Former members of polygamist sect led by Warren Jeffs reveal secrets in FBI documents
April 5, 2016 by CNN
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.”
These FLDS outcasts are talking to the FBI.
They include the former cooks and drivers for the Jeffs family, as well as ex-wives and others who hovered close to the church leaders and their power center. Their words fill hundreds of pages of freshly filed federal court documents, bringing outsiders into the cloistered world of the FLDS like never before.
According to these breakaway members, the FLDS of 2016 has a pecking order: There are the elite church leaders and chosen followers, and everyone else....
The prophet — and there is little doubt Warren Jeffs is still the FLDS prophet — chooses who will be included in the United Order. His brothers, Lyle and Seth, serve as “bishops” and carry out the prophet’s wishes at FLDS compounds along the Utah-Arizona border and in the Black Hills of South Dakota.
The cook, Allene Jeffs Steed, told the FBI last year that while she prepared feasts of lobster and shrimp for the bishop, her own children “lived off toast.” She used duct tape to hold her kids’ shoes together. And hers wasn’t the only FLDS family to go without.
“We were literally starving,” Sheryl Barlow told the FBI in February. She lived in a house with 40 people and said they subsisted on noodles, brown rice, tomato juice and, when they were lucky, bread or a few containers of yogurt....
He was sentenced in August 2011 to life in prison in Texas, convicted of sexually assaulting two girls, 12 and 15, who he considered his “spiritual brides.” An audiotape of the prophet having sex with the 12-year-old was among the most damning evidence at his trial.
With establishment of the United Order, the old Phelps elementary school in Hildale, which closed in 2002 after the prophet ordered all FLDS children home-schooled, was rebranded as Jeffs Academy. Here, followers turned in all their wordly goods for “consecration” in the bishop’s storehouse across the street. They attended “trainings” to learn how to be worthy of eternal salvation and emerged rebaptized as members of the United Order.....
http://pix11.com/2016/04/05/former-members-of-polygamist-sect-led-by-warren-jeffs-reveal-secrets-in-fbi-documents/
Showing posts with label polygamist sect. Show all posts
Showing posts with label polygamist sect. Show all posts
Tuesday, April 5, 2016
Monday, October 26, 2015
Horace Mann alum details shocking sexual abuse of students at elite prep school in new book, Polygamist sect limits sex to 'seed bearers,' court document says
Horace Mann alum details shocking sexual abuse of students at elite prep school in new book
- The DA’s report noted there were at least 20 instances of abuse brought to the attention of Horace Mann teachers through the years — and law enforcement was never notified.
- found as many as 64 students were abused by 22 faculty and staff members
Polygamist sect limits sex to 'seed bearers,' court document says
- It's hard to imagine that a convicted child rapist would be allowed to lead a church from prison, but that's exactly what's going on with Warren Jeffs.
- In 2008, authorities raided the church's sprawling Texas ranch. Police removed more than 460 children from the property, including mothers under 18 years old. Authorities seized and shut down the ranch last year.
Horace Mann alum details shocking sexual abuse of students at elite prep school in new book
BY Sherryl Connelly NEW YORK DAILY NEWS Saturday, October 24, 2015
Horace Mann, its board populated by international hedge fund managers and real estate titans, settled with abuse victims for between $4 million and $5 million.
Amos Kamil, the Horace Mann alum who first exposed the shocking story of sexually abused students at the elite prep school, knew only about half of what happened.
Three years later, he’s ready to tell the rest of the sordid tale.
Kamil, in “Great is the Truth: Secrecy, Scandal, and the Quest for Justice at the Horace Mann School,” details the long-lingering effects on the victims of predatory staffers.
In the aftermath of the furor ignited by his 2012 article in The New York Times Magazine, many more victims stepped forward.
Only then did the human toll of the abuse become clear — so many lives impaired by the reverberating trauma of drug abuse, aborted careers, suicide.
Kamil, in the book co-written with Sean Elder, charges the Bronx school and its powerful backers adopted a ruthless stance with the sex-abuse survivors.
Protecting Horace Mann’s reputation, and its financial well-being, seemingly took precedence over addressing the victims’ needs, according to Kamil....
The Kamil book says that while the sexual abuse lasted from the 1960s into the 1990s, the school ignored repeated warnings about the sick behavior.
One guidance counselor was said to listen sympathetically before putting his own sexual moves on a student.
