin’s study reported abuse to other FMC members, even professionals mandated to report suspected abuse (i.e., teachers and police) usually did not convey the information to outside authorities. Reports to other FMC members generally resulted in a reproach to the complaining child, an injunction to “pray about it,” or outright disbelief (The alleged perpetrator is a “man of God,” so the child must be wrong).
Bardin identified factors that complicate CPS investigations in FMCs:
• Children may be uncooperative because they subscribe to the group’s beliefs. For instance, teenage girls may happily accept plural marriage, believing that becoming sister-wives (see glossary) to older men is the best thing they could do with their lives. Children may fear that cooperation will endanger their families and communities. One former member who reported abuse within the group stated that her father told her, “If I talked to the police I would be bringing evil into our lives.” Or children may fear being returned to the community after cooperating, where they would be punished for their cooperation.
• Intimidation of CPS workers may occur. Two workers reported incidents of intimidation by FMC members. One of these episodes was not even related to an investigation.
• Practical difficulties include the geographic isolation of some rural communities, which makes it hard for workers to arrive without notice and easy for families under investigation to disappear. In urban communities, fundamentalist Mormons may withdraw a child from school and move out of the neighborhood if teachers appear curious. The large number of children per family (one worker spoke of trying to interview
42) and lack of privacy make it difficult to interview all those involved.
• Finally, the political power of FMCs in rural areas may affect the willingness of elected officials to move promptly and appropriately, while the FMCs’ readiness to accuse investigators of prejudice may have a chilling effect on enforcement agencies.
Page 45 Psychological Impact on Women and Children
Dr. Larry Beall, Clinical Director of the Trauma Awareness and Treatment Center in Salt Lake City, provides professional services for numerous women and children who have chosen to leave the polygamous lifestyle. This is a summary of his paper, “The Impact of Modern-Day Polygamy on Women and Children.” Dr. Beall describes his personal observations of former members of polygamous organizations and feels that contemporary polygamy has a “negative psychological impact” on women and children. Dr. Beall is a member of the American Psychological Association, Utah Psychological Association, International Society for the Study of Dissociation, and International Society for the Study of Trauma. He also conducts Critical Incident Stress Debriefings, as well as seminars on the treatment of trauma. The following is a summary of his article.
The purpose of Dr. Beall’s paper is to provide a general statement regarding the basic principles and attitudes of modern-day polygamy and to describe the possible negative psychological impacts the polygamous practice has on mothers and their children. The author also makes
comparisons between those who have left polygamy and survivors of domestic violence based on his clinical observations.
First, it should be noted that the reports of the women with whom Dr. Beall has worked are different from women who report positive experiences in polygamist families. It is important to know how conditions, roles, and experiences in polygamous families differ and to what extent the negative experiences reported by former members of polygamous organizations occur. This however, is beyond the scope of Dr. Beall’s paper.
Obstacles to Leaving a Polygamous Group
Dr. Beall states that it takes an unusually strong and resourceful woman to successfully leave some polygamous groups. The most challenging obstacle may be the mental and emotional conditioning of members by certain polygamous doctrines and teachings. This conditioning may normalize the negative aspects of their experience. Another obstacle is the fear that others will not believe the victim when she describes her experiences. What she reports may sound bizarre and may also contradict accounts from proponents of polygamy. Third, providing financially for herself and her children can be a severe burden; and fourth, emotional wounds are sometimes severe for women and their children when leaving the polygamous society.
Basic Structure of Polygamy
The basic structure of polygamy is authoritarian (called patriarchal in polygamous circles). In some polygamous societies, it is believed that men have the authority to govern and control their wives and children. Often, these are closed societies due to the legal prohibition of the
practice. Sometimes this governing and control can take extreme forms and be maintained in secrecy because of the closed nature of the organization. From the author’s perspective, the structure of polygamy (authoritarian and secretive) can provide an atmosphere that tolerates
coercion and force, resulting in harmful psychological and emotional consequences.
Page 46 Prominent Characteristics of Polygamous Organizations
Dr. Beall presents the following information about the nature of polygamy based on the experiences of his clients who have left their polygamous organizations.
1. All control belongs to a central figure, in this case, the prophet.
2. Revelation from God dictates the words and acts of the prophet.
3. Independent thinking and outside information are discouraged.
4. Relationships with individuals outside the organization are discouraged or prohibited.
5. Education is restricted to include only one viewpoint; diversity is discouraged.
6. Adaptation or assimilation with the larger culture, “the world,” is discouraged.
7. Members are encouraged to report to the prophet when others deviate from group norms.
8. Physical punishment is an appropriate method of discipline.
9. Emotional expressions of vulnerability, such as crying, are signs of weakness and are undesirable.
10. Personal desires are viewed as subsidiary to the will of the group, which are expressed through the dictates of the prophet.
11. A caste system organizes polygamous organizations with men given personal value by the prophet and women and children given personal value by their husband/father. Dr. Beall feels this caste system may explain some of the differing accounts of polygamy. Those who are given more personal value may be treated better and have more positive experiences in polygamy.
12. A woman is viewed as a possession with the duty of bringing children and/or income to the family.
Psychological Impact of Polygamous Organizations
From Dr. Beall’s experience working with women and children who have left polygamous organizations, the negative psychological impact can range from moderate to severe.
Women may experience (1) anxiety resulting from a loss of control over one’s life; (2) depression from feeling powerless to make a difference; (3) low self-esteem from lack of appreciation of herself as an individual and insufficient personal experience that affirms her sense of worth; (4) “learned helplessness,” or learning that one’s actions have little impact on the outcome, so it is futile to ask for change; and (5) inability to keep in touch with reality, resulting in depression or thought disorders such as schizophrenia.
In addition to these psychological consequences, children may experience (1) harsh physical discipline; (2) lack of medical services; (3) child abuse or neglect; and (4) lack of educational experiences. In Dr. Beall’s opinion, children raised in some polygamous organizations tend to have anxious and dependent personalities with a fragile sense of worth. They are often not capable of functioning well in the larger society and only years of careful, combined efforts from various professionals and committed persons will help make up for some of the obstacles in their path.
Persuasive Techniques Used to Convert Polygamists
From Dr. Beall’s perspective, the prophet’s centralized and authoritarian control over the people and the men’s control over women and children allow for a gradual conditioning of the mind to
Page 47
embrace ideas and notions that, at their outset, may naturally be rejected. Persuasive techniques used by these powerful individuals include (1) special attention such as private outings; (2) being taught that polygamy was practiced by special and spiritual people, like Adam; (3) sexual grooming, which may include child sexual abuse, to prepare young women for the “special relationships” with older men in the group; (4) fostering an “us vs. them” mentality with regard to the culture outside of the polygamist organization and emphasizing the moral superiority of the polygamous group; and (5) restricting access to education and/or media and only allowing access to that which supports a polygamous lifestyle.
Parallels between Domestic Violence Victims and Former Polygamous Members
Dr. Beall has spent much of his professional career working with women who have been victims of domestic violence. He notes that there are many parallels between his clinical observations of victims of domestic violence and clients who have lived in polygamous conditions.4 What follows are some of the more salient parallels:
1. Blames herself for her batterer’s behavior and often makes excuses for him.
2. Learned hopefulness: the woman believes he will stop the abuse and the relationship will get better.
3. Minimizes or blocks out the most dangerous parts of the assaults.
4. Believes that she controls his assaults by her behavior and thus constantly tracks his moods in her head; feels lost and in danger if she has no contact with him.
5. Post Traumatic Stress Disorder symptoms are common when she is separated from her batterer. These symptoms may include
(1) exaggerated startle response;
(2) intrusive recollections of the abuse;
(3) recurrent distressing dreams;
(4) feeling as if the abuse is recurring during recollections;
(5) sensory cues: intense psychological distress to stimuli reminiscent of abuse encounters;
(6) physiological reactivity when exposed to batterer;
(7) avoidance of stimuli about the abuse: thoughts, feelings, and conversations;
( 8 ) inability to recall specific parts of the abuse;
(9) feeling detached from others;
(10) restricted range of affect;
(11) sense of a foreshadowed or hopeless future;
(12) difficulty sleeping;
(13) irritability; and
(14) hyper-vigilance.
6. Is economically dependent on her batterer regardless of income level due to lack of
access to the family income.
7. Is isolated from friends and family.
8. Has been manipulated by power and control tactics used by the abuser (i.e., emotional
abuse).
9. Is misunderstood by outside observers and expects people to blame and judge her, resulting in hypersensitivity to subtle blaming statements.
10. Is more likely to be seriously injured or murdered when she is separated from the batterer.
11. Frequently comes from a childhood with domestic violence history.
12. Doesn’t trust the “system”: it may have treated her badly in the past.
13. Has been placed in double binds, resulting in a hesitancy to make decisions, insecurity, and low self-esteem.
4 It is also important to note that this syndrome’s characteristics correspond with symptoms of
Posttraumatic Stress Disorder and associated post-trauma disorders, such as Major Depressive Disorder, Generalized Anxiety Disorder, and Dissociative Disorder, frequently manifested by women fitting this profile.
Page 48
14. Is most likely to get hit for the first time when pregnant or on her wedding day.
15. Is frequently sexually abused by her batterer.
16. Shows guilt, ambivalence, and/or fear over living conditions.
17. Feels isolated and untrusting of others, despite involvement in the community.
18. Has a poor self-concept (this may not have been true before the relationship).
19. Feels angry, embarrassed, and ashamed.
20. Is fearful of being insane.
21. Has learned to feel helpless and feels powerless.
22. Has unexplained injuries that may go untreated.
Psychological Treatment for Former Members of Polygamous Organizations
From Dr. Beall’s experience, treating former members of polygamous organizations is similar to treating victims of chronic and relatively severe trauma. Again, it should be noted that these personal observations may not be generalized to the larger population due to insufficient data
about the extent of domestic violence and child abuse in polygamous organizations.
There are four stages of treatment: (1) the establishment of emotional and physical safety for the client; (2) trauma resolution to help remove psychological pain; (3) cognitive restructuring to help the client acquire mental and emotional resources to function effectively and feel powerful
in directing her own life; and (4) life skills development to help the client become more selfassertive, manage stress, manage emotions and create a new lifestyle.
To summarize, the effects of membership in certain closed polygamous organizations are pervasive and far-reaching. From Dr. Beall’s experience in treating women and children who have left the lifestyle, many of these effects are negative. Anxiety, insecurity, thought disorders, Posttraumatic Stress Disorder, repressed anger, identity loss, and personality destabilization, among other mental and emotional problems, may accompany membership in these organizations. The complete article can be found at traumaawareness.org.
Page 49 The Safety Net Committee
Utah and Arizona took notice of the many issues surrounding polygamy at an historic summit in August 2003. The “Polygamy Summit” brought law enforcement officers and social service providers together to discuss problems and possible solutions. This gathering also gave birth to the Safety Net Committee, which began holding monthly meetings in Salt Lake City and St. George, Utah, Colorado City, Arizona and Creston, British Columbia. Committee participants adopted this mission statement: The Safety Net Committee brings together government agencies, non-profit organizations and interested individuals who are working to open up communication, break down barriers and coordinate efforts to give people associated with the practice of polygamy equal access to justice, safety and services.
