Free Republic

A polyamory cult has fenced off a huge portion of land in southwestern Colorado and attempted to claim it for themselves under the Homestead Act of 1862. The Free Land Holders have fenced off about 1,400 acres of San Juan National Forest land. The group were formerly associated with the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and other well-known figures, including imprisoned FLDS President Warren Jeffs, who called himself a prophet and is serving a life sentence in Texas for child sexual assault. The group, an offshoot of the mainstream Mormon church, encourages members to engage polygamy. 'The...

A fascinating documentary has lifted the lid on life inside a fundamentalist Mormon community where families still practice 'plural marriage' - but insist they're nothing like the horrific FLDS cult founded by Warren Jeffs. Peter Santenello, 45, a popular YouTuber who is based in the US, recently spoke to a group of people who are part of what's known as the Righteous Branch of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints - and they spilled on everything from why the believe in polygamy to how the women combat 'jealousy' over their husbands spending time with his other wives....

A Mormon woman who was raped has revealed how her family blamed her for the attack and punished her for 'sinning.' Kristjana Hillberg, whose family practiced mainstream Mormonism, appeared on a recent episode of the Cults To Consciousness podcast to discuss her harrowing ordeal. The now 33-year-old laid bare the details of a sexual assault that left 'blood everywhere' and revealed how it made her mom 'sick.' She was forced to 'repent' her sins to the bishop in the aftermath and she was eventually disfellowshipped from the religion. Kristjana began by telling host Shelise Ann Sola what it was like...

A few months before her 18th birthday, Katie Wallace hatched a plan to overdose on heroin. She and a male friend who had her hooked on the drug would do it together, ending years of misery to which the 17-year-old saw no way out. It was not the path the Mormon church, in which Katie had been raised, had ordained for her. But it was one that she holds the religion responsible for, after church leaders allegedly covered up years of rampant sexual abuse and incest within her family. For Katie, now 39, it began when she was four. Unbeknown...

Mormon families who tried to expose cases of sexual abuse within their communities have alleged they were 'silenced' and threatened with disciplinary action by church leaders, DailyMail.com can reveal. In one instance, two Idaho members claim they were warned they could be punished after the pair alerted others in their congregation to the fact that their former bishop faced child sex abuse charges dating back 10 years. In another case in Minnesota, a church member and social worker claims he was stripped of his positions within the church after he spoke out about a registered sex offender who had been...

A man has revealed how he escaped a polygamous Mormon cult before its former leader was sentenced to life behind bars for child sex offences. Ben, based in Utah, appeared on a recent episode of the Cults to Consciousness podcast to share what it was like growing up in the Fundamentalist Latter Day Saints Church (FLDS) with two moms, who were sisters, and 28 siblings. FLDS was a break away group which branched off from the original Mormon church when the mainstream religion ceased practicing polygamy. Ben laid bare the strict rules that were imposed by former self-appointed leader Warren...

Former members of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints believe their children have been abducted by the Mormon group in a twisted way to fulfill a prophecy of its disgraced leader. Four mothers, Lorraine Jessop, Miranda Johnson, Elizabeth Roundy and Sarah Johnson, believe their eight missing children did not run away, as court records suggest, but are, in fact, being concealed by their former church. The FLDS is a polygamist offshoot of Mormonism best known for its prophet Warren Jeffs, who is currently serving life in prison for sexually assaulting girls as young as 12. Jeffs remains...

FLAGSTAFF, Ariz. (AP) — The leader of a small polygamous group near the Arizona-Utah border had taken at least 20 wives, most of them minors, and punished followers who did not treat him as a prophet, newly filed federal court documents show. Samuel Bateman was a former member of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, or FLDS, until he left to start his own small offshoot group. He was supported financially by male followers who also gave up their own wives and children to be Bateman’s wives, according to an FBI affidavit.

Eight young girls who were forced to marry a Mormon prophet were found together at an Airbnb in Washington after escaping protective custody in Arizona. Federal agents say the eight girls who ran away from group homes in Arizona late last month were found hiding out at the Airbnb in Spokane with one of their older sister-wives, Moretta Rose Johnson, 19, who is now facing federal kidnapping charges. The girls, as young as 9-years-old, had been taken into protective custody by the Arizona Department of Child Services back in September after a whistleblower revealed how Bentley-driving Samuel Rappylee Bateman, 46,...

An Arizona polygamist cult leader had 20 wives aged as young as nine, married his own daughter, and drove his spouses around in a trailer with a bucket for a toilet, it is claimed. A new FBI affidavit has revealed shocking allegations against Bentley-driving Samuel Rappylee Bateman, 46, who was arrested in Arizona earlier this year. Samuel Rappylee Bateman, 46, is accused by witnesses of 'marrying' up to 20 women and girls as young as nine, including his own daughter, according to the affidavit filed on Friday, the Salt Lake Tribune reported. He has been in federal custody on obstruction...

