Polygamist Cult Found Guilty of Violating Civil Rights
The end has always held particular fascination for Warren Jeffs.
Even before he proclaimed himself prophet of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, the 10,000 strong polygamist cult in southern Utah, he envisioned the end of the world, relating to his followers terrifying visions of plagues, pestilence and Jesus descending in red robes of vengeance.
The end may have finally come for Jeffs and his flock, just not in the way any of them imagined. This afternoon at a federal courthouse in Phoenix, a jury returned a guilty verdict against Colorado City, Arizona and Hildale, Utah — the two towns that make up the fundamentalist Mormon community of Short Creek — finding that city officials there have engaged in a pattern of discrimination against non-believers, denying them building permits, police protection and water hookups for years. The verdict comes after a three year investigation by the Department of Justice and nearly seven weeks of testimony, during which former members testified that Jeffs, who is serving a life sentence in Texas for multiple convictions of child rape, still runs the church and that under his orders FLDS leaders and city officials conspired to push “apostates” out of town, at times using the town marshals as a de facto enforcement arm of the church.
With the verdict in hand, criminal charges against high ranking FLDS leadership are likely to follow and both towns could go into receivership, or temporary federal or state control. The mayors may be dismissed. The town marshals offices could be disbanded. The last theocracy in America will be no more.
But is it the end of the FLDS?
Maybe, says Isaac Wyler, a former member who testified in the trial for the Department of Justice and still lives in Short Creek, and maybe not. “This is huge, it really cripples them, but I don’t know if it’s the end,” he says.
The verdict comes at a time in which the FLDS faces existential threats, seemingly from all sides. A week before the jury began deliberations in Phoenix, the FBI raided church controlled businesses in Short Creek, removing boxes of evidence they say implicates sect leaders in large scale welfare fraud and money laundering, in which they used millions of dollars in food stamps to cover church expenses. While the raid was underway, federal agents 400 miles north in Salt Lake City were arresting top FLDS leadership, including Warren Jeffs’ brother Lyle, who runs Short Creek in his brother’s absence. By the end of the day, the U.S. Attorney in Utah had announced the indictments of 11 top leaders, eventually bringing all of them in to custody. If the FLDS was the mob, an apt comparison according to some former members, the feds had nabbed all the capos and generals on the same day.