Research resources: Apologetics Index entry on Polygamy
High profile prosecutions of fundamentalist Mormons who engaged in child marriages have shone an unwelcome spotlight on polygamous believers.
But the members of one polygamous sect — that does not allow underage followers to marry — say they are tired of living in secret and want to demonstrate plural marriage as a normal, loving lifestyle.
A polygamous cult of Mormonism, whose prophet is serving life in prison, is coming under increased scrutiny by U.S. authorities.
Arizona Attorney General Tom Horne has announced a criminal probe to determine whether marshals in the FLDS cult-dominated town of Colorado City are preventing women from leaving the polygamous sect.
The State of Texas on Wednesday took steps to seize the Yearning For Zion ranch where underage girls were involved in marriages to adult followers of the Fundamentalist Church of Latter-Day Saints (FLDS).
Last year the cult’s leader, Warren Jeffs, was sentenced to life plus 20 years in prison for sexually assaulting two underage followers he took as brides in what the FLDS considers “spiritual marriages.”
Under Texas law, law enforcement can try to seize property that was used to commit or facilitate certain criminal conduct.
The state of Utah must help pay more than $5.5 million in past-due bills owed to an accountant appointed to run the FLDS sect’s United Effort Plan property trust after it was taken over by the state, the Utah Supreme Court decided Friday.
Utah courts seized control of the trust in 2005 amid allegations by state attorneys that the cult’s leaders had mismanaged its assets.
Jessop sued after he was excommunicated, alledging he was blackmailed and pressured to lie for Warren Jeffs, who faced charges of under age marriages and child sexual assault.
In August, 2011, a Texas jury convicted polygamist sect leader Warren Jeffs of child sexual assault in a case stemming from two young followers he took as brides in what his church calls “spiritual marriages.”
Jeffs has appealed his conviction with ‘revelations’ in which Jesus Christ allegedly demands his release, but the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals has turned down the appeal.
In his appeal, Abram Harker Jeffs claimed that the state had insufficient evidence to prove that a sexual relationship had occurred between him and his wife, whom he married when she was 14 years old.
He was one of 12 men indicted after a 2008 law enforcement raid on the sect’s Texas-based ranch.
A Utah Attorney has a series of criminal investigations under way into members of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, the polygamous sect led by jailed cult leader Warren Jeffs.
Authorities in Texas have begun sharing some of the billions of pages of evidence seized in an April, 2008 raid on the sect’s ranch.
State Attorney General Tom Horne had championed the bill, saying Colorado City officers who are members of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints flout the law and are simply replaced by other followers of imprisoned FLDS leader Warren Jeffs if removed individually.
Cult leader Warren Jeffs has filed an appeal for his release. The appeal is in the form of three ‘revelations from Jesus Christ.’
The revelations threatens God’s “full whirlwind judgements” if he and other imprisoned leaders of the polygamous FLDS sect are not released.