Polygamists: Authorities Prepare For the Worst in Texas

Special bond formed at children's shelter
6/3/2008 6:31 PM
By: Kendra Mendez


Paintings are the only things the children left behind.
What most of us know about the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints comes from the images we see on the news or what we read in the paper.

Gena VanOsselar and her co-workers at the Austin Children's Shelter got an experience most people will never get.

"There's no question that some bonds were formed; it was really hard to say goodbye," VanOsselar said.

Volunteers at the local shelter perhaps got the best glimpse into the lives many are curious about.

"We had read that they had a fear of technology, so we took down our computer lab, and the first night one of the mothers pulled out her iPod and asked where she could dock it," VanOsselar said. "It surprised us because we didn't expect them to be so technology savvy," she said.

Sixteen children and mothers spent about six weeks at the shelter where they slept in cribs lined in rows.

Kathleen Weager worked with many of the young children.

"They're such very gentle people, very gentle children and very focused," Weager said.

During their stay, with their mothers' permission, the children even got to experience some new things.

"The second week, I asked the mom if it would be okay if we did some painting and they said okay, and so I brought out some water colors and the children loved the water colors," Weager said.


The shelter brought in a pianist so the women and children could hold church services.
Their paintings are the only things they left behind. The shelter staff tried everything to help them feel as normal and as comfortable as they could, even brining in a pianist so they could hold their religious services.

They also learned that their diet is mostly organic, but they're no strangers to fast food. Workers said they loved Wendy's chicken sandwiches.

"Ultimately we all learned that what's important is what we have in common more than our differences," VanOsselaer said.

Even though their stay was short, VanOsselaer said it's the impact on both lives that's important never to forget:

"Anything that we read about them is now counter-balanced with our experience of coming to know them and forming a relationship with them."

The Age of Innocence?
The fine legal line between teenage angels and monsters.
By Dahlia Lithwick
Posted Saturday, June 7, 2008, at 7:35 AM ET


Anyone who's ever spent a year or two being 15 knows that the question of when childhood ends and adulthood begins is a complicated one. At that age, one can veer between rational decision-making and delusions of fabulous self-importance 30 times each day. That's why our legal system tries?-not always successfully?-to draw a nuanced, fact-based line between childhood and adulthood. It's why the age of consent in some jurisdictions is 14, while in others it's 18, even though American teenagers everywhere really, really like sex.

And that's why the comparison between the 465 youngsters seized from a Texas polygamist ranch in early April and the young Canadian man currently facing a military trial at Guantanamo Bay is so illuminating. In both cases, when it came to treating children like adults and adults like children, the government has been hopelessly confused. Considered side by side, the two cases reflect our troubling legal tendency to overprotect the teens we deem to be victims and overpunish those we consider dangerous or violent.

The decision by Texas Child Protective Services to pluck hundreds of youngsters from the compound of the Yearning for Zion Ranch this spring was rooted in a fatally romantic vision of childhood. In April, the state initiated a sweeping raid based on what may have been a fraudulent sex-abuse hotline call, as well as the state's allegation that five young girls at the ranch had been sexually abused by older men. Late last month, two state appellate courts determined that the removal of hundreds of small children, including boys, toddlers, and married, consenting women, was unwarranted. While Child Protective Services had argued that these young people were all in immediate danger as a consequence of the polygamists' dangerous beliefs, the courts disagreed on both counts. Many of those taken into custody were not children at all?-of the 31 girls initially removed as underage mothers, 15 were, in fact, adults, and one was 27?-nor were they in any imminent danger of harm. Many were old enough to make their own legal decisions. Furthermore, even if those decisions were the product of ongoing religious brainwashing, the appeals courts would not characterize the mere exposure of vulnerable young people to those ideas as abuse.

The Texas authorities mistakenly believed that each one they had grabbed on the
ranch was essentially a too-impressionable child. The Texas courts, on the other hand, credited those same young people with a broad capacity to make autonomous legal decisions. Teenagers who are sober, conservative, religious, and married don't quite match up with our streetwise notions of contemporary MTV adolescence. But, in the eyes of the Texas courts, that doesn't necessarily make them all victims of abuse.

Now consider Omar Khadr, a 21-year-old Canadian who has been held at Guantanamo Bay for six years while awaiting trial for crimes he is accused of committing in Afghanistan at age 15. Khadr faces a life sentence for allegedly throwing a grenade in a firefight, which resulted in the death of a U.S. soldier. Khadr's lawyers had sought to have the case against him dismissed because international law, including the Optional Protocol of the U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child, affords special protections to soldiers under 18, treating them as victims to be rehabilitated rather than as seasoned killers. But last month, the military judge presiding over Khadr's tribunal denied that motion, and so Khadr will be tried as an adult, just as he's been incarcerated and interrogated as one. In the eyes of the Pentagon, a 15-year-old kid was a wholly autonomous adult and faces a life sentence for the choices he made.

