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."
Here is another interpretation - that guy is too stupid to put his socks on, more less count his kids.
In video #1, the wife is interviewed exclusively, and he doesn’t say jack.
Is that a function of the genetic disease, common to FLDS? I don’t know. Fulmarase deficiency?
Can the wife be prosecuted for raping the mentally impaired husband, who lacks sufficient capicty to consent?
Signed, bloody patton, or some such. ;)
I think they found some type of marriage record. Word is the girl became a 'spiritual' wife shortly after her 15th birthday. She'll be 17 in July.
Technically, I think the extension of the TRO for 90 days was by agreement of the parties as opposed to an actual ruling by the court. The court signed an order, but it had been negotiated between the attorney ad litem (Moranis?)and the mom’s attorney, Tim Evans. The court “strongly suggested”, it seems, that the parties reach an agreement, and they did.
As far as the “evidence of abuse” I have seen two different (but similar) versions. In a news sory, it was reported that Moranis said she had evidence which she wished to produce under seal to protect the minor. In a blog, it was reported that Moranis presented “documentary evidence of abuse” and the judge “immediately cleared the courtroom.”
As to what the evidence may have been — I don’t know, but it almost certainly related to the allegation that Teresa had been spiritually married to thirty-something guy at age 15. Perhaps the info came from the informant. I recall Moranis had reportedly said in the original TRO application that she had been told of the ‘marriage’ by CPS and LE. Also, there was an earlier claim that Teresa had a child, but I believe DNA tests have shown otherwise.
Teresa has now testified to the GJ. She was obviously asked about this issue, but who knows what she answered? Also, how credible is the evidence there was a marriage? I have no idea.
There was some boog-a-loo in there as well.
By golly you are on to something!! I'm going to give you back that third star!
This whole flds deal is not a bunch of men making slaves or robots of weak-willed women. It's conniving women taking advantage of some poor retards. Yeah! That's the ticket! I knew those females were up to no good.
“They are being persecuted and prosecuted for what people think they may have been thinking in the past, what they think they may be thinking today, and for what they might be thinking in the future.”
If the allegations that Teresa was spiritually married to Raymond are true, and he was over 35 while she was 15, then it wasn’t what they were ‘thinking’, it was what they were ‘doing’.
LOL - sarcasm will get you nowhere.
Besides, I never got past E5 in the army, you can’t pin a star on me.
I don’t want it.
There was an video interview with three of the FLDS men, and another with three of the FLDS women.
Several of them seemed a bit retarded. It is possible it wasn’t actual mental retardation, but the fact they live such timid, controlled, and isolated lives.
Especially when some of them admit they didn’t even ‘know’ there was anything wrong with their ‘child-brides’, or ‘spiritual’ marriages.
Is the reason Willie wants an FLDS friendly lawyer, and one who will ‘advocate’ for FLDS, because some of the FLDS members are not mentally capable of understanding the nature of what is going on?
Have the FLDS members been so deluded by their PROPHET, they don’t ‘know’ they are breaking the law?
NAME: Natalie Joanne Keate
BIRTHPLACE: Sandy, Utah
BIRTHDATE: November 30,2001
http://i.cdn.turner.com/cnn/2008/images/05/13/flds.doc.pdf
“Also, how credible is the evidence there was a marriage?”
I think it would depend on how much credence the court gives the Bishop’s Log.
Yes, I believe so.
I don’t think it’s Fumarase Deficiency:
Fumarase deficiency is characterized by polyhydramnios, enlarged cerebral ventricles in utero, and fetal brain abnormalities. In the newborn period, findings include severe neurologic abnormalities, poor feeding, failure to thrive, and hypotonia. Early-onset infantile encephalopathy, seizures, and severe developmental delay with microcephaly are also common. Other findings include infantile spasms, trunk hypotonia with hypertonic and dystonic posture of the limbs, athetoid movements, and autistic features. EEG abnormalities such as hypsarrhythmia, facial dysmorphism, and craniofacial dysmorphism have been reported. Findings can include neonatal polycythemia, leukopenia and neutropenia, and mild hepatosplenomegaly. Neuroimaging may reveal nonspecific mild hypomyelination, progressive cerebral atrophy, ventricular dilatation, periventricular cysts, Dandy-Walker malformation, agenesis of the corpus callosum, deficient closure of the sylvian opercula, large lateral ventricles, and diffuse, bilateral polymicrogyria. Many children with fumarase deficiency do not survive infancy or die in childhood; those surviving beyond childhood have severe psychomotor retardation.
Oy, a no would have sufficed. My brain is full, I am off to bed. Reading the heller decision wore me out.
Of course, a “NO!” would have sumarized that, too.
LOL. Night, y’all.
Thanks for the link.
It proves that those who claimed ‘due process’ and violation of Constitutional Rights were correct.
But... it only applies to
“Monogamous families living in single family residences.”
Good night.
Check out the link on post 509.
I think you will be interested.
That Log is going to raise some really interesting questions.
In any criminal proceeding, they are going to fight to keep it out, claiming the search and seizure were illegal. Whatever the court rules, it'll go up on appeal.
But in the civil suit, I think it would most likely be admitted assuming it can be properly authenticated. Let's say it comes in to evidence and it shows a pattern of some number of underage 'marriages'. Would that justify the court giving conservaorship to CPS of male children or really young children? Hmmm, I don't know, but given the SC ruling--probably not, especially if the mother claims not to support such things now that the flds has some new edict against it.
Specifically as to Teresa--I'd like to know how she testifed at the GJ. She could not claim the 5th, and if she lied, she could face a perjuy rap as a juvy, so she may have been in a tough spot.
FLDS hearing before grand jury a ‘slow grind’
http://www.sltrib.com/news/ci_9697255
“Willie Jessop previously said the women called as witnesses are being asked to choose between their children and their husbands, their freedom and their faith. “
WHAT THEY DIDN’T SAY
(Willie had already told the FLDS women that if they testify, he will make sure they lose their husbands, children, freedom, and faith.)
“In 2006, FLDS members summoned in an Arizona grand jury investigation of Warren Jeffs, refused to testify and ended up being jailed for contempt. “
WHAT THEY DIDN’T SAY
(But, they were allowed to return to their husbands, children, freedom, and faith, after they got out.)
“Let’s say it comes in to evidence and it shows a pattern of some number of underage ‘marriages’. Would that justify the court giving conservaorship to CPS of male children or really young children?”
I do think the CPS had to initially take ‘all’ the children, just to sort them out.
I just don’t think they had the laws to support keeping them all.
Six of the TXSC justices said NO, three said YES.
So the children were returned, except for the three primary witnesses, who are allegedly victims of some kind of abuse.
It does make one wonder.
If you have six ‘wives’ and you piss them off..... well, you gotta sleep sometime.
Of course, I heard the men may not have ‘lived’ with the women and children.
So if they had a secure location to sleep, I guess they didn’t have to worry about waking up and finding their ‘nads’ gone.
Wasn't the Petition for Writ of Habeus Corpus dismissed in deference to the primary jurisdiction of the San Angelo court and then rendered moot by the Ct of Appeals decision which restored these children to the parents? So it never really went anywhere, I think.
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