Riverdale’s Horace Mann was a small patch of educational paradise in the Bronx, where teachers were expected to fully immerse themselves in their students’ lives.
Boundaries between home and school were intentionally blurred as pupils routinely traveled with their teachers, or spent after-hours and weekends pursuing further enlightenment in their company.
The cult personality was seen as a good thing, demonstrating the powerful influence of a dedicated educator....
The DA’s report noted there were at least 20 instances of abuse brought to the attention of Horace Mann teachers through the years — and law enforcement was never notified.
A recently concluded independent investigation conducted by former Judge Leslie Crocker Snyder — and funded by the alumni association — found that as many as 64 students were abused by 22 faculty and staff members.
The school refused to cooperate in the probe. And when 25 of the survivors repped by media-savvy lawyer Gloria Allred agreed to mediation, Horace Mann’s board played hardball.
New York State’s strict statute of limitations precluded the victims’ getting their day in court, so a financial settlement was the school’s only opportunity to address the wrong.
The settlement arrived at in Brooklyn’s Poly Prep abuse scandal awarded the 12 survivors about $800,000 each. Penn State paid out a total of $59.7 million to the 25 victims in the Jerry Sandusky scandal....
http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/horace-mann-alum-reveals-abuse-new-book-article-1.2410248
Polygamist sect limits sex to 'seed bearers,' court document says
By Thom Patterson, CNN Thu October 1, 2015
(CNN) It's hard to imagine that a convicted child rapist would be allowed to lead a church from prison, but that's exactly what's going on with Warren Jeffs.
Jeffs leads a polygamist sect known as the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. It gained worldwide attention in 2006 when authorities accused Jeffs of sexual offenses against girls he took as wives. At one point Jeffs disappeared, prompting the FBI to put him on its 10 Most Wanted Fugitives list until he was captured.
In 2008, authorities raided the church's sprawling Texas ranch. Police removed more than 460 children from the property, including mothers under 18 years old. Authorities seized and shut down the ranch last year.
Eventually, Jeffs was convicted in 2011 of "sexual assault" and "aggravated sexual assault" of two girls ages 12 and 15. He was sentenced to life in prison plus 20 years.
The FLDS broke away from the mainstream Mormon church more than a century ago because its members refused to renounce polygamy.
The church allegedly exercises control over the adjacent towns of Colorado City, Arizona, and Hildale, Utah -- an area informally known as Short Creek. Other enclaves exist in Mancos, Colorado; Boise City, Oklahoma; Custer County, South Dakota; and a Canadian community known as Bountiful, British Columbia....
First obtained by the Salt Lake Tribune, a child custody petition filed in a St. George, Utah, juvenile court by Lyle Jeffs' estranged wife Charlene Jeffs describes a group of followers called "seed bearers." "A seed bearer is an elect man of a worthy bloodline chosen by the Priesthood to impregnate the FLDS woman," according to Charlene Jeffs' petition. Under a new doctrine, "FLDS men are no longer permitted to have children with their multiple wives. That privilege belongs to the seed bearer alone," the petition said. "It is the husband's responsibility to hold the hands of their wives while the seed bearer 'spreads his seed.' In layman terms, the husband is required to sit in the room while the chosen seed bearer, or a couple of them, rape his wife or wives," according to the document.
Utah juvenile court records are not usually available to the public, so it's unknown if anyone filed documents disputing any details in Charlene Jeffs' petition, or the veracity of the petition's allegations....
Children who were put to work included at least 125 who were younger than 12, at least 50 between ages 12 and 13, and at least 25 between 14 and 15, according to the suit. All performed tasks during school hours such as mowing, pruning and bagging pecans, the suit said....
The number of followers in the secretive church is impossible to know for sure. At its peak many years ago, total FLDS membership may have been as high as 15,000, Brower said, but by his educated guess the number now -- in the wake of Jeffs' imprisonment and the civil lawsuit -- is somewhere near 10,000.
Brower said several thousand have left the church or been expelled within the past few years.
FLDS members did not send their children to public schools, which may explain reports of skyrocketing enrollment in public schools. Enrollments have been rising, as more members are expelled or leave the church....
http://www.cnn.com/2015/09/30/us/polygamist-flds-warren-jeffs-update/
- The DA’s report noted there were at least 20 instances of abuse brought to the attention of Horace Mann teachers through the years — and law enforcement was never notified.