The House is contemplating a Child Soldier Bill, which has already passed in the Senate. Like the U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child, this legislation deems soldiers under 18 as fundamentally different than adults, and one provision would seek to prosecute anyone involved in the "recruitment or training" of juveniles under the age of 15. Nobody really disputes that Omar Khadr was radicalized by his father as early as age 11, when he was trotted around Afghanistan to meet with al-Qaida muckety-mucks, so how can it be that we think of Khadr both as the "victim" of terrorist recruitment and training and also a full-fledged, culpable adult? Like the Texas Child Protective Services system, the Child Soldier Bill assumes that children are enormously susceptible to brainwashing?-so much so that their own decisions, even their choice to take up arms, are not free and autonomous. Like the Texas courts, the Pentagon assumes a level of maturity and free will that may not be there. And thus, like the youngsters at Yearning for Zion ranch, Khadr is a child under one legal model and an adult under a second.

So, which one is it? Are we looking at innocent teenage victims or incorrigible adolescent demons? Are they grown-ups with slightly less facial hair? Or the lap dogs of adults who brainwash and manipulate them?

One way to reconcile the confused legal decisions about the children of the Texas polygamists and Omar Khadr is to recognize that the legal system operates in broad caricatures when it comes to children, manifesting a disproportionate fear of violent kids as wholly out of control, while treating all victims as though they are incapable of protecting themselves. Maybe all of this legal confusion is just a function of the dual nature of American teenagers, who always somehow seem too old and too young for their own good. Or maybe it just reflects our own uncertainty about whether to believe too broadly that teens are perfect and pure, or dangerous, unguided missiles.

A version of this article also appears in this week's issue of Newsweek.

How do FLDS know whom they're going to marry?
The Salt Lake Tribune
Article Last Updated: 06/09/2008 12:41:00 AM MDT


The FLDS do not court or date. Typically, a girl and/or her parents decide she is mature enough to marry and submit her name to the prophet.
That timing varies from family to family; some girls have said they believed they were ready for marriage before their parents did and vice versa.
The prophet arranges marriages, which are seen as inspired by God - although some members say they were asked by past church presidents if they had received their own inspiration about whom to marry. It is sign of faithfulness to accept a match made by the prophet.
Members say women may defer marriage or reject a match but social and religious pressure make that rare.
A marriage ceremony may occur within minutes or days of a match being made. Ceremonies are private, involving the couple, often their parents, high-ranking church leaders and the prophet.
The prophet may designate someone to conduct the ceremony.
The couple then "court," which may take days to months, before consummating the marriage.
- Brooke Adams

By Ben Winslow
Deseret News
Published: Friday, June 13, 2008 12:02 a.m. MDT

Lawyers for the Fundamentalist LDS Church are preparing for what could become a series of lawsuits against Texas authorities for the raid on the YFZ Ranch.
"There is a desire and a need for compensation, so I think you will see something come," said Rod Parker, a Salt Lake attorney who is acting as a spokesman for the FLDS people.

The lawsuits would likely focus on the removal of the children, the raid itself and damage to the FLDS Church's first-ever temple on the Eldorado property.

"They kicked in the door. They tore it up," Parker told the Deseret News Thursday. "More importantly, it was defiled. It's not usable as a temple."

The children taken in the raid and placed in foster care have returned to their families with "problems," he said.

"They're looking at counseling."

The raid on the Yearning For Zion Ranch began April 3 when Texas child welfare authorities and police responded to a call about a 16-year-old girl who said she was pregnant and in an abusive marriage to an older man.

Once there, authorities say they saw signs of other abuse, including underage mothers. That prompted a judge to order the removal of all of the children from the FLDS property.
All 440 children were returned to their parents following a pair of rulings by an appeals court and the Texas Supreme Court that said the state acted improperly. Criminal investigations are still under way, and the original call that sparked the raid is being investigated as a hoax.
A Dallas attorney who represented a number of young women whom Texas alleged were minors ?- but were really adults ?- told the Deseret News she is still considering a lawsuit on their behalf, alleging civil rights violations.

"We're still in the research and drafting process," Laura Shockley said Thursday.

Collecting on any possible court victory may not be easy. Texas has immunity laws protecting itself against certain types of civil litigation, but government officials could be named individually. There is also a cap on the amount of damages that could be collected.

"It depends on if they sue in state court or federal," Shockley said. "If they sue in state court, there's all kinds of immunity. There may be some immunity issues in federal court. We're all researching that issue."

The Deseret News first reported in April that letters had been sent out, putting Texas authorities on notice to preserve any and all communications and documentation, should it become evidence in civil litigation. A series of follow-up letters were recently sent out, Parker said.

"There are a lot of different ways to pursue this and look at it," he said. "We want to be smart about it and not be reckless."

Polygamous sect figure meets with Utah Attorney General reps
By Brooke Adams
The Salt Lake Tribune
Article Last Updated: 06/13/2008 11:43:27 AM MDT