The committee also had some early goals: provide training and develop materials for public awareness; reduce isolation, secrecy, abuses of power and crime; and find ways to provide access and education to members of polygamous communities.
Some of the goals have been met, including:
• Utah received a grant that provided money for an expanded domestic violence information line; additional caseworkers and law enforcement officers; and transportation, shelter and legal help for victims of domestic violence from polygamous communities.
• Washington County, Utah and Mohave County, Arizona law enforcement agencies are doing additional patrolling in the Hildale, Utah/Colorado City, Arizona area.
• The staff at the Utah Domestic Violence Information Line and Childhelp USA Helpline received training on how to help victims from polygamous backgrounds.
• State agencies and non-profit groups have expanded efforts to provide help and mentor men, women and children who have left or have been expelled from some polygamous communities.
• Educational classes about parenting, foster care, kinship care, community council development, domestic violence and child abuse are being held in several polygamous communities.
• A Resource Center in Colorado City, Arizona is now housing Mohave County, Arizona and Washington County, Utah law enforcement officers, victim advocates, and staff for the Arizona and Utah Attorneys General, Division of Developmental Services and Child Protective Services.
• Guidelines have been developed for state agencies that help victims from polygamous communities.
• Newsletters, flyers and Public Service Announcements have been created to increase awareness about resources available near polygamous communities for victims of domestic violence and child abuse.
Although much progress has been made, the Safety Net Committee acknowledges that much more needs to be done and continues to seek people who are willing to take part in this ongoing effort.
This is from 2003, but it gives an idea of what FLDS received from AZ.
By Al Herron
Prescott Daily Courier
Tuesday, September 02, 2003 - It was a nice coincidence that Jon Krakauer’s new book, "Under the Banner of Heaven – A Story of Violent Faith", went on sale last month. It’s about fundamentalist Mormons, and he confirms much of what I’ve been writing. A best seller – I recommend it.
***
How would you like for the state to pay your food bill, especially if you had dozens of mouths to feed? Would $2,000 a month be OK? This is not uncommon in the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (FLDS). Some families get more.
This polygamist sect, which is not affiliated with mainstream Mormons, lives in Colorado City, Ariz., and Hildale, Utah. They number in the thousands. The last census in 2000 showed that about 5,000 people lived within the two towns, but the entire community is now closer to 10,000, and increasing daily.
Among polygamists only the first marriage is legally recognized – after that they’re called "spiritual unions." So, even though a man may have five wives and 40 kids, the state considers most of them to be in single parent families because there’s only one legal marriage. However, that’s immaterial according to state and federal guidelines – what matters is the number of people living together. So, they’re usually eligible for food stamps, child care, and medical care at government expense.
The following numbers are estimates based on year-old statistics, and they’re all rising rapidly.
Arizona’s AHCCCS program provides most of the medical insurance for residents in Colorado City. Last year more than 4,000 residents were enrolled, costing the state about $8 million a year.
About half of the residents there receive food stamps, compared to 5 percent statewide. This costs the state and federal governments over $3 million a year for those in Arizona.
Five years ago there were no Colorado City children getting child care assistance, but last year there were about 200 – which cost the state another $600,000.
Colorado City gets back about $8 in benefits for every dollar the residents pay in state taxes, while for the rest of Mohave County it’s about one for one.
In the well-publicized case of Tom Green and his five wives in Utah, the state documented that the Green family received $647,000 between 1989 and 1999. Then they estimated that the grand total was more than $1 million – just for one family.
In addition to the public assistance programs, Colorado City has recently received about $2 million from HUD to pave streets, improve the fire department, and upgrade the water system. And the FAA built a $2.8 million airport that serves hardly anybody but FLDS leaders.
Remember also, last column we talked about the new $6 million school and $9 million in "rapid decline" money which the school board shrewdly harvested from the state after the prophet withdrew two-thirds of the kids from the public school system.
The various FLDS prophets justify taking tax money like this by saying that it is really coming from the Lord. Fundamentalists call fleecing the government "bleeding the beast" and regard it as a virtuous act. It’s the Lord’s way of using the system to take care of his chosen people.
Actually, "bleeding the beast" goes back 160 years to Joseph Smith and Brigham Young. Young was about to be arrested in connection with it in Illinois in 1846, and this forced the LDS to leave Nauvoo early, in midwinter, causing great hardship.
Next time, a wrap up: recent court decisions, need for legislation, and more.
prescottaz.com
Originally published Tuesday, September 2, 2003
Texas social workers will begin conducting DNA tests today to identify the 416 children taken into custody from the fundamentalist Mormon ranch near Eldorado since April 3. A district court judge granted the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services (TDFPS) permission to test the children last Friday, as the agency's custody workers continued to struggle with the serious, complicated task of determining which children belong to whom — a task further clouded by the fact that children and mothers gave evasive, shifting answers during interviews.
Genetic testing could be completed in as little as a few days, according to Howard Coleman, CEO of Genelex, a Seattle-based commercial genetics lab, which is not involved with the Texas case. It could take several weeks longer, however, to construct a family tree from the results. Once they are traced, however, the children's origins may offer a fascinating look at the family structure of the secretive polygamist sect, as well as insight into the emergence of a tragic birth defect that has plagued the community.
At the heart of the identity problem are the group's commitment to "celestial marriage" — polygamy — and its custom of allowing first cousins to marry. "Your family tree shouldn't be a wreath," says Randy Mankin, editor of the El Dorado Success newspaper, which unearthed the sect's Utah roots four years ago, when its first members, posing as businessmen, arrived in Eldorado under the pretense of building a hunting and game preserve. But the legal notices published in Mankin's paper listing the custody suits brought by the state against the Fundamentalist Church of the Latter Day Saints of Jesus Christ (FLDS) illustrate just how circular relationships are. Four surnames dominate the list: Jeffs (relatives of Warren Jeffs, the sect's imprisoned leader and "prophet"), Jessop, Barlow and Steed.
In the 1930s, two families, the Jessops and the Barlows, settled the area around Hildale, Utah, along the border with Arizona, where they founded the FDLS — and began handing down to their descendants a recessive gene for a severe form of mental retardation called Fumarase Deficiency. The birth defect has become increasingly prevalent within the FLDS community since 1990 when it was first identified by Dr. Theodore Tarby, an Arizona pediatric neurologist, now retired but formerly with the Children's Rehabilitative Services in Phoenix. He saw his first case when an FLDS mother brought her severely retarded son to see him. Tarby asked the mother whether any of her other children had problems, and she mentioned a daughter with cerebral palsy — testing proved that she, too, had Fumarase Deficiency syndrome.
The birth defect — an enzyme deficiency — causes severe mental retardation, epilepsy and disfigurement of features. "The retardation is in the severe range — an IQ around 25," Dr. Tarby says. Afflicted children are missing portions of their brain, often cannot sit or stand, and suffer grand mal seizures and encephalitis. Language skills are nonexistent or minimal. "I remember one little girl has a fascination with coins and the only word she could say was 'money,'" the doctor said. Families whose children are affected often avail themselves of state-funded medical care, consistent with the FLDS philosophy of seeking government aid — despite their suspicion of government — which they call "bleeding the Beast."
Until 1990 Tarby says he knew of only 13 cases of Fumarase Deficiency worldwide. Since, it has taken hold in the FLDS community because of intermarriage. "If you have two parents with the gene," Tarby says, "you are going to have a one-in-four chance of having a child afflicted with it." Depending on the severity of the disorder, children may die in childhood or may survive into early adulthood; if a person who has developed the disorder goes on to have a child, his or her chances of passing it on are one in two. But diagnosing the condition is difficult and requires extremely careful testing, the doctor says. His research, published in 2006, identified 20 cases within the Hildale-Colorado City enclave. "I would expect there are going to be Fumarase Deficiency cases there in Texas," he said.
State officials will not release any medical information about the 416 children in their custody, but one mother, giving her name simply as Sally on CNN's Larry King Live, described her son as "handicapped" and needing hourly care. "One of the mothers raised concerns about her child who had Down Syndrome," TDFPS spokesman Greg Cunningham told TIME in an e-mail. "That child has had a medical evaluation and has had one-on-one care." Cunningham says that the children in custody at the Pavilion, part of the city's civic center complex, have one caregiver for every three children. A small number of older boys have been moved to the Cal Farley Boy's Ranch in Amarillo, a privately funded home for needy children.
The FLDS community, by and large, rejects the idea that Fumarase Deficiency is caused by genes, according to Tarby. "They have their mythology about the condition. They think it's something in the water, or something in the air," he says. Before Tarby retired in 2007, FLDS leaders invited him to address the community about the disorder and how to prevent it. He told them that prevention would involve barring marriages between people with the recessive gene, or asking those couples to forgo children. He suggested that families discontinue having children once the disorder presents itself, or test for the gene during pregnancy and selectively abort pregnancies with the deficiency. All were approaches rejected by the FLDS. "It's not something they are willing to do," Tarby says.
As DNA Testing Begins For FLDS Members, Questions of Lineage, Disease, and Law Arise
2008-04-21
TEXAS.
In 2004, the FLDS groups started constructing a compound in Texas and Texas lawmakers, at the urging of Utah Attorney General Mark Shurtleff, started taking steps in 2005 to strengthen its laws.
Shurtleff's statement to the Texas legislator was clear and blunt, when told them, "Imagine a community run as a theocracy, where women are considered nothing but property, where women have two purposes -- to please their man sexually and have children."
The Texas legislators took his advice and made major changes to their laws against polygamy and underage marriage.
Representative Harvey Hilderbran, R-Kerrville sponsored the new bill to strengthen the laws and upgraded the penalties for polygamy from misdemeanor to felony and raised the minimum age that minors with parents' permission can marry from 14 to 16, modeling the new laws after Utah's statutes.
In cases where teenage girls have babies, authorities will look closely at how old they were when they conceived and at the father's age. And because polygamous sects do not file marriage certificates of second and third wives, the law also allows prosecutors to charge people with polygamy in situations where there is an appearance of the crime, such as multiple wives living under one roof.
According to the legislative director for the Texas District and County Attorney's Association, Shannon Edmonds, polygamy was rarely prosecuted because it was a misdemeanor in the past and now that it carries the potential penalty of lengthy prison terms, prosecutors are more likely to prosecute.
Prosecuting laws with no precedent will prove to be challenging, then again, that is how precedents are set to begin with.
The final version of the bill also made it illegal for children to marry their stepparents. It also provided for the prosecution of parents who allowed children younger than 16 to get married.
In here lies the basis of concern for many, as well as a whole slew of legal ramifications for the mothers and fathers of the 416 children now in state custody.
The specific laws in that bill that apply to the polygamist FLDS sect.
- Prohibits marriage of people younger than 16. Requires parental consent of people 16-17;
- Prohibits marriage between current and former stepchildren and stepparents;
- Provides for felony prosecution of parents who allow children younger than 16 to marry;
- Allows for prosecution of people who perform wedding ceremonies for people younger than 16;
- Prohibits people from being in a common-law marriage if they are already married;
- Makes having sex with first cousins a second-degree felony, while other forms of incest may be considered third-degree felonies;
- Voids marriages in which one of the parties is underage, meaning that sexual acts committed during those marriages can be considered felonies.
