By Neil Young
The Daily News
July 24, 2008
http://www.bishop-accountability.org/AbuseTracker/
FORT MOJAVE - Expressing concerns about the health and welfare of the children in the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (FLDS) in the far-flung Mohave County community of Colorado City, k.Dee Ignatin spoke at the Mohave Valley Chamber of Commerce luncheon Wednesday.
The FLDS is a breakaway sect of the mainstream Mormon church - the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints - which renounced polygamy more than a century ago.
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| SPEAKER: K.Dee Ignatin speaks to the Mohave Valley Chamber of Commerce Wednesday at the Casa Serano in Fort Mojave about the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Later Day Saints. |
The FLDS, based in northern Arizona and southern Utah, believes polygamy brings glory in heaven. Male church members have been known to take several wives, many of them minors. Its former leader, Warren Jeffs, 52, occupies a cell in Mohave County Jail in Kingman, awaiting trial on charges he was an accomplice in committing four counts of incest and four counts of sexual contact with a minor in Arizona.
Jeffs was arrested in August 2006 in Nevada and was convicted last year in Utah of rape as an accomplice in the arranged marriage of a 14-year-old girl and her 19-year-old cousin. At the time of his arrest, he was on the FBI's Most Wanted list.
More charges have recently been brought against Jeffs in Texas, the location of an FLDS ranch. Jeffs and four others have been charged with felony sexual assault of a child.
Jeffs was named president, or prophet, of the FLDS church in 2002.
Ignatin, media manager at the Avi Resort & Casino, told of how she originally became interested as a radio news reporter in what she described as the plight of the women and children of the FLDS.
Ignatin alleges that Mohave County officials have not been adequately aggressive in pursuing FLDS members.
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