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Criminality and the FLDS


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I often wonder why we don't cover the FLDS here more. I assume it's because they don't have blogs or other public outlets for their kind of craziness. But what goes on in Colorado City and other FLDS strongholds isn't just garden-variety fundie nuttiness, it's downright criminal. I'm talking child abuse, kidnapping, fraud, rape and even murder. And yet there's a big ol' gap between what is known about FLDS, and what law enforcement and other agencies are willing to do about them.

 

I found a really good article that outlines the problem - http://journals.democraticunderground.com/Cerridwen/77

 

Here's an excerpt from the article:

 

 

 

Quote
Cerridwen's Journal

Infanticide, rape, physical abuse, child abandonment, incest, genetic deformities

Posted by Cerridwen in General Discussion (1/22-2007 thru 12/14/2010)

Tue Apr 15th 2008, 09:27 PM

resulting in death (or murder), forced "marriage", tax fraud, welfare fraud, kidnapping, torture, child labor, government complicity in hiding, abetting, and/or excusing flds crimes...

 

I have read, here and other message boards, and I have heard in "the real world" and spouted by the "media" all of the examples I list below. This is my "open letter" to "them".

 

Leaving aside for a moment what I think about those dancing on the head of a pin trying to justify forced "marriage" of young, impressionable, brainwashed and controlled young girls,

 

---Or those who would obfuscate and divert the discussion by picking semantic nits about the definition of pedophilia; the implication appears to be that it's not pedophilia if they're "married" and the child "consented",

 

---Or those who aren't as concerned until they hear the terms welfare fraud or tax fraud (because forcing little girls into marriage isn't horrific enough and criticism of their crimes must be legitimized as worthy of criminal status),

 

---Or those whose needle is stuck on branch davidian when they should be looking to a 100-year old jonestown,

 

---Or those of the beavis-and-butthead-sexual-maturity crowd who wink, wink, nudge, nudge, hee hee, they've got multiple wives and they're "young thangs", too,

 

---Or those who intentionally or unintentionally divert attention from the seriousness of the flds crimes as they ridicule and focus on the clothes or hairstyle of the women; the men's clothes, not so much a topic, btw,

 

---Or to those defending flds "polygamy" as though polygamy as practiced by consenting, informed, self-determined, independent adults is the same as what is forced on members of the flds "church",

 

---Or to those "religious freedom" fighters who think the perversion that is the flds "church" can in any but the most specious manner be constitute "religious" practice,

 

read about the history of and practices of the flds and their "religion" and their use of "polygamy" and other "accepted" practices. To those who would defend the flds, see what it is you defend. To those who don't know enough to decide, read and learn.

 

 

Another aspect that is hardly even spoken about is the high rate of fumarase deficiency, a genetic defect that is almost exclusive to this group because of inbreeding. It's a devastating disease which at the very least renders children permanently disabled, and at the most causes very early death.

 

Now that Warren Jeffs is convicted, I think more needs to be done about the criminal activities of the FLDS cult.

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I definitely agree that it's criminal and horrifying, but I also think that it's worse under Warren Jeffs than it ever was before (ie, now really is the time to act) and additionally, I do think some of the girls might be of age when they get married and not to a sibling, half-sibling, or first cousin, which I think is part of the problem just because it helps to argue that that is the norm when it probably isn't (at least not under WJ) but nevertheless the fact that there are very young girls forced into sexual marriages, sometimes to close relatives, is awful and there really needs to be more done. I'm all for letting them practice their religion as long as it's a choice and, if as in other polygamist mormon cults, underage forced marriages are not condoned and neither are incestuous ones. I think the Amish have it right with Rumspringa. They don't shun a child who leaves as long as it's before their baptism, so that's an adult choice the kids make. If the FLDS kids weren't shunned for leaving, kicked out to reduce competition for wives (the boys), or married off when they should be starting high school (the girls), and if they could sort out some decent regulations on marriage, and make sure to monitor potential tax fraud, then it wouldn't be so bad. I mean if you want to wear prairie dresses and big hair, be submissive, share a husband, and procreate like a bunny rabbit, that's your choice. The problem is it's so often NOT their choice.

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I would guess it is because other than the trial, they aren't in the news as much any more. Plus they are quite insular and don't seek to convert others.

I have no problems with the FLDS as such, I DO have huge problems with what Warren Jeffs has been doing. That sicko needs locking up for the rest of his life. The FLDS was one of my gateway fundies.

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If you want to practice polygamy, fine go ahead. But when you have to force girls into marrying, force them into marrying at a young age, kick out young males to reduce competition, commit fraud against the government and so on it's time to reconsider that lifestyle. Of course the creepy old men won't. :(

I have a lot of respect for people like Elissa Wall and Carolyn Jessop who have written about the culture and getting away from it. I have a lot of respect for Carolyn especially because she held out in order to get custody of all 8 of her kids. That was unheard of at the time for women who escaped from the FLDS. Her eldest daughter did go back, but I haven't heard much about that except they wouldn't let the eldest daughter get married.