In what may be a historic turning point, an FLDS church spokesman spent four hours Thursday with representatives of the Utah Attorney General's Office - a meeting both sides described as a small, first step toward more open communication.
Willie Jessop, spokesman for the polygamous sect, met with Kirk Torgensen, chief deputy, and several other staff members.
Utah Attorney General Mark Shurtleff, who traveled to Nevada on Wednesday to discuss the FLDS and other polygamy issues with counterparts from three states, did not attend the gathering. Jessop said he hopes for a future meeting with him.
"We've always seen him quick to the table when it's against the FLDS," Jessop said, who requested the meeting. "So our question is, what will Mark Shurtleff do?"
It was the first formal conversation between a representative of the polygamous Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints and the Attorney General's Office since Warren S. Jeffs took over as leader of the church in 2002.
"We hope this meeting will begin to open doors," Jessop said, who came alone because of "uncertainty about how we'd be treated."
Torgensen did not return a telephone call Thursday night. Paul Murphy, spokesman for the Attorney General's Office, did not attend but also said the meeting was a positive first step.
"There are a lot of bridges to be built," he said. "We've talked and now we discover whether we can trust what the other person has said."
The sect has historically been based in Hildale, Utah, and Colorado City, Ariz. It began building the Yearning for Zion Ranch in Eldorado, Texas, in 2004.
The meeting covered a range of issues, most related to the removal of about 450 children from the YFZ Ranch in April.
Among topics discussed: a list created by the Washington County Sheriff's Office and shared with Texas officials, describing nearly two dozen FLDS members as potentially dangerous.
Jessop said he made a formal complaint to Torgensen about the profile list and asked for help setting the record straight about those named on it.
"We're the kind of people for whom an apology goes a long way," he said.
Jessop said he was asked whether FLDS would participate in the state's Safety Net Committee, which facilitates interaction between polygamous groups and government services. But "that's impossible when you've got profiling going on and you've got government officials trying to smear us," he said.
The FLDS have had only limited participation in the committee to date and Murphy challenged Jessop to increase the sect's presence in the group.
"If he feels people in his community are being unfairly treated, it is the perfect issue to bring up in the Safety Net," Murphy said.
Jessop said he also was asked about a marriage statement issued by the FLDS church 10 days ago, in which the sect pledged to not violate marriage age laws in any state where members reside. The Attorney General's Office wanted clarification on whether it would also abide by bigamy laws.
"We're hoping the FLDS church is going to stop underage marriages, which is the No. 1 issue we've had," Murphy said. The Attorney General's Office also has wanted clarification from Jessop about his role in representing the FLDS church. "We still need to hear who he is and how much authority he has to carry out whatever he says," Murphy said.
Jeffs has been sentenced to serve up to life in prison for his Utah convictions as an accomplice to rape, for a marriage he conducted. He is now in jail in Arizona, awaiting trial on similar charges.

The state of Texas expects to shell out four point five million dollars, to pay for the legal fees involved with the FLDS raid in April. Now, that amount will only cover one third of the total costs of the raid. The entire raid is estimated to top $14 million. Most of the money was spent on court proceedings after more than 400 children were taken from the Yearning for Zion Ranch in Eldorado. A state District Judge in San Angelo originally gave children protective services custody of the kids. However, Texas Supreme Court recently ruled to return the children back to their parents.

FLDS Update: CPS Workers Talk About Investigation
Reported by: Kristen Clark
Thursday, Jun 12, 2008 @07:46am CST

It's been a week now since more than 400 YFZ ranch children left foster care across the state to be returned to their parents who are members of the polygamist Fundamentalist Mormon Church.

Even though the children are no longer in state custody, for Child Protective Services workers in San Angelo the investigation into child abuse continues.

Because of the ongoing investigation - Supervisor Angie Voss could not comment on the specifics of the case, but she and other investigators say they still believe the original decision to remove the children from the YFZ ranch was the right one.

Angie Voss, CPS Supervisor, " A combination of things happened within the first two hours that caused me great concern for the children. I don't know how to describe it if you weren't there - the atmosphere and the feeling of it. It's not a place for children."

For the past two months CPS investigators in San Angelo have been sorting thru the massive amount of evidence- what was once a conference room has now been turned into a taskforce center. Dozens of computers help investigators compile the information.....Photos of various FLDS members are on the walls with notes about dates of birth and possible marriage dates.

Paul Dyer a Special Investigator with the department, says not being able to talk about the case is difficult.

Paul Dyer, Special Investigator, CPS," Thru investigation we know things that no one knows and we just wish they did and at some point they will, but it's hard...Beyond our large workroom where we are all working, fact is not known and then you have people that are giving opinion and there's a big difference between opinion and fact."

Since the first week in April when they first entered the ranch, investigators have been working late nights and long weekends. Tina Martinez says having the support of her family has made it easier for her to spend so much time on this case...

Tina Martinez, CPS Investigator, "My family knows I would not give up time with my children if I had an inkling that we weren't doing the right thing, and that there is so much that we need to do. They know I wouldn't give up that time with them."

Paul Dyer, "My immediate family and friends know that I wouldn't

be committed to this if it didn't warrant it. If it wasn't something real and something very important. Thru 27 years as a detective at the Police Department this has been the hardest investigation I've ever been involved in bar none."

State law required a hearing to be held 14 days from when investigators first went in.... but since it took 5 days to get all the children off the ranch, that left investigators with a little more than a week to interview and gather evidence on the more than 400 children.

Angie Voss, "I wish I could testify now to what I know now, because so much more has come to light that has validated everything that we thought. And one thing I do remember saying when I was on the stand is that I think we've hit the tip of the iceberg and I'm certain of that now."

Even though a court order allowed the children to return to the ranch....Voss insists the investigation has not ended...

Angie Voss, "We continue to find more information that makes us feel even more strongly about the cause and the initial call and the initial reasons that we went onto the ranch and we are still in here fighting."

