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The increasingly protracted battle between the FLDS community and the state of Texas has prompted a number of discussions about the Texas polygamous group and the Mormons. A MormonTimes.com reader identifying himself as Tom Jones sent a question to the site's "Mormon Q&A section," where answers and discussion on topics of interest are addressed by the Foundation for Apologetic Information and Research (FAIR). Jones' question reads: Since the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has much more in common with the mainline LDS Church than the LDS Church has in common with mainline Christianity, why is it...

More than two months after being forced to return children from a polygamist sect to their parents, Texas child welfare authorities want eight youngsters put back in foster care.Individual hearings for the four mothers of the children, who range in age from 5 to 17, are set to begin Monday. Child Protective Services has asked a judge to return the children to foster care because their mothers have allegedly refused to limit their contact with men accused of being involved in underage marriages. "We continue to have concerns in particular for these eight children, which is why we have asked...

ELDORADO - A Schleicher County grand jury issued indictments today against Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints leader Warren Jeffs and five other sect members, alleging sexual assault, bigamy and related charges. Jeffs was charged with sexually assaulting a child, a first-degree felony, and the four others were indicted on allegations of sexually assaulting girls younger than 17. Each of those four face one felony count of sexual assault, and one faces an additional charge of bigamy.Jeffs was identified because he was served with the indictment in jail. The other four remain unidentified until they are served....

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid will introduce a measure Wednesday establishing a federal task force on polygamy and offering help to those trying to escape polygamous communities. The bill, if passed, would set the stage for likely the largest orchestrated crackdown on polygamy in a century. Ahead of the first congressional hearing focused on polygamy since the 1950s, Reid, a Mormon convert from Nevada, will introduce the Victims of Polygamy Assistance Act. It would set up a collaborative effort between federal, state and local law enforcement agencies to combat "broad patterns" of polygamy-related crimes. The bill also would create grants...

Warren Jeffs married his underage daughter to the 34-year-old son of his chief deputy, one day after she turned 15, according to pictures, diaries and a marriage record kept by Jeffs' polygamist sect obtained Friday by the Houston Chronicle and the San Antonio Express-News. The documents were attached to a report filed Friday by Court-Appointed Special Advocates in San Angelo, the girl's guardian, in a battle over who represents her in court. The CASA report contradicts both interviews the girl and members of her church, The Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, have given denying that she...

Once upon a time, people who wanted to be president were not expected to admit it in public. This mask of false indifference had to be dropped when the rise of primaries forced candidates to campaign actively for the office.

A Texas judge is set to consider a request from the teenage daughter of polygamous sect leader Warren S. Jeffs that her attorney be replaced. Natalie Malonis, ad litem for Teresa Jeffs, requested that 51st District Judge Barbara Walther meet with the teen privately to hear why she wants Malonis to step aside. That hearing is set for Monday afternoon. Malonis also has filed two motions asking the judge to stop two other attorneys participating in the child welfare case involving Jeffs. A rift between Malonis and Jeffs, 16, became public last month after the Flower Mound, Texas, attorney sought...

On Tuesday, attorneys representing sect members filed a request for a temporary restraining order to bar fiduciary Bruce R. Wisan from evicting hundreds of residents from homes in the twin towns of Hildale, Utah, and Colorado City, Ariz. ... Until Wisan took over, property taxes were always paid promptly, Stirba said. As of June, past due taxes totalled $384,000, according to Wisan. And within the past few weeks, he has also sent notices giving residents until the end of the month to catch up. ... Wisan has spent more than $3 million in fees and expenses since becoming the trust's...

Posted: 6:51 PM- Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid will take his quest for a federal investigation of a polygamous sect before the Judiciary Committee next week. The Nevada Democrat requested and received the July 24 hearing before the committee, during which he will present evidence to support a federal crime investigation of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, a spokesman said. Jon Summers, who works in Reid's Washington, D.C., office, said Reid and others are set to testify. "He is trying to step up federal enforcement against abuses that often occur in these polygamous sects," Summers...

Custer County's sheriff is taking a stand. "We don't want them here," Fred Jobe says of the polygamists who quietly are settling onto his turf. "I just don't want them to think they're gonna move in and take over the county." As Jobe tells it, followers of Warren Jeffs' Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints have moved into four compounds in Custer County and two in Fremont County. The extent of their influx into south-central Colorado is unclear because few outsiders have been let inside the sect's secrecy fences. Many locals are wondering why they don't see...

