ELDORADO, Texas, July 22, 2008
Sex Assault Charges For Polygamist Leader
Sect Leader Warren Jeffs And 4 Others Indicted On Child Sexual Assault Charges
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Play CBS Video Video The Godfather Susan Spencer takes a closer look at jailed FLDS leader Warren Jeffs.
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Video Warren Jeffs Home Video In this undated video, former FLDS leader Warren Jeffs leads a prayer service before a talent show at a polygamist school. Video courtesy of Kathy Jo Nicholson, who left the organization 17 years ago.
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Warren Jeffs, the leader of a polygamist sect, is led into a courtroom in Las Vegas on Aug. 31, 2006 during a separate trial stemming from marriages of underage girls in his sect. (AP)
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Photos Polygamist Sect Ordeal Church compound raided, children placed in foster care, returned to parents after court fight.
Attorney General Greg Abbott said the five men are charged with one count of sexually assaulting girls under the age of 17. One of them, but not the 52-year-old Jeffs, faces an additional charge of bigamy.
Abbott said a sixth member of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints is charged with three counts of failure to report child abuse.
Jeffs, already convicted of being accomplice to rape in Utah and awaiting trial in Arizona on other charges related to underage marriages, is accused of assaulting a girl in Texas in January 2005, according to the indictment issued Tuesday.
"Our investigation in this matter is not concluded. This is an ongoing investigation that we intend to continue," said Abbott, whose office is acting as the special prosecutor in the case.
The grand jury in this tiny western Texas ranching community will continue consideration of other possible criminal charges on Aug. 21, according to a source who spoke on the condition of anonymity because proceedings of the panel are secret by law.
The identities of Jeffs' followers who were indicted in addition to him were not released Tuesday because the indictments remain sealed until authorities can arrest the men.
"There will be an aggressive effort to apprehend them," Abbott said when asked whether he was concerned the men may have fled Texas.
FLDS members have historically lived around the Arizona-Utah line and bought the Yearning For Zion Ranch in Eldorado about five years ago.
Willie Jessop, a church member and spokesman, said members would face the accusations.
"We're actually quite shocked. As soon as we know who they're looking for, we'll try to face it," Jessop told The Associated Press in an interview Tuesday. "We believe in our innocence."
He said that he didn't know who was indicted and that no one from law enforcement had tried to enter the ranch Tuesday evening.
The criminal indictments were issued after a separate child custody case in which more than 400 children were placed in foster care. The Texas Supreme Court ruled child welfare authorities overstepped in taking all the children from their parents even though many were infants and toddlers and the state failed to show any more than handful of teenage girls were abused or at risk.
The criminal charges came during the panel's second meeting on the case; it met in June without taking any action.
Abbott spent Tuesday in the small community building where the grand jury was meeting near the courthouse. Women and girls in prairie dresses, including a 16-year-old daughter of Jeffs, were escorted in and out, while lawyers and FLDS members crowded a bench in front of the courthouse.
Grand jury proceedings are supposed to be secret, but documents released as part of the separate child custody case involving the FLDS children have revealed some of the evidence collected by law enforcement during the weeklong raid that began April 3.
Among the hundreds of boxes of photos, documents and family Bibles, investigators found photos of Jeffs in intimate embraces and kissing several apparently underage girls, the documents say.
A journal entry purportedly from Jeffs attached to a report by a child advocate indicates he married his daughter to a 34-year-old man the day after she turned 15. The girl turns 17 on Saturday and has denied being married, though the child advocate report indicates intimate notes between the girl and man were also found in the raid.
In addition to discussions of the girl's marriage, the Jeffs journal entry also indicates he blessed marriages of two other underage sect members to himself and another member.
FLDS leaders have consistently denied there was any abuse at the ranch and vowed not to sanction underage marriages.
Under Texas law, a girl younger than 17 cannot generally consent to sex with an adult. Bigamy is also illegal in Texas, and although FLDS plural marriages were not licensed by the state, the law contains a provision outlawing the act of "purporting to marry" more than one person.
The FLDS, which believes polygamy brings glory in heaven, is a breakaway sect of the mainstream Mormon church, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which officially renounced polygamy more than a century ago.
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The Bible does not say when a man or woman has become of age to be married and bare children but the Bible is clear that we are to obey the laws of the nation we are in.
If we have laws that specify the age a female can have sexual relations with an older man then that is the law and it is to be obeyed. If you do not like the laws of the nation you belong then you should leave.
My study of God%u2019s Word tells me that this is a false system of worship. The Commandments of God clearly state %u201CThou shalt not commit adultery%u201D but this false system makes it%u2019s own laws and disregards the laws of man and God.
Yes i know in these poly''s they are pairing old dudes with the teenagers which is sick.
This is basically just another example of our gov. telling us what we can and cannot have, eat, drink, breath, smoke, bla bla bla... only in the last 100 or less years has any of these things been illegal.
these people live in a world apart from us. or should i say in the past. let them be
It''s true that, for a time, blacks were not ordained to the priesthood. That hardly rises to a doctrine of enslavement and subjugation. The doctrine was not based on biblical links "Japet" or ancient curses. We simply accept that the administration of the church is revealed through a living prophet. Instead of constructing your own version of church doctrines based on hearsay and conjecture, I suggest that you research the writings of the prophets.
I am certain that you will discover there is no "veneer of hostility". I, along with the vast majority of other members of the church wept with joy at the announcement that all worthy male members could be ordained to the priesthood.
Your post is very accurate. We have the right to practice our religion freely in this country, but not if the religion has practices that violate law. If your religion requires you to sacrifice a human baby, well obviously you can''t do that right? There are some who will think they can though.
These men who rape these young girls cannot be allowed to continue this terrible atrocity.
fit?
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Posted by babooph at 03:41 AM : Jul 23, 2008
Ummmm, religion has no right to think itself above the law of the land.
Especially if you''re hiding the rape of children behind your religious beliefs.
Bunch of sick old perverts waiting for the next virgin to be available to them!
Posted by babooph at 03:41 AM : Jul 23, 2008
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No!, that is incorrect. The Bible say we are to obey the law of the Government unless it breaks God''s law. There are no laws in the Bible that require and allow for more than one wife.
There were men of the Bible that had more than one wife but you will find that these men and their families suffered hardships as the result.
God''s original intent was "one man with one women".
Let us be correct here, yes they did play a part in America''s genocide of it''s original inhabitants, but for "Black" people, the story is a bit more insulting, they posited that the youngest son of Noah, Japet, who laughed at his naked father, and was cursed by Noah afterward to always be servant to his two brothers Ham and Shem, migrated to Africa after the flood, and became "Black" people, and therefore the enslavement and subjugation of "Black" people is in keeping with the curse of Noah.
Now you find that they will now disavow this tenet of their "religion", but under the veneer, the hostility is still quite apparent.
Just to be fair...
fit?
- by barbaram99 July 23, 2008 1:46 AM EDT
- Lock them up and yep they use to hang them in the town centre, now they can''t. They are worried about their rights. Yep. The crimmal got mores rights than us. Cops told us that.
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