Jeffs has been going through prolonged fasts ever since he was imprisoned 5 years ago.

From the article that Filly posted:



I'm guessing that Jeffs is experiencing organ failure due to prolonged though intermittent fasts over the past 5 years. While in prison in AZ, Jeffs was placed in soft restraints because he would kneel in prayer for extended periods of time, causing ulcers to form on his knees.

The power play that William Jessop is making may be complicated by Jeffs death (if he dies). I don't know that the community is ready to transfer their loyalty to another family so soon after Jeffs death. It would be easy for Jeffs' supporters (true supporters) to tell the followers that Jessop's attempt to grab power is responsible for Jeffs death. In general, Mormons believe strongly in signs and revelations. FLDS members take that to an extreme level.

Polygamy Cult's Civil War

h/t Sister Wives Blog

The Jessops are a major FLDS family; they have a lot of power in FLDS communities. Jessop is doing something very radical; under his leadership, Jessop's followers have begun sending their children to PUBLIC school. Jeffs pulled out all FLDS children from public schools years ago, and created his own curriculum. The idea of sending children to a real school is big. The idea of sending children to a non-FLDS (and non-religious school) is astonishing.

Should Jeffs die, I predict that William E Jessop will have to fight Lyle Jeffs (Warren's brother and current leader on behalf of Warren Jeffs) for power. The video tape of Jeffs saying that Jessop is the true prophet will bolster Jessop's claim, but the folks in Colorado City/Hildale (and satellite communities) will have a very difficult time breaking from the Jeffs. This is going to get messy.

Bravo, Stern.

I cannot understand anyone who could learn of what this man did to children and have even a spark of human feeling for him.

Reports of Jeffs health may be exaggerated; Phoenix News Time (Note: Phoenix New Time also reported the story of Jeffs' coma earlier today, but has posted this new article):



I don't know what the true story is. Really, all this story says is that Jeffs hasn't been starving himself. It doesn't much more.



Some suspect they that infanticide isn't unheard of when infants are born with abnormalities. Perhaps there is a higher infant mortality rate in FLDS communities because of inbreeding. FLDS members in Colorado City do have access to modern health care. At the TX compound, there is a fully trained, board certified FLDS family practitioner. I don't think that infant mortality at birth is a significant problem in the FLDS communities because the women have access to trained midwives and doctors.

Why do some suspect that infanticide is occurring? On FLDS compounds, there are a lot of child graves. In 2004, Flora Jessop requested that the FBI initiate a full investigation into this issue. Flora Jessop left Colorado City some time ago and operates a group that helps get women and children out of Colorado City. She is frequently interviewed by national media and has become a major source of insight into the FLDS community. Flora is a bit intense, so I do question whether she is the best or most accurate source on FLDS matters. However, she is far from the only on looking into "Babyland".

From Jessop's request/report (note, this isn't the most objective request/report):



No one outside the FLDS knows the official birth/death rates for FLDS communities.

Here is a partial inventory of graves in one of the Colorado City cemeteries:
From K D Ignatin's Scribd acct; Ignaton's website. FLDS members aren't always buried on the cemetery; some a buried at home or on hills, which is not illegal in Utah.

Other sources regarding Babyland and/or infanticide: http://www.counterpunch.org/2005/03/02/ ... statehood/.

Trailer to the documentary Banking on Heaven; infanticide is mentioned at 3:20.



The FLDS engages in some extreme forms of child abuse. It is reported that FLDS babies are "trained" not to cry in several ways (certainly not all families practice this). Adults (or older children) will clamp their hands around a baby's mouths and nose so that the baby can't breath, some dunk their baby's head in water and some put their baby's faces under running water, essentially water-boarding the baby. Some babies are slapped hard. Jeffs fully supported such actions.

Carolyn Jessop (a cousin of Flora's by marriage) is currently testifying in a Canadian polygamy case. She discusses how water torture is used to shape obedience in children:



There is a video at the link. Another video: Carolyn Jessop on Today, discussing water torture (cue to 1:40).

Carolyn was able to gain full custody of her 8 children because her husband was so abusive to her and her children. According to the article, water boarding was one of the abuse issues that helped Carolyn highlight how abusive Merril was to her children. Merril Jessop is now an FLDS Bishop in Colorado City.
Carolyn Jessop escaped from Colorado City with her 8 children (in 15 years; she spent 7 years of her life pregnant ) and wrote Escape and Triumph: Life After The Cult.

You can watch Carolyn Jessop discuss her book at The Tattered Cover Bookstore in Denver (one of my very fave bookstores). Carolyn Jessop's daughter Betty returned to Colorado City as soon as she turned 18.

I found a site that has a lot of the evidence gathered from the Yearning for Zion raid in 2008. The site has a document of notes that were made by Sam Barlow, an FLDS member, as he was working on a special assignment report for Jeffs. On page 8, water-boarding is referred to.