A Washington County judge on Wednesday granted a temporary restraining order and injunction sought by a polygamous sect spokesman, who is accusing a Cedar City investigator of harassment. Fifth District Judge G. Rand Beacham set a hearing for July 23 on the action sought by Willie Jessop. Jessop, a member of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, filed the request against private investigator Sam Brower on Tuesday. He claims Brower has a "long history of following and photographing FLDS members," often leading to confrontations, and has engaged in a "pattern of continual harassment" that includes making...

A West Jordan jury has convicted 19-year-old Parley Jeffs Dutson, one of the FLDS polygamous sect's so-called "lost boys" exiles, in the rape and murder of his 15-year-old girlfriend. A jury of 10 delivered a verdict at about 9:30 p.m. Tuesday, finding that Dutson was guilty of one count of murder and one count of aggravated sexual assault, both first-degree felonies.

An FLDS teenager is taking a dispute with her attorney public, claiming the attorney is making her life "harder" and asking the lawyer to "please leave me alone." Teresa Jeffs, 16, a daughter of polygamous sect leader Warren S. Jeffs, gave The Salt Lake Tribune on Sunday a copy of an e-mail she sent Natalie Malonis of Flower Mound, Texas, after seeing news reports about her case. On Friday, Malonis won a court order banning contact between an FLDS spokesman and the girl. "The most help you will be to me now is for you to step aside and let...

A scrappy Web site that's built a reputation for taking on Goliath-sized corporate and government corruption is now fighting a holy war over copyright infringement.Wikileaks — a watchdog Web site that leaks corporate and government documents — hasn't officially launched, yet it has already uncovered human rights violations in China, claimed to have swayed Kenya's elections and exposed the inner workings of Guantanamo Bay. So many were surprised when it recently turned its sights on two lawyer-heavy religious groups: the Mormons and the Scientologists. Founded in December 2006, Wikileaks boasts of an archive of 1.2 million released documents, sent in...

SALT LAKE CITY (AP) ― The home of the San Angelo judge who ordered the removal of 440 children from a polygamist ranch is under guard after Utah and Arizona authorities warned of "enforcers" from the sect, a newspaper reported Wednesday. Police assigned to Judge Barbara Walther's San Angelo house were provided dossiers and photos of 16 men and women deemed a threat, the Deseret News said. "There are many individuals who are willing to give up their life for the cause and you can never underestimate what a religious fanatic is capable of," said e-mails obtained from the Washington...

As a district judge heard the state's case for keeping children from a polygamous sect in custody, hundreds of electronic and telephone messages were pouring into Texas Gov. Rick Perry's office. They came from around the country - including Utah - and most made the same point: Send the children home to their mothers. By April 17, three days after separating mothers from their children, the office had received 449 messages opposed to the removal of the children and just 32 from people who supported it. "If you do nothing to protect these rights, you can be assured that you...

Gov. Rick Perry said Thursday that he'd take personal responsibility if Texas "stepped across some legal line" in the April raid on a West Texas polygamous sect's ranch, but he also defended the state's action.

In the wake of falling subscriptions and advertising revenue, the Deseret News is shedding 35 staffers by mid-July. "There is no question it is a huge punch in the gut to everyone's morale," said Editor Joe Cannon on Thursday afternoon following a staff meeting. The newspaper, owned by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, will rethink its operation from top to bottom, Cannon said. "We will become more local, more online, and more Mormon," he said. The paper's revenues declined 32 percent since January, according to the Deseret News, as advertisers sought out other media, including the Internet....

Removing 460 children from a polygamist sect compound and then reuniting them with their families will cost Texas $7 million, according to the state Department of Family and Protective Services. The children were ordered returned to their families this week after the Texas Supreme Court found that the state did not have enough evidence to show that abuse was happening at the Yearning for Zion ranch near Eldorado. Custody Battle Over Sect ChildrenMike Stone, ReutersA woman and two children from a polygamist sect in Eldorado, Texas, prepare to return home Tuesday after sect children were ordered reunited with their families....

The largest child custody case in U.S. history - discredited last week by the Texas Supreme Court - was prompted by soft-spoken Sarah Barlow's pleas for help. That Sarah doesn't exist. But the caller may have been a woman who, like the fictitious girl, claims to have endured childhood sexual abuse. [Snip] Rozita has worked full-time for an insurance company for seven years, attends community college part-time for general study courses, and is a practicing Mormon. She is her neighborhood's delegate to the state Democratic convention. And a person diagnosed with dissociative identity disorder who blanks out chunks of time...

