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This article quotes both an outside doctor who treats these children, and an ex-FLDS member, as saying they actually take very good care of the fumarase-deficient children (and of course, get extra taxpayer money and medical care for each affected child). From what I’ve read, about half of these children die before age one (even outside the FLDS communities), and I think the rest die well before reaching adulthood. That may account for some of the babies in the Babyland cemetery, especially if not all of the affected infants are being brought to the attention of outside medical personnel.

Re the incinerator, see this old thread http://texaspolygamy.blogspot.com/2005/05/warrenjeffs-moderator.html (misleading thread name, as thread starts with a question about a mystery message board claiming to be moderated by WJ) on an ex-FLDS blog (haunted by a handful of current FLDS members) in which an ex-member who was involved in building the incinerator discusses it. Incinerator discussion starts in earnest about 3/4ths of the way down. He seems to be unsure what it was really for, but doesn’t discount the disposal-of-bodies theory. Overall, that’s an interesting message board, though incredibly difficult to navigate and rarely any correlation between thread headings and thread content. There seem to be a lot of ex-FLDSers who have fond memories of the community, all dating to pre-Warren times. Makes me the think the church/community may be resurrected in a saner form in the foreseeable future, with Warren and his equally insane lieutenants out of the picture. I’m increasingly getting the sense that the Texas, Utah, and Arizona authorities are effectively rescuing the church members from the control of a handful of tyrannical dictators whose iron-fisted control of the church is a fairly recent development (i.e. 10 years or so).

A bit off-topic, take a look at the second photo accompanying this news article http://www.phoenixnewtimes.com/2005-12-29/news/forbidden-fruit/ . It shows one of the two founders of the FLDS, shortly before his death in 1953 (the year of the Short Creek raid), with a young daughter sitting on his knee. It’s instructive as to the huge change this church has undergone since its founding. That photo a little girl dressed in normal 1950s clothes, happily sitting on the knee of her father (who’s clearly old enough to be her grandfather, but nothing inherently wrong with that). I think it helps illustrate why the Utah and Arizona governments left this group alone for a long time, and also that when they did the Short Creek raid, it really was mainly about polygamy, and not about imprisonment and child abuse, and that explains why there was huge public outcry against that raid. No doubt for quite a long time after 1953, reports of really forced marriages of minors and of severe child abuse were considered as exceptions, not as representative of the group’s lifestyle.

It appears that things started getting gradually more cultish after 1953 — not sure when Warren Jeffs’ father Rulon became prophet, but if this founder in the photo was the second founder to die, it may have been 1953. It would make sense that in the immediate post-raid environment, the group would have responded to that experience by becoming more insular and paranoid. But even under Rulon, there was quite a bit of freedom, with some young women still going to college (probably while living at home), and there apparently was little or none of the phenomenon of kicking out adolescent and teen boys. The move toward hard-core cultishness seems to have really been driven by Warren, starting when Rulon was old and infirm and not fully in charge anymore, and drastically accelerating after Rulon’s death and Warren ascension to the official prophet position.