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Polygamy

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Attorneys for indicted members of the FLDS dropped a 7,000-page bombshell Wednesday on the 51st District Court, alleging that Texas Rangers misled Judge Barbara Walther into issuing a pair of search warrants that authorized last year’s raid on the polygamous sect’s Schleicher County compound.

The Texas Attorney General’s Office, which is handling the prosecutions, issued a statement Wednesday that called the FLDS motion “baseless and without merit.”
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Last year, Texas Child Protective Services removed 439 children living at a West Texas ranch owned by the Fundamentalist Church of Latter Day Saints because caseworkers reported finding evidence of girls being married to adults.

Today, FLDS members will testify before the Texas House Committee on Human Services. Committee members will be discussing what occurred in Eldorado last year, the state’s actions and discussing a new measure that would clarify alternatives CPS workers can take, when child abuse is suspected in a household.
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1 year after the raid on the Yearning for Zion ranch, just one child remains in state custody. Twelve men face criminal charges related to underage marriages; the first trial is set for October. A new legislative committee is set to explore “lessons learned” from the raid, which has cost upward of $15 million.

Texas authorities resolutely defend their actions as necessary for the children’s safety. And members of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints remain as firmly committed to their faith as ever.
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In January, the RCMP charged two prominent members of a fundamentalist Mormon sect in Bountiful, B.C., with practising polygamy.

The lawyer for one of them has vowed to cite his client’s religious freedom as a defence, leading some legal and constitutional experts to speculate the case could go all the way to the Supreme Court of Canada.
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Texas child welfare authorities are accusing a 17-year-old girl from the Fundamentalist LDS Church’s YFZ Ranch of switching babies to avoid having to undergo a DNA test.

In a court filing in San Angelo, Texas, made public on Monday, Child Protective Services urges a judge to cancel a Friday hearing over the girl and order her to undergo a psychological evaluation.
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Winston Blackmore has yet to enter his plea to the criminal charge of practising polygamy, but he’s already on his third lawyer, has filed for legal aid and asked Utah’s attorney-general for help in having his bail conditions amended.

Blackmore’s new lawyer is Joe Arvay, a well-known human rights and constitutional lawyer, whose firm successfully argued before the Supreme Court of Canada that the Constitution protects gays and lesbians from discrimination.
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Politicians are too scared to discuss multiple marriages in case they offend Muslims, shadow minister for Community Cohesion Baroness Warsi has claimed.

The Muslim peer blamed “cultural sensitivity” for the failure to tackle the problem of polygamy.
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Polygamists, ex-polygamists, activists, lawyers and government officials were all in the same room Saturday night, supporting the newest organization to reach out to offer help to people in Utah’s cloistered polygamous communities. A fundraiser gala at Gardner Village drew nearly 200 people for the debut of Holding Out HELP (Helping, Encouraging and Loving Polygamists).

The goal of “Holding Out HELP” is to provide shelter, food and clothing to those who want to leave polygamy and start a new life. And for those who want to stay with their families and community, Towell talks of counseling, legal assistance and support.
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Lawyers for FLDS leader Warren Jeffs are accusing Texas and Arizona authorities of blocking their efforts to ferret out the origins of the raid on the YFZ Ranch.

Their court filings show that a raid on the sect’s ranch last year has apparently spurred a federal grand jury investigation into members of the group.
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Winston Blackmore and James Oler, leaders of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints in Bountiful, B.C., were charged last month with practising polygamy.

The B.C. Civil Liberties Association is urging that the constitutionality of the anti-polygamy law be tested by a reference to the Supreme Court of Canada —a recommendation made in earlier legal opinions prepared for the B.C. attorney general.
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The arrests in Canada last month of two fundamentalist Mormon leaders are bringing renewed interest to their polygamous communities near Creston, B.C., and loyal followers living just across the border in Idaho’s Boundary County.

Winston Blackmore, 52, and James Oler, 44, who now head factions of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints in Canada, face prison terms if convicted of violating that country’s polygamy laws.
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Last year’s raid on the YFZ ranch destroyed the secrecy surrounding the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, possibly forever.

In the largest release of evidence to date, hundreds of pages of dictations by Jeffs to his wife Naomie were unsealed last week, painting a picture in Jeffs’ own words of a paranoid leader whose meticulous control over his flock knew no bounds, continuing even after his arrest and imprisonment for arranging a marriage between a 14-year-old girl and her 19-year-old cousin.
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A fiduciary overseeing a polygamous sect’s trust has sued the parents, a sister and former husband of Elissa Wall, saying they, not the trust, are responsible for her forced marriage at age 14.

He argues that any damages that may have resulted from her 2001 marriage to Allen Steed were “primarily and ultimately” caused by their failure to act.
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Even before he became a fugitive, polygamous sect leader Warren S. Jeffs began visiting state capitals to “shake the dust off his feet in condemnation,” asking that each be punished with “the wrath of God,” Utah Attorney General Mark Shurtleff said Friday.

