As the case of a snatched Mormon girl from Salt Lake City unfolds, polygamists along the Arizona-Utah border face legal scrutiny
By John Dougherty
Published on March 20, 2003
The leader of a renegade branch of the Mormon Church, now 47, had sexual relations with an underage girl who bore him a daughter in July 2000, records obtained by New Times indicate.
http://www.phoenixnewtimes.com/2003-03-20/news/fornicating-for-god/
From Governor Janet Napolitano down, Arizona authorities have protected polygamous sexual predators with their indifference
By John Dougherty
Published on August 07, 2003
“This is laughable,” scoffs CindiNannetti, Maricopa County’s sex-crimes bureau chief, as she finishes reading a three-page report prepared by the Colorado City Police Department — an agency controlled by fundamentalist Mormon polygamists along the Arizona-Utah border
http://www.phoenixnewtimes.com/2003-08-07/news/eyes-wide-shut/
Arizona faces a “Waco-level” threat from Mormon fundamentalists.
By John Dougherty
Published on October 03, 2002
Arizona Attorney General Janet Napolitano’s office is covering up information documenting extensive and ongoing criminal activity including rape, incest, assault, kidnapping, forced marriages of underage girls, weapons violations and welfare fraud that is rampant in the remote polygamous community of Colorado City, state records obtained by New Times reveal.
http://www.phoenixnewtimes.com/2002-10-03/news/cover-up-arizona-attorney-general-internal-memo/
My own father, in 1974, at age 36, took as a plural wife a girl 16 years of age. It is laughable to see the impotence of state and local government when it comes to dealing with this particularly insidious form of child abuse.
Its horrifying. Girls married off to men when they hit puberty. Boys taught to be sexual predators
While these small towns are charming, there is a darker side to aspects of fundamentalist sects that have their roots in the Church of Latter-Day Saints.
Feds accuse sibling of hiding polygamist Warren Steed Jeffs
By Karen Abbott
Rocky Mountain News
The brother of fugitive polygamist leader Warren Steed Jeffs is in federal custody after a traffic stop near Pueblo, accused of hiding Jeffs from authorities.
In the car with Seth Steed Jeffs, 32, younger brother of Warren Jeffs, was about $142,000 in cash, seven cell phones, many letters addressed to “The Prophet” or “Warren Jeffs” and a glass container fashioned into a donation jar, with Warren Jeffs’ photograph and a label reading “Pennies for the Prophet,” court documents said.
The jar contained cash, prepaid credit cards and prepaid cell-phone cards, documents said.
Seth Jeffs was stopped about 3 a.m. Friday, traveling south on Interstate 25 at U.S. 50 after a citizen telephoned the sheriff’s office to report a suspected drunken driver traveling in a car straddling two lanes, according to Pueblo sheriff’s spokesman Steve Bryant.
A deputy responding to the tip spotted the car going slowly through a stop sign and coming almost to a stop on U.S. 50, Bryant said. The deputy thought the driver might be lost.
The two men in the car – Seth Jeffs in the passenger seat and Nathaniel Steed Allred driving – told the deputy conflicting stories about where they were going, Bryant said.
“During a subsequent investigation, Allred told the deputy that the vehicle in which they were traveling belongs to (Seth) Jeffs and that (Seth) Jeffs had hired him for sexual companionship,” court documents said. “Allred told the Deputy that (Seth) Jeffs paid him $5,000 for his sexual services.”
A dog trained to smell narcotics indicated the presence of drugs in the car, Bryant said, so investigators impounded the car, arrested Allred and Seth Jeffs on charges of prostitution and solicitation for prostitution and released them with a summons, Bryant said. No drugs were found.
Later in the day when Jeffs arrived at the sheriff’s department to talk about retrieving his car, the FBI arrested him.
He appeared in federal court in Denver on Monday and is charged with harboring a fugitive.
Warren Jeffs is president of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, which split from the traditional Mormon church in the late 1890s after Mormons renounced polygamy.
A grand jury in Mohave County, Ariz., indicted Warren Jeffs in June on felony child sexual abuse charges. He allegedly arranged a marriage between a 16-year-old girl and an older married man in 2002.
Authorities have not been able to find Warren Jeffs.
Asked his brother’s whereabouts, Seth Jeffs replied that he didn’t know and said, “It would be stupid to tell anyone where he is because he would get caught,” according to documents filed in federal court.
In an interview with FBI agents Friday afternoon, “(Seth) Jeffs explained that he is a ‘messenger’ for the church. Jeffs advised that he was delivering the aforementioned documents and currency from a church headquarters in Hildale, Utah, to another church headquarters in Texas,” court documents said.Jeffs’ sect, long headquartered in the twin communities of Hildale, Utah, and Colorado City, Ariz., has in recent years established communities in southwestern Colorado’s Montezuma County and in Eldorado, Texas.
”Jeffs acknowledged that the items addressed to ‘The Prophet’ and ‘Warren Jeffs’ were, in fact, intended for the wanted fugitive Warren Steed Jeffs,” the documents said.
”Jeffs advised that the envelopes contained gifts and ‘well-wishes’ for the ‘prophet,’ Warren Steed Jeffs, and were being delivered to a Bishop at the church headquarters in Texas,” they said.
abbottk@RockyMountainNews.com or 303-892-5188
RockyMountainNews.com
Originally published November 1, 2005
Shouldn’t criminal laws be reserved for conduct that creates serious harm to individuals or society? Does polygamy fit within that framework?
http://religiouschildabuse.blogspot.com/2009/02/polygamy-debate-should-be-in-parliament.html
Dear Family Members,
We now know for a fact that members of our immediate family are involved in incest. We have been suspicious for years, but believed that incest was unlikely. However, new and disturbing evidence obligated us to find a definitive answer; therefore, we conducted DNA testing.
The DNA test proved that our sister’s son is without any doubt a product of incest. His Y chromosome is exactly the same as ours. Given that other children were born under equally suspicious circumstances, we assume that these children are products of incest as well. Substantial evidence indicates, and we are personally convinced, that our dad (Ross Wesley LeBaronJr), two of our brothers, and three of our sisters have engaged in incestuous relations.
We recently confronted these members of our family and although they never made any direct admissions of incestuous behavior, they did, in fact, adamantly defend the practice. Also, through a number of statements made to us, they confirmed our suspicions that our dad and oldest sister have been engaging in an incestuous relationship for many years.
We tried through reason, logic and scientific research, to persuade them to end their destructive beliefs and practice. Our efforts were to no avail. We are left with public exposure as our best hope. We very much dislike having to take actions against our family, but we believe it is absolutely necessary to expose them and put an end to this outrageous, immoral, and destructive conduct.
Our primary goal is to protect our youngest brother and sister, who are in danger of eventually being compelled to participate in this heinous lifestyle. It is our sincere hope that we can help and provide them with the opportunity for a better life.
We hope and pray that our dad, brothers and sisters might come to understand that their deluded and pernicious philosophy and belief system is simply unnatural, genetically destructive and immoral, and that they will put an end to the damage being done to their posterity.
With love sincerely,
Alaric C, LeBaron
David Uri LeBaron
Elend S, LeBaron
Elend’s incest bill is due to come up before the legislature soon.
Today’s Spectrum.
http://www.thespectrum.com/article/20090102/NEWS01/801020329/-1/NEWSFRONT2
You are currently browsing the archives for the Crime category.