Now, if as shown in portions of the Bishop's records that were introduced into evidence in the two custody hearings, that most everyone in the FLDS compound can be traced back to four original founders and three additional surnames, which totals seven families, how many of the above laws will these DNA tests prove have been broken?
Questions of Incest.
CBS reports that at least one expert, Lawrence Kobilinsky, who is a professor of forensic science at John Jay College in New York, warns that the chain of custody of the massive amount of DNA samples must be managed that they needed to be careful of any "mix-ups", but when he was asked about another issue, one of incest with the FLDS community and whether these DNA tests could establish if incest occurred, he responded by saying, "I believe there will be. When you have situations like that, people are more closely related, DNA technology is able to establish kinship, so we can do a paternity, we can do kinship. It's the same kind of testing that we use for criminal matters."
This is not the first time issues of incest have come up in regards to the FLDS community, in fact, Warren Jeffs, the sect's self-pronounced prophet, who was convicted in Utah of being an accomplice in the rape of a 14-year-old girl, is now in Arizona awaiting trial and the charges against him are sexual conduct with a minor, incest and conspiracy.
Time has a report, from yesterday. discussing the construction of the the FLDS community's family tree as well as discussing the group's custom of allowing first cousins to marry and what genetic dangers this presents to children in the form of "Fumarase Deficiency syndrome", including severe defects, which have been found in disturbing levels in the Hildale-Colorado City enclave.
Most of these issues will not be dealt with in the hearings for custody of these children because those are focused on child abuse and sexual abuses on children, but everything that gets entered into the court record, will then provide prosecutors already established evidence for future indictments.
Added: August 24, 2006
BANKING ON HEAVEN is an unflinching look at a cult of Fundamentalist Latter Day Saints (FLDS). The polygamist communities of Colorado City, Arizona and Hildale, Utah are home to a culture that routinely practices child rape, welfare fraud and systematic mind-control. This is the cult ruled over by the recently-convicted monster, Warren Jeffs. An unholy trinity of sex, power and wealth are at the dark heart of this deeply troubling story.
Ex-polygamist-turned-filmmaker Laurie Allen and director Dot Reidelbach used hidden cameras to capture the real FLDS story. Excerpts from BANKING ON HEAVEN and interviews with film participants have been featured on Larry King Live, Court TV, America's Most Wanted, Anderson Cooper 360, Dr. Phil, Good Morning America, and many more media outlets.
BANKING ON HEAVEN features exclusive and explosive interviews with Elaine Jeffs (Warren Jeff' sister), Carolyn Jessop (author of "Escape"). Jon Krakauer, Ed Smart, attorney generals of AZ & UT, and many other insiders. Their hair-raising testimonies are the equivalent of dropping a match into gasoline.
The Secret Lives of Saints: Child Brides and Lost Boys in Canada's Polygamous Mormon Sect
By Marni Soupcoff
National Post - Toronto, Ontario
The following is an excerpt from The Secret Lives of Saints: Child Brides and Lost Boys in Canada’s Polygamous Mormon Sect by Daphne Bramham.
In November 2001, a month after the United States, Canada and a coalition of other countries attacked Afghanistan in search of Osama bin Laden, President George W. Bush talked about the kind of life women and children were leading under the tyranny of the Taliban.
"Women are imprisoned in their homes, and are denied access to basic health care and education. Food sent to help starving people is stolen by their leaders. The religious monuments of other faiths are destroyed. Children are forbidden to fly kites, or sing songs," he said. "A girl of seven is beaten for wearing white shoes."
A few weeks later, Laura Bush filled in for her husband on his weekly radio spot. "All of us have an obligation to speak out," she said. "We may come from different backgrounds and faiths — but parents the world over love our children. We respect our mothers, our sisters and daughters. Fighting brutality against women and children is not the expression of a specific culture; it is the acceptance of our common humanity."
The Bushes were referring to the Taliban in Afghanistan, but they might well have been talking about women and children in the United States and Canada living under the tyranny of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (FLDS), the largest polygamous sect in North America.
Until his imprisonment in 2007, Prophet Warren Jeffs controlled every aspect of the lives of more than 8,000 people, from where they live to whom and when they marry. Jeffs banned school, church, movies and television. He outlawed the colour red and even forbad his followers to use the word "fun." Along with his trusted councillors, Jeffs arranged and forced hundreds of marriages, some involving girls as young as 14 and men as old as or older than their fathers and grandfathers. Many of the brides have been transported across state borders as well as international borders with Canada and Mexico.
The roots of the FLDS are in Mormonism, although the name itself is a recent one. When the mainstream church renounced polygamy in 1890, dissidents splintered off and continued to practise plural marriage. The fundamentalists believe they are the only true Mormons because they continue to hold to founder Joseph Smith’s revelation that men must have multiple wives to enter the highest realm of heaven. There, in the "celestial kingdom," they will become gods, and their wives goddesses — albeit goddesses who must serve at the table of their gods for all eternity.
Polygamy has been illegal in Canada and the United States since 1890. But fundamentalist Mormonism is thriving in Utah, Arizona, Texas and British Columbia. There are dozens of different groups and thousands of so-called independents, which makes it impossible to know how many fundamentalists there are. Estimates range from 37,000 to 1 million across the continent, yet politicians have been loath to do anything about the people who call themselves Saints.
Politicians have not just looked the other way, they have in many instances made it easier for the Saints’ leaders to intimidate, control and abuse their followers. Nowhere is that more obvious than in Bountiful, British Columbia, and in the twin towns of Hildale, Utah, and Colorado City, Arizona.
In 1992, the B.C. government refused to enforce Canada’s law by charging the bishop of Bountiful, Winston Blackmore, with polygamy. Citing studies by several leading legal experts, the B.C. government said the law would not withstand a challenge under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, which guarantees freedom of religion and association.
Those rights, however, are not unlimited. Twice since its decision not to prosecute polygamy, the B.C. government has successfully gone to court to force children of Jehovah’s Witnesses to submit to blood transfusions, even though that goes against their beliefs. The government’s argument: Religious belief cannot override a child’s right to health. Since the 1992 decision to effectively legalize polygamy in B.C., Bountiful’s population has more than tripled.
Unlike Christians, who believe that the soul comes to the body at birth and leaves the body at death, the Saints believe in both a pre-mortal existence and the "lifting up" of the earthly body into heaven. They believe millions of spirits are waiting to be born into earthly bodies. And, as God’s Chosen People, they believe they have a responsibility to bring as many of those spirits as possible into the world as Mormons — rather than as something less worthy. As Joseph Smith’s friend and apostle Orson Pratt wrote, "The Lord has not kept [the spirits] in store for five or six thousand years past and kept them waiting for their bodies all this time to send them among the Hottentots, the African negroes, the idolatrous Hindoos or any other fallen nations that dwell upon the face of the Earth."
Emboldened by the failure of governments to prosecute, Canadian polygamist Winston Blackmore no longer hides. A second-generation leader and one of North America’s best-known and wealthiest polygamists, Blackmore makes no secret of the fact that he has many wives. How many, he won’t say. But some of his wives, those who have left him, say that he has been married 26 times and has more than 100 children.
On at least two occasions, Blackmore — a spiritual leader, superintendent of a government-supported school and respected businessman — has publicly confessed to having sex with girls who were only 15 and 16 years old. That’s a criminal offence in Canada. His first admission was in 2005 at a "polygamy summit" organized by his wives in Creston, B.C. Nobody said or did anything when he said he’d married "very young girls" because God and the prophet had told him to. Blackmore has yet to be charged.
Blackmore repeated his confession in 2006, during an interview on CNN with Larry King. Blackmore said he hadn’t realized that one of his wives was only 15 when they’d married. She had lied about her age, Blackmore said. But all women do that, don’t they? he asked King.
Girls may well lie about their age; middle-aged, balding men often do as well. But that’s why there are laws to protect children. It’s our society’s shame that the laws are not always enforced.
***
After George and Laura Bush spoke out against the human rights abuses in Afghanistan, Utah’s Attorney General, Mark Shurtleff, recognized the parallels and began calling the FLDS "North America’s Taliban." After more than 100 years of his state allowing them to hide in plain sight, he has promised to do something. Arizona’s Attorney General, Terry Goddard, also has promised to end the theocracy that exists on his state’s border. Both states began by laying charges against Jeffs, first in Arizona and then in Utah.
A handful of men loyal to Jeffs have recently been convicted for having sex with minors. Several Hildale police officers, more loyal to the prophet than to the laws of the state and country, have been stripped of their badges. A Utah court — at the request of the states of Utah and Arizona — has placed the FLDS trust fund in receivership.
In British Columbia, by contrast, the RCMP spent nearly three years investigating Bountiful. Lawyers in the attorney general’s ministry recommended that no charges be laid because they didn’t believe there was a substantial likelihood of conviction. Attorney General Wally Oppal didn’t like that recommendation and hired a special prosecutor, who after two months recommended that the polygamy law be referred to the B.C. Court of Appeal, where justices could rule on whether the law would withstand a constitutional challenge.
Oppal didn’t like that answer either. A former Court of Appeal justice himself, Oppal believes it’s not something the courts should do. So, he hired another special prosecutor — more of a pit bull — to give him the answer he wants. Charge one or more of them with polygamy, and send them to trial.
Meanwhile, Blackmore continues to direct and control almost every aspect of his followers’ lives. He has moved many of his followers to Idaho and has made numerous trips to fundamentalist communities across the United States and Mexico to gather more faithful to his flock.
Girls are still being forced into marriages. Boys are still driven out to make the polygamous arithmetic work for the older men. Neither boys nor girls are getting an adequate education in either country. And Arizona’s attorney general admits that reintegrating the communities into the mainstream after years of isolation and theocratic rule is still years away.
How is it that two nations, so clear-sighted in recognizing human rights atrocities in other countries and so fearless in taking on tyrannical rulers on the other side of the world, have been so blind to the human rights violations committed against their own women and children?
Inbreeding Mormons producing a caste of severely retarded
and deformed children
Forbidden Fruit
Inbreeding among polygamists along the Arizona-Utah border is producing a caste of severely retarded and deformed children
By John Dougherty
Fifteen years ago, a strange-looking child suffering from severe physical maladies and acute retardation was brought into the office of Dr. Theodore Tarby.
The pediatric neurologist regularly deals with a wide range of serious childhood diseases as a doctor with the state-funded Children's Rehabilitative Services in Phoenix. Tarby says he quickly realized he was dealing with a very unusual condition that he could not diagnose.
He prepared urine samples and sent them to the University of Colorado Science Center's Dr. Steve Goodman, a professor of pediatrics who runs a laboratory that detects rare genetic diseases.
Goodman soon made a startling discovery: Tarby's young patient was afflicted with an extremely rare disease called fumarase deficiency.
"I had never seen a patient with it," Tarby says. "Right away I asked the parents if there were any other children with the same problem."
The parents said their daughter had cerebral palsy. Tarby asked them to bring the girl to him for an examination.
"As soon as I saw her, I knew she had the same thing as her brother," Tarby says.
The fact that fumarase deficiency had shown up in one child was startling enough -- there had only been a handful of cases reported worldwide. But now that it was appearing in two children in the same family was an indication it was being spread by a gene that was getting passed to the children by their parents.