Speaking to a symposium at the S.J. Quinney College of Law in Salt Lake City, Shurtleff said Jeffs visited all 48 contiguous states to perform the ordinance, which he detailed in “priesthood letters” and journals seized in April from the Yearning For Zion Ranch in Eldorado, Texas.
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Months of hearings, restraining orders, depositions and allegations of sexual abuse were washed away Friday when a Tom Green County district judge dismissed almost entirely a case involving the nearly 18-year-old daughter of polygamous sect leader Warren Jeffs.

Citing the decision last week by the state’s Child Protective Services agency to drop the girl from its investigation, 51st District Judge Barbara Walther ended all ongoing litigation in the case, leaving open only the question of who should pay the attorney fees.
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A 14-year-old thought to be the youngest bride of jailed polygamist leader Warren Jeffs was advised through text messages to “please stay angry” and to “keep crying, pout, sleep in” in an attempt to manipulate Texas caseworkers, according to a report filed with a San Angelo court.

The girl is the only one of 439 children taken in last year’s raid of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints ranch in Eldorado who remains in foster care.
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Texas Child Protective Services notified a judge Monday that it is removing the 17-year-old daughter of jailed polygamist sect leader Warren Jeffs from court supervision even though evidence shows her father encouraged her marriage to a 34-year-old sect member.

The teen’s removal leaves under court supervision only three of 439 children CPS removed last April from the sect’s ranch in Eldorado.
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Jessop, a top leader of the polygamous Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints that runs the Schleicher County ranch, invoked the Fifth Amendment 267 times on questions as minor as whether he drives a car and as significant as whether his now-14-year-old daughter was involved in a sexual relationship with sect leader Warren Jeffs.

The deposition was conducted principally by Denton family law attorney Natalie Malonis, who has said she sought information about the sect’s finances in the hopes of providing financial means for her 17-year-old client, a daughter of Jeffs who sect documents say was married at age 15 to a 36-year-old son of Merril Jessop.
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Betty Jane Jessop’s favorite phrase: “Good grief!”

That’s what Betty utters as she reads the new epilogue in her mother’s best-selling book, Escape. In those pages, Carolyn Jessop describes her daughter’s return to the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, calling her brainwashed.

Betty said she decided to write a book about her own experiences after watching news reports about Texas authorities’ raid on the Yearning For Zion Ranch and her mother’s “ridiculous” comments about the community.
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The practice of polygamy sets neighbour against neighbour, parent against child, politician against politician and even some husbands against wives in this southeastern B.C. town.

It’s not that townsfolk here are polygamists. But Creston’s proximity to the fundamentalist Mormon community of Bountiful, where some men unabashedly have more than one wife, makes it a more frequent topic than most would like.
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The lawyer for a B.C. polygamous sect leader plans to defend his client’s right to marry more than one woman by citing gay marriage and cohabitation arrangements.

Blair Suffredine, who is representing Winston Blackmore in court Wednesday, will challenge the legitimacy of the Criminal Code’s ban on polygamy, arguing it contravenes religious protections under the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
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Texas lawmakers lawmakers are drafting legislation they hope will prevent a repeat of the costly and controversial removal of hundreds of children from a Schleicher County polygamous compound.

Reps. Harvey Hilderbran, R-Kerrville, and Drew Darby, R-San Angelo, are working on a bill they say would provide the state’s Child Protective Services agency with more authority to remove alleged perpetrators at the outset of an investigation into reported abuse.
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The bitter rivalry between two religious leaders in B.C. charged last week with polygamy could lead to two separate trials, increasing costs and prolonging a process that is already expected to stretch over a number of years.

Mr. Robertson would prefer to have both men on trial at the same time. But Mr. Blackmore and Mr. Oler have the option to ask for separate trials, Mr. Robertson said in an interview.
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The grand jury indicted 12 members of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints last year on charges related to underage marriages.

The judge also set May 13 to hear arguments for throwing out evidence seized from the Yearning For Zion Ranch, which authorities raided in April after receiving a call alleging abuse.
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The simple answer is that despite having interviewed more than 90 people in B.C., Idaho, Utah, Arizona and Nevada, RCMP were unable to find anyone willing to testify to any of those offenses. And without witnesses or victims, the likelihood of getting a conviction is very low and one of the thresholds for laying charges in British Columbia is crown prosecutors must be convinced that conviction is not only possible, but likely.

The problem with the charge of polygamy against Blackmore and Oler is that there are those in the legal community — including many in the attorney general’s ministry — who believe that the polygamy offense is invalid because of the constitutional guarantee of religious freedom.
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Most Read about Polygamy

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1. Polygamy... Utah's Open Little Secret
2. Cult stories enough to make you want to cry
3. Jane Doe in Warren Jeffs case no longer seeks anonymity, shows photo
4. Thou shalt obey
5. Escape from polygamy: Ex-plural wife alleges rampant abuse in FLDS unions
6. Warren Jeffs: Fugitive Mormon leader's reign of fear ended by traffic violation
7. 1984 Lafferty case still haunts
8. Winston Blackmore: Polygamist group's leader expects to be charged soon
9. At Warren Jeff trial, an inside look at his church
10. Meeting sheds light on Colorado City polygamist sect

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