Posted on 04/18/2008 8:38:05 AM PDT by DFG
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.
(Excerpt) Read more at slate.com ...
What’s the matter, you don’t like the fact that I called you on your attempt to plaster gender bias on me. I don’t like tell all books and never have. They are one sided and the persons talked about don’t get to rebut the comments.
The fact is, people stay on these farms, women and men. These books are only written by people who were bitter ex-members.
While I do not approve of criminality, I do not like to see people blasted in the press. Bring on the charges. Lets convict the criminals and get on with life.
You can lap up the tell all books all you like. No thanks.
“I don’t expect the cowards cheering the raid to say much about it though.”
Or the pedophiles who oppose it
I missed that thread.......thanks. This is like a slow train wreck......it’s hard to look away. Very sad for those children, very sad.
Well Ansel, since you have all the answers, please tell us the names of every man charged down there, what the charges were and who has been convicted of anything.
So far all we have in this case is a lot of hot air.
This is the same type of thing that was covered in the movies countless times, with the sheriff having to tell the folks out front of the jail to break it up and go home.
Justice will be done without hysteria ruling the day.
Where is anyone prosecuting anyone for polygamy? -which God did not invent and which is forbidden by the NT,as the Church has understood from the beginning: The evil of breeding children, to be sex slaves of vile old men while they are still minors “is being investigated here”.
Just when I think my capacity to absorb any more of the horrors of this group is reached, something new comes out that’s even worse than before.
You can’t make up stuff like this. If someone wrote a novel like this, it would be labeled fiction. Nobody would believe it.
Doesn’t matter what caused the state of Texas to get involved.......God bless them for doing it. It’s a big, thank-less job.
What an understatement!
LOL, call it what you like Metmom. Most folks recognize it as incarceration. Trying to avoid the truth of it doesn’t make it any less a fact.
” I lean right now toward keeping the families together “
At least pretend that you are learning something new about the cult, there are no “families”, these are breeding farms and the members of all ages are interchangeable and can be shipped to any branch, in any state, and “mother” or “father” or “daughter” or “son” are simply labels for that role within your assignment.
The people at this compound were handpicked, even the children were handpicked, and were pulled away from biological parents from other compounds to be transferred to this facility in Texas which is the flagship compound.
Think in terms of a farm that produces stock and maintains the herd that the bulls then assign to each other, just the number of wives (as young as 12) alone for a single bull can reach 50 and 60 and more, but as I said those wives can also be parceled out to other bulls at the whim of the cult.
There are no families, only individual components of a child rape breeding farm.
Once again Ansel, please tell me the names of the people who committed crimes, what those crimes were, what charges have been filed and what convictions have been made.
Other than that, nothing is known to have taken place at this farm. Nothing!
We have a lot of blowhards making a lot of charges. Strangely, the authorities haven’t followed through with charging anyone, or more than one or two people. Why is that?
No, the lack of toys had nothing to do with them being taken into protective custody by the Republic of TX...I referenced it as an indicator of how bizarre the cult lifestyle is/was (substantiating Ms. Jessop's claims). As for the 'Lost Boys' I will watch 20/20 tonight...they are doing a report on the these young men.
20/20? LOL, since when have they been a valuable source of investigative journalism as it relates to Conservatism? I view the show to be a media outlet that is not supportive of Conservatism or Religion. Watch all you like, just try to keep that in mind.
As for what was or wasn’t outside, please remember that not everyone has to share our ideals of what bringing up children must to be like. I realize that is dismissing the problem of statetory rape and some of the other problems out there, but we don’t know if there were toys and things inside the buildings.
Thanks for the discussion on this thread. I appreciate the fact that many of you think the folks at the farm are vile. I actually agree with you more than you know, but I do have concerns for what some of these tactics are doing to the kids, even if it is ‘for their own good’.
We’ll see how this plays out, and I’m sure many of your concerns will be born out and convictions will follow.
Take care.
LOL, It must be bitter fruit for you to have to deal with watching the efforts against the cult advance.
“””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.”
You're missing the point and resorting to demonizing me to justify your opinion. This is classic group-think brainwashing of the same type you accuse the polygamists of engaging in. If you are correct, then the gov't should protect homosexuals from themselves, teens from each other's STD's, fat people from McDonalds, etc, etc, etc. There is no logical end to that argument and the only acceptable opinion is that of the gov't.
"It’s OK for the cult to rob someone of their Constitutional rights but not OK for the government to stop them?"
The definition of 'cult' is similar to the definition of 'terrorist' vs 'freedom fighter'. It all depends on which side of the fence you are on. What you are learning is to call the gov't in on anyone who practices a lifestyle that isn't on your side of the fence. That and defining as a 'cult' those whose lifestyles are in the minority and not politically-correct.
These women are only being 'robbed' in your opinion. They seem to accept the lifestyle and don't act like they think they are being robbed. The ones who don't agree clearly were able to leave, so what's the big deal?
Someday your lifestyle will be the minority view and will not be politically-correct. Then you would be subject to being declared a 'cult' and your children hauled away to be properly indoctrinated.
That's what you are doing.
Ansel, I haven’t had any problem with people being charged and brought to justice. What we have here is people who haven’t been charged and brought to a lynch mob justice.
Let this play out in the courts, and I’m just fine with any guilty verdicts that can be reached. There’s a lot of hysteria about this case right now. We’ll see how it plays out.
I don’t personally think all the adults at the farm are going to be prosecuted. I could be wrong about that, but I only think a handful will go to prison. I want every person doing something wrong to suffer that fate.
In that I’m sure you agree.
Throwing out the age of 12 is useful for putting the picture you want in people's minds, but I remember a girl from my school who was a full-grown woman at age 12. Probably had D cups on that 'child' and she gave birth to her first baby when she was in the 6th grade. Somehow she figured out what that equipment was for all on her own.
Same welfare situation, no father in the home, a succession of 'men' and children by those men.
How is that 'better' than what you condemn? It's not.
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