Tarby and a team of doctors from Barrow Neurological Institute at St. Joseph's Hospital in Phoenix and the University of Arizona College of Medicine in Tucson began researching the disease and soon discovered that fumarase deficiency was occurring in at least two other families living in the same isolated community that practiced an unusual custom.
Nearly everyone in Colorado City, Arizona, and the adjacent town of Hildale, Utah, was a member of a fundamentalist Mormon sect that practices polygamy and had long encouraged multiple marriages between close relatives.
By the late 1990s, Tarby and his team had discovered fumarase deficiency was occurring in the greatest concentration in the world among the fundamentalist Mormon polygamists of northern Arizona and southern Utah.
Of even greater concern was the fact that the recessive gene that triggers the disease was rapidly spreading to thousands of individuals living in the community because of decades of inbreeding.
Fast-forward to the present: About half of the 8,000 people living in the towns are blood relatives of two of the founding families that settled in the 1930s on the desolate high desert plateau against the base of the Vermillion Cliffs.
Religious leaders control all marriages in the community, and many of these relatives have married or likely will marry in the future. Some of these marriages will include parents who both are carriers of the fumarase deficiency gene, making it certain that more children will be afflicted with the disease.
"We have and will have a continual output of children with this condition," Tarby says.
In this isolated religious society north of the Grand Canyon, few secrets have been more closely guarded than the presence of fumarase deficiency. Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints elders, who control the community, have labored to keep the public from finding out why the disorder is manifesting. Many members of the fundamentalist community don't even know it's occurring.
The state of Arizona is contributing to the secrecy. The state Department of Health Services and the Department of Economic Security have been quietly providing services to assist the children and families of fumarase victims for more than 15 years. Both DHS and DES officials refused repeated requests from New Times to document the type and cost of services the state is providing to treat fumarase deficiency. The agencies claim that federal health laws prohibit them from releasing records or allowing their authorities to comment on the situation.
Doctors and family members interviewed by New Times say up to 20 children from families in the polygamist community are currently afflicted with the condition that requires full-time attention from caregivers. Victims suffer a range of symptoms, including severe epileptic seizures, inability to walk or even sit upright, severe speech impediments, failure to grow at a normal rate, and tragic physical deformities.
"They are in terrible shape," says Dr. Kirk A. Aleck, director of the Pediatric Neurogenetics Center at St. Joseph's Hospital. Aleck is a geneticist who participated along with Tarby and others in the groundbreaking study of several polygamous families with fumarase deficiency in the late 1990s.
There is no cure for the disease, which impedes the body's ability to process food at the cellular level.
"We can only treat the complications of the disorder," Aleck says. Once a baby is born with the condition, Aleck says, "You really can't treat the underlying disorder."
There is one documented case of a child dying from the malady since medical experts began studying it, but it is unknown how many others could have died in the fundamentalist community before the condition was diagnosed.
Before the plethora of fumarase deficiency cases was discovered in Colorado City and Hildale, many victims among the handful of cases documented worldwide died in the first several years of life.
"If you look in the literature, you won't find another dozen cases in the world that have been reported," says Tarby.
Experts say the number of children afflicted in the FLDS community is expected to steadily increase as a result of decades of inbreeding between two of the polygamous sect's founding families -- the Barlows and the Jessops.
"If you cross a Barlow and Jessop, you stand a high risk of getting this condition," Tarby says.
The genetic defect has been traced back to one of the community's founding patriarchs, the late Joseph Smith Jessop, and the first of his plural wives, according to medical literature, the Mormon Church genealogy database and residents of the community familiar with Jessop and Barlow family histories.
Joseph Smith Jessop and his first wife, Martha Moore Yeates, had 14 children. One of their daughters married another of the community's founding patriarchs and religious leaders, John Yeates Barlow. By the time Joseph Smith Jessop died in September 1953, he already had 112 grandchildren, the majority of them directly descended from him and Yeates.
Fifty-two years later, more than half of the 8,000 people now living in Colorado City and Hildale are blood descendants of the Barlows and the Jessops, says Benjamin Bistline, a lifelong resident of the area who has published a book, Colorado City Polygamists, on the history of the fundamentalist community.
An unknown number -- but believed to be in the thousands -- of Barlow/Jessop descendants carry the recessive gene that causes fumarase deficiency. If both parents carry the gene, the likelihood that their offspring will be affected by the disease or become carriers of the gene greatly increases, medical experts say.
"It's like any inbred disorder," Tarby says. "If the community gets larger, the number of people with fumarase deficiency gets larger."
Aleck says the fact that so many people in the polygamist enclave are blood relatives of the founding Barlow and Jessop families "shows the magnitude of the problem."
The disease is not widely known about even in Colorado City, a place where even normally public events such as marriages are conducted in secret. But residents who are aware of fumarase deficiency fear that the number of children afflicted with the disease will indeed increase.
"This problem is going to get worse and worse and worse," predicts 40-year-old Isaac Wyler, another lifelong Colorado City resident who was excommunicated from the FLDS in January 2004. Wyler's ex-wife's sister has had two babies afflicted with fumarase deficiency. "Right now, we are just looking at the tip of the iceberg."
For more than 70 years, all marriages in the isolated towns have been arranged by the leader of the FLDS, a breakaway sect of the Salt Lake City-based Mormon Church.
Marriages among first and second cousins have been common for decades in the community, where religious doctrine requires men to have at least three wives to gain eternal salvation. Only the FLDS prophet can arrange and perform polygamous marriages, and those marriages are taking place in a community in which almost everybody is related.
The current FLDS prophet is 50-year-old Warren Jeffs, who has not been seen publicly since August 2003. Last June, Jeffs was charged with seven felonies by Mohave County, Arizona, in connection with his performance of "spiritual" marriages of three underage girls to already married men. He was placed on the FBI's most wanted list last August. Eight other Colorado City polygamists have been indicted by a Mohave County grand jury for having unlawful sex with underage girls who were their plural wives.
The indictments have come amid a three-year investigation by New Times of the FLDS community. That probe has uncovered widespread sexual abuse of young girls forced into polygamous marriages that, until recently, was downplayed by Arizona political leaders and law enforcement.
The state not only ignored the crimes for decades, it helped facilitate them by allowing the FLDS polygamists to set up a town government, a public school district and a police department that have received tens of millions of dollars in taxpayer funds despite the fact that polygamy violates Arizona's Constitution. The FLDS has had an iron grip on the local governments, because it has been impossible to get elected or hired to a taxpayer-funded post without the church's blessing.
The fundamentalist community has also benefited immensely from state health-care services for the poor and indigent by receiving more than $12 million a year in state assistance in Arizona to pay for health-insurance premiums.
It turns out that taxpayers also have been footing the bill for the fumarase deficiency children born to polygamists who insist that plural marriage involving close relatives is their divine right.
There is no doubt in the mind of any expert interviewed by New Times that the practice of polygamy combined with inbreeding has fostered the spread of fumarase deficiency.
"Polygamy leads to sexual predation, and that leads to genetic problems," says Rehabilitative Services' Tarby. "If you stop the sexual predation, you stop the genetic problem as well. But [FLDS members] don't think of it as sexual predation. That's the big problem."
"This man has left nothing of his worldly worth, but he has left far more than most people of God's work. There isn't another man in the U.S. that can boast this man's posterity," Life magazine quoted Virgil Jessop as eulogizing at the September 1953 funeral of his 84-year-old father, Joseph Smith Jessop.
Five decades later, it appears that Joseph Smith Jessop and his first wife also passed on the rare genetic disorder fumarase deficiency.
The stage was set for the appearance of the rare disease when their 12th child, Martha Jessop, married her second cousin, John Yeates Barlow, in 1923, according to LDS genealogy data and Colorado City historian Ben Bistline.
Like his father-in-law, John Y. Barlow became one of the towering patriarchs of the fundamentalist Mormon community and served as FLDS prophet from 1935 until his death in 1949.
The Barlow-Jessop marriage brought forth some of the major political and religious leaders of the community, including former Colorado City mayor Dan Barlow, police officer Sam Barlow, public school superintendent Alvin Barlow, teacher Louis Barlow, and civic leader Truman Barlow. All of these men have or had multiple wives and scores of children.
Fumarase deficiency began to manifest in the community when three sets of Joseph Smith Jessop and Martha Moore Yeates' great-grandchildren married each other. The three marriages between second cousins have produced at least eight children afflicted with fumarase deficiency, according to a report in the May 2000 Annals of Neurology (based on the study conducted by the group led by Tarby and Aleck), interviews with doctors treating the disease and anecdotal evidence gathered from the community.
The children afflicted with fumarase deficiency from these three marriages include the grandchildren of Dan Barlow and his brother, the late Louis Barlow, and Merill Jessop, a top aide to fugitive prophet Warren Jeffs. It is Merill Jessop who is overseeing construction of a massive FLDS temple in Eldorado, Texas, where many believe Prophet Jeffs plans to move his faithful eventually.
Dan Barlow, who has been excommunicated from the FLDS, and Merill Jessop could not be reached for comment. But Isaac Wyler, a former FLDS member who was excommunicated from the church last year, says he has firsthand knowledge of multiple fumarase deficiency children in each of the three families.
"I know this off the top of my head," Wyler says. "I know these people personally."
Medical experts say the incidence of the disorder will increase because the FLDS community is refusing to accept recommendations to reduce the likelihood of producing babies with fumarase deficiency. Tarby says he discussed the disease and its causes during a town meeting on November 18, 2004, that was attended by more than 100 FLDS members.
Tarby says he explained to the gathering at Town Hall in Colorado City that the only way to stop fumarase deficiency in the community is to abort fetuses that test positive for the disease and for the community to stop intermarriages between Barlows and Jessops, Barlows and Barlows and Jessops and Jessops.
Tarby says members of the community made it clear that neither choice was acceptable. Tarby recounts a conversation he had with a member of the Barlow clan in which he tried to explain why so much fumarase deficiency was occurring among Mormon polygamists.
"I said, 'You're married to somebody you're related to. That leads to problems.'
"The man's response was, 'Up here, we are all related,'" Tarby says. "They just don't worry about the effects of intermarriage."
Tarby says the disease could begin to show up in children at Warren Jeffs' new FLDS headquarters under construction on a 1,600-acre ranch outside of Eldorado. The FLDS already has moved several hundred men, women and children to the compound, many of whom very likely carry the fumarase deficiency gene.
The only long-term solution to the health crisis is for Barlows and Jessops to have children with spouses from outside the polygamist community.
"They have to outbreed," Aleck says.
But this is a very unlikely scenario for FLDS faithful, who practice a religious doctrine that requires men to be strictly obedient to religious leaders and requires women to give birth to as many children as possible to increase the sect's numbers.
"Who [from outside the fundamentalist Mormon religion] would want to go in there and join their population?" Aleck asks. "It's probably hard to recruit into that environment."
Indeed, even if an outsider wanted to join the FLDS community, such a person would not be welcome.
"They are discouraging any new blood," historian Bistline says. "They've got this idea that their blood is pure and that they want to keep it pure."
With no other options available, more FLDS families will be faced with the difficult burden of caring for children suffering with fumarase deficiency. Rather than take steps to avoid the problem, the FLDS loyalists may believe it is their duty to accept their fate.