The report refers to the book The Dance of Anger, a popular self-help book published in 1985. It is quite interesting to me that Barlow would reference this book, let alone be able to access this book as an FLDS member.

According to this comment:



An interesting FLDS website!

They tried something similar to that in 1953. All it did was split up the families, sending each mother with her children to other polysemous compounds. If anything, the 1953 raid in Spring Creek (now Colorado City and Hildale) intensified the abuses and made way for Warren Jeffs. While polygamists have always been shunned, their self-imposed segregation was nothing like it is today.

I wrote a bit about the Short Creek raid here:



The Short Creek raid terrified every branch of the fundamentalist Mormon movement (FMM). Ever since the raid, branches of the FMM have become completely uncooperative with "outsiders". While the FLDS is the most extreme is their self-imposed segregation, every polygamous family in the US, Canada and Mexico lives in fear. FLDS families regularly move between the 3 countries.

IMO, we must decriminalize polygamy, and encourage members to come out of hiding. The fact that William Jessop is sending children to state public schools is a huge step in the right direction. Teachers and medical providers are on the front line for detecting child abuse. Decriminalization could increase the number of teenage girls who finish high school. It would be much easier for women to leave abusive marriages. While decriminalization won't cause massive changes in the FLDS church, it is, IMO, our only alternative if we truly wish to address the problems of abuse and inbreeding in the FLDS community.

It is very easy to see the abuses that occur in the FLDS church and assume that all of the women are victims and that all of the men are abusers. That is simply not true. There are good people in those communities. When you look at the FMM branches that are not controlled by Jeffs, you see much more mainstream fundamentalist families. If you saw a wife, her husband and their children out for dinner, you would assume that they were mainstream Christian fundamentalists or conservative Catholics.

It is easy to say that all of the responsibility for the abuses in the FLDS are on the head of Warren Jeffs and his father. Frankly, this isn't a cult that has always been so isolated. This is a cult that was forced into exile for their simple survival because we would not tolerate their religious expression. These men could have as many live-in mistresses as they wanted; instead, they formed committed relationships in which they cared for their children (I know, a fair percentage have gone far from that). But, I can't help but think that our (historical) hypocrisy allowed this situation to become extreme. We can't solve this as we have tried to for the past 100 years. Rather than worry about enforcing laws against polygamy, lets get to the point where women and children can get off the compounds so that if they need us, they can get to us. Right now we rely on underground railroads. Unless we change, the FLDS have no reason to do so.

I know I'm going to get a shit storm for that last paragraph. Please, have some mercy on me!

How would that be done? Cults have been very successful in keeping people under their control. Would it be law enforcement that ensures that escape is possible? How could even unbiased (not FLDS) officers do that?

There needs to be an inquiry into infant and child deaths in FLDS communities. Infanticide needs to be considered. There also needs to be an accounting of "the lost boys" who may have been expelled because there were no wives for them.

In general I agree that if consenting adults choose to live in some form of polygamous marriage, this should not be a criminal act. Jeffs went far beyond this; these were not adults when he assaulted them.

Moreover, power confounds these relationships and makes the "consent" questionable. If that power is over jobs and other things key to survival, over law enforcement, and ultimately over one's salvation, "consent" may be meaningless.

Ah, and there's the rub in this whole religion thing, it seems to me.

"God's gonna get you for that," and "you're going to burn in Hell unless you follow God's law (as delivered by me)" is pretty coercive. Could the leader's threatening someone with eternal damnation unless they submit and tithe be considered to be extortion? Maybe not legally, but it sure sounds like it to me. Yet it is the very nature of hellfire and brimstone "Christianity."

That is why it is so important to cults to keep their members out of contact with the outside world. No public school, no TV, no outside reading, etc. This is not restricted to Christianity, but it seems quite popular in that particular religion.

Education is the solution, but making education a possibility for people trapped in cults is hard. I have no idea how to do that without imposing the force of government, which might violate the freedom of religion clause.

I think the Framers meant for people to be able to choose their religion freely. That is not what happens within cults. There is only coercion, coupled with fear and lying.

As I recall, the Amish insist that their teenagers live outside the community for a year, so that they may freely choose whether or not to return. I'm not sure if this is true for all their teenagers or if it applies only to boys. Such a model would solve a lot of the problems caused by cults.

There are thousands of people living a poly lifestyle now, whether it's polyandrous or polygamous. It's just that with our puritanical society, they aren't married, or only married to one person.

I'm with LMK. As long as there are consenting adults in the relationship, why don't we allow them to commit legally?

Agreed, as far as adults are concerned. The issue here is the children. These types of cults always seem to have plenty of them. I've always felt that children should not be brainwashed to any particular religion, much less one where sex becomes such a major part of it at a young age.