Polygamy couture: Sect's clothing line selling well on Web
By Eric Wilson Published: July 3, 2008



Do we have to call it polygamy chic?

The polygamist sect that drew the world's attention in April when hundreds of children were seized in a raid at its Yearning for Zion ranch in Eldorado, Texas, has begun to sell children's versions of the conservative prairie dresses worn by its members through a Web site, fldsdress.com, creating something of a fashion sensation.

Maggie Jessop, a member of the sect, the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, told The Salt Lake Tribune this week that the community had been flooded with interest since it began selling online several children's styles, which adhere to the church's standards for clothing that is neat and comely but not costly.

"We have to make a living the same as everyone does," Jessop said.

Considering the uniform look of the church members who appeared in Texas courts to regain custody of their children, the site offers a surprising variety of children's styles - overalls, underwear, jeans, onesies and baby dresses sold with or without bloomers, available in pink, peach, yellow, green, blue, lavender and lilac.

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A basic dress sells for $48.07 and a nightgown costs $31.81, but they recall the timeless quality and charitable notions of handmade crafts sold through 19th-century women's exchanges.

The venture may have come not a moment too soon. There has not been a soul in the fashion world who has not queasily wondered which designers will cite the women of the Yearning for Zion ranch as an inspiration for their next collections.

Designers have been tempted to mine cultures with an insensitive and not entirely comprehending eye in the past. For example, Donna Karan and Yves Saint Laurent have borrowed liberally from peoples Aboriginal to Maasai, and Jean Paul Gaultier once based a menswear collection on traditional Hasidic attire.

The Easter egg palette and box-pleat, huge princess-sleeve styles of the polygamist wives may still prove irresistible. But who does their hair?

Mothers in polygamous sect selling FLDS fashions online
182 commentsby Jaimee Rose - Jul. 2, 2008 12:00 AM
The Arizona Republic
Polygamy's pop-culture moment now extends to the closet. FLDS women are offering their handmade, old-fashioned children's clothing for sale online - long underwear, slips and all.

At FLDSDress.com, pastel-pink dresses and denim overalls mirror the clothing that intrigued the nation when authorities raided the Yearning for Zion Ranch in Texas in April, taking children into custody while investigating charges of underage marriage and child abuse.

There are $65 "teen princess" dresses that stretch from ankle to wrist, long pajamas and matching robes, all sewn by the mothers themselves, even some in Arizona's own polygamist enclave of Colorado City.


Sales of the clothing will help the Texas FLDS women pay rent and support their families. Now displaced from their homes at the ranch, most of them are still in the midst of a child-abuse investigation, and lawyers have advised them to establish their own households.

Mothers originally created the site so Texas officials could get FLDS-approved clothing for the children while they were in state custody. Turns out other people were interested, too.

"We're used to our clothing not being popular," said Maggie Jessop, 44, an FLDS member who helps coordinate the sewing efforts. "(But) we've had many, many people say that they would like to have their children be more modest and have expressed interest in our modest lifestyle."

"There were a lot of people that asked, 'Where can I purchase those clothes?' " said Cynthia Martinez, spokeswoman for Texas RioGrande Legal Aid, which represents 48 of the mothers.

Paul Murphy, spokesman for the Utah Attorney General's Office, finds the FLDS women's fashion offerings quite smart.

"It's very clever," he said. "With all the issues that are going on, most of the media attention has been about the way they dress and the way they wear their hair.

"I give them credit for going where the interest is."

FLDSDress.com has dispatched packages to California, Iowa, New York, Washington, and even Arizona, Maggie Jessop said, and not just the FLDS-heavy Colorado City area, either.

The FLDS wardrobe puzzled and captivated America as events unfolded in Texas. The poufed hairstyles, long dresses and buttoned-up shirts are mandated by jailed FLDS leader Warren Jeffs, who disallows patterned fabric and the color red. The FLDS members wear the clothing as a symbol of their faith.

The Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints is part of a group that split from the Mormon Church in 1890 over the practice of polygamy. Those who have fled the polygamist sect have long accused it of conducting underage marriages and other abuse.

Jeffs was convicted in September of being an accomplice to rape, charges stemming from his role in marrying a girl to her first cousin. In April, reports of pregnant teenagers and underage marriages sent Texas authorities swarming the YFZ Ranch. They pulled 449 children away from the arms of their parents, and mournful mothers appeared on morning talk shows, pleading for their children. Their efforts turned public sympathy in favor of the polygamists, and the FLDS capitalized on that with many fundraising Web sites.

Just three days after the children were separated from their mothers, Texas Gov. Rick Perry's office logged 449 comments that opposed the separation and just 32 in support, according to a report in the Salt Lake Tribune.

Polygamy itself is a hot talking topic across the nation these days. The HBO series Big Love provides a fictionalized version of life as a plural wife. Grey's Anatomy star Katherine Heigl is set to star in the movie version of former FLDS member Carolyn Jessop's memoir, Escape, and Carolyn is working on the script with screenwriters now. She fled the sect and her plural marriage in 2003. Her story about leaving Colorado City topped bestseller lists during the Texas raid.

Carolyn sewed costumes for Big Love, and since the Texas raids, has been approached by others who want such clothes to wear as costumes on Halloween.

"They even want me to help them comb a wig up (in the FLDS style), Carolyn said. "That's the other thing those guys ought to be doing, selling wigs with the face frame (hairstyle) already done."