- found as many as 64 students were abused by 22 faculty and staff members
Polygamist sect limits sex to 'seed bearers,' court document says
- It's hard to imagine that a convicted child rapist would be allowed to lead a church from prison, but that's exactly what's going on with Warren Jeffs.
- In 2008, authorities raided the church's sprawling Texas ranch. Police removed more than 460 children from the property, including mothers under 18 years old. Authorities seized and shut down the ranch last year.
Horace Mann alum details shocking sexual abuse of students at elite prep school in new book
BY Sherryl Connelly NEW YORK DAILY NEWS Saturday, October 24, 2015
Horace Mann, its board populated by international hedge fund managers and real estate titans, settled with abuse victims for between $4 million and $5 million.
Amos Kamil, the Horace Mann alum who first exposed the shocking story of sexually abused students at the elite prep school, knew only about half of what happened.
Three years later, he’s ready to tell the rest of the sordid tale.
Kamil, in “Great is the Truth: Secrecy, Scandal, and the Quest for Justice at the Horace Mann School,” details the long-lingering effects on the victims of predatory staffers.
In the aftermath of the furor ignited by his 2012 article in The New York Times Magazine, many more victims stepped forward.
Only then did the human toll of the abuse become clear — so many lives impaired by the reverberating trauma of drug abuse, aborted careers, suicide.
Kamil, in the book co-written with Sean Elder, charges the Bronx school and its powerful backers adopted a ruthless stance with the sex-abuse survivors.
Protecting Horace Mann’s reputation, and its financial well-being, seemingly took precedence over addressing the victims’ needs, according to Kamil....
The Kamil book says that while the sexual abuse lasted from the 1960s into the 1990s, the school ignored repeated warnings about the sick behavior.
One guidance counselor was said to listen sympathetically before putting his own sexual moves on a student.
Riverdale’s Horace Mann was a small patch of educational paradise in the Bronx, where teachers were expected to fully immerse themselves in their students’ lives.
Boundaries between home and school were intentionally blurred as pupils routinely traveled with their teachers, or spent after-hours and weekends pursuing further enlightenment in their company.
The cult personality was seen as a good thing, demonstrating the powerful influence of a dedicated educator....
The DA’s report noted there were at least 20 instances of abuse brought to the attention of Horace Mann teachers through the years — and law enforcement was never notified.
A recently concluded independent investigation conducted by former Judge Leslie Crocker Snyder — and funded by the alumni association — found that as many as 64 students were abused by 22 faculty and staff members.
The school refused to cooperate in the probe. And when 25 of the survivors repped by media-savvy lawyer Gloria Allred agreed to mediation, Horace Mann’s board played hardball.
New York State’s strict statute of limitations precluded the victims’ getting their day in court, so a financial settlement was the school’s only opportunity to address the wrong.
The settlement arrived at in Brooklyn’s Poly Prep abuse scandal awarded the 12 survivors about $800,000 each. Penn State paid out a total of $59.7 million to the 25 victims in the Jerry Sandusky scandal....
http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/horace-mann-alum-reveals-abuse-new-book-article-1.2410248
Polygamist sect limits sex to 'seed bearers,' court document says
By Thom Patterson, CNN Thu October 1, 2015
(CNN) It's hard to imagine that a convicted child rapist would be allowed to lead a church from prison, but that's exactly what's going on with Warren Jeffs.
Jeffs leads a polygamist sect known as the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. It gained worldwide attention in 2006 when authorities accused Jeffs of sexual offenses against girls he took as wives. At one point Jeffs disappeared, prompting the FBI to put him on its 10 Most Wanted Fugitives list until he was captured.
In 2008, authorities raided the church's sprawling Texas ranch. Police removed more than 460 children from the property, including mothers under 18 years old. Authorities seized and shut down the ranch last year.
Eventually, Jeffs was convicted in 2011 of "sexual assault" and "aggravated sexual assault" of two girls ages 12 and 15. He was sentenced to life in prison plus 20 years.
The FLDS broke away from the mainstream Mormon church more than a century ago because its members refused to renounce polygamy.
The church allegedly exercises control over the adjacent towns of Colorado City, Arizona, and Hildale, Utah -- an area informally known as Short Creek. Other enclaves exist in Mancos, Colorado; Boise City, Oklahoma; Custer County, South Dakota; and a Canadian community known as Bountiful, British Columbia....
