Word: utah
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Texas New Charges For Jeffs A grand jury indicted breakaway Mormon sect leader Warren Jeffs on charges of sexually assaulting a girl under age 17. Five of his followers also face counts stemming from an April raid on the polygamist group's Texas ranch. Jeffs was convicted in Utah last year as an accomplice to the rape of a child bride and awaits trial in Arizona on similar charges...
...Brower, a Utah-based private detective who deals with FLDS issues, compares the sect's structure to feudal Europe, when daughters served as pawns in alliances. "If your father-in-law is prominent, this helps with business dealings - maybe you have another wife and then you have daughters that you can place with other church members," Brower says. "The circle goes around - the more business dealings, the more wives, the more daughters, the more business dealings, and it goes...
...officials searched the ranch, which was built on instruction from Jeffs, they found his portrait hanging everywhere. When child protective services caseworkers looked at the Books of Mormon clasped in the hands of FLDS children they found his photograph pasted inside. At his September, 2007 trial in St. George, Utah, young women dressed in the FLDS prim, prarie-style fashions testified, while casting coy smiles Jeffs' way, that they listened to Uncle Warren's teachings on their I-pods...
...what of the taped January 2007 recantation of Prophethood? It was widely rejected by the FLDS, which saw it as provoked by duress. It came as he was held for trial in the Purgatory Jail in St. George, Utah; law enforcement reported he developed physical weakness from fasting, had ulcers on his knees from prolonged praying and even attempted suicide. In the phone conversation with Bishop William E. Jessop (and taped by prison authorities), Jeffs said that the Lord "has shown me I have not held the priesthood since I was 20 years old, having been immoral with a sister...
...Mafia analogy may play out in other ways. Following the raid on the YFZ Ranch, the FBI executed a search warrant and removed several boxes of papers and materials. Earlier this month, a summit was held by Utah, Arizona, Nevada and Texas law enforcement officials along with representatives of the U.S. Department of Justice and the IRS. Hamilton of Yeshiva University says she expects federal authorities may develop racketeering charges against the FLDS leadership using federal RICO laws. "There's reason to hope after that summit meeting," she says...