Posted on 06/24/2008 9:41:49 AM PDT by Alice in Wonderland
SAN ANGELO, Texas — A court-appointed attorney for a 16-year-old FLDS girl caught up in a grand jury investigation will go to court today under armed guard. Natalie Malonis confirmed to the Deseret News she has received death threats since she sought a restraining order against a high-profile member of the Fundamentalist LDS Church to prevent him from contacting her client.
"I've been getting death threats and I am being provided a security detail," she said this morning. "That was not even at my request. Law enforcement recognized the need for it."
Malonis said she did not know who has made the threats. She represents four FLDS members — including Pamela Jeffs, for whom she was praised by FLDS supporters when she managed to secure additional rights in court for the woman once declared by Texas authorities to be a minor.
Malonis' 16-year-old client, meanwhile, has fired off several e-mails asking her to step aside.
In e-mails sent to the Deseret News and posted on pro-FLDS Web sites, Teresa Jeffs accuses her court-appointed lawyer of not acting in her best interest.
"My attorney is going against my wishes. Maybe you need a restraining order that you can absolutely have nothing to do with me and you have to stay 1,000 feet away from me! What do you think of that?" she wrote in an e-mail to Malonis.
Jeffs has been subpoenaed to testify Wednesday before a grand jury investigating crimes involving FLDS members. The Texas Attorney General's Office said it could not find Jeffs to subpoena her, and Malonis went to court seeking a restraining order against FLDS member and spokesman Willie Jessop. In court papers, she accused Jessop of coercing the girl to avoid the subpoena and interfering with her relationship with her client. Judge Barbara Walther signed a temporary restraining order that technically prevents Jeffs' mother from allowing her daughter to have any contact with Jessop. A hearing on a more permanent restraining order will be held this afternoon.
On Monday, Malonis said she spoke with the attorney for Jeffs' mother, but no agreement could be reached.
"I hoped we could, but no ... ," she told the Deseret News.
Malonis said she is prepared to call witnesses and present evidence to suggest that the girl is being intimidated and pressured by FLDS members. The judge is not expected to consider Jeffs' request for a new lawyer.
Rod Parker, a Salt Lake attorney acting as a spokesman for the FLDS, believes Malonis is not following her court-appointed duties. Because Malonis is Teresa Jeffs' attorney ad litem and not her guardian ad litem, her job is to be an advocate for the child, he said.
"I think that she's really out on a limb in doing what she's doing and injuring her own client in a very public way," Parker said. "This is just a very unhealthy and dysfunctional attorney-client relationship. The court ought to grant Teresa's wish and give her another lawyer. This system of justice does not work appropriately when attorneys and their clients are at odds with each other." When the Texas Supreme Court ordered the hundreds of children taken in the April 3 raid to be returned to their parents, Jeffs was exempted.
Malonis said in court papers it was because the girl was an identified sex-abuse victim who had been "spiritually united" to an older man at 15. A special order was put in place for Jeffs, preventing her from contacting her father — FLDS leader Warren Jeffs — and a man named Raymond Jessop, who was not further identified.
The Deseret News normally does not name sex-abuse victims, but the girl has gone public in media interviews and in an e-mail forwarded to the Deseret News. She insists she is not a victim. In her e-mail, the girl said neither Willie Jessop nor Raymond Jessop has ever threatened her.
"That have treated (sic) so very kindly," she wrote.
Jeffs wrote in the communication with Malonis that she did not want the grand jury subpoena, but acknowledged being served.
"Well, they want me to appear before a grand jury. I do not have confidence in you and how can I get you to help me in such a situation that I am in when it feels like to me all you are doing is going against me," she wrote. "So, that is the reason that I am asking you to step aside and let me do what I need to do to and get me a different attorney."
yes, do
Id be interested in hearing - in all fairness though - you used the word here - you ought to be able to define it here -
While waiting, check out The FLDS Clothing Store
I wear that proudly thank you very much. I wish more people did.
Judge’s impartiality questioned in FLDS case
By Brooke Adams
The Salt Lake Tribune
06/24/2008 04:47:44 PM MDT
SAN ANGELO, Texas — The mother of an FLDS teenager questioned the impartiality of 51st District Judge Barbara Walther, asking for a new judge to oversee a dispute between the teen and the attorney appointed to represent the girl.
Teresa Jeffs, a 16-year-old daughter of polygamous sect leader Warren S. Jeffs, is among FLDS members who have been called to testify before a grand jury meeting in Schleicher County on Wednesday.
The teen, one of more than 440 children taken from the polygamous sect’s Eldorado ranch in April, has been clashing with her attorney ad litem, Natalie Malonis. She has asked for a new lawyer.
On Friday, Walther signed a temporary restraining order Malonis sought to block contact between Teresa Jeffs and FLDS spokesman Willie Jessop. The order instructed Annette Jeffs, the girl’s mother, to keep her from Jessop and set a court hearing in the matter for Tuesday.
But that hearing was halted by a motion filed by Annette Jeffs, who sought the judge’s recusal.
The motion pointed out that secuity was placed around the judge’s home after Texas law enforcement circulated dossiers that alleged Jessop was an enforcer for the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter day Saints.
It questioned whether, given that security, Walther could be impartial in a case involving Jessop. Malonis alleges that the girl’s push for a new attorney was due to coercion from Jessop.
An administrative judge who heard arguments on the recusal request this afternoon ruled the request was not timely and not founded.
The original hearing before Walther got underway after the decision.
Teresa Jeffs has said Malonis is not accurately representing her wishes, including her desires to write to her father and to return to the sect’s Yearning for Zion Ranch with her mother and siblings.
Warren Jeffs is serving two five-to-life sentences in Utah after being convicted of rape as an accomplice for a marriage he conducted in 2001 between a 14-year-old girl and a 19-year-old man.
Teresa Jeffs and the other children were released from state custody in May after the Texas Supreme Court upheld an appeals court decision that the state had not shown sufficient evidence they were in danger of being abused.
Walther granted Malonis’ request that Jeffs be reunited with her mother and siblings under special restrictions, making her the only child governed by such an order.
The order says Jeffs may have no contact with her father or a man named Raymond Jessop. She also is prohibited from living at the YFZ Ranch.
In her request for the restraining order, Malonis said she had been told by child welfare workers and law enforcement that Teresa Jeffs was spiritually married to an older man when she was 15. The teenager denies ever having sexual relations.
Actually, the teenager wrote that it couldn't be proved that she had sexual relations. Two different things.
I have several LEOs in my family. They all say that a little intimidation goes a long way.
Actually, in Texas, you are flat wrong about whether a girl would be asked about coercion.
We have a very solid informed consent law, a waiting period, a parental consent requirement, and a requirement to actually inform any girl or woman that no one has the right to force her into an abortion. There is an affidavit to be signed by the patient or a legal parent or guardian, then notarized.
The abortionist has to offer a list of local resources for women and girls who want to keep their babies.
All strengthened by the consistent age of consent law and available for anyone free of charge, on line:
http://www.dshs.state.tx.us/wrtk/default.shtm
Don’t know.
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Thanks........ based upon that article it appears the court was in and out this afternoon. The judge wasn’t removed I see.
I wonder if they put out a catalog?
Oh, I am not offended. I am highly annoyed that, when told you should not use (f)lds, you thought you could be cute and change it to ( ) flds and somehow that would not run afould of the larger edict to not deliberately try to associate FLDS with LDS. Don't play games with FR rules - that can get you in hot water a lot faster than not being aware of the rules.
From # 30: Everyone should be QUITE clear as to how to refer to FLDS by now, but a few don't seem to be able to get the message and continue to try and play games to associate them with the larger LDS church.
See also #64. And the disappeared posts # 14,23, 33, etc., all the way into the 100's.
Where are the doggone rules that apply????? Where is it written, this "larger edict??"
Give me a break.This is a news thread.
There's a very good chance that someone is going to get offended. So What??? Where is the right not to be offended?
Who cares if some posters point out the connection between the LDS and the FLDS??? It's just like mixing the Anglicans and the Catholics, the Reformed Jews and the Conservative (if not the Orthodox) Jews.
There appears to be some sort of history here. However, this is not the sort of threat and intimidation that I expect when I read and post on Free Republic. I expect ignorant people to be corrected with information by the less ignorant people, not to see the thread on a news story high jacked by the Mods.
Its an every day thing - The relig mod shift ends, and the mormon threads disappear
Maybe nobody informed the teen that a medical exam could show whether or not she is still a virgin..
Off topic... but are you serious?
When the mods come on and do pre-emptive strikes to hold off any kind of criticism of the Mormon Church (legitimate or not), you make the LDS posters here look like a bunch of helpless theological wimps.
Your pre-emptive censorship of the thread doesn't help the Mormons. It simply makes the LDS posters appear to be incapable of debating their own religion on an equal footing, so the mods have to come here and level the playing field for them.
If the Mormons are not whining about it, then why should you care?
“and you can choose the designation for that thread as open, ecunumical or closed.”
THANKS.
Now I know what the [OPEN] means at the end of certain thread titles.
I been wondering for weeks what that meant.
Post #71.
Proves everything I said yesterday and today.
I would hope that those who think Malonis is the problem would read the article fully, just so they can consider all the facts.
Now, I’ll read the rest of the thread, and see if that happened.
A lot of this stuff happens after the relig mod signs off for the evening and someone else moderates..whole threads get zapped or locked at night
The activity meant to thwart it is actually making it worse IMO
Tonight, a thread actually got locked for being briefly off topic, worse yet - locked on a pre-emptive whim
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2035301/posts?q=1&;page=101
“Thank you for your contribution. Your comment has been submitted for review.”
Test...
... Caught several trout, gobs of croakers and gafftops...
... and a shark...
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