First obtained by the Salt Lake Tribune, a child custody petition filed in a St. George, Utah, juvenile court by Lyle Jeffs' estranged wife Charlene Jeffs describes a group of followers called "seed bearers." "A seed bearer is an elect man of a worthy bloodline chosen by the Priesthood to impregnate the FLDS woman," according to Charlene Jeffs' petition. Under a new doctrine, "FLDS men are no longer permitted to have children with their multiple wives. That privilege belongs to the seed bearer alone," the petition said. "It is the husband's responsibility to hold the hands of their wives while the seed bearer 'spreads his seed.' In layman terms, the husband is required to sit in the room while the chosen seed bearer, or a couple of them, rape his wife or wives," according to the document.
Utah juvenile court records are not usually available to the public, so it's unknown if anyone filed documents disputing any details in Charlene Jeffs' petition, or the veracity of the petition's allegations....
Children who were put to work included at least 125 who were younger than 12, at least 50 between ages 12 and 13, and at least 25 between 14 and 15, according to the suit. All performed tasks during school hours such as mowing, pruning and bagging pecans, the suit said....
The number of followers in the secretive church is impossible to know for sure. At its peak many years ago, total FLDS membership may have been as high as 15,000, Brower said, but by his educated guess the number now -- in the wake of Jeffs' imprisonment and the civil lawsuit -- is somewhere near 10,000.
Brower said several thousand have left the church or been expelled within the past few years.
FLDS members did not send their children to public schools, which may explain reports of skyrocketing enrollment in public schools. Enrollments have been rising, as more members are expelled or leave the church....
http://www.cnn.com/2015/09/30/us/polygamist-flds-warren-jeffs-update/
Thursday, August 4, 2011
Warren Jeffs, Polygamist Leader, Convicted In Child Sexual Assault Case
Warren Jeffs, Polygamist Leader, Convicted In Child Sexual Assault Case
8/4/11
SAN ANGELO, Texas (AP) — A Texas jury convicted polygamist sect leader Warren Jeffs of child sexual assault Thursday in a case stemming from two young followers he took as brides in what his church calls "spiritual marriages."
The 55-year-old head of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints stood stone-faced as the verdict was read.
Jeffs, who acted as his own attorney, faces up to life in prison. The jury went immediately into sentencing proceedings. They had deliberated on a verdict for more than three hours.
Prosecutors used DNA evidence to show Jeffs fathered a child with a 15-year-old girl and played an audio recording of what they said was him sexually assaulting a 12-year-old girl. They also played audio recordings in which Jeffs was heard instructing young women on how to please him sexually.
Jeffs has claimed he was the victim of religious persecution. The FLDS, which has at least 10,000 members nationwide, is a radical offshoot of mainstream Mormonism. The church believes polygamy brings exaltation in heaven and that Jeffs is God's spokesman on earth.
Police had raided the group's remote West Texas ranch in April 2008, finding women dressed in frontier-style dresses and hairdos from the 19th century as well as seeing underage girls who were clearly pregnant. The call to an abuse hotline that spurred the raid turned out to be a hoax, and more than 400 children who had been placed in protective custody were eventually returned to their families.
But authorities brought charges against several men from the group, with Jeffs by far the highest-profile defendant.....
Jeffs represented himself after firing seven attorneys in the six months leading to the trial. He broke his courtroom silence with an objection marked by a nearly hourlong speech defending polygamy, and twice threatened the judge and the court with warnings of punishment from God.
....Eleven other FLDS men were charged with crimes including sexual assault and bigamy. All seven of those who have been prosecuted were convicted, receiving prison sentences of between six and 75 years.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/08/04/warren-jeffs-polygamist-leader-convicted_n_918915.html
8/4/11
SAN ANGELO, Texas (AP) — A Texas jury convicted polygamist sect leader Warren Jeffs of child sexual assault Thursday in a case stemming from two young followers he took as brides in what his church calls "spiritual marriages."
The 55-year-old head of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints stood stone-faced as the verdict was read.
Jeffs, who acted as his own attorney, faces up to life in prison. The jury went immediately into sentencing proceedings. They had deliberated on a verdict for more than three hours.
Prosecutors used DNA evidence to show Jeffs fathered a child with a 15-year-old girl and played an audio recording of what they said was him sexually assaulting a 12-year-old girl. They also played audio recordings in which Jeffs was heard instructing young women on how to please him sexually.