LDS View of God Contradicts the Bible LDS Prophet Joseph Smith taught that God was once a mortal man:     "God himself was once as we are now, and is an exalted man, and sits enthroned in yonder heavens! That is the great secret. ...I am going to tell you how God came to be God. We have imagined and supposed that God was God from all eternity. I will refute that idea, and take away the veil,...     It is the first principle of the gospel to know for a certainty the character of God, ...and that He was once...

LDS Leaders Define Their Concept of JESUS CHRISTBy Sandra Tanner Often Mormons will say that they believe in the same Jesus as standard Christianity. However, their leaders’ definition is very different. The current president of the Mormon Church, Gordon B. Hinckley, made a very telling comment about Jesus Christ in a talk in Geneva, Switzerland, June 6, 1998. The Deseret News reported: In bearing testimony of Jesus Christ, President Hinckley spoke of those outside the Church who say Latter-day Saints "do not believe in the traditional Christ. No, I don't. The traditional Christ of whom they speak is not the Christ...

Mormon Tom Quinn reports on the story of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints and confusion about his own faith's attitude to polygamy. Ever since the April 3 raid in which Texas authorities removed 464 children from a remote polygamist ranch, much of the world has watched with a bizarre mix of curiosity and horror as investigators shine an unwelcome light on the secretive Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (FLDS). [Snip] As novel as the whole mess might seem to the average person, there is one group that would just as soon pretend it...

Child welfare officials were up against a culture of secrecy, unlimited resources and sect members well-schooled in the art of misleading authorities as they tried to build their case for removing hundreds of children from a West Texas polygamist enclave, religious experts and former adherents say. [Snip] "These are people who have been taught from the cradle that outsiders are bad, that government is evil, until they fear us more than they fear their abusers," said Utah Attorney General Mark Shurtleff. [Snip] Mr. Brower said that the sect's legal strategy is simply to outlast opponents – and that it has...

With the price tag of providing care for more than 400 children seized last month from a polygamist ranch in West Texas expected to reach the tens of millions of dollars, a legislative panel suggested Tuesday that the state explore garnisheeing the religious organization's assets to recoup the costs. "That compound didn't grow out of fairy dust," Sen. Robert Deuell, R-Greenville, said after a Senate Finance Committee hearing in which he urged state health officials to determine whether members of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, or even the sect as a whole, should be held...

It was the call for help that launched one of the largest raids on a religious compound in U.S. history. But on Monday, a Child Protective Services attorney asked for the case involving a 16-year-old known as "Sarah," who claimed sexual and physical abuse at the hands of her husband, to be dropped. The state has all but declared the call a hoax after the phone number was traced to a Colorado woman with a history of pretending to be an abused child. The Texas Department of Public Safety even withdrew its arrest warrant against Dale Barlow, alleged husband and...

Child Protective Services workers returned to the West Texas ranch of a polygamist sect after learning that there may be more children living there. [Snip] Guy Jessop was standing guard at the main gate of a ranch run by the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints and said he denied two state workers accompanied by a sheriff's deputy access without a search warrant.

The more than 400 children, from newborns to teens, forced from a polygamist sect's sprawling ranch during a raid six weeks ago and into foster care have been treated as a single group of abused and at-risk kids. Starting Monday, judges will filter the unruly, chaotic custody dispute into hundreds of individual cases to determine what the parents must do to get their children back or whether their parental rights will be permanently severed. This is standard operating procedure for family court, but these are hardly standard cases. First, these families are comprised of at least 168 mothers and 69...

The Wikimedia Foundation has received a copyright infringement claim from The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, also known as the Mormon Church. The infringement claim is in reference to a URL used as a source in a Wikinews article about Mormon Church documents leaked to the website Wikileaks, titled "Copy of handbook for leaders of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints obtained by Wikinews". The URL was originally cited as a link in the sources subsection of the article. The Wikimedia Foundation is a donor-supported non-profit organization which runs Wikipedia and Wikinews. This is the first...

A mother taken from a polygamist sect and being held as a minor in state custody gave birth Monday to a baby boy who was immediately taken into child-protective custody. State officials acknowledged the mother may be an adult, and said they were trying to determine her true age. Since state officials raided the sect's West Texas ranch on April 3, child welfare officials have taken custody of all its children on the grounds that they were endangered by the sect's underage and polygamous spiritual marriages. The boy is the second baby born in state custody since the raid. Child...