The FLDS women don't mind if their wardrobe inspires a Halloween trend.

"If some people want to act weird, that's their problem, not ours," Maggie said. And a beauty lesson could be arranged, she added.

FLDS women have a long history behind the sewing machine. For years, they staffed a clothing factory in Colorado City and sewed things like uniforms in addition to handcrafting all the clothing worn by their families.

Clothing sold on their Web site is cut out at the sewing factory on the ranch in Texas and then sent in pieces to the mothers across the state for completion.


Carolyn Jessop applauds the women for finding a way to support themselves and tiptoe toward independence.

"When 100 percent of their (financial) support is coming from the (FLDS) church, that makes them 100 percent dependent on the church," she said. "If they realize they have a skill that is marketable ... they might realize they could do it outside of the church."

Familiar with FLDS financial practices, Carolyn is concerned that the funds the women earn with their clothing sales won't end up in the mothers' pockets.

According to an FLDS spokesman, the women are paid per item sewn, and if they draw in more revenue than is needed to cover expenses, it is shared with other families.

"If people who purchase (the clothing) would at least request that they make the check out to the woman who made the garment," Carolyn said, "then this could be a really positive

SAN ANGELO ?- Texas authorities will have their work cut out for them as they try to track members of a wealthy polygamist sect well-equipped to hide within a national network of safehouses and whose members, critics say, have no qualms about harboring a fugitive.

On Tuesday, grand jurors in the tiny town of Eldorado issued the first in what could be a series of indictments against members of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, a 10,000-strong group that holds polygamy as a sacred tenet and is known for its secretive nature.

"It's so hard. It's not like a regular bank robber takes off in a 1986 Toyota Camry and you can go check with his wife or girlfriend," said Sam Brower, a Utah private investigator who has spent the past five years working for attorneys suing the FLDS and assisting law enforcement in Utah, Arizona and more recently, Texas.

"These people are on the run and all their friends and relatives are hiding them and considered it an honor and a privilege to participate and harbor a fugitive."

Six men, including jailed FLDS president and self-proclaimed prophet Warren Jeffs, were indicted on charges related to the sexual abuse of minors through the sect's practice of marrying girls to adult men.

Only Jeffs, who is in Arizona awaiting trial on charges related to his role in arranging underage marriages and was convicted on similar charges in Utah last year, was named by the Texas Attorney General's office, the lead prosecutor in the Texas investigation.

But the other five indicted men's identities were not released because both prosecutors and the Texas Department of Public Safety say sealing the names until they are arrested is the best way to track them.

"We have better means," DPS spokeswoman Tela Mange said while explaining the agency's decision not to issue pictures of the five wanted men to the media or ask the public's help in capturing them.

"I think we're going to do what we need to, to bring folks in."

Mange declined to discuss how state authorities plan to go about capturing the men. By Wednesday afternoon, there were no reports of arrests of any of them.

Brower and others close to the investigation say it could be a long wait. Willie Jessop, Jeffs' former bodyguard and a spokesman for the FLDS in Eldorado, did not return messages left by the Houston Chronicle on Wednesday. Jessop told the Associated Press on Wednesday that once he is made aware of who was indicted, his group will have the men surrender.

But legal experts said Jessop's offer is an empty gesture because no one other than law enforcement will be informed who is named in the indictments.

The criminal charges against Jeffs and his five followers followed a three-month criminal investigation that began with Texas Child Protective Services finding enough evidence in April at the group's sprawling, 1,700-acre West Texas ranch to remove more than 400 children because of suspected child abuse.

The children were eventually returned after a Texas Supreme Court ruling but they remain under court protection and monitoring by the state.


CPS says it's been vindicated
The agency took a public relations beating over its decision to remove all the children, not just the underage girls. On Wednesday, CPS claimed some vindication with the indictments.

"The indictments seem to indicate that CPS was correct in its belief that some children at the ranch had been sexually abused, and all children are at risk in a community in which adults do not take a stand against the abuse taking place in their homes," CPS spokesman Patrick Crimmins said.

Crimmins added that his agency had not been told the names of the other five men, but once they are given to CPS, the agency will recheck on the children suspected of being victims of the men indicted.

But Rod Parker, a Salt Lake City attorney and FLDS spokesman, said CPS shouldn't be so quick to claim a victory. An indictment, Parker said, is not a criminal conviction.

"An indictment requires the lowest standard of proof of anything in the law," said Parker, who declined to answer specific questions about the indictments because he had not been able to get in touch with his clients. "The real question is whether they can prove beyond a reasonable doubt."

That said, bringing those indicted to trial could prove to be a big task.

The FLDS, which broke away from the mainstream Mormon church more than 100 years ago over the practice of polygamy, owns several construction businesses and has thrived for years in that industry and relied on the heavy tithing of its members to amass what most experts believe is about $100 million in assets. Their activities will be the focus of a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing in Washington on Thursday. Active FLDS members have complained they have not been invited to speak.

Brower points to Jeffs' own run from justice as an example of what Texas faces. In 2005, Jeffs was placed on the FBI's 10 Most Wanted list and for the next year efforts to find him failed until an obscured temporary license plate on a newly purchased Cadillac Escalade caught the eye of an observant Nevada highway patrolman. Inside was Jeffs and one of his estimated 72 wives. His brother was at the wheel and inside the car, and authorities discovered three wigs, several cell phones and laptops and $50,000 in cash.