Jeffs has claimed he was the victim of religious persecution. The FLDS, which has at least 10,000 members nationwide, is a radical offshoot of mainstream Mormonism. The church believes polygamy brings exaltation in heaven and that Jeffs is God's spokesman on earth.
Police had raided the group's remote West Texas ranch in April 2008, finding women dressed in frontier-style dresses and hairdos from the 19th century as well as seeing underage girls who were clearly pregnant. The call to an abuse hotline that spurred the raid turned out to be a hoax, and more than 400 children who had been placed in protective custody were eventually returned to their families.
But authorities brought charges against several men from the group, with Jeffs by far the highest-profile defendant.....
Jeffs represented himself after firing seven attorneys in the six months leading to the trial. He broke his courtroom silence with an objection marked by a nearly hourlong speech defending polygamy, and twice threatened the judge and the court with warnings of punishment from God.
....Eleven other FLDS men were charged with crimes including sexual assault and bigamy. All seven of those who have been prosecuted were convicted, receiving prison sentences of between six and 75 years.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/08/04/warren-jeffs-polygamist-leader-convicted_n_918915.html
Monday, July 25, 2011
Texas Town Braces For Polygamist Leader Warren Jeffs' Trial
Texas Town Braces For Polygamist Leader Warren Jeffs' Trial
(WATCH) WILL WEISSERT 07/25/11 SAN ANGELO, Texas
The first hint of polygamist sect leader Warren Jeffs' defense strategy came Monday when his attorney said his right to freedom of religion was trampled by Texas prosecutors, who claim he sexually assaulted two underage girls after manipulating them into "spiritual marriages."
Jury selection began Monday in the case of the 55-year-old ecclesiastical head of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, an offshoot of mainstream Mormonism that believes polygamy brings exaltation in heaven. The church's 10,000 members see Jeffs as a prophet who speaks for God on Earth....
Jeffs is accused of sexual assaulting two girls, one younger than 17 and one younger than 14. The charges against him include aggravated sexual assault of a child, which is punishable by up to 99 years to life in prison.
He faces a separate trial for bigamy in October.
The charges stem from an April 2008 police raid on a church compound known as Yearning For Zion outside the town of Eldorado, about 45 miles south of the West Texas oil and gas town of San Angelo. Authorities who believed girls were being forced into polygamous marriages removed more than 400 children living at the compound, and TV images of women wearing frontier-style dresses and 19th century hairdos were shown across the country.
The original call to a Texas domestic abuse hotline that sparked the raid turned out to be a hoax. Most of the children seized from the compound have since been returned to their families, but the evidence collected proved enough to charge Jeffs and 11 other church men with crimes including sexual assault and bigamy.
Seven church members have been convicted and received prison sentences of between 6 and 75 years.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/07/25/warren-jeffs-polygamist-trial_n_908442.html
(WATCH) WILL WEISSERT 07/25/11 SAN ANGELO, Texas
The first hint of polygamist sect leader Warren Jeffs' defense strategy came Monday when his attorney said his right to freedom of religion was trampled by Texas prosecutors, who claim he sexually assaulted two underage girls after manipulating them into "spiritual marriages."
Jury selection began Monday in the case of the 55-year-old ecclesiastical head of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, an offshoot of mainstream Mormonism that believes polygamy brings exaltation in heaven. The church's 10,000 members see Jeffs as a prophet who speaks for God on Earth....
Jeffs is accused of sexual assaulting two girls, one younger than 17 and one younger than 14. The charges against him include aggravated sexual assault of a child, which is punishable by up to 99 years to life in prison.
He faces a separate trial for bigamy in October.
The charges stem from an April 2008 police raid on a church compound known as Yearning For Zion outside the town of Eldorado, about 45 miles south of the West Texas oil and gas town of San Angelo. Authorities who believed girls were being forced into polygamous marriages removed more than 400 children living at the compound, and TV images of women wearing frontier-style dresses and 19th century hairdos were shown across the country.
The original call to a Texas domestic abuse hotline that sparked the raid turned out to be a hoax. Most of the children seized from the compound have since been returned to their families, but the evidence collected proved enough to charge Jeffs and 11 other church men with crimes including sexual assault and bigamy.
Seven church members have been convicted and received prison sentences of between 6 and 75 years.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/07/25/warren-jeffs-polygamist-trial_n_908442.html
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