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I have often thought we should talk more about the FDLS here, too. I just downloaded Sam Brower's (with Jon Krakauer) book Prophet's Prey: My Seven-Year Investication into Warren Jeffs and the FLDS and I can hardly put it down.

I had read Carolyn Jessop's book and Elissa Walls' book and both had a lot of information, so I thought I knew a fair amount about Jeffs and the general criminality of the whole FLDS. It turns out I hardly knew anything.

Anyway, I would recommend the book to anyone who wants to know more than what's being covered in relation to the trial.

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When I first saw Flora Jessop and heard how she sneaks back in under cover of night to rescue girls, I was all ready to move out there and help her.I even tried to talk my husband into being a safe house for the rescued girls. (we don;t have room, but I really wanted to anyway)

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I have often thought we should talk more about the FDLS here, too. I just downloaded Sam Brower's (with Jon Krakauer) book Prophet's Prey: My Seven-Year Investication into Warren Jeffs and the FLDS and I can hardly put it down.

I had read Carolyn Jessop's book and Elissa Walls' book and both had a lot of information, so I thought I knew a fair amount about Jeffs and the general criminality of the whole FLDS. It turns out I hardly knew anything.

Anyway, I would recommend the book to anyone who wants to know more than what's being covered in relation to the trial.

I second the recommendation highly! I know a lot about the FLDS from years and years of reading and observation here in Arizona and Utah and what Brower writes about rings true to me. He's apparently gone through all the transcripts of Warren Jeffs' "heavenly sessions" and pulled out important information. In the Brower book, I was also hugely amused to find out that Jon Krakauer, who had previously written outdoors, adventure-type stuff, wrote Under the Banner of Heaven after ending up in Colorado City and being basically harassed by the locals. (I also recommend Krakauer's book as a good historical background on Mormon-style polygamy.) I did have to stop reading the Brower book after a certain point and calm down because as a former resident of Utah and current resident of Arizona, it p*sses me off to no end that the authorities in that town will f*ck around with your civil rights if you cross the profit. This, folks, is why we have separation of church and state!!!

A blog I check in with regularly (very regularly) is FLDS Texas, which has been covering the trials. The comments are where the action is at. Someone regularly posts the police blotter for the twin towns.

texasflds.wordpress.com

And I just discovered this blog, which is ostensibly about the Kody Brown families, but also has a lot of discussion and information about Mormon-style polygamy in general. The owner of the blog is tracking the tweets of the Brown wives pretty intensely.

sisterwivesblog.blogspot.com

This website is kind of a mess, but there's a lot of good data here if you persevere.

www.childbrides.org

www.childbrides.org/news.html << this has pretty much every article that's been published in the last several years in the US and it's been regularly updated. If you scroll down just a little bit, you can see pictures of Warren Jeffs and his favorite wife, Naomi(e), wearing "Gentile" clothes. Towards the bottom of the page there are links to some of Warren's "dictations." :handgestures-thumbdown:

Warren got what was coming to him--my question is, when is the government going to move in and break up this (and other) multigenerational child sexual abuse rings masquerading as religion???

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I have often thought we should talk more about the FDLS here, too. I just downloaded Sam Brower's (with Jon Krakauer) book Prophet's Prey: My Seven-Year Investication into Warren Jeffs and the FLDS and I can hardly put it down.

I had read Carolyn Jessop's book and Elissa Walls' book and both had a lot of information, so I thought I knew a fair amount about Jeffs and the general criminality of the whole FLDS. It turns out I hardly knew anything.

Anyway, I would recommend the book to anyone who wants to know more than what's being covered in relation to the trial.

It's only 2.99 for the nookColor so I snagged a copy. Looking forward to reading it.

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I heart Jon Krakauer.

I loved Under the Banner of Heaven, but never knew the impetus for him writing it.

(But the man can seriously write about paper clips and find a way to make it riveting. He is my favorite non-fiction author.)

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---Or those who aren't as concerned until they hear the terms welfare fraud or tax fraud (because forcing little girls into marriage isn't horrific enough and criticism of their crimes must be legitimized as worthy of criminal status)

It is extremely hard to prove forced marriage if no one's cooperating. Sometimes, getting them for tax fraud is the only way you can get them. It's how the government finally got Al Capone- they couldn't get him for everything else he'd done, but they could get him for not paying his taxes.

Everything else, I complete agree with, though.

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It is extremely hard to prove forced marriage if no one's cooperating. Sometimes, getting them for tax fraud is the only way you can get them. It's how the government finally got Al Capone- they couldn't get him for everything else he'd done, but they could get him for not paying his taxes.

