FLDS Girls Vindicated As Pedophile “prophet” Awaits Sentencing, by Cathy Scott, The Forbes, August 6, 2011

FLDS Girls Vindicated As Pedophile “prophet” Awaits Sentencing

By Cathy Scott
The Forbes
August 6, 2011

http://blogs.forbes.com/shenegotiates/2011/08/05/flds-girls-vindicated-as-pedophile-prophet-awaits-sentencing/

Two guilty verdicts in the state of Texas versus polygamist leader Warren Jeffs finally vindicated the right of Jeffs’ underage victims to be free of sexual predation under the guise of protected religious activities.

Jeffs, who had 78 wives in addition to his legal spouse, 24 of whom were under the age of 17, was convicted of the rape of two young followers, 12 and 14, whose “spiritual marriages” and subsequent sexual assaults were captured on audiotape.

Even more disturbing than Jeffs’ cult-sanctioned pedophilia was the revelation during trial that three of Jeffs’ “wives” were in the room holding down the 12-year old victim while Jeffs raped her. In a scene straight out of The Handmaid’s Tale, audiotapes seized during a 2008 raid on the Eldorado Texas compound run by Jeffs’ church, revealed that one of those “wives” bound the girl’s arms and legs to assist Jeffs in the rape.

Women Complicit?

Although two women were complicit in at least one crime for which Jeffs was convicted, it is not yet known if the women will be prosecuted as well. Los Angeles attorney Gloria Allred, who often represents female victims, didn’t mince words. After the verdict, she told CNN she had a message for women in Jeffs’ sect: Submission is dangerous to your health and to your children.

Some, however, have argued that the women in the church acted out of their fear of Jeffs who, on his father’s death in 1998, took over as “prophet” and continued to engage in the sexual crimes he’d been raised to believe were his birthright.

As a prophet and the ecclesiastical head of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, Jeffs was required to document his every move, keeping track of every marriage he performed, every young woman he wed, and, even his intimate moments in the bedroom – the last often captured on audiotape.

It is the audio recordings of those intimate moments that were the most damning and which may send Jeffs to prison for life. In one tape, the sect leader can be heard instructing the 14 year old victim and several other young women how to please him sexually and thereby win favor with God.

Women on Jury and on the Bench for Jeffs Trial

For a man who violated women, it is an ironic twist that a 10-woman jury that, together with two male jurors, convicted Jeffs after a trial presided over by a woman judge, a trial that just unravel Jeffs’ 10,000-member “church.” The sentencing phase of the trial is now underway.

Jeffs, 55, fired his attorneys because they were not willing to present what they believed to be a ridiculous defense – that God was controlling Jeffs’ activities as he raped pre-teen and teen girls. Jeffs did not deny the charges but claimed the marriages and sexual assaults of his underage brides were ordained by God. As a prophet of his Fundamentalist church, argued Jeffs, the laws of the land could not be applied to him or his religion.

Jeffs’ religious sect, long based in an enclave on the twin border towns of Hildale, Utah, and Colorado City, Arizona, in the red-rock foothills, split from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints when the mainstream Mormon Church banned polygamy more than a century ago.

America’s Most Wanted Religious Pedophile

The taking down of Warren Steed Jeffs as a leader of his FLDS “church” and as a sexual predator began near Las Vegas in 2006, when a Nevada Highway Patrol trooper, in a routine traffic stop, pulled over the driver of the 2007 Cadillac Escalade in which Jeffs was a passenger. The trooper had unknowingly stopped one of the most notorious wanted men in America. At the time, Jeffs, who’d been on the lam for several years to evade arrest, was on the FBI’s Top 10 Most Wanted List, right up there with Osama bin Laden.

I was at FBI headquarters in Las Vegas the morning after Jeffs’ arrest for the news conference, covering the story for The New York Times and Reuters. It was clear then that authorities very much recognized the impact of Jeffs’ arrest.

“Now he’s going to be held accountable,” Utah Attorney General Mark Shurtleff said of Jeffs’ arrest. “Nobody is above the law.”

On that quiet summer night in August 2006, Jeffs was stopped six miles north of Las Vegas by a Highway Patrol trooper for improperly displayed license plates on the sport utility vehicle he was riding in. Driving the vehicle was Warren Jeffs’ brother.

The officer looked into the backseat and asked Jeffs, who was visibly nervous, a couple of questions.

“He was sitting in that right-side backseat and wouldn’t make eye contact with me,” Trooper Eddie Dutchover said at the time. “His carotid artery was pumping.”

Then Jeffs, without responding to or looking at the trooper, began eating a take-out salad that was on his lap. Suspicious, the trooper called for backup and the officers obtained permission to search the SUV. They found wigs, dozens of cell phones, laptops, a collection of sunglasses, $50,000 in cash, a duffel bag full of more cash, gift cards totaling $10,000, and, most importantly, a letter addressed to “President Warren Jeffs.”

That is when they realized they had nabbed a fugitive. FBI agents also were summoned, and Jeffs was hauled off to jail. With his arrest, the sect began to fracture.

The Sentencing and [Hopeful] Liberation of the Sect’s Women

Seven other men in the church were prosecuted before Jeffs, and each was convicted, receiving sentences from six to 75 years. For Jeffs, prosecutors are seeking the maximum punishment of 22 years for other misdeeds (including marrying underage girls) and, for the convictions of sexual assault of two children, life in prison. It’s going to be tough for his church, with many of the elders in prison and Jeffs sent away for life, to survive.

There is no heir apparent to replace Jeff. No new “prophet” has arisen to lay claim to Jeffs’ church and its flock. Hopefully, the girls and women who have been victimized for decades will begin their lives anew as the hold of Warren Jeffs over their minds, hearts and souls withers.

[Ed. My favorite line from the trial by Judge Barbara Walther to Jeffs: "I know that this is difficult for you to understand, but you don't have control over these proceedings."]

Cathy Scott is a true crime writer who blogs for Women in Crime Ink, a women’s criminal expert blog. Cathy’s books include The Killing of Tupac Shakur, The Murder of Biggie Smalls, Death in the Desert: The Ted Binion Homicide Case,Seraphim Rose: The True Story and Private Letters, Murder of a Mafia Daughter: The Life and Tragic Death of Susan Berman, Pawprints of Katrina: Pets Saved and Lessons Learned and, The Rough Guide to True Crime.