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."
Ping to #30!
Sacred Cow rule...
When the discussion drifts into bashing of a separate religious group? I love all the doe-eyed innocence among the usual suspects on this thread.
Don’t go. I think offending the FLDSers is still ok.
I sure have no intention of calling those creeps exactly what they are. Child molesters. If that is wrong, I’m done too!
Apparently so.
Keep up the good work.
Amen to that.
The boundary on FLDS threads is just that - keep it about the FLDS. If you want to make it a religious discussion about Mormonism, take it to the Religion forum.
I can’t watch Greta either. Two shrill, whiney chicks. It’s like watching the view.
Interesting. I wonder how this plays into the twisted theology of their church? Sounds like the makings of a Jim Jones type cult if this is smiled upon by the church(sic).
You are free to post your own comments on LDS open threads, or start your own Religion forum thread regarding your views on the LDS and you can choose the designation for that thread as open, ecunumical or closed.
But this thread is about potential criminality of the FLDS and opinions about that sect. Keep it on that topic without trying to drag the LDS into it, unless the LDS is specifically part of the original post.
Natalie Malonis, the Denton County attorney with four clients who are members of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, has become the latest center of a public storm - this one surrounding the relationship between her; her client, a daughter of sect leader Warren Jeffs; her client's mother, believed to be Jeffs' legal wife; and a sect elder.
With a Schleicher County grand jury set Wednesday to consider possible indictments, one of the many subplots in the case is scheduled to play out at 2 p.m. today.
Initially confined to sound bites delivered to the media, the public battle between Malonis and the elder, Willie Jessop, is expected to spill over today into state district court in Tom Green County. The attorney is seeking a restraining order that would keep Jessop clear of her client.
"It's not that I hate the FLDS," said Malonis, who practices family law with Lewisville firm Elsey and Elsey. Malonis was initially hailed by the sect's supporters when she negotiated additional rights for another client who was fighting to keep her children. "I'm doing my job. Each case is different."
In her Friday request for a temporary restraining order, Malonis argues Jessop intimidated and coerced her 16-year-old client into avoiding a grand jury subpoena, being uncooperative and asking Walther to remove the attorney from the case.
The girl, one of Jeffs' many children, was placed under special restrictions at Malonis' request soon after the Texas Supreme Court ordered Walther to return the 440 children removed, in a weeklong raid begun April 3, from the YFZ Ranch in Schleicher County.
According to Malonis' filings in the case, the girl was "spiritually married" at age 15 to a ranch leader in his 30s.
The request for special restrictions sparked a public exchange with Jessop, who criticized Malonis as biased and pursuing an agenda.
With Malonis filing the request for a restraining order Friday, sect members struck back over the weekend, making the girl available for interviews with Salt Lake City reporters and releasing e-mails the girl sent Malonis asking her to drop her as a client.
"I feel like I need protection from you right now!" one e-mail states. "If you can believe such a thing! My attorney is going against my wishes."
In her filings and in an interview Monday, Malonis accused Willie Jessop of interfering with the case in an effort to disrupt the girl's scheduled grand jury testimony. The request was sparked by the inability Thursday of investigators to serve the girl with a subpoena for Wednesday's proceedings.
The e-mails and a similarly worded letter written to Walther seeking Malonis' removal do not represent her client's true wishes, Malonis said, and appear to be written by someone else.
"The judge considered it, and rather than remove me, issued a restraining order," Malonis said Monday, referring to Walther's temporarily granting the order, pending today's hearing.
"If (the girl) wants to have me removed or disqualify me, that's not a freely chosen preference."
Malonis' filings describe the girl as cooperative and friendly until shortly after her release, after which Jessop told Malonis he had spoken with the girl "several times," according to an affidavit Malonis filed on her own behalf.
In a meeting between Malonis, Jessop, the girl and her mother, Annette Jeffs, Malonis in her affidavit said Jessop "told me (the girl) had to have an (attorney) who would forcefully advocate for the FLDS church and the FLDS lifestyle."
It's not the first time Jessop has been accused of intimidating witnesses in sect cases.
A set of dossiers provided by Utah authorities to San Angelo police in the days immediately after the raid described Jessop as a sect "enforcer" and accused him of attempting to intimidate witnesses in the criminal trial of Warren Jeffs - a claim Jessop and sect spokesman Rod Parker have strongly denied.
"This is an almost 17-year-old girl who has an extremely poor relationship with her lawyer," Parker said. "It's the girl reaching out to Willie, and not the other way around."
Those arguments likely will play out today in court - assuming the hearing goes forward. Malonis said she was working Monday with Annette Jeffs' attorney, local lawyer Tim Edwards, on whether an agreement could be reached.
Edwards declined to comment on the case. His involvement is required because the restraining order officially would require Jeffs to keep her daughter away from Jessop.
If the hearing does take place, Malonis will be escorted by armed security from the state's Attorney General's Office - assigned after at least one sect supporter sent her threatening e-mails over the weekend, she said.
It's the price, apparently, of becoming one of the most public faces in one of history's most controversial child-welfare cases.
ping post 12 for later
I don’t think it is required because of the reason she was appointed to be a strong advocate for the religion itself. If the religion is the problem then how will she be able to insert herself to correct the problem if she is just an advocate of the religion? Now, if the religion is doing things within the bounds of the law, I would gather she cannot interfere with them on the basis of the religion only. If they are outside the bounds of law within the religion, then that is a different story.
Ditto that, there are few newscasters that want me to pour salt in my eyes and drill my eardrums out as much as her.
Thanks... of course, it seems some still don't get it...
For some this is a mere conduit to do what they do. The snickering and stuff behind the scenes goes on day in and day out. Heck, one person accidentally sent me a pm meant for someone else that was about me. Can you say “oooppss”. They have a mission. I thought is was quite funny and revealing.
Just a point of clarification, the LDS actually excommunicated the FLDS cult.
Just curious sir, but when was that particular edict issued and by whom and on what thread? I must have missed it...
Historically speaking, it's very difficult to disassociate the FLDS with LDS since both churches ultimately share the same roots with Joseph Smith and Brigham Young and, polygamy aside, teach many of the same doctrines.
It has been enforced for some time, and re-stated often. This thread is about FLDS. If you want to discuss the religious history of the LDS, take it to the Religion Forum.
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