In the days following the raid on the Texas polygamous compound, I took a call from a St. Louis radio host requesting one of our reporters to come on his show to "talk about the situation in Utah." Early in this cordial conversation, I informed him that this newspaper is owned by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and that I am a member of this church. After a few minutes, it became clear that he thought I was somehow affiliated with the FLDS group. I felt like an anthropology specimen. The questions were friendly and good natured,...

Hand-scrawled records taken from a polygamist sect are helping untangle the spider-web network of family relationships at the Yearning For Zion ranch, where some husbands had more than a dozen wives. The church records offer a peek into an intricate culture in which men related to the sect's prophet, Warren Jeffs, enjoyed favored-husband status in the distribution of wives and all young women were married by 24. An Associated Press analysis of the records, which authorities seized in a raid last month, show that by the time a girl reached 16, she was more likely to be married than to...

There is substantial evidence to show that Joseph Smith was sealed to the wives of other men. This occurred while the men were still legally married to their wives. Sometimes these second marriages even occurred outside the presence of their husbands. Many of the poor guys were on their missions when Joseph Smith married their wives. The most unfortunate men came back from their missions with their wives pregnant. How would you feel if the Prophet asked you for your wife? How would you feel if you came back from a business trip or a mission to find your wife...

ST. GEORGE - Attorney General Mark Shurtleff called a raid on a polygamous sect's ranch in Texas no surprise given the group's resistant, secretive practices but said Thursday he would never authorize such a move in Utah. "I know you are worried about that. We're not going to do it," said Shurtleff, drawing applause from a crowd at the Dixie Center packed with fundamentalist Mormons. "We don't believe that is the answer." It's been more than a month since Texas authorities took more than 400 children from the ranch, home to members of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of...

"And now, polygamy," sighs Charles Krauthammer, in a recent Washington Post column. It's true. As if they didn't already have enough on their minds, Americans are going to have to debate polygamy. And not a moment too soon. For generations, taboo kept polygamy out of sight and out of mind in America. But the taboo is crumbling. An HBO television series called "Big Love," which benignly portrays a one-husband, three-wife family in Utah, set off the latest round of polygamy talk. Even so, a federal lawsuit (now on appeal), the American Civil Liberties Union's stand for polygamy rights, and the...

Back then, Harry Reid had no faith. He had just been in a fist fight with his future father-in-law and was eloping with his wife-to-be when a Mormon friend offered to help. The bishop of a congregation in Henderson, Nev., offered Reid space in a local ward house and said he'd perform the ceremony while another friend stood guard. It would be one of the memorable encounters Reid had with The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints on a journey that now leaves him the highest-ranking elected Mormon in U.S. history. [Snip] Reid, a soft-spoken man who now wields...

When a renegade Mormon sect was looking for a quiet place to live out its polygamous beliefs, it made a Texas-sized mistake when it picked this state to move to. Texas responded by raising the age at which children can legally get married with parental consent, and law enforcement agencies immediately put the sect in its crosshairs. The result was raids this month that left 463 minors in state hands or foster care. With judges saying they will hear abuse cases individually, the sect's practices are sure of thorough legal scrutiny. "They made a big mistake when they came here,"...

AUSTIN (AP) — The chief of protective services in Texas is telling legislators that investigators have uncovered a history of physical injuries, including broken bones, in children taken from a polygamist sect. Commissioner Carey Cockerell, who oversees the state agency now caring for the children, said medical examinations have revealed numerous physical injuries, including broken bones in "very young children."

Airs April 29 at 10:00 PM ET on WE Television Network In the past year, Polygamy has been a hot button issue all over America. From the trial and conviction of the infamous Polygamist leader and member of the FBI’s Most Wanted List Warren Jeffs, to Mormon Mitt Romney’s run for the Presidency, there has been no shortage of news about the subject. In this episode of Secret Lives of Women, we profile 3 women, all of whom have different stories to tell about their involvement with Polygamy. Flora escaped from the infamous Polygamous cult known as the FLDS (Fundamentalist...

SAN MARCOS, Texas (AP) — One of the hundreds of young polygamist-sect members taken into custody by the state was giving birth Tuesday while child welfare officials, state troopers and fellow sect members stood watch outside the maternity ward. The teenager was admitted to the Central Texas Medical Center and was in labor, said Rod Parker, a spokesman for the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, a renegade Mormon sect. He contends she is 18, but state officials have the girl on a list of minors taken into state custody. Two armed state troopers and at least...

