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A 25-year-old woman has escaped from the polygamist community where Warren Jeffs's other wives still live. Her flight shows that even though Jeffs is in jail, the nightmare may not be over for some of his followers. More »
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Polygamist leader Warren Jeffs, who had been hospitalized at the East Texas Medical Center in Tyler after refusing to eat, was transferred to a prison hospital in Galveston today after his condition was upgraded from critical to serious. Jeffs told prison officials that he was fasting, but wasn't on a hunger strike. Prison spokeswoman Michelle Lyons says reports that Jeffs was in a medically induced coma were incorrect, though "he was sedated." Two years ago Jeffs was force fed in an Arizona prison, and Lyons says, "We do have a policy in place where medical professionals can evaluate the situation and if it's medically necessary they can move to force feed the inmate." More »
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Polygamist leader Warren Jeffs was hospitalized today and sources say he's been put in a medically induced coma. Jeffs hasn't been eating since he was sentenced to life in prison for sexually assaulting two underage girls. He has a history of fasting while incarcerated and is expected to survive. More »
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Though Warren Jeffs was sentenced to life in prison for sexually assaulting children earlier this week, his followers in the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter Day Saints remain loyal to him — so loyal that they're planning to erect a 38-foot statue of him at the FLDS compound on the Utah/Arizona border. Thanks to a no-media policy in the compound, Jeffs followers don't know about the evidence presented against him. Sources say that for those building the statue, this is a "way of showing them that they can't take him away from us." More »
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Former FLDS church member Jerusha Jeffs says she is "feels a lot stronger now" that her testimony about the abuse she suffered by her uncle's hand helped to send Warren Jeffs to prison. More »
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The Warren Jeffs trial came to a close today when the polygamist leader was given a life sentence for sexually assaulting two of his underage "spiritual wives." The Texas jury, which quickly found Jeffs guilty last week, deliberated for less than 30 minutes before giving Jeffs the maximum sentence of 99 years for one charge and 20 years for the other. More »
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It didn't take jurors long to make up their minds about polