Informant: Men had sex with underage girls in FLDS temple

Salt Lake Tribune ^ | 04/09/2008 | Brooke Adams

[JRochelle]

SAN ANGELO, Tex. - Adult FLDS men were having sex with underage brides inside the massive limestone temple at the polygamous sect's Texas ranch, a confidential informant told authorities.

According to a request for a search warrant unsealed today by a Texas judge, Schliecher County Sheriff David Doran has been working with a confidential informant who has shared information about the ranch over several years. On Saturday, as a sweeping raid was underway at the YFZ Ranch, the informant spoke to Doran and made the allegation about the temple, the court filing said.

The affidavit was from Texas Ranger Leslie Brooks Long, who reported being at the ranch and observing a bed inside the temple with disturbed linens and a long hair, apparently from a female.

The document was filed in support of the state's request for a second warrant to search the ranch, owned by the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. That warrant was signed Sunday; an earlier warrant had been signed on Thursday, the day the raid began.

Since then, authorities have removed 419 children, accompanied by 139 women.

Tom Green County District Judge Barbara Walther unsealed the documents during a hearing today.

She also ruled three members of the sect have the legal right to challenge the massive search, and said she will appoint a special master to review documents and computer hard drives seized from the sect's ranch. The special master will determine what material is privileged and protected as strictly religious.

Gerald Goldstein, who is representing sect members, estimated that hundreds of boxes of documents have been taken from the YFZ Ranch.

"We ought to be able to cull out those that are sacred," he told the judge. "If it relates to the children, they get it. If it doesn't, they don't."

Police can seize any documents related to family lineage, he acknowledged.

Allison Palmer, assistant district attorney for the 51st District, argued that sect members did not have legal standing, or should not be allowed to challenge the search. No arrests have been made, she pointed out.

But the judge disagreed, granting legal standing to three men:

- Lyle Jeffs, representing himself and the FLDS church. He is the bishop of the FLDS church's Short Creek stake on the border of Utah and Arizona and the father of two children taken from the ranch.

- Ranch overseer Merrill Jessop, who is also is a presiding elder in the sect.

- Isaac Jeffs, a brother of the sect's leader.

Goldstein said the men are no longer seeking to quash two state search warrants used so far by officials, conceding the point is moot because a federal search warrant has been issued.

[Huntress]

The forerunners of the FLDS broke away from the mainstream LDS church around 1890, when the mainstream church publicly disavowed polygamy. Since then, polygamous Mormons have splintered into a large number of individual sects. The leaders of these sects all claim that they are the rightful successors of Joseph Smith, and that their sects are the one true Mormon church. The FLDS church is one of bigger splinter sects.

[PhiKapMom]

You have got to be kidding. Those young teenage girls are pregnant.

[MHGinTN]

You have a gift for understatement!

[rawhide]

According to a request for a search warrant unsealed today by a Texas judge, Schliecher County Sheriff David Doran has been working with a confidential informant who has shared information about the ranch over several years.

One thing really bothers me about this. If this had been going on for several years, I think of all the abused children over all those years. Why in the world were these crimes not acted upon several years ago, when it first came to light, to prevent all these additional children from being violated and abused? I understand the need to make your case, but several years? While the authorites waiting to make their case, more and more children were being abused.

[Rebelbase]

“Why then would there be a bed in the temple? For napping?”

Would have helped a guy I watch fall asleep in church one day. As he dozed off his head fell forward and whacked the back of the pew in front of him hard enough to leave an egg on his forehead.

[txroadkill]

Well...at least he didn’t fall out of the window.

[MHGinTN]

The reporter may have a problem with the verb tense, agreement, and placement of the verb ... read it like this to see what I mean: "... Schliecher County Sheriff David Doran has been working with a confidential informant who has shared information about activities at the ranch which have occurred over several years.

[fatima]

These men are pigs.

[JRochelle]

claim that they are the rightful successors of Joseph Smith,

That is the root of the problem. They are following Joseph Smith. Every blasted one of them.

Not God.

Not Jesus.

Joseph Smith.

And when you follow man, you are doomed to fail.

[ansel12]

The bible is ubiquitous in America and is even in Latter Day Saint homes and hotels, but the Book of Mormon is pretty much only by the bedside of Mormons. Here is a link on the Latter Day Saint movement. List of Sects in the Latter Day Saint Movement

[SlapHappyPappy]

Dang, you just asked the second question which has turned in to flame wars on these threads.

I will avoid the various answers that trigger the fighting (because I am not certain as to the validity or invalidity of those answers) and instead point out that a big problem is that the cult members are very isolated, particularly the women. There have been women who left the FLDS and told their stories. In some cases they were young and, in a few instances, their “husbands” were prosecuted. Additionally the “prophet” is in jail.

But for charges to be filed there essentially has to be a complaint and there are few people who actually have the information necessary to file the complaints. In most cases all there was was hearsay (from a legal standpoint). It’s not like these “marriages” are filed with the courts.

That said, there is no excuse for the fact that the officials in the welfare departments in Utah and Arizona did not both deal with the welfare fraud and report the obvious cases of child abuse.

[panaxanax]

At least you've got a sense of humor about all this, thank you.

It won't be long before I'm accused (again) of being a “defender” of the Jeffs cult. Nothing could be further from the truth. I only tried to shed some light on and attempt to bring some common sense to the lynch mob mentality. Jeffs and his ilk should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law and hung if necessary.

This case will certainly keep the lawyers busy for many years. What a mess this has become and it looks like it will only get worse. It is truly unfortunate that there are so many “Mormon-haters” here who are fueled by nothing but hatred, all in the name of God. What a world, huh?

[ansel12]

"They have to gather evidence to make a case or else all charges could be dropped and they would have to start all over. By this time the group would/could move and will be harder to infiltrate the second time."
============================================================ Here is how one of the sects was handled in Utah
"The Kingstons aren't in the news as much these days, but back in the late 90's the family definitely was. And Shurtleff now confirms that a year and a half ago, 80 warrants had been issued by the courts and that he was "gearing up" to serve them. Shurtleff said, "We considered going in a similar, swap type - I guess for lack of a better word - operation into a church meeting and bar the doors and start collecting evidence." Shurtleff says the plan was to take dozens and dozens of DNA swabs from the Kingston family. According to the attorney general, the goal of this raid was to try and determine if any acts of incest had been committed. But in the end, Shurtleff decided against a Texas-style raid. Although, in talking about it, it almost seems like Utah's Attorney General sometimes wonders...what if? "We elected not to do that to try and work with their attorney. And, of course, the result of that was all our subjects disappeared, our targets disappeared and we didn't get the warrants served like we hoped to do," said Shurtleff."

[txroadkill]

These men are pigs.

They are not men. A real man would never victimize a child, or anyone else weaker than they.

Is it just me, or is there something very familiar about their religious beliefs? Islam I just can't seem to put my finger on it. Islam

[maine-iac7]

WAco was a Clinton/Reno run fiasco - and if you do the research on just how four of the ATF men actually died, you might begin to think the whole action was to cover up the murder of some men who had some damaging info on the clintonistas - the list of people anywhere near them who ended up dead is VERY long.... These are the four ATF men that died in WACO - all had previously been Clinton bodyguards - and are not the only bodyguards that have been killed...

47. STEVE WILLIS 48. ROBERT WILLIALMS 49. CONWAY LE BLEU 50. TODDY McKEEHAN These four died in the SAME MINUTE, 2/28/93 "executed" by gunfire in the Waco, Texas assault on the Branch Davidians. - All four were examined by a "private doctor" and determined to have died from nearly identical wounds to the left temple, so-called execution style. According to Linda Thompson, videotapes and other evidence indicates that none died from guns fired by Branch Davidians

http://www.handpen.com/Bio/clintonbodycount.htm

The Texas Rangers are one of the finest law enforcement outfits ever...

Do some research before you denigrate such a group.

[GeorgeWashingtonII]

I saw Carolyn Jessop on the news. She was 18 when she got married. At what age do you become an adult and become responsible for the decisons you make. She also stuck around long enough to have 8 children. I think she said 15 years. I believe she was an adult that made certain bad decisons with her life by yelling brainwash you absolve yourself of any and all guilt and responsibility for your life. I saw her and she took ZERO responsibility for any of the choices she made. Did her children have a choice of staying or leaving? did the father have any say? probably not if the family courts are involved.

Maybe we should have a separate thread on “brainwashing.” Are students at Harvard “brainwashed” because they move from home, only see their parents a couple times a year, spend hundreds of thousands of dollars, spend hours and hours studying, are sleep deprived, take years of their lives to get a degree.

Or how about some tv junkie that watches 70 hours of tv a week and believes Oprah is the gospel?

So if any group has a similar level/intensity of commitment in religion they are brainwashed, a cult, etc. And of course the government churches are “compounds,” i.e. code word for threat real or imagined.

[Recovering Ex-hippie]

this is NOT like Waco....the authorities are doing a careful investigation and local community/churches are helping. Pretty transparent if you ask me.