Court: Texas Had No Right to Take Children from Polygamist Sect

indicted



Leader Jeffs, 5 others indicted in FLDS polygamist case
Months after Texas raid, church members are charged with such offenses as sexual assault of a child and bigamy


By TERRI LANGFORD
Copyright 2008 Houston Chronicle

ELDORADO — Five members of a West Texas polygamist sect, including leader Warren Jeffs, were indicted Tuesday in Schleicher County on charges of sexual assault of a child. A sixth member was indicted on charges of failing to report child abuse.

The indictments were handed up more than three months after Texas law enforcement raided the group's ranch near Eldorado and began investigating whether underage girls were being forced to have sex with adult men.

"There will be an aggressive effort to apprehend them," Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott said of the indicted sect members about an hour after grand jurors left.

Abbott would divulge only Jeffs' name because he is already behind bars, convicted in Utah last year on two counts of being an accomplice to rape. He is awaiting trial in Arizona on sexual misconduct charges.

The names of the others, all members of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, will not be released until they are arrested. It is not known whether the men are in Texas, or even in the United States.

Sheriff David Doran said it was likely the arrests would be handled by the Texas Rangers with his office assisting. He offered little other information about the indictments.

One of the five men indicted also was charged with bigamy. The sixth man was charged with failure to report child abuse, the only misdemeanor charge.


Grand jury to meet again
The indictments bring to a close the second act of a drama that began four years ago when locals discovered that men who bought 1,700 acres for a hunting retreat were FLDS members looking for a place to relocate some of their congregation from their home along the Arizona-Utah border.

The grand jury will meet again Aug. 21 to hear more evidence against the group, but this first set of indictments is considered a needed win for the state of Texas.

State authorities captured the nation's attention when they removed more than 400 children from the group's Yearning For Zion Ranch after a possible hoax tip brought Texas Child Protective Services to the ranch on April 3.

The next day, hundreds of CPS and Texas law enforcement agents swooped into the ranch, taking the children and their mothers in for questioning.

The officials collected at least 1,000 boxes of documents and records from the ranch, seeking to shed light on polygamist practices involving underage girls.

Also, DNA samples were taken from the children and some of the parents to try to establish which children belonged to which parents, particularly an underage parent.

The children were returned a month later after the Texas Supreme Court said the agency did not prove that the children were in so much danger that removal was the only option.

The FLDS began moving hundreds of its members to the 1,700-acre Yearning For Zion Ranch in 2004, about the time their president and prophet, Jeffs, became wanted by police for his role in forcing young girls to marry in Utah.

The FLDS claims the twin border cities of Hildale, Utah, and Colorado City, Ariz., as its home, with satellite settlements in South Dakota and other states and in Canada.


Denial of forced marriages
Jeffs has married girls as young as 11, according to evidence entered in court since the raid.

While the group acknowledges that unions between underage girls and men exist, they have stressed that such unions are rare and are the girl's choice.

It is thought that no marriages, underage or otherwise, have been conducted in the FLDS since Jeffs' conviction in 2006. The group believes that only the prophet can preside over marriages.

No FLDS spokesman returned calls for comment following Tuesday's indictments.

Before the indictments were announced at about 6:30 p.m., the proceedings slowed to a crawl, sources told the Houston Chronicle, over questions on whether immunity offered by the state to female FLDS members could protect them from prosecution for federal crimes.

The issue was eventually cleared up, but officials would not say how, nor would they talk about the grand jury proceedings, which are secret.


Taking the Fifth?
State District Judge Barbara Walther was called to the secret proceedings and presided in a room separate from the grand jury, sources told the Chronicle. Witnesses who continued to take the Fifth Amendment privilege not to testify, even though they had immunity but feared federal prosecution, reportedly were instructed about their rights and possible contempt charges if they declined to cooperate.

The Texas Attorney General's Office declined to discuss what happened.

One of the women who was called before the grand jury Tuesday was a 16-year-old at the center of a civil battle over which attorney represents her. The teen was married at 15 to 34-year-old Raymond Jessop, the son of Jeffs' chief deputy, Merrill Jessop. She was the third girl from the Jeffs family to marry Raymond Jessop.

Two of her sisters were also married to Jessop. Her mother Annette stood outside the grand jury room but did not testify.

Only one male member of the sect was subpoenaed to testify: Willie Jessop, the former bodyguard of jailed president and sect prophet, Warren Jeffs.

"It'll all come out," Jessop said as he waited in the Schleicher County Courthouse.

Asked if he expected members of his church to be indicted, he said. "I don't know. I hope not." Asked how FLDS members were doing, he said: "Hopefully, they can answer that for themselves."