"It's not like a regular crook," Brower said. "It is a criminal organization. They have unlimited resources, places to hide, they trade vehicles and can be hidden by friends and family."


Going underground
The FLDS bases its organization along the Utah-Arizona border in the twin cities of Hildale, Utah, and Colorado City, Ariz. But the group, which was raided by Arizona government authorities in 1953, has been known to go underground and regroup. In 1953, group members went to Mexico. They surfaced later and returned to their Utah-Arizona homes.

Today, the church has settled in South Dakota, Colorado, Canada, Mexico and other places. They are also known to keep what are referred to as "places of hiding" or "places of refuge."

It's a moniker for both settlements, such as the group's Yearning For Zion Ranch north of Eldorado or nondescript homes the group owns.

"They can live basically anywhere they want, all over the country," Brower said. "It's exactly what Warren did."

By SARA CORBETT
Published: July 27, 2008
On a humid Wednesday in late June, as she waited to be summoned by a grand jury, 16-year-old Teresa Jeffs hitched up her navy blue prairie dress and hoisted herself into the crooked arms of a live oak tree that sits in front of the Schleicher County Courthouse in Eldorado, Tex. For a few minutes, she was not ?- as has been speculated about many of the young women of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, or F.L.D.S. ?- a possible child bride, or a sexual-abuse victim, or a member of an out-of-touch, polygamous religious sect. She was just a kid in a tree, perched serenely above the heads of all the lawyers, reporters and sheriff's deputies ?- a moon-faced girl with an auburn coxcomb of hair and a mischievous grin

Life on the Outside ReNae Jeffs, 15 (left), with her sister LeAnn, 17, at a park in San Antonio. They were 2 of more than 400 minors removed from a ranch belonging to the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. More Photos »
We understand so little about the view from that tree, about what the world known simply as "outside" looks like to someone like Teresa Jeffs, who was among more than 400 minors forcibly removed from the Yearning for Zion Ranch, which belongs to the F.L.D.S., in early April.

Even after the calls that triggered the military-style raid on the ranch were suspected to be a hoax, Texas child-welfare officials persisted in claiming that F.L.D.S. children were endangered by what they deemed to be a pattern of sexual and physical abuse at the ranch. Those claims have yet to be proved ?- the Texas Supreme Court ruled that officials had overstepped their authority, and in early June the children were ordered to be returned to their families ?- but child-welfare and state criminal investigations continue. Investigators have reportedly taken D.N.A. samples from some 600 F.L.D.S. members, including children, presumably in an attempt to establish a biological link between under-age mothers and older men (in Texas, the legal age for marriage is 16 with consent; 17 for unmarried sexual contact when there is an age difference of more than three years). In addition, a handful of the sect's young women have been subpoenaed by a Texas grand jury.

Only a small number of families have returned to the ranch, according to Willie Jessop, a spokesman for the ranch, who says many of its former residents fear the possibility of more government interference and have opted to try to live quietly elsewhere, while continuing to adhere to F.L.D.S. principles.

Two weeks ago, the photographer Stephanie Sinclair was given rare and intimate access to some of the young women who have found themselves at the center of the often-bilious battle between the state of Texas and the F.L.D.S. What's interesting is that in a case that is, at heart, about doctrinaire male authority, and supposed abuse committed by men, it's the women of the F.L.D.S. who have largely had to assume a public mantle these past months, making court appearances, trying to defend both their faith and their lifestyle in the face of deep skepticism.

Meanwhile, the most visible interpreters of F.L.D.S. culture have been two highly critical former members of the sect, Elissa Wall and Carolyn Jessop. (It would be an understatement to say that patriarchal plural marriages spawn vast and complicated family trees: Jessop and Jeffs are common F.L.D.S. surnames.) Both women claim to have escaped abusive, arranged marriages and have since written best-selling memoirs detailing a world in which women are forced into unconditional obedience and rapid-fire childbearing as a ticket to eternal salvation.

We may never know much about the individual circumstances of the young women in these pages or, most important, whether the relationships that carried some of them into motherhood were forced upon them. The women Sinclair met offered no information about the nature of their marriages or who the fathers of their children are.

For at least some F.L.D.S. mothers, these are uneasy times. It would stand to reason that simply by giving their ages and the ages of their children to a grand jury, coupled with court-ordered paternity tests, some of these mothers may ?- willingly or not ?- contribute to the indictments of their children's fathers. (Because plural marriages are often considered "spiritual unions" and not legally recognized, the usual spousal protections do not apply.) Should they refuse to testify, the women risk being held in contempt of court.

Sinclair found Teresa Jeffs living with her mother and other members of her extended family in a sprawling, stately ranch house in the town of New Braunfels, 30 miles northeast of San Antonio. (Teresa's sister Lenora was visiting that day.) Teresa is a daughter of Warren S. Jeffs, the now-notorious leader of the F.L.D.S., convicted last year on felony charges as an accomplice to rape for his role in coercing the marriage of Elissa Wall, who was then 14, to her 19-year-old cousin. Jeffs is now serving a 10-year-to-life sentence while awaiting trial on other sex charges in Arizona.