"They think it is a test from God," says Wyler, who was born and raised in the FLDS before he was booted out.
And a terrible test it is.
Fumarase deficiency is caused by a lack of the fumarase enzyme, an essential component in a biological process called the Krebs cycle, which converts food into energy within each cell. Not enough of the fumarase enzyme can lead to severe mental retardation and physical deformities.
"The kids that I have seen have terrible seizure disorders and developmental delays," says Dr. Aleck. "They are functioning way below their chronological age."
Yet, Aleck says, some children are more seriously affected by the disorder than others. "Some are very debilitated and some aren't," he says.
Some fumarase deficiency children, he says, develop a small degree of motor skills over time: "They don't remain infantile their entire life. They do develop to some degree, but it's way behind their peers."
Dr. Tarby, who routinely treats fumarase deficiency children at a state-funded clinic in Flagstaff, says, "They are funny-looking kids [with] biggish heads and coarse, thick features."
Their brains, he says, "are strangely shaped" and are frequently missing large areas of brain matter that has been replaced by water. An MRI of the brain of one fumarase deficiency child showed that more than half the brain was missing.
Tarby says most of the children "can say at least a word or two," but that all of them "have severe mental retardation" with IQs of less than 25.
Some of the kids can walk, but others have a difficult time even sitting. The children who can't walk, the medical experts say, have most likely suffered strokes during severe seizures.
Despite the secrecy in the community over fumarase deficiency children, Wyler says he has observed his ex-wife's sister's children and others on several occasions.
"People don't like to talk about their fumarase babies for obvious reasons," Wyler says. "I don't know how many who die within the first two or three years that we don't even ever know about."
Wyler says he has seen some fumarase deficiency children who can walk, but others can barely move and spend their entire lives prone.
Children of the latter variety, he says, "can't crawl. They can't sit up. They are lucky if they can even move their head and eyes a little bit."
All of the fumarase deficiency children Wyler has seen remain dependent on the parents or caregivers.
"They are totally helpless," he says.
Frequent and powerful seizures are among the most disturbing characteristics of the disease. Wyler says he once saw a fumarase deficiency child suffer a seizure while she was sitting with her mother and two other children also suffering from the disorder.
"All of a sudden [with] this one little baby, everything tightened up and she arched her back so hard her head was almost touching her toes," Wyler says.
"The mother," he says, "was just sitting there rubbing her hands on [the child's] back trying to get her to relax."
Families with fumarase children receive in-home help from the Division of Developmental Disabilities, a unit of the state Department of Economic Security. Much of the state care is simply helping parents with hygiene, feeding and mobility of the child.
"One lady I know, she just cannot physically pick [her son] up anymore to get him into the bathtub," Wyler says. "A lady comes in and helps her. And it takes two of them to get him into the bathtub just to wash him down and clean him up."
One advantage of polygamous families, Wyler says, is that the mother of a fumarase child will likely have other women in the household to lend a hand.
"A sister wife would be a godsend just to be able to help out," he says. "Not only to help physically, but to be somebody to talk to."
Arizona used to send doctors from Children's Rehabilitative Services, which is a division of the state health department, to Colorado City on a regular basis to examine fumarase deficiency children.
But doctors stopped going to Colorado City after the state and press stepped up scrutiny of the community in 2004. Doctors feared that the media would photograph fumarase deficiency children as they were entering a medical clinic in Colorado City.
"We had no desire to encounter ABC News at the clinic entrance," Tarby says.
The doctors only agreed to talk to New Times after Tarby was approached with a copy of the fumarase deficiency study.
Families now must drive fumarase children to Flagstaff for regular evaluations. Despite the frustrations doctors have with dealing with a community that refuses their recommendations on how to prevent the condition in the future, there is no question that treatment will continue.
"We do not deny medical care to people because of religious beliefs," Tarby says.
In fact, the state's willingness to provide medical assistance to afflicted children may be allowing Utah families to receive treatment paid for by Arizona taxpayers. "I don't know if all the patients I treat are technically eligible for my services [because they may live out of state]," Tarby says.
Researchers have identified a gene on the first chromosome that causes fumarase deficiency, but no test has been developed that could be used to identify individuals carrying the malady. If such a test were developed, a community-wide screening program could be instituted that would identify those carrying the fumarase gene.
Dr. Vinodh Narayanan, a pediatric neurologist at St. Joseph's Hospital, says he is seeking funding to develop a test that would allow public health officials to collect voluntary blood samples from as many FLDS members as possible. The samples could be tested for the gene at the Translational Genomics Research Institute in Phoenix.
He estimates the test would cost about $50 per sample and would provide crucial information to community members of who is carrying the recessive gene that causes fumarase deficiency.
Until the test is available, Tarby says, the best prevention measure remains refraining from crossing Barlows, Jessops and their relations -- who make up half the population of the polygamist enclave.
It's unlikely the polygamous community will heed the doctor's advice.
Even the few highly educated people there, including a medical doctor who practices at the Hildale Health Center, refuse to accept advice from any outsider, including doctors such as Tarby, who has treated their children for years.
"They don't believe anything written about Colorado City [by outsiders, even medical experts] carries much truth," Tarby says.
For Colorado City and Hildale to avoid more fumarase, polygamist leaders must use their authority to make sure that those potentially carrying the fumarase gene are not allowed to marry, says geneticist Aleck.
The leaders must also understand the ethical considerations of continuing behavior, he says, that is bringing children into the world who suffer tragic deformities.
"They have the authoritarian structure necessary to keep this from happening, but I don't think they have the advanced thinking," Aleck says.
"I try in my own, quiet way and tell them to outbreed. But that's like spitting in the ocean."
The ultimate decision on marriages rests with FLDS Prophet Warren Jeffs. And Jeffs so far has shown no indication that he is concerned about the increasing prevalence of fumarase deficiency children in the community, former FLDS member Isaac Wyler says.
Even if a genetic screening test were available, Wyler says, Jeffs would have to be cautious about how he allowed it to be implemented. If the FLDS faithful believed that Jeffs was relying on science to determine marriages rather than divine revelation from God, he could lose control of the church.
"Warren has to be really careful that he doesn't lose his position as a god to these people," Wyler says.
FLDS marriages, Wyler and other community experts say, are an extension of a breeding program that began with Mormon Church founder Joseph Smith in the 1830s. The early Mormon Church practiced polygamy until 1890, when leaders abandoned the practice as a condition for Utah to gain statehood. The FLDS was formed by Mormons who refused to give up polygamy.
Warren Jeffs, like Joseph Smith before him, has emphasized the importance of obedience among members of the church. Jeffs is following a long-established practice -- started by Smith 170 years ago -- of excommunicating those who do not strictly adhere to church leaders' commands.
"The 'gene' that Warren is really selecting for," Wyler says, "is the 'obedience gene.'
"Joseph Smith was also selecting for the 'obedience gene.' He was kicking people out, too, who weren't obedient.
"I hate to talk like this about my own genealogy," Wyler says, "but, literally, they are keeping all the breeding stock -- the women, the [strictly faithful] men -- and weeding out the disobedient men."
The ultimate goal of the breeding program, Wyler says, is to create the perfect race.
"Remember how Hitler was trying to breed a perfect race?" he says. "Warren Jeffs is also trying to breed a perfect race."
The widespread presence of the fumarase deficiency gene in the bloodlines of the founding families of Colorado City is going to make reaching any such goal extremely difficult.
The few dissenters in the community say the serious genetic problems that are beginning to surface are an indication that the closed FLDS society could eventually collapse.
"Maybe it will just self-destruct," historian Bistline says of the fundamentalist church he quit 20 years ago because of a dispute over religious doctrine and property ownership. "In the meantime, the taxpayers have to pay the bills."
Ruling: More hearings, DNA tests for children April 19, 2008
SAN ANGELO, Texas — A judge ruled late Friday that all 416 children taken from the polygamist YFZ Ranch will remain in temporary state custody.
The decision, for now, validates the actions of the state's child welfare agency but infuriates FLDS members.
The ruling followed a marathon two-day hearing unprecedented in the nation's history of child-custody cases, featuring hundreds of lawyers, reams of paperwork and the issue of protecting children balanced against religious freedom.
Following the ruling, the sadness in the eyes of the children's mothers spoke volumes about their disappointment.
"It's awful," said one mother leaving the courtroom. "Why don't people stand up and say something about this?"
Another mother, echoing that sentiment, said, "This is ridiculous."
But Marleigh Meisner, a spokeswoman with the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services, said the custody issue boiled down to one thing: abuse.
"We've said all along there are no winners in this situation. ... We emphasize in particular with the mothers. But this case is not about religion. This is about keeping children safe. We believe what we found is systemic abuse of children."
The Texas judicial system will now schedule individualize status hearings for all 416 children to be completed by June 5. In addition, DNA tests to determine paternity and maternity of the children were ordered to be conducted. A criminal investigation is ongoing by the Texas Department of Public Safety.
For now, the majority of the children remain housed in two facilities in town while foster care is arranged. Two dozen boys are being housed at a state-contracted boy's ranch 400 miles away outside Amarillo.
Friday's ruling keeps the case alive for the agency but also sets the stage for a number of anticipated appeals stemming from the hasty nature of a case that disposed, for now, the future of 416 children in less than 24-hours of legal proceedings.
But under Texas law, the state has to hold a custody hearing within 14 days of when a child is removed from a parent's custody and care. The raid on YFZ occurred April 3.
Many attorneys, at the conclusion of the hearing and before Judge Barbara Walther issued her ruling, objected to the way the proceedings were handled, saying their clients didn't get an "individual hearing."
"The law has certain requirements and it doesn't say 'except when it's hard,'" one attorney argued.
The judge told the courtroom she hoped she never again in her life would have to preside over a hearing of this magnitude.
"I hope you do go to the Legislature and do something (about the requirements of the law) so that, should there be something catastrophic happen like this again, we don't have to have this 14-day requirement," Walther said.
Those representing the FLDS faith say they are not going to give up the fight for their children.
"There is no way that the state's theory that children would be indoctrinated satisfies the statutory standard of an imminent and urgent danger," said Rod Parker, an attorney serving as the Fundamentalist LDS Church spokesman.
"I don't think an infant is going to be indoctrinated within the next 60 days," when another hearing will be held. Even if the state had questions about some of the children, such as teenage girls, he questioned why others could not return home.
"You can't point to a single male who has ever been sexually abused," he said. "Why don't they let them go home?"
He also disputed the state's argument that they were not pursuing the case on religious grounds. "This is all about religion. No thinking person could believe CPS's assertion that it is not about religion," he said. "The evidence they presented about doctrine, beliefs and lifestyle" demonstrate that it is their main focus.
But that focus, at least in testimony on behalf of the state, was that FLDS members without question follow directives from religious leaders, including allowing underage girls to "spiritually" wed older men. Some young women, state investigators testified, said that it was a "blessing" to have children and no age was too young for a spiritual union.
The state contended children in the group grow up in an atmosphere that perpetuates sexual assault of young women and the grooming of young men to one day be those perpetrators. That amounts to abuse, they contended.