Everything else, I complete agree with, though.

In the Warren Jeffs case, the crimes were proven (carefully), using "priesthood records," Warren's babblings, DNA evidence (in the case of the 15 YO he got pregnant) and that awful, awful HORRIBLE audio of him raping the 12 YO. No testimony from the girls. God only knows where those girls are now.

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I read Under the Banner of Heaven last year and I learned a lot from it. I remember back in 2008 or 2009, the WE channel did a documentary that featured Carolyn Jessop and she discussed her escape from polygamy. I will definitely be sure to read her book and the Sam Brower book at some point. I think more people becoming aware or FLDS because of these books, documentaries and the crimes that Warren Jeffs committed.

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FLDS aren't snarkworthy, they're just awful. That's why we don't talk about them here (well, that and the dearth of blogs.)

I thought i'd read every FLDS memoir out there, but I missed the Brower book. Now i'm going to get it!

Canada's been going after their branch of FLDS the last few years, too, but they've been pretty quiet about it compared to the splashy raids here, so it's made a lot less news.

Along with that texasflds site, there's a site called texaspolygamy.blogspot.com/ where a lot of former FLDS folks post. I can't follow their conversations half the time, though.

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There should be no lost boys because it should be illegal for a parent to refuse to care for an underage boy. I don't understand why authorities don't punish parents who throw boys out of the compound.

Or to those "religious freedom" fighters who think the perversion that is the flds "church" can in any but the most specious manner be constitute "religious" practice,

This reason angers me. Parents do not own their children. If a consenting adult wishes to forgo medical care or remain in a harmful situation, that is their right. The same person shouldn't be able to prevent their child from obtaining medical care or the education needed to leave the parents' control. Freedom of religion is not an excuse to abuse children or make harmful decisions for them.(like not getting a birth certificate)

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Debrand, the problem with saying parents have to take care of kids is then states take the kids back to parents who beat them and starve them and hate them.

It's a hard issue. When I was a teen, in the city I lived in the police let the kid choose a shelter or a ride home, when they got picked up for running away. But in the county my dad lived in, in another state, there was no shelter, so the police took every runaway home...often to horrific conditions. Nobody wants to take the risk of someone milking the system (by, say, emancipating their 16 year old and then she qualifies for her own housing, food stamps, free medical care) or "Nanny state breaking up families!" so instead we put up with years of horrific abuse in some families.

Is it Flora Jessop who reported her incestuous, violent father and then had her very own social worker to tell when she was abused again and again and again, but was never removed from the home?

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wow. thanks for the 2.99 tip on the krakauer book. i snagged that one, and then saw the elissa wall one, also for 2.99.

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With Warren Jeffs in the news, and the abuse has been shown, anyone else remember Stacy McDonald basically saying how wrong it was of the state to remove those children? Her post has been scrubbed (imagine that!) but Google still has a cache copy. The comments are quite interesting as well.

http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/s ... google.com

I think that Stacy has some deep seeded issues that could use a good licensed psychologist. That woman is in desperate need of therapy.

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The more I read about this the worse it seems to get. I hope that Jeffs is put away for a long, long time but that will not be enough to stop; the ongoing abuse. I don't know if anything could stop it. I really feel for the women and children who are stuck in that life style.

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I finished the Sam Brower's book Prophet's Prey last night and I have to say, as much as I thought I knew about FLDS from other sources, I knew next to nothing. It's much worse than I even considered as a possibility. FLDS is a organized crime syndicate, not a faith. It utilizes mormon theology to achieve its purposes when necessary, but that's all the theology is: a means to an end for the leadership to control and defraud and violate anyone they want within their community - at any age.

BTW, Brower is a member of the LDS church. So he's not writing with any ax to grind against mormons.

There are so many layers to this, so much that can't be covered in newspaper articles or CNN. One has to really understand who all the players in this syndicate are, how they got there, and all of the backstory to truly get an idea of what this thing is.

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BTW, Brower is a member of the LDS church. So he's not writing with any ax to grind against mormons.

Wouldn't that, if anything, make him MORE likely to be anti-FLDS? The LDS church *hates* anything that claims the Book of Mormon, or other texts, or relevant traditions, mean anything other than precisely what the LDS church says they mean.

I'm not saying you need a special reason to be anti-FLDS, but him being LDS makes him MORE, not LESS, likely to be anti-FLDS.

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Wouldn't that, if anything, make him MORE likely to be anti-FLDS? The LDS church *hates* anything that claims the Book of Mormon, or other texts, or relevant traditions, mean anything other than precisely what the LDS church says they mean.

I'm not saying you need a special reason to be anti-FLDS, but him being LDS makes him MORE, not LESS, likely to be anti-FLDS.

Okay. I guess you'd have to read the book and decide for yourself. That was just my take.

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