UTAH
The Salt Lake Tribune
By Peg McEntee
and Brooke Adams
The Salt Lake Tribune
After 17 months of silence, the man who filed a lawsuit accusing polygamist leader Warren Jeffs of raping him as a child has come forward to, in his words, "take a stand on this and take him down."
Brent Jeffs, now 22, on Wednesday repeated the allegations he made in his July 2004 lawsuit: that in the late 1980s, Warren Jeffs, his uncle, sodomized him in the Salt Lake Valley compound then owned by the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (FLDS). Brent Jeffs said he was 5 or 6 at the time, and that Warren Jeffs' brothers, also named in the lawsuit, watched and participated in the abuse.
He said he decided to come forward now because of actions by Utah and Arizona to protect church assets held in its United Effort Plan, which holds all FLDS property in trust. In particular, authorities in both states want to make sure that residents of Hildale, Utah, and Colorado City, Ariz., are not in peril of losing their homes if the UEP defaults on its obligations to them.