Friday's testimony also included firm assertions from polygamous mothers who said they were willing to abandon their lifestyle to keep their children, but it wasn't enough to sway the state or CASA — the court-appointed special advocates — who strongly recommended the children remain in state custody.
One mother testified she had the ability to get a job and an apartment and would abide by whatever the court said if it would allow her to keep her child.
Another mother, Merilyn Jeffs, who was born in Utah, said she would never allow her daughter to be married until she reached the age of 18. For herself, she did not marry until age 20 and was "absolutely not" coerced into the union. Under cross-examination by the state's attorney, Merilyn Jeffs' answers became measured and slow, and were given with some reluctance. Although she testified that she has a 19-year-old sister who is married, she said she didn't know when the marriage took place.
When the attorney asked if she knew how her sister was married, she replied, "After it's done, they come and we congratulate them." When asked the age of her sister's baby, she said, "I estimate 2." She also said she has another married sister and said, "I believe she is 18."
It is the ambiguity of testimony like this that has officials concerned regarding the monumental task of sifting through information about FLDS families to determine when or if it is appropriate to reunite the parents and children.
On Thursday, a child-protection supervisor testified that inadequate record keeping, inconsistent answers and at times refusal to answer simple, biographical questions has led to roadblocks in the agency's ability to determine familial relationships.
The case also has implications for FLDS leader Warren Jeffs, who, one attorney said Friday, was the father of her client, a young girl. Jeffs has faced accusations in both Utah and Arizona of being complicit in underage marriages. He was convicted in Utah of two counts and currently is being held in Arizona awaiting trial on similar charges.
The attorney, Susan Richardson, extensively questioned an expert defense witness on religion regarding Jeffs' beliefs and his actual practices when it comes to "uniting" adult men with young females.
Jeffs may be a party to the Texas case, Richardson said.
The Texas case also largely hinged around the testimony of a leading child trauma psychologist for Texas who described the raid and the subsequent custody status of the children as a "lose-lose situation."
Bruce Perry, senior fellow at the ChildTrauma Academy, an organization that works in cooperation with a multitude of state government agencies to counsel traumatized children, did say the FLDS children should remain in custody because they are either victims of sexual assault, potential victims of sexual assault or potential perpetrators.
But under cross-examination, Perry conceded that there is no one-size-fits-all solution. In fact, Perry admitted that "the traditional foster care system would be destructive to these kids." He also said that the state child-welfare agency needs some time to further investigate the various situations of all the families involved.
"The children and families need to get to be known for their individual strengths and vulnerabilities ... They need an environment that is respectful and loving but is open and allows them to make their own choices."
When asked which option would be best for the children — a return to the ranch, placement in the foster system or remaining in the coliseum where they are now housed — he said none was acceptable. He said to return to the ranch would be detrimental, even for the young boys, because it is a "special place, it reinforces their beliefs."
One telling moment in the testimony Friday reinforced the state's fears that while many of the women may not be perpetuating abuse, they may not know how to stop it.
A polygamous wife was asked if abuse of women or children is something her belief system supported.
She said "no."
The state's attorney then asked her to define, in her own mind, what constitutes abuse or neglect.
Many in Colorado City did not question the ascension of Warren Jeffs to the presidency of the FLDS Church. “I believe Warren is trying to accomplish something that even God hasn't heretofore,” said one follower. “To be able to pull together a captive group of followers who are measured by a mortal man as being perfectly united in mind and body and purpose.”
Nevertheless, in the eyes of some fundamentalists and outsiders, Warren Jeffs early actions as FLDS leader did little to instill confidence. Having constructed an 8-foot wall around his home compound, he promoted seclusion among all church members by establishing new rules forbidding followers from talking to any non FLDS members, even their own family members. He also enlisted groups of men as the “Sons of Helaman,” to enter UEP members homes looking for unapproved literature. Violators were excommunicated from the church and expelled from UEP property, with the men’s wives and children reassigned to more worthy FLDS patriarchs. Surprisingly many of the disciplined fathers submitted to Jeff’s demands to “repent from afar,” retaining the hope that they might someday be restored to church fellowship and to their families.
On 26 July 2003, the fiftieth anniversary of the 1953 raid, Mayor Dan Barlow dedicated a monument and established a museum commemorating the oppressive events of that day. Apparently those proceedings occurred without Warren Jeffs’ approval. Offended and angered, he ordered Barlow to grind the monument into powder and sprinkle it in the hills.
Speaking in Sunday Church services on August 10th, Warren Jeffs quoted a revelation he had received days before: “Verily I say unto you, my servant Warren, my people have sinned a very grievous sin before me in that they have raised up monuments to man and have not glorified it to me... Reparations have to be made... Hear the warning voice, oh ye my people, and repent and make restitution unto me that I may own and bless you in the day of trouble... Let my people make restitution unto me, through the repentance of their sins and building up my storehouse and all other things, as I shall direct through my servants.” [22] Then Jeffs suspended all further religious meetings but continued to allow his followers to pay their tithes and offerings to him.
Polygamist sect children present a cultural challenge
for foster-care facilities
Youngsters arrive at Harris, Brazoria County homes
By TERRI LANGFORD, RICHARD STEWART AND JANET ELLIOTT
Copyright 2008 Houston Chronicle
April 25, 2008
As the last of 462 children from a polygamist ranch were arriving at foster homes in the Houston area and throughout the state Friday, their new caretakers were prepped on how to handle them.
No red clothing. No red shoes.
"No television, movies, Internet and radio especially at first," cautioned one of two primers sent to child care workers from Texas Department of Child Protective Services. The instructions were issued this week to those caring for the children from the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints ranch in West Texas.
The two guides were crafted this week to help foster care workers at 16 different residential facilities, including those in the Houston area, who will interact with children from the reclusive breakaway Mormon sect.
"Help them with self-esteem, guilty feelings, shame, confusion about mainstream culture, and learning basic decision making skills," stated the "Model for Care For Children From the Yearning For Zion Fundamentalist Latter Day Saints Sect," released to the Houston Chronicle by CPS.
The second guide, the "Cultural Awareness Guide for Children From Eldorado," offered child care staffers a laundry list of the children's dietary and clothing needs.
"The color 'RED' is not acceptable for clothing," the memo stated. FLDS church members believe red is reserved for Jesus Christ because when he returns, he will be wearing red robes.
The final busloads of FLDS children left a mass shelter at the San Angelo Coliseum on Friday bound for group homes and shelters around the state, including those in the Houston area.
Many of the three dozen children who got off the buses Friday night at Kidz Harbor near Liverpool in Brazoria County were infants — some carried by young women wearing prairie style dresses and others carried by CPS workers.
"They were much younger than we expected them to be," said Liverpool Mayor Mike Peters, standing in front of Kidz Harbor. He said about 25 were very small children, all 5 years old or younger. Most of the others appeared to be mothers of the young children.
Children arriving at the home were shielded by law enforcement officers, members of the home's staff and volunteers holding up sheets.
Kidz Harbor volunteer Bruce Colbert said the children would be kept separate from the 29 other children at the home and would be allowed to conduct any religious practices they wanted to do.
He said school-age children will not go to public school, but will be educated on site by the Alvin Independent School District.
The girls will continue to wear long, prairie-style dresses they're accustomed to.
"We're going to try to make them as comfortable as we can," he said.
The trip from San Angelo to Kidz Harbor took extra time Friday because the bus had to stop several times to ease children's motion sickness.
"Some of them probably haven't even ridden in a vehicle before," state trooper Dial King said.
About a block from the facility, one man, Charles Walker, held a homemade sign saying "KID NAP?"
Two white buses arrived at the Boys and Girls Country facility near Hockley in Montgomery County, escorted by a state Department of Public Safety car and an ambulance. The buses pulled in and went around the back of the facility. It could not be determined how many children were in the buses.
CPS officials said they now hope to break a "code of silence" that has prevented them from learning much about what life was like for 462 children removed from a West Texas polygamist ranch three weeks ago.
While not downplaying the emotional trauma involved in separating women from their children, Texas Child Protective Services spokesman Darrell Azar said that once the children are settled in their new locations, they may finally feel free to speak the truth about such basic matters as their names and ages.
"The children are in a position to no longer on a daily basis be influenced by adults who have encouraged a code of silence," said Azar. "Now that they are away from that influence they may become more comfortable and we will have a better chance of learning the truth."
The guides pointed out an isolated way of life. The children's culture has "a deep instilled fear of the outside world," the memos warned.
"When discipline is needed, be aware of the potentially harsh practices children may have experienced and their belief that obedience is important from a religious perspective as it relates to their favor with God and their eternity," the memo stated.
None of the children will be sent to individual foster homes in order to keep together large sibling groups. The foster care facilities have been told to educate the children at the facility or through private schools.
If the children are in foster care for an extended time, they could eventually attend mainstream schools.
"Plan for slow and gradual integration with mainstream school and population, only after being assured of readiness," the guide advises.
Women who were among seven who returned Thursday to the Yearning for Zion Ranch near Eldorado described the anguished separation from their children Friday.
"There are no words to describe how it was," said Velvet, a mother who was forced to leave her 13-month-old. "We've been staying up nights to watch over the children because we didn't know what would happen."
Velvet and another woman who spoke declined to give their last names.
An FLDS Web site set up to accept donations for the legal custody battle said that 40 mothers who decided to go to battered women's shelters in San Antonio and San Angelo did so because CPS workers told them they would have a better chance of seeing the children.
Azar called those allegations "blatantly untrue" and said CPS will work to ensure that all mothers can visit their children in foster care.
"No public relations effort can explain away dozens of underage mothers and pregnant minors. No one can explain away a pattern of grooming children to become wives of older men, and girls as young as 13 becoming mothers," he said.
While some members of the FLDS may practice polygamy, lawyers for the mothers have said that the state needs to prove each individual child is in harm's way.
They will argue Tuesday before an Austin-based appeals court that state District Judge Barbara Walther's decision to remove all the children was illegally broad. Legal aid attorney Robert Doggett, who represents 48 mothers, said he will seek an order that each child should have a hearing in the county where they are now living.
Azar said Walther plans to begin hearing cases mid-May for children individually or in small groups. "There will not be another mass hearing," he said.
With a female chaplain juggling tennis balls to keep the children entertained, the move of the final 260 from the mass shelter early Friday went smoothly, Azar said.
"The children were mostly quiet. They were a bit sleepy because they were up early. Caseworkers explained what was happening and the children responded well," he said.
A caseworker was assigned to each toddler for the bus ride.
"To us this is a very good day. It means the children are living in more normal settings where they will be protected and safe," Azar said.
The group of children, while large, shouldn't have a serious impact on the state's foster care system because caseloads have declined over the past 18 months as CPS implements new laws designed to keep children with their families or place them with relatives.
There were about 17,400 children in foster care last Month, down from about 20,500 in December 2006.
Reaction to the raid of the FLDS compound continued to be mixed. Dozens of people from around the country have contacted Gov. Rick Perry's office to express support or disagreement with the largest child abuse case in Texas history.
A release of e-mails from Perry's office also showed many people had been urging the state to do something about the sect in Eldorado for several years, particularly after FLDS leader Warren Jeffs was convicted last September in Utah for his role in arranging the marriage of a 14-year-old girl to her older cousin.
