Attorneys for Jeffs seek dismissal of incest charges
KINGMAN, Ariz. (AP) - Attorneys for polygamist sect leader Warren Jeffs want an Arizona judge to dismiss incest charges in cases pending in Arizona.
The Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints leader is charged as an accomplice in a Mohave County, Ariz., court. The charges stem from two arranged marriages between teenage girls and their older male relatives......
http://news.aol.com/story/_a/attorne...10124909990008
Utah sects won't be raided, attorney general says
AP
Posted: 2008-05-09 14:25:45
ST. GEORGE, Utah (AP) - A raid at the Texas ranch of a polygamous sect was no surprise given the secrecy surrounding the group, but Utah authorities would never act in a similar way, Attorney General Mark Shurtleff said.
"I know you are worried about that. We're not going to do it," Shurtleff said Thursday during a public meeting on polygamy at the Dixie Center. "We don't believe that is the answer.".....
http://news.aol.com/story/_a/utah-se...09142509990026
Letter asks Bush to help FLDS kids
A hand-delivered letter to President Bush at his Crawford, Texas, ranch asks the new father-in-law to intervene in the plight of hundreds of FLDS children and their parents.
The 10-page letter was written and delivered on Saturday by FLDS member Willie Jessop to staff members at Bush's ranch. The president and his family were at the ranch for daughter Jenna's wedding to Henry Hager. "I was not there to make a political statement or to detract in any way from the wedding," said Jessop. "I just wanted to deliver the letter. Staff members for the president took the letter, read it, and we talked about its contents. It was a cordial, sensitive meeting. They were great and said they would get back to me."
http://www.deseretnews.com/article/1...224855,00.html
Feds will review issues in polygamous communities
AP
Posted: 2008-05-08 13:18:46
SALT LAKE CITY (AP) - A federal prosecutor has been assigned to look for ways to help tackle problems associated with polygamy in Western states, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said.
"This is precisely the kind of help I believe the federal government should provide," Reid said in a letter to attorneys general in Utah and Arizona. "Your requests for federal funding to assist victims of domestic violence also merit prompt review."
Reid's letter, dated Monday, said the Justice Department can strengthen efforts to fight crime within polygamous groups.
http://news.aol.com/story/_a/feds-wi...08131809990011
Church records offer rare look inside families who lived in polygamist sect
By MICHELLE ROBERTS,
AP
Posted: 2008-05-08 20:02:27
SAN ANTONIO (AP) - Hand-scrawled records taken from a polygamist sect are helping untangle the spider-web network of family relationships at the Yearning For Zion ranch, where some husbands had more than a dozen wives.
The church records offer a peek into an intricate culture in which men related to the sect's prophet, Warren Jeffs, enjoyed favored-husband status in the distribution of wives and all young women were married by 24.
An Associated Press analysis of the records, which authorities seized in a raid last month, show that by the time a girl reached 16, she was more likely to be married than to live as a child in her father's household. The same was not true for boys.
http://news.aol.com/story/_a/church-...08200209990005
Yahweh sect may be Texas test case
12:00 AM CDT on Sunday, May 11, 2008
By PAUL MEYER / The Dallas Morning News
pmeyer@dallasnews.com
CALLAHAN COUNTY – In his first sermon after leaving jail, Yisrayl "Buffalo Bill" Hawkins was in classic form: folksy, paternal and apocalyptic.
"No, we're not getting ready to kill ourselves," said the prophet of the House of Yahweh, a barbed wire kingdom of brimstone prophecies and abject poverty 15 miles southeast of Abilene. "We're getting ready to live through the greatest tribulation that ever will be."
http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcont...2.46f2f8b.html
Raid on ranch reverberates into Canada
The April 3 police raid of a polygamist compound in West Texas, which has mushroomed into the largest child abuse investigation in the nation's history, has unnerved polygamists across the country and into Canada. There, authorities have long wanted to halt the rituals of plural marriages and underage sex in Bountiful, British Columbia.
"Clearly, they know that the spotlight is on them," Wally Oppal, the province's attorney general, said of the approximately 3,000 residents of Bountiful, near the American border and the foothills of the Rocky Mountains.
http://www.star-telegram.com/804/story/635576.html
Op-ed column: False child abuse claims must be investigated
The removal of more than 400 children from the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter Day Saints (FLDS) compound in Texas made front-page news for several days in April. However, a follow-up Associated Press story revealing that the phone call that initiated the raid was a hoax got short shrift.
Rozita Swinton, who has been arrested and charged with misdemeanors more than once for making false phone calls about child abuse, has been questioned by Texas Rangers and may be the person who made the phone call.
http://www.dailygazette.com/news/200...s-must-be-inv/
Probe could halt cross-border trade in young women
VANCOUVER, British Columbia -- A federal prosecutor will work with state and local authorities to end lawlessness in polygamous communities and may stop the so-called polygamy underground railway across the Canada-U.S. border.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said this week that a senior prosecutor in the U.S. deputy attorney general's office would carry out the review with the attorneys-general of Nevada, Arizona and Utah.
Reid described the problem as an "epidemic of lawlessness in polygamous communities."
Reid had previously contacted U.S. Attorney General Michael Mukasey to urge a review of how the federal government could help state and local authorities "tackle this complex problem."
Arizona Attorney-General Terry Goddard said yesterday that he welcomes the review, which he and others had sought three or four years ago. "The problem traditionally has been that the laws have not been enforced in these remote communities in Utah, Arizona and Nevada," he said.
"My fundamental guiding star is, there is nothing special here. They need to follow the law like anyone else and it is up to us as prosecutors to make sure it happens," Goddard said.
The Canadian government should be working with the United States on the cross-border issues, said British Columbia legislator Bill Bennett.
http://www.heraldextra.com/component...328/Itemid,53/