Texas child welfare officials say more than half the teen girls swept into state custody from a polygamist sect's ranch have been pregnant. Child Protective Services spokesman Darrell Azar says 53 girls between the ages of 14 and 17 were living on the ranch in Eldorado. Of that group, 31 already have children or are pregnant.

MONTHS before authorities removed 416 children and 139 women against their will from the Texas compound of the fundamentalist Mormon sect, the producers at WE were all over them like a bad smell... < snip > Tomorrow's episode tells not just their stories but those of other women and girls who were forced into marriage at 13 and 14 years old. Carolyn was married off as a teenager to a man called Meryl Jessop, who was 32 years her senior and already had three wives. Jessop was then the No. 2 guy in command and is now the un-anointed Prophet...

SAN ANTONIO — Workers at the Children’s Shelter on this city’s gritty west side began this week to remove anything and everything colored red from the walls, the floors, even from their clothes. The shelter’s president, Jack Downey, said he was not sure, exactly, what was wrong with red, only that state officials had told him to get rid of it in preparing for the children of a fundamentalist polygamy sect who would be coming his way as their odyssey through the Texas child welfare system began. But getting the red out is only the beginning. Forget bologna and white...

Texas Will Attempt to Show That Polygamist Culture Itself Harms ChildrenELDORADO, Tex. -- The ironic thing is that before the big sheriff's department armored personnel carrier appeared outside the Yearning for Zion Ranch, it was starting to seem as though America had finally figured out how to live with its polygamists. For more than a century, authorities had alternately persecuted and ignored the groups practicing plural marriage around the West -- splinters from mainstream Mormonism, splinters of splinters. Mostly, they ignored them. But, in the past few years, officials in some states have begun trying to bring these groups out...

There are believed to be far more girls than boys among the children in custody. And the Texas boys are thought to have escaped the hardships common in other Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints communities, where boys are routinely expelled.

As DNA testing samples were being taken from the children removed two weeks ago from the YFZ Ranch, attorneys representing their mothers filed several restraining order requests in 51st District Court. Janece Rolfe. a spokeswoman for the Texas Attorney General's Office, said the genetic sampling started at 8 a.m. today at the San Angelo Coliseum. Judge Barbara Walther convened a hearing at 10 a.m. to deal with motions and other paperwork filed over the weekend and today, and then set another hearing for 3 this afternoon in the Tom Green County Courthouse. That hearing could determine whether parents of infants...

SAN ANGELO, Texas — A judge wants attorneys representing FLDS mothers and children to ask local LDS congregations if they would be willing to "provide a buffer" for FLDS members who wish to pray in groups at a temporary shelter. Judge Barbara Walther made the decision late Monday afternoon at a hearing to address three issues brought by attorneys representing mothers of children who remain in a state shelter. A total of 416 children were removed from the Fundamentalist LDS Church's YFZ Ranch earlier this month as part of a child-abuse investigation. The group of mothers filed court papers earlier...

About two months ago, my wife and I visited the Fundamentalist Mormon community of Colorado City, Arizona, the base of imprisoned leader Warren Jeffs. I had always wanted to see for myself how this community lives. Arriving late in the afternoon, we went to the main supermarket, where tens of fundamentalist Mormons were out buying food with their families. They were understandably suspicious of these intruders and reluctant to engage us in conversation. After a while, the manager of the store came over to us and asked, with considerable warmth, if we had found what we were looking for. He...

Many of the men in the polygamist sect in Eldorado, Texas didn't know it is illegal to marry someone under 18, one of them tells Early Show co-anchor Maggie Rodriguez in an exclusive interview. Rodriguez conducted the interview Sunday night with three men whose children were among more than 400 removed by authorities from the sect's compound in a raid earlier this month. It was the first time since the raid that any male members of the sect spoke with a member of the media. -SNIP- Asked by Rodriguez if he was saying older men don't marry adolescent girls in...

BOUNTIFUL, B.C. - B.C. Morman polygamist leader Winston Blackmore says the people of Bountiful are praying for the children in Texas being held in custody by U.S. authorities. The spiritual leader of Bountiful called the Texas children family, but says he doesn't know if any are from his commune, located near Creston in B.C.'s Kootenay region. "It's been six years since I have had any contact those people," Blackmore told The Canadian Press on Sunday. More than 400 children apprehended April 3 at the Morman sect's Texas enclave may be subject to genetic testing to sort out family relationships that...