"After watching the Warren Jeffs trial, I was appalled to learn that a FLDS sect of his followers had located in Eldorado, TX," wrote Mrs. Tommie Burkham of Ben Franklin, Texas, in an e-mail dated Sept. 25, 2007. "Shame on you, Gov. Perry, if you allow these people to carry on."
A number of e-mails from Utah have criticized the state's action, and a group of about 100 protesters voice their opposition outside Thursday's NBA playoff game in Salt Lake City between the Houston Rockets and Utah Jazz.
"The way your state has raided the YFZ Ranch is an absolute outrage! Does the fact that these people have different religious beliefs exempt them from the US Constitution, the Bill of Rights, Due Process, or ANY civil liberties at all?" wrote Richard Johnson of Salt Lake City in an April 7 email.
Terri Langford reported from Houston, Richard Stewart from Liverpool and Janet Elliott from Austin.
Dos and Dont's
The Texas Department of Family and Protective Services provided a "Cultural Awareness Guide for Children from Eldorado'' to caretakers throughout the state. The guide includes aspects of culture, behavior and clothing as well as a glossary of terms.
Culture
• A fear of the outside world is deeply instilled
• Outsiders are distrusted
• April 6 (Joseph Smith's birthday) is their only significant holiday
• Children have made derogatory remarks to minority staff
Behaviors
• The children appear to cooperate but may not
• They will demonstrate politeness but may disclose little and/or contradictory information
• Children were initially extremely compliant, but are beginning to "act out'' after separation from parents
• Children are socialized to believe that sexual activity with adults is positive
Clothing
• Red is not an acceptable color for clothing
• Girls prefer long sleeves, long dresses and pastel colors
• Shoes should be worn with stockings, socks or leggings that cover the ankle, black Nikes and Crocs are acceptable (all colors except red)
• Children have made negative comments concerning women wearing jewelry.
• Boys prefer long-sleeved shirts (usually blue), black pants and black shoes
• Boys have been upset that some men are not clean shaven and are not wearing long-sleeved shirts.
This is a very interesting, although convoluted, read on the background and beginnings of polygamy among the LDS. Joseph Smith disavowed any connection with the pamphlet, but as the transcriber's notes explain, that does not appear to be quite truth.
--------------------------------------------------------
AN EXTRACT
FROM A MANUSCRIPT.
ENTITLED
THE PEACE MAKER.
OR THE
DOCTRINES OF THE MILLENNIUM.
BEING A TREATISE ON RELIGION
AND JURISPRUDENCE.
OR A NEW SYSTEM OF RELIGION AND POLITICKS.
_________
FOR GOD, MY COUNTRY, AND MY RIGHTS.
BY UDNEY HAY JACOB,
AN ISRAELITE, AND A SHEPHERD OF ISRAEL.
NAUVOO, ILL.
J. SMITH, Printer.
* * * * * * * * *
1842.
-------
P R E F A C E.
IN the following extract, which is two chapters only, taken from a larger work, there are some allusions to matter contained in the larger work; which will not appear with the same clearness and force, as if the whole work was before the reader. This cannot be remedied in making an extract.
It is written Mal. 4:5-6, Behold I will send you Elijah the Prophet before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the Lord; and he shall turn the heart of the fathers to the children, and the heart of the children to their fathers, lest I come and smite the earth with a curse. The author of this work professes to be the teacher here foretold. Some may object that John the Baptist was the character there alluded to. But if it was necessary that Christ should have a forerunner when he came to this world as a servant only; not to be ministered unto; but to minister, and to give his life for the ransom of the world; how much more requisite is it, that he should be thus honored, when he comes in his glory and majesty, to be king over all the nations of the earth. Moreover, please to take notice of the character spoken of. He shall turn the heart of the fathers to the children; and the heart of the children to their fathers; (nothing is here said of the mothers,) lest I come and smite the earth with a curse. This is matter of great importance in the eyes of God, in its proper time. No teacher since this prophecy was given, has made the least aproximation towards the accomplishment of this great work, which is to save a world from a dreadful curse. But did not Christ do any thing to effect this purpose? says an objector. Hear him; Suppose ye that I am come to give peace to the earth? I tell you nay; but rather division; the father shall be divided against the son, and the son against the father; the mother against the daughter, and daughter against the mother, etc. and a man's enemies shall be they of his own house. Math. 10:34-36. Luke, 12:51-56, ye hypocrites can discern the face of the sky, and of the earth; but how is it that ye do not discern this time. However the public can form a better judgment of the authors pretentions by reading this extract, than by his mere professions. And when the whole work shall be published, and its glorious object accomplished; then will the whole world know assuredly that he is indeed the teacher foretold by the Prophet Malachi, more than two thousand years ago. Then will the truth of the holy prophets be established; and the judgments of God, and his wisdom will be made manifest.
The author of this work is not a Mormon, although it is printed by their press. It was the most convenient. But the public will soon find out what he is, by his work.
CHAPTER XVIII.
ON THE LAW OF MARRIAGE.
(page 16) The idea of a woman taking a man to be her husband is not found in the word of God. But the man marries the woman; and the woman is given in marriage. She is therefore the property of the husband in marriage. But the husband is not the property of the wife in any sense of the word. It is not said even in the holy decalogue when Mount Sinai was all on fire; and trembled at the presence of Jehovah, in that solemn exhibition of the power and glory of God; in the holy decalogue, written with the finger of God himself, it is not said; thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's husband, no verily, she has no such property. But thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's wife, nor his man servant, nor his maid servant, his ox, nor his ass, nor any thing thy neighbor possesses. Here the wife is pronounced the husband's property, as much so as his man servant, his maid servant, his ox, or his horse. Although she is a different kind of property, very precious near and dear to him as his own body. For she is the glory of a man, and if a virtuous woman, her price is above rubies. A different kind of property, and held. by a different tenure according to law being bound to the husband, and cannot be sold. By the law a man had a right to sell men servants and maid servants. Yet if he took a maid servant to be a concubine; she was under the same law to her master as was the wife; but the master then could not sell her, after she had been thus taken: but he could let her go out free, and she was then a free woman. But the man is in no sense of the word the property of his wife. How can property possess its owner? How can the owner be put under the law and government of his property? When God made the woman he gave her to the man; but he never gave the man to the woman. Therefore the woman has no power to divorce the man. How can property divorce its owner? Think of these things my countrymen seriously. For Zion shall be redeemed with Judgement, and her converts with righteousness; and the destruction of the transgressorsand the sinners shall be together; and they that forsake God shall be consumed. Isa. 1:27.
(page 19) But suppose a married man entice a maid; shall not the wife be entitled to a bill of divorce against him? This is not an offence against his wife; neither is it against the maid; but altogether in the maid's favor. It is not against the wife, for the man is not under the law of marriage to his wife in any sense whatever; neither can he be put under the law of the woman, without disorganizing the whole system of the law of God, and of righteousness. If he has addressed the maid without her father's consent, it is against the father, for which the law of God espressly provides. And the wife has no concern, or control in this matter. The wife cannot put away the husband for any cause. As well might a servant put away his master, or a child his father. A divorced man is a creature, not known in the whole canon of scriptures.
(page 2 Again, if a man desire a woman to commit lewdness with him; then he must commit lewdness with her; for whatsoever ye would desire others to do unto you, do ye even so to them, for this is the law and the prophets! But thou fool, dost thou not know that Jesus Christ never gave any instructions, contrary to the law of God, and the prophets, and that in this particular instance he hath referred you to the law as an infallible guide to the understanding of his precepts, and that no person has any right to desire any thing of another, contrary to the law, and the order thereby established in society: for it is written thou shalt not covet. Again, there is another law respecting the crime which we denominate a rape. Deut. 22:28. In which case the man was compelled to marry the maid, and was forbidden to put her away all his life. He must provide for her a dowry as a wife, and provide for her forever: and moreover pay a heavy fine to her father.
(page 29) But suppose a man (that has already a wife) entice a maid; how then could he marry her? If a man entice a maid that is not betrothed, and he lie with her, he shall surely endow her to be his wife. Ex. 22:16. There is no condition that can justify him in refusing to marry her. The kind hearted and affectionate maid or wife, shall not be put away or neglected, on pain of death. There is no positive law of God against a man's marrying Leah, and Rachel both. So long as he is a good and faithful husband, he is justified by the law of Christ his lawful head. But one objects, that it is written, they twain, (not they three) shall be one flesh. From this he infers that the law of God forbids him to marry more than one wife. Yet you allow a man to marry another wife if his first wife be dead; which would constitute [three], one flesh, as much so, as if both wives were alive at the same time. But the fact is, two females cannot become one flesh. -- When Jacob married Leah, they twain became one flesh; of this compound Rachel formed no part. And when Jacob married Rachel, they twain became one flesh; of this compound Leah constituted no part, any more than if she had been dead, when Jacob married Rachel. It is still no more than twain that became one flesh. And it is evident that none other could be the result, had Jacob married as many wives as King David; a man after God's own heart, or even as King Solomon. And whether the former wives be dead or alive it alters not the result in this respect in the least. Because this word is literally accomplished in the offspring only. Thus this objection vanishes into smoke. The burthen of maintaining the wife is a sufficient check. A man cannot be put lawfully under the law of marriage to the woman; she is his property in marriage. The word sayeth, That a woman is under the law to her husband as long as her husband liveth; but if her husband be dead, she is no adulteress though she be married to another man. Here we learn what is particularly meant, by a woman's being under the law to her husband; that is, she has no right to be married to another man, while her husband liveth. And if a man has no right to marry another woman while his first wife liveth, then is he under the law of his wife, and the law of his wife is the governing power of his wife. Thus do our laws as I have before abundantly shown, establish this gross absurdity. The man is under the governing power of his wife, and the wife is under the governing power of her husband; and both in identicaly the same premises. Now, which shall be subservient? Certainly neither where both have equal power. By taking away a man's lawful right of giving divorcement, when his wife rebels; and by depriving him of the right of marrying more than one wife, you totally annihilate his power of peaceable government over a woman, and deprive the family of its lawful and necessary head. But the husband is under the law to Christ, who is his lawful head. And he forbids, his putting away his affectionate wife in any case. When the law of God shall be restored, it will have a direct tendency to turn the desire of the wife towards her husband, as God has ordained. And fornication will finally cease to take place in a married woman. Consequently the husband will rarely have a lawful cause to put away his wife. When the husband appears before the magistrate to put away his wife; let him be cautioned; that if it should afterwards appear by two witnesses, that he accused his wife falsely; that it is death by the law. God himself has declared that he will be a swift witness against false swearers. The expense and care of a numerous family, and support of many wives, will be a sufficient check to men in ordinary circumstances, not to go to excess in multiplying wives which they must support, and cannot put away, or wilfully neglect on pain of death. And in fact vile men will not be able to obtain wives so easily. It is said, 1 Tim. 3:2 That a bishop must be a man of one wife. We must infer from this, that other men might have more than one