Despite a grand jury's apparent interest in Teresa Jeffs, she has insisted that she is neither married nor has children, though in June her court-appointed lawyer obtained a special order barring any contact between Teresa and a 34-year-old F.L.D.S. man, Raymond Jessop. His relationship to Teresa was not specified at the time. (Teresa has engaged in a public dispute with her attorney, claiming that her interests were not being represented.)

In a rented four-bedroom home on a cul-de-sac in a San Antonio subdivision, Sinclair also visited the household of Sally Jeffs, the mother of 15 children, including LeAnn Jeffs, 17; Pamela Jessop, 18; and Janet Jeffs, 19, who, along with their own young children, were removed from the ranch in the raid. Pamela and Janet, as well as nearly two dozen other mothers, were originally misclassified as minors by the state (under age 18). Sinclair also spent time with 19-year-old Veda Keate in a town house in Converse, Tex. Keate was still fuming about a recent visit from a nurse and two deputies from the Texas attorney general's office, who came to collect DNA from her and her 2-year-old daughter. With the future uncertain, the women featured here may be keeping their faith and continuing to live in large family groups, but they have, for better or worse, also had to start a new relationship with the "outside" ?- dealing with investigators and judges, making trips to Wal-Mart for groceries and at least contemplating the sight of their neighbors over the backyard fence.

NATIONAL AFFAIRS
Rozita Swinton's Bad Call
Police say her deception set off the FLDS raid. Prank or personality disorder?

By Arian Campo-Flores and Catharine Skipp | NEWSWEEK
Published Jul 26, 2008
From the magazine issue dated Aug 4, 2008

When Flora Jessop answered her phone on the morning of March 30, a female caller spoke in a meek and frightened whisper. She said her name was Sarah, a child bride trapped on a polygamist compound in Texas. She had apparently sought out Jessop because of the woman's work with abused kids as executive director of the Child Protection Project. Sarah claimed she had been assaulted by the older man she was assigned to marry and was often locked in a room with boarded windows. She described details, like names of elders, that only someone in the sect would likely know.

Around the same time, Sarah was also calling a shelter in San Angelo, Texas. After counselors there forwarded her abuse reports to law enforcement, authorities responded with a massive April 3 raid on the property where Sarah claimed to be held, the Yearning for Zion ranch of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (FLDS) in Eldorado, Texas. In the course of the operation, officials said they discovered such a troubling pattern of sexual and physical abuse that they forcibly removed more than 400 kids. (All of them have since been returned to their families by court order; last week sect leader Warren Jeffs and four of his followers were charged with sexually abusing underage girls.) But Sarah was never found.

The reason, according to law enforcement: Sarah was not the blond, blue-eyed teen bride she claimed to be, but rather a 33-year-old African-American woman living in Colorado Springs, Colo., named Rozita Swinton. It's not the first time Swinton has been accused of duping authorities. She's been arrested for false reporting in two separate cases in Colorado, allegedly setting off frantic manhunts by repeatedly impersonating abuse victims. But even as she now faces possible charges in Texas, Swinton remains an elusive and enigmatic figure. As one woman who cared for her believes, Swinton might well be a victim of sexual abuse who fractured into multiple personalities to cope with the trauma. Others who've known her view her as a masterful manipulator with an insatiable appetite for attention. In a brief conversation with NEWSWEEK, Swinton only added to the mystery. "There are so many lies about me that have been published," she said without elaborating.

The daughter of a convicted murderer, Swinton had a turbulent upbringing in Nashville. By the age of 14, she had run away from home so many times that she became a ward of the state. In her senior year in high school, Rozita accused her father, Clarence Swinton, of sexually abusing her?-an allegation she would repeat throughout her life. Though he was never charged with abuse, a restraining order against him?-which cites Rozita's allegations?-was issued in 1992. In a recent conversation with NEWSWEEK, Clarence described Rozita as "the world's greatest con artist," and denied her accusations. "If there is any victim, it is me," he said. (Rozita didn't address the abuse allegations with NEWSWEEK, and her attorneys did not return repeated calls for comment.)

When Swinton was 19, she went to live with Mary Nelson, a social worker who gave shelter to foster kids. Writing under the pseudonym Kate Rosemary, Nelson authored two books that mention Swinton. In "After Disclosure," Nelson wrote that the girl "had been tragically abused" and "had been diagnosed as having developed multiple personalities, each of which experienced part of her abuse." When news of Swinton's arrest broke, a newsletter put out by Nelson's publisher featured a story meant to defend Swinton. Citing a "source very close to her," the article claimed that "Rozita has flashbacks to a time when she was an abused child and teenager, and to times when she had been locked up and kept hostage." (Nelson, who is exceedingly private, declined to comment.)

After leaving Nelson's home, Swinton headed west, eventually settling in Colorado Springs in the mid-1990s. She became a Mormon and worked in the insurance industry, first as an agent and later in the claims department at State Farm.

Soon, Swinton came to the attention of authorities. Around 1997, she filed the first of some 15 police reports claiming that her father or some other man was sexually assaulting her (Clarence denies he ever visited Colorado). But "we could never corroborate information because she would never do any follow-up," says Det. Terry Thrumston of the Colorado Springs Police Department.