I agree about children. But, unfortunately, all we can do is try our best to protect children from the abuse. We cannot mandate that a parent is not allowed to raise the child in his or her religion. It would be easier to see the signs of abuse in the children if their familes were more mainstreamed, as opposed to what is the state of affairs right now.

LM-K wrote:


This is the part I have a problem with. There are plenty of activities that we do not tolerate even though various groups have claimed them to be a part of their religious expression or traditions. Denying medical care to children, snake-handling, severe discipline of children causing them injuries, forced child marriages are the most common.

Jeff's cult wasn't driven underground or into isolation simply because of practicing polygamy. It was a way for one man to exert complete control over a community and dictate to them his desires or whims in the name of religious expression.

I do not see how legalizing polygamy changes anything. If the cult leader dictates grooming the children to satisfy his desires, he will still have to keep them in isolation and away from normal LE. I don't think you are suggesting we legalize forced child marriages to bring them into the mainstream and out of isolation. Most cult situations do not last and they do not end well whether it's the Manson family, Jonestown, the Branch Davidians, the Maharishi's, Doomsday cults or many others that are not as well-known.

If it's the kind of practice that society does not tolerate and drives them to isolation, there's usually a good reason the practice is not tolerated.

I'm with LMK as far as consensual polygamous relationships, or polyamorous relationships in general, involving adults.

However, as far as the FLDS goes, who gets to pay millions to support their profoundly retarded children, who are pervasively carriers of the genes for fumarase deficiency, a disease that renders one a very sick and mentally retarded individual whose medical expenses are staggering. What gives these child molesting bastards the right to inflict these costs on society?

America is far too tolerant of crimes committed in the name of religion, even crimes with such hideous outcomes as creating fumarase deficient babies.

There are more children with this disease in FLDS families than there are in the entire rest of the world.

These cults do not have the right to force children into incestuous marriages and then impregnate them with defective children.

If cults like FLDS live in fear, good. I'd rather they live in prison, and would not shed a tear if the "men" running that operation were rotting in their graves.

Jeffs hasn't had his diet recently of underaged girls.

Let him die.

I think he should be force-fed. I am certain there are a number of prisoners who would be willing to force-feed him protein and fluid, 5cc at a time.

I think Warren Jeffs should live a long time in prison. Let's not be inhuman here.

If he dies from his refusal to take fluids and food, he will become a martyr to the FLDS. His obscene presence will always be there, maybe in the person of his hand-picked successor. His teachings will be sanctified, and men will model their lives after his life. I hope that he dies an old man in jail, finally forgotten by the people over whom he exercised such evil power. There must be some good people in the FLDS who now have a chance to put things right.

I don't care. Martyrdom since 33 A.D. is overrated. Let him die.

I want Jeffs to live for a good long time, for the reasons that Toll gives and for one more. I want Jeffs to see himself become a footnote in FLDS history, watching as the people of Colorado City and hopefully Eldorado move on from his oppressive regime.

A few videos that may be of interest; rather than embed all the youtubes, I am just going to link to them.

Multiple Husbands

Wife Sharing

Free Love

Leaving Bountiful, Part 1 (Other parts are easy to find on youtube.)


From Funny or Die:

Polygamy: The Fragrance

The only way to put it right is to shut it down entirely. Its core beliefs are evil and its actual practices vile.

I do not see how it could be improved without destroying it. Any "good" version of FLDS simply put would not be FLDS at all.

I note that I would not say that about all polygamous groups.

In its century or so of existence, the FLDS [pedophiles] have lost several "prophets," and it has never slowed down their appetite for ruining their own people with inbreeding and incest. I highly doubt that the loss of Jeffs will do anything to clean out the dirt among them.

Having lived in Arizona for nine years, it's been interesting to watch the FLDS games. Colorado City (AZ) and Hilldale (UT) are run almost exclusively by FLDS members/elders. The police departments, the city attorneys, the school administrators, the hospitals, city councils, et. al. are run by the FLDS. Their move to Texas was an end run around the methodical uncovering of FLDS ways by Utah prosecutors who have finally decided to act.

This is part of why I think our federal standing doctrine is wrong. The very existence of an evil cult enclave posing as a municipality or set of municipalities and then inflicting crimes against humanity on their residents is a threat to all of society and a violation of the Constitution.

The people personally harmed by it are either inured to being incestuously raped or unaware that this is even wrong, because of cult brainwashing.

If cults like this aren't an argument for taxpayer standing, I don't know what is.

Then there is the wholesale theft of government funds, acquired in the name of public works, schools, etc., that go to things like cars, airplanes & real estate for the FLDS 'elders' (white scumbag misogynists with giant, multi-winged homes and legions of female servants and child sex slaves).

I'm generally against the death penalty as it is carried out in this country, but jeffs, like gacey, bundy, et. al. before him, have earned the that device that cuts cancers out of society.

I'm anti- death penalty also but if they choose to starve themselves to death, that's a-ok with me.