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Leftovers
In the aftermath of FLDS fiasco, the Senate held a committee meeting yesterday on "crimes associated with polygamy." According to the NY Times, majority leader Harry Reid "introduced legislation Wednesday calling for a national task force on polygamy and a $4 million fund to bolster law enforcement and social service efforts to fight it and associated crimes." (As you'll recall, FLDS prophet Warren Jeffs was arrested in Reid's home state of Nevada.) Today, FLDS members will speak at a Senate hearing, though the Times quotes a social worker with relatives in the church as saying that the FLDS would never abandon its multiply-marrying ways. “It’s essential to their faith,” she said. “You can’t enter the celestial kingdom unless you’ve been entered into a polygamous or plural marriage.” [NY Times]
Big Love
Warren Jeffs Indicted On Child Sex Charges…Again
Prophet Warren Jeffs and the Fundamentalist Latter Day Saints are back in the news again, this time with another indictment relating to statutory rape. In El Dorado, the town outside the Yearning For Zion ranch, Jeffs and four other FLDS members have been charged with felony sexual abuse, and a fifth was indicted for failing to report child abuse, the AP reports. One of the followers is also facing a charge of bigamy but surprisingly, the bigamist is not Jeffs, though grand juries have been shown pictures of Jeffs fondling and kissing three of his alleged underage "spiritual" wives. (Although he has not been hit with bigamy charges yet, Jeffs isn't off the hook for those disturbing photos. CNN reports that DNA tests have been run to determine whether Jeffs is the father of the children born to the very young girls Jeffs is smooching in those pictures.) More »
Even though they shun mainstream American culture, the Fundamentalist Latter Day Saints definitely embrace the American way: they're taking national notoriety and turning it into cold, hard cash. According to the Salt Lake Tribune, the FLDSers have started a website, fldsdress.com the demure prairie dresses seen on the sect's female members are for sale. Maggie Jessop, a resident of the YFZ ranch and a seamstress, tells the Tribune, "Our motive is not to flaunt ourselves or our religion before the world. We have to make a living the same as everyone does." The dresses pictured at left are called the "Teen Vest Dress" and retail for $54.95. [Salt Lake Tribune via Reason]
big love
Warren Jeffs' Daughter Trying To Dump Attorney In Polygamist Sex Abuse Trial
Teresa Jeffs (not pictured here), the 16-year-old daughter of deposed Fundamentalist Latter Day Saints prophet and convicted sex offender Warren Jeffs, is denying that she was sexually abused, and she is speaking out against her court-appointed lawyer, Natalie Malonis. Malonis filed an emergency restraining order against church elder Willie Jessop on Friday, insisting that Jessop was influencing her client. Friday's motion alleged that Jessop has a history of tampering with FLDS witnesses as he "attempted to intimidate witness Elissa Wall during Jeffs' trial last year." Wall testified against Warren Jeffs in the case that sent him to federal prison on two counts of being an accomplice to rape for forcing a then-14-year-old Elissa into a spiritual marriage with her 19-year-old cousin. Teresa has also been barred from speaking to her father, though this is common practice with parents who are convicted sex offenders. On Sunday, Teresa sent an email correspondence she had with Malonis to the Salt Lake Tribune. More »
big love
Commune-Raised Writer Asks Everyone To Go Easy On FLDS Kids
While the majority of the FLDS minors have been returned to their parents, the daughter of Warren Jeffs, the former FLDS head honcho who is currently serving time for being an accomplice to rape, returned her mother, but with special restrictions, reports the Dallas Morning News. Apparently the girl's lawyer "complained she'd been sexually abused by a man in the group and might be in danger," so while the teen has been reunited with her mother Annette, Annette has been ordered to stay in the San Antonio area and barred from returning to the Yearning For Zion ranch. But, as the Dallas Morning News points out, the majority of children were thrilled to be reunited with their parents, which goes to show that at least some measure of the public hand-wringing over the fate of these kids (of which I am also guilty) is potentially overblown. Lee Ann Kinkade, who grew up on a commune in Virginia, sympathizes with the FLDS kids in today's Slate because she knows what it's like to grow up outside of mainstream society. More »
The reunions have begun between FLDS parents and the children that the state of Texas temporarily detained. Church spokesman Willie Jessop said the church will no longer sanction unions of underage girls and will "counsel members against such unions." The state of Texas did manage to prove that as many as five of the FLDS teenage girls were sexually abused, but there do not seem to be any immediate repercussions to this conclusion. Many of the FLDS parents have moved off the Yearning For Zion ranch and have rented temporary homes in Amarillo and San Antonio, the AP reports. However, the court order does not require parents to renounce polygamy, nor does it place restrictions on the children's fathers. [AP via MSNBC]
news roundup
She's Spent Sixteen Years On Your Trail…
- Hillary suffered a coughing fit in South Dakota today and might give up altogether tomorrow. I have been suffering coughing fits all weekend and I haven't even managed to give up smoking, so I'm not placing any bets, but apparently there's a deal in the works for the Obama campaign to Bernanke her Bear Stearns. [Huff Po]
- Speaking! Krugman defends Bernanke on the grounds that there are no unions in America sending inflation spiraling of control with their wage demands like there were in the seventies. But hello Paul, you know what the Chinese were making in the seventies? [NYT]
- Also, I bet Americans had slightly less than a trillion dollars in credit card debt in the seventies. [WSJ]
- Stuff we did have in the seventies besides unions: regulations and trade barriers. Without those things to eradicate economic growth may be so hard to achieve that Barack Obama can call himself the "growth candidate" with his proposals to focus on preschool. [Wash Post]
A Texas judge has set the minors from the Fundamentalist Church of Latter Day Saints free, reports CNN. Judge Barbara Walther said that the FLDS parents can start picking up their children immediately, though the Department of Family and Protective Services will be checking in on the polygamist sect, and, according to CNN, "These unannounced visits could entail medical, psychological and psychiatric examinations, and the parents must not intervene." FLDS parents must also complete parenting classes and are not allowed to leave the state of Texas without notifying authorities in advance. [CNN]
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