One of Swinton's calls in 2005 led to her arrest. In June of that year, staffers at an adoption agency in Castle Rock, Colo., notified police that a girl claiming her name was Jessica had contacted them about giving up her newborn for adoption. The baby, Jessica claimed, was the product of sexual molestation by her father. On the morning she was scheduled to bring in the newborn, she left a note at the agency saying she'd changed her mind, would leave the baby at a fire station and then kill herself, according to a police report. That set off a three-day search by police that eventually identified Swinton as the hoax caller (with no baby). She was charged with false reporting and obstructing government operations, to which she pleaded guilty in 2007 in return for a deferred sentence.

Yet the calls continued?-to school counselors, women's shelters and police. Among the cast of characters Swinton impersonated, according to Thrumston: April, who claimed she was molested by her father; Ericka, who said she'd been impregnated by her uncle, and Dana, who alleged that she was abused by her youth pastor. This past February, according to an arrest-warrant affidavit against Swinton, Colorado Springs police responded to two 911 calls from someone claiming to be Jennifer, a 4-year-old abused girl locked in a basement. By tracking the calls, cops narrowed the location to a two-block radius and then searched the area house by house for a trapped little girl. Swinton "basically shut down a whole police division," says Thrumston. The girl was never found. (In between calls, Swinton also found time to get elected as a state delegate for Sen. Barack Obama in the Colorado Democratic caucuses.)

Swinton's alleged behavior is difficult to categorize. On one hand, she seems to inhabit her fabricated identities so thoroughly that some who have dealt with her believe she may indeed suffer from multiple personality disorder. She said as much in a conversation with Jennifer Pierce, a victim advocate at a Colorado Springs social services agency who received calls from the Dana character for months. Describing a stay at a shelter at one point, Dana said "she had another personality named Rozita … and Rozita took 'them' to the safe house," says Pierce. Dana explained that "her personality comes out when Rozita feels threatened, and she's there to protect Rozita." Court documents show that Swinton takes prescribed medication, sees a therapist and has attended an in-patient program in Missouri.

Yet there's a highly rational and calculating aspect to Swinton's alleged deeds. In the past few years, she has used at least nine cell-phone numbers?-many of them prepaid, avoiding the need to register them?-to orchestrate her ruses, according to police. And rather than slipping uncontrollably into one character or another, she has seemed to switch between them at will.

Psychiatrists interviewed by NEWSWEEK say that although they wouldn't rule out multiple-personality disorder?-a controversial diagnosis technically known as dissociative identity disorder (DID)?-Swinton's behavior doesn't match the usual profile (none of them has personally examined her). "People with DID typically have intense stories of their own abuse" and don't "run around reporting on other people's abuse," says David Spiegel, associate chair of psychiatry at Stanford University School of Medicine. Richard Kluft, a clinical professor of psychiatry at Temple University School of Medicine, says it's possible that Swinton suffers from other conditions, like factitious disorder, in which people have a need to be seen as ill and deliberately create symptoms to prove it.

Whatever the case, Swinton's alleged deceptions began to unravel in March. Thrumston had already concluded that the countless calls from little girls were probably made by the same person. But she hadn't yet established a link to Swinton. Things finally clicked when Thrumston interviewed Pierce, the victim advocate, who provided a phone number for Dana that matched one on record for Swinton. On April 13, one of Thrumston's sergeants received a call from the Texas Rangers, who had traced two phone numbers in the FLDS investigation to Colorado Springs. One of them, Thrumston discovered, was associated with Swinton. Within days, police obtained a search warrant for Swinton's home, carted off boxes of evidence and arrested her for false reporting in the episode involving the house-to-house search.

Swinton's legal troubles are mounting. She's now awaiting an October trial in the Colorado Springs case, in which she pleaded not guilty. The case in Castle Rock has been reopened, since her arrest violated the terms of her deferred sentence. And the Texas Rangers are "actively pursuing" her as a "person of interest" in the FLDS case, according to a press release. Whether any of this has curbed her alleged trickery is unclear. Only hours after Swinton was released on bond in Colorado Springs, Jessop, the former FLDS member, received a call. It was the same voice as before, except now the caller said her name was Rose. "You're playing games with me," Jessop said. "It's not a game," Rose responded, sobbing. "I know you think I probably tricked you, but it's not like that." Even now, Swinton's calls can sound like a genuine cry for help. Instead, they stand to land her in jail.

AUSTIN - Five indicted men from a polygamist sect in West Texas have surrendered to authorities, Attorney General Greg Abbott announced today.

The five were among six sect members indicted last week by a grand jury in the West Texas town of Eldorado with offenses relating to the sect's practice of marrying minor girls to adult men.

Four of the men and Warren Jeffs, leader of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, who also was indicted, were charged with felony sexual assault of a child.

Another man was charged with failing to report child abuse.

Previously, only Jeffs, who is jailed in Arizona awaiting trial on similar charges, had been identified by the attorney general's office.

Jeffs was convicted of similar offenses in Utah last year.

Abbott said the investigation is continuing and could result in additional charges.

The Texas criminal charges followed a three-month investigation that began with Texas Child Protective Services raiding the group's West Texas ranch in April to remove more than 400 children because of suspected child abuse.

The children eventually were returned to their parents following a Texas Supreme Court ruling, but they remain under court protection and monitoring by the state.