wife. This is not a law to govern men in general, or in any case. It is merely a mark of character; with several other marks of character therein specified. Such as to be vigilent, sober, given to hospitality, apt to teach, etc. And it was proper that a bishop or elder who should take the care of the church upon him, that he should not be encumbered with a numerous family, or many wives. But a man fortunate in the choice of one good wife whose character; such as she must be, is also specified. It was therefore a circumstantial and characteristic mark. If it had been a law, it could not have been a mark of character; because it must have been enforced by law upon all. Neither is it now any mark of character being compulsory upon all. But when the law of God shall be restored, it will then as formerly become a mark of character; and not till then can this direction of Paul, become applicable to us. The law must be restored in all things; for it is written, that the times of the restitution of all things spoken by the mouth of all God's holy prophets since the world began, shall come. That is, all the true principles both of the law (or civil governing power), and of the gospel, for these are the things which have been spoken by the mouth of all the prophets. And in the times of the restitution of these things, shall Jesus again come. See Acts 3:21. A bishop or an elder in the church, must however have at least one wife, which is in fact the principle meaning of this passage; or how could he have his children in subjection with all gravity? see the whole specification as given by the apostle. But kings, and men in power are forbidded to multiply wives, or greatly to multiply gold and silver, Deut. 17:17. It would be as reasonable to make a law, and ten thousand times less injurious to mankind; that a man should possess no more than one dollar, one servant, or one cow at one time, as is our law upon this subject. But we are commanded to be temperate in all things. To God only are men accountable in this matter, and not to their wives. But if a man entice a maid that is not betrothed, and lie with her, he shall surely endow her to be his wife. And if the man refuse to marry her, he shall suffer death. Such is the perfect law of God. And David by the holy spirit of truth declares, that the law of God is perfect. This penalty may appear unreasonably severe to Gentiles, educated as they are. But when we consider attentively the circumstances in which the man is placed by the law of God, why should he desire to put away the kind hearted wife, or the affectionate maid which he has thought proper to woo to his embrace? Especially when the law not only permits him to retain them both, but requires it, at the peril on his life; and a disobedient one he can discharge. As soon would a king wish to drive from his realm his most zealous and faithful subjects; or a man throw away his money because he had too much. No doubt it was so ordained by infinite wisdom, thus to prevent the possibility of such cruel and unnatural crimes, by annihilating all temptation thereto. We might here remark, that the abominable crimes of a maiden beguiled and deserted by the man: and a wife and family abandoned to the mercy of a heartless world; never did occur in the land of Israel. Neither can they occur where the perfect law of God bears rule. A law therefore which would annihilate such unnatural and cruel crimes, with the endless catalogue of ruinous evils, that follow in their train; and which at the same time would harm no body; must be acknowledged by reason, to be a holy and righteous and perfect law. While the laws of the Gentiles to the contrary, do produce these outrageous crimes; with the addition of many cruel murders: and are in their very nature not only a complete disorganization of all righteous and peaceable government, but are temptations in many cases to commit the most unnatural, and outrageous cruelties; and they are the fruitful source of an innumerable train of wicked and cruel evils. A tree is known by its fruit. For their vine is worse than the vine of Sodom, and of the fields of Gomorah; their grapes are grapes of gall, their clusters are bitter. Deut. 32:32. That is our law upon this subject is worse than Sodomy in its effects. But consider and repent. What was the fate of Sodom? If the true law of divorcement was restored, without any other improvement, and the penalty of adultery; they would be great blessings to this nation. For then a man would have power to maintain peace and order in his family; and women would not be compelled to live with men, whom they did not love, and all cruelty towards wives would cease. And the propogating our species from an alienated woman would be prevented: which in its effects and consequences, is the greatest evil that exists among us. But yet while a man is bound by law to one wife only, the cause of jealousy in a married woman still exists. The jealousy of a married woman is a thing not named in the whole volume of the Bible; and because it did not exist. It could not exist under the law of God. And is the principle cause of the alienation of wives. And our young ladies would still remain exposed to the arts of seduction, as they now are. A thing which the law of God wholly prevented; and such a circumstance is not recorded in the Bible. These great evils with all their wretched consequences would remain in their full force: and the filth of the daughters of Zion would not be washed away, and annihilated. Therefore I esteem all thy precepts O Lord concerning all things to be right; and I hate every false way. Psa. 119: 128.
Udney Hay Jacob was born to an American Jewish family in Sheffield, Massachusetts on Apr. 24, 1781, and was probably named after Lieut. Udney Hay, a hero in the recently ended Revolutionary War. Udney married his first wife, Elizabeth Hubbard, on 18 Nov. 1802. They had 7 children, born between 1804 and 1822. Udney later (perhaps at Nauvoo or in Utah) married three more wives: Elizabeth Piggett of Ireland, Phylotte Greene of Rhode Island, and a Mrs. Snyder, who was a widow. Udney H. Jacob died on Apr. 10, 1860 in Salt Lake City, Utah Territory.
Although LDS Church records indicate that Udney was first baptized a Mormon in Illinois in 1843, he and his family lived in association with the Latter Day Saints at least as early as 1833 in Busti, Chautauqua Co., NY, where his is shown living in the 1830 Federal Census. Udney's son, Norton Jacob, married Emily Horton Heaton in or near Jamestown, Chautauqua, Co. NY, on Nov. 20, 1830. The Heatons came from Chittenden, Co., VT, and were very likely neighbors to D. Philastus Hurlbut, the infamous LDS apostate, who entered the Church at Jamestown in 1832. One of Norton Jacob's young sons died of Smallpox among the Mormons gathered at Jamestown in 1833-34 and it is more than probable that Norton, Emily, and other members of their extended family were living in close association with the Mormons both in the Jamestown area, and, a few years later, in Hancock Co., IL. Udney is variously listed as living "near Warsaw," at La Harpe, and at Pilot Grove (all villages in western Illinois), between the late 1830s and 1846.
Udney's 1843 LDS baptism date is significant, because on the year before he had incurred the seeming displeasure of the Mormon leader at Nauvoo, Joseph Smith, Jr., by publishing there his Extract from a manuscript he had entitled "The Peace Maker." The pamphlet advocated polygamy and was published in the fall of 1842, at a time that polygamy was first beginning to spread as a secret practice among the top Mormon leadership. Although the pamphlet was printed on the LDS Church's press and identified Joseph Smith himself as being its "printer," Smith disavowed all connection with its writing and publication, and in a notice in the Church's Times and Seasons newspaper of Dec. 1, 1842 said: "There was a book printed at my office a short time since, written by Udney H. Jacobs, on marriage, without my knowledge; and had I been apprised of it, I would not have printed it; not that I am opposed to any man enjoying his privileges; but I do not wish to have my name associated with the authors in such an unmeaning rigmarole of nonsense, folly, and trash." Given the fact that Smith publicly distanced himself from Udney's "trash," it seems odd that the same writer would be welcomed into the Church only a few months (or perhaps even just a few weeks) thereafter.
The details of Elder Jacob's experience with the Church in Hancock Co. remains unknown, but he was possibly disfellowshipped or even excommunicated at some point. His "rebaptism" occurred in the Mississippi River at Nauvoo on Nov. 2, 1845, at the hands of his son, Norton Jacob. Then again, that "re-baptism" may have been one of a renewed commitment and not the result of any expulsion from the company of the Saints. Udney was subsequently ordained (or re-ordained) an Elder in the Church and he and his wife received their Endowment on the Nauvoo Temple on Feb. 6, 1846. Shortly after that the Jacob family moved west and Udney is recorded as crossing the plains in Captain Rounday's company, under Heber C. Kimball.
Perhaps as early as its initial appearance, Udney Jacob's 1842 pamphlet was identified as the work (or at least representing the teachings) of Joseph Smith, Jr. Ex-Mormon, Oliver Olney, said in 1843: "If the pamphlet was not written by the authorities of the Church, it by them was revised in Jacobs name." (The Absurdities of Mormonism Portrayed. Warsaw, 1843, p. 10). LDS Apostle John Taylor noted in his diary on Sunday, Aug. 17, 1845: "some men... were in secret publishing the doctrines contained in a book written by Udney H .Jacobs which was a corrupt book; they state that it was Joseph's views, published under a cloak of another man's name and the character of Joseph Smith was implicated in the matter..." Taylor's public denunciation of Jacob's pamphlet at that time was particularly significant, as he presented that rebuttal in the context of a response to a pro-polygamy sermon just given before the same audience by Joseph Smith's brother, Apostle William Smith. Taylor's implication is that William had learned of his version of polygamy, not from his brother Joseph, but from Jacob's seemingly discredited pamphlet. However, if at least one adult male member of the Smith family implicitly approved of Jacob's sentiments, the possibility is obviously left open that the "printer" of that same 1842 publication approved of its contents, no matter what he may have said in public.
The probability that Joseph Smith, Jr. approved of many of Jacob's views (and probably clandestinely supported the publication of the 1842 pamphlet) is strengthened by an admission from former Nauvoo resident, Elder John D. Lee. In 1877 Lee stated: "During the winter [of 1842-43] Joseph, the Prophet, set a man by the name of Sidney [sic] Hay Jacobs to select from the Old Bible scriptures as pertained to polygamy, or celestial marriage, to write it in pamphlet form, and to advocate that doctrine. This he did as a feeler among the people, to pave the way for celestial marriage." Thus the picture emerges of Jacob having been commissioned by Joseph Smith (or at least by Smith's close associates) to write a pamphlet advocating the doctrine of polygamy, as a sort of trial balloon among the residents of Nauvoo, to set the stage for an eventual official revelation on that then secretly taught latter day tenet. This being very likely the case, it does not necessarily follow that all of Udney Jacob's teachings were approved of by Smith. Indeed, it is most unlikely that Smith would have concurred in Jacob's identification of himself as a latter day divinely-appointed messenger. Besides this presumption on Jacob's part, there are several other points made in his pamphlet which do not square well with Mormon theology.
Several interesting examinations of Elder Udney Jacob and his 1842 publication have been written. Among the most useful to the student of early LDS history are: Kenneth W. Godfrey, "A New Look at the Alleged Little Known Discourse by Joseph Smith," BYU Studies IX:1 (Autumn 1968), pp. 49-53; Lawrence Foster, "A Little-Known Defense of Polygamy from the Mormon Press in 1842," Dialogue, a Journal of Mormon Thought, IX:4 (Winter 1974) pp. 21-34; Richard S. Van Wagoner, Mormon Polygamy (SLC: 1986, especially Chap. 5); B. Carmon Hardy, Solemn Covenant, The Mormon Polygamous Passage (Urbana: U. of IL. Press, 1992, especially pp. 7-8, and 366-67). See also: "The Life of Norton Jacob" on the Signature Books New Mormon Studies CD-ROM, and the on-line "Record of Norton Jacob."
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Again, if a man desire a woman to commit lewdness with him; then he must commit lewdness with her; for whatsoever ye would desire others to do unto you, do ye even so to them, for this is the law and the prophets! But thou fool, dost thou not know that Jesus Christ never gave any instructions, contrary to the law of God, and the prophets, and that in this particular instance he hath referred you to the law as an infallible guide to the understanding of his precepts, and that no person has any right to desire any thing of another, contrary to the law, and the order thereby established in society: for it is written thou shalt not covet. Again, there is another law respecting the crime which we denominate a rape. Deut. 22:28. In which case the man was compelled to marry the maid, and was forbidden to put her away all his life. He must provide for her a dowry as a wife, and provide for her forever: and moreover pay a heavy fine to her father.
