FLDS Update

I started covering the FLDS story back when the state of Texas responded to a phone call they really had to have known was a hoax by kidnapping some 400 children and adult women it dishonestly claimed were children.
The state of Texas engaged in other acts I think will be recognized as violations of certain constitutional protections at some point, and those were the questions that interested me.

I never claimed (nor believed) that every single person in the FLDS was innocent, and I have never been particularly interested in the legal cases swirling around the man most FLDS recognize as their prophet, Warren Jeffs. He wasn't even in Texas at the time of the YfZ raid, but was in a Utah prison.

However, I spent enough time on the unjust kidnapping of those 400 women and children- that is roughly 400. The state was never really sure how many women and children they were holding, and *all* the pregnant minors the state was holding turned out to be adult women, one of them in her thirties), that every few months I take a look at what's going in the legal world of the FLDS.

Warren Jeffs has now been tried and sentenced to life plus twenty in Texas for 'marrying' minor girls under 15, and consummating those relationships. He's had a child with at least one. He will be serving life plus 20 years. If you're interested, you can read all about the trials and the evidence here. Some of it is pretty graphic and just nasty. I'm not really surprised, nor does this change anything I've previously written about the FLDS.

One interesting point is that there is a tape of Jeffs telling his wives Jeffs, well, many unedifying things- but he also said he is specially chosen by God and allowed to behave in certain ways forbidden to other FLDS men, that women married to him are part of a 'higher order,' and they should never tell others, including FLDS, what happens within their 'marriages' to him. That's a pretty classic sign of an abuser, not that this surprises anybody outside the FLDS. He tells his harem of victims that only he is permitted to do the things he does- that any other FLDS man would lose his priesthood.

Some of the evidence used against him was with him when he was first arrested.  But much of it also comes from the raid on the YfZ ranch, and one of the concerns many of the bloggers condemning the way the YfZ raid was handled (and we were justified by the court's subsequent overturning of Walther's orders and ordering the return of all the children) is the possibility that evidence against actually guilty parties might be tossed out eventually, on appeals, as fruit of a poison tree.  We'll have to wait and see on that.

Jeffs made the incredibly poor and foolish decision to fire his lawyers and defend himself in court- a decision I personally think is the providence of God, and I don't mean the god Jeffs serves.  If he continues in that vein, I doubt he's have much success in any appeals.  And the evidence that he was participating in deeds of darkness which he specifically condemned and denied to any other FLDS man may well be heartbreaking enough to sincere FLDS members who did not participate or support (or even know about) such actions. Perhaps the community will see big changes.

Or perhaps not.

and perhaps there will be no appeals so the question of the legality of the YfZ raid will never reach the Supreme Court..