Warren Jeffs: The Godfather

Susan Spencer Takes A Closer Look At Jailed FLDS Leader Warren Jeffs

(CBS)  More of the secrets of that lifestyle may soon come to light when Jeffs goes on trial, this time in Arizona, on new charges: sexual conduct with a minor.

And Elissa Wall may once again testify against her former prophet.

"I think she needs to be very careful," Brower says. "Ten thousand people hate her because of what she’s done to the prophet."

Asked if she's concerned about this, Wall tells Spencer, "You know, I am."

But she's thrown herself into the public eye by writing a book about her ordeal.

As for Jeffs, he's not taken well to prison, has at times been on suicide watch, and, in an astonishing moment, was caught on jail surveillance tape last year admitting to his brother that he is not the prophet of his church and that in fact he is a bad man.

"I’m not the prophet…I never was the prophet," he told his brother. "I have been a liar and the truth is not in me."

His attorneys dismissed the tape, saying Jeffs was just depressed.

But Utah's attorney general hopes his unquestioning followers were listening very carefully. "I think that was the one truthful moment in that man’s life. He realized that he hurt a lot of people."

[mommakat64]

Warren Jeffs really needs to be let out into the general population of the prison he is in...let the "hardened criminals" take care of "The Prophet". ALL prisoners have mothers, sisters, daughters, sons....

[mommakat64]

Those "assets" were gathered by "spiritual" wives getting welfare as "single mothers". People, we have been scr**ed BIG TIME. Our taxes have built that grand white "temple". Statutory rape, bigamy/polygamy, child abuse--kicking out the boys and allowing jealous wives to abuse other wives'' children--incest--one sect has children with grave birth defects..which our social services tax dollars pay for the treatment of. This is insane...

[gal50]

Having a PA Dutch heritage and being aware of all of the legal battles the PA Dutch faced over maintaining their values, I can easily separate what is a legitimate cultural value from what is clearly illegal behavior and I think everyone else in the mainstream is not fooled either. For example, Warren Jeffs has banned pets, books, toys and the color red from the FLDS and in doing so, he has established new cultural values. Warren Jeffs has also reassigned families, abandoned underage boys and forced young girls to marry older men. This is illegal behavior that is not to be tolerated by anyone in our society.

Given that there is 100 million in assets, the lawyers who so ably handled the Catholic church *** abuse settlements should be employed for years to come.

[justthought1]

I always try to be sensitive to other cultures and beliefs; however, when the exploitation of women, men and children masks itself as organized religion or culture I find myself disregarding that sensitivity. But what does it matter that such practices are against my personal beliefs. The more important question is %u201Care such practices exceptional crimes.%u201D What if these individuals are tried, should their sentences be more severe because of the extraordinary nature of the acts? In cases like these subjectivity and media sensation often cloud justice. Therefore we should all take advantage of opportunities like the depravity scale (www.depravityscale.org) to voice our opinion in order to effect how justice is carried out. It doesn%u2019t matter that I personally think that certain of these practices are wrong, but it will matter how I classify the severity of such crime.