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."
He’s playing games to make an association between FLDS and LDS, even though LDS has disavowed FLDS. Some folks just want to take these threads into Mormon-bashing territory instead of sticking to commenting on the specifics of the story.
Honestly, some posters entire existence on here is do just that, for years now.
I think it is rather silly and stupid myself.
The pictures of those ‘leaders’ of the FDLS church are really creepy.
What kind of church uses coded messages and security forces? Really creepy.
Don’t give me that nonsense. You go to great lengths to twist around the FLDS acronym, and now you act all innocent? You think we were born yesterday?
That is smart. Some folks live and breath every syllable she spits here.
For you who just posted comment #37- we’ll handle it. Lets not let this turn into a fight.
Correction #46- 37 was my post.
The Vatican has its own security force.
I certainly noticed that. The story has many interseting aspects-- legal, social, state power, when a society should tolerate funky religious beliefs and at what point is the line crossed into patently illegal behavior-- a lot to talk about.
Robust debate is cool, but seeing someone just bash another's religion for no reason other than to disply one's own bigotry is not particularly interesting.
Amen to that.
So are you saying that in the threads that were pulled, there were no complaints about the religious issue coming up?
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.
You might, but I don’t, consider them a religious group. They became a ‘church’ in 1987, hoping to hide behind the word ‘religion’ in a lawsuit filed by former members. I think of them as a bunch of criminals.
In the two I am aware of, the mods discussed the fact that FLDS threads in question were drifting off topic into bashing of the larger Mormon church and reached a consensus that the threads should be pulled for that reason.
Indeed...
So I guess Governor Perry and the Texas Rangers have bveen issuing deaths threats to this girl’s lawyer as part of their grand frame-up of FLDS, as some will actually argue on this board?
Yeah, the is a great plan...
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