I wonder about the timing. Was this to keep Romney from being McCain’s VP?
“I wonder about the timing. Was this to keep Romney from being McCain’s VP?”
Sure, it is a big conspiracy against your candidate, have you seen the recent history between the cult and law enforcement?
“””Alarmed that the sect’s members were building a compound, Utah Attorney General Mark Shurtleff urged Texas lawmakers in 2005 to strengthen its laws. He described the sect in stark terms.
“Imagine a community run as a theocracy, where women are considered nothing but property,” Shurtleff told the Legislature, “where women have two purposes — to please their man sexually and have children.”
Texas lawmakers heeded the advice and made sweeping changes to Texas law against polygamy and underage marriage”””
“””In 2001, Utah authorities began a crackdown on underage marriages and arranged marriages of teenagers, targeting members of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, a Mormon splinter group that had lived in two towns on the Utah-Arizona border.”””
“””After seeing high-profile FLDS Church critic Flora Jessop on the ABC television program Primetime Live on March 4, 2004, concerned Eldorado residents contacted Jessop. She investigated and on March 25, 2004, Jessop held a press conference in Eldorado confirming that the new neighbors were FLDS Church adherents. On May 18, 2004, Schleicher County Sheriff David Doran and his Chief Deputy visited Colorado City, and the FLDS Church officially acknowledged that the Schleicher County property would be a new base for the church. It has been reported in the media that the church is building a temple at the YFZ Ranch, which has been supported by evidence including aerial photographs of a large stone structure (approximately 88 feet wide) being built. Recent pictures now show the temple in a state of relative completion. A local newspaper, the Eldorado Success, reported that the temple foundation was dedicated January 1, 2005 by Warren Jeffs.[20]
On January 10, 2004, the church suffered major upheaval when Dan Barlow, the mayor of Colorado City, and about 20 men were excommunicated from the church and stripped of their wives and children (who would be reassigned to other men), and the right to live in the town. As a result, a few teenage women reportedly fled the towns with the aid of activists who advocate the escape of plural wives from polygamy. Two of the young women, Fawn Broadbent and Fawn Holm, soon found themselves in a broadly publicized dispute over their freedom and custody. They fled state custody together on February 15, and have been on the run in multiple states since.
In October 2004, disaffected members of the church reported that David Allred purchased a 60-acre (240,000 m²) parcel of land near Mancos, Colorado (midway between Cortez and Durango) about the same time he bought the Schleicher County property. Allred told authorities the parcel is to be used as a hunting retreat.
In July 2005 eight men of the church were indicted for sexual contact with minors. At least some of them surrendered to police in Kingman, Arizona.
On July 29, 2005, Brent Jeffs filed suit accusing three of his uncles, including Warren Jeffs, of sexually assaulting him when he was a child. The suit also named the FLDS Church as a defendant. On August 10, former FLDS Church member Shem Fischer, Dan Fischer’s brother, added the church and Warren Jeffs as defendants to a 2002 lawsuit claiming he was illegally fired because he no longer adhered to the faith. Fischer, who was a salesman for a wooden cabinetry business in Hildale, claims church officials interfered with his relationship with his employer and blacklisted him.
In July 2005, a half-dozen lost boys who say they were cast out of their homes on the Utah–Arizona border to reduce competition for wives filed suit against the FLDS Church. “The [boys] have been excommunicated pursuant to that policy and practice and have been cut off from family, friends, benefits, business and employment relationships, and purportedly condemned to eternal damnation,” their suit says. “They have become ‘lost boys’ in the world outside the FLDS community.”
On May 7, 2006, the FBI named Warren Jeffs to their Ten Most Wanted Fugitives list on charges of sexual misconduct with minors.
The mayor of Colorado City, Terrill C. Johnson, was arrested on May 26, 2006 for eight fraudulent vehicle registration charges (providing false registration and title papers eight separate times)—a felony. He was booked in to Purgatory Correctional Facility in Hurricane, Utah and was released after paying the $5,000 bail in cash.[21]
On August 28, 2006, Warren Jeffs was captured on Interstate 15 just north of Las Vegas, Nevada, after a routine traffic stop. He was captured with his brother, Isaac Steve Jeffs, and one of his wives, Naomi Jeffs, both 32. Isaac and Naomi were both released. Jeffs was tried in St. George, Utah and was found guilty by a jury of two counts of being an accomplice to rape.
November 2007
A judge sentenced polygamous sect leader Warren Jeffs to five years to life Tuesday for his role in the arranged marriage between a 14-year-old follower and her 19-year-old cousin.
A jury in Utah convicted Jeffs, the so-called “prophet” of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, of two counts of accomplice to rape for “enticing” Elissa Wall to marry and have sex with her cousin, Allen Steed, despite her objections.