A group of Mormon cult leaders is being charged with organizing sexual religious rituals with underage girls and threatening them with damnation if they did not participate, according to court documents filed in Salt Lake City, Utah, on Wednesday.

FULL TITLE: Polygamous fundamentalists say they are victims of 'cultural cleansing' as they are evicted from their homes by the Government A polygamous group of religious fundamentalists fears their community is being destroyed by 'cultural cleansing'. Members of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints have been evicted from their homes in Hildale, a 100-year-old red rock community on the Utah-Arizona border. The evictions stem from an order by a Utah state judge who became fed up with people not paying $100-a-month occupancy fees.

FULL TITLE: How a one-in-400million disability became common in a tiny polygamist Mormon town after generations of inbreeding A polygamist Mormon enclave on the Arizona-Utah border is seeing more and more children being born with an extremely rare disorder that causes severe mental and physical retardation. Dr. Theodore Tarby, who specialized in rare childhood diseases, first discovered the problem in 1990, when a woman in the community brought her 10-year-old son to him. The boy had unusual facial features, such as a prominent forehead, low-set ears, widely-spaced eyes and a small jaw. He was also severely physically and mentally disabled....

Lyle Jeffs, who was among 11 members of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints indicted in what prosecutors have called a conspiracy to defraud a federal food stamp program, was captured late Wednesday in South Dakota. Few details of the capture were immediately provided. An online log at the Minnehaha County, S.D., jail lists Jeffs as an inmate. He is being held without bond. The FBI Field Office in Salt Lake City sent a tweet Thursday morning saying Jeffs was arrested in South Dakota about 8:30 p.m. Wednesday. The FLDS has a compound in South Dakota, though...

HILDALE, Utah (ABC4 Utah) A catastrophic earthquake is predicted to hit Utah and much of the US this month, if you believe recent warnings from Fundamentalist LDS Prophet Warren Jeffs. "Whenever there is trouble coming to the FLDS people, especially to the leadership, the first thing that Warren begins to predict is gloom and doom," Dowayne Barlow said, former assistant to the FLDS bishop. Insiders say Jeffs made his most recent apocalyptic prediction before the FBI raided Hildale, UT and Colorado City, AZ. Eleven FLDS leaders and members are accused of a $12 million federal welfare fraud and money laundering...

In a hearing that dealt with polygamy and child sex abuse as much as alleged food stamp fraud, a federal judge Wednesday considered whether Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints Bishop Lyle Jeffs should remain in jail until his trial. U.S. District Judge Ted Stewart is expected to issue a ruling later Wednesday or perhaps later this week. Prosecutors want Jeffs, 56, to remain in jail, where he has been held since indictments against 11 FLDS members were unsealed Feb. 23. Jeffs' lawyer, Kathryn Nester, asked Stewart to release her client to a home his family or supporters...

SALT LAKE CITY, Utah — A decade after the arrest of polygamous prophet Warren Jeffs, insiders say his church has literally become a place of feast or famine, of haves and have-nots. Prison has done little to loosen Jeffs’ hold on many of his followers, even if he is now a convicted child-sex offender serving a life sentence. They still await his revelations and follow his directives, both difficult and bizarre. But some members are leaving the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints — and disobeying their prophet’s longstanding orders to avoid law enforcement and “answer them nothing.”...

A decade after the arrest of polygamous prophet Warren Jeffs, insiders say his church has literally become a place of feast or famine, of haves and have-nots. Prison has done little to loosen Jeffs' hold on many of his followers, even if he is now a convicted child-sex offender serving a life sentence. They still await his revelations and follow his directives, both difficult and bizarre. But some members are leaving the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints - and disobeying their prophet's longstanding orders to avoid law enforcement and "answer them nothing." These FLDS outcasts are talking...

Two polygamous towns on the Utah-Arizona border violated the constitutional rights of nonbelievers by denying them basic services such as police protection, building permits and water hookups, a jury said Monday. The civil rights trial marks one of boldest efforts by the government to confront what critics have long said was a corrupt regime in Colorado City, Arizona, and Hildale, Utah. The seven-week trial provided a rare glimpse into the communities that for years have been shrouded in secrecy and are distrustful of government and outsiders.

When a "church" constantly tills the ground with phony claims of having "living prophets, seers and revelators", who haven't EVER "prophecied, seen or revealed ANYTHING", and fertilizes that ground with the manure of claims that these same men are powerless because unfaithful members are keeping the "church" under condemnation...they OWN the nonsense that sprouts up in the ground they have prepared.I can think of no better punishment for the breakaway sect of Mormonism, headquartered in Salt Lake city and known as the LDS, than the self-proclaimed "Reincarnation of Hyrum Smith" who has used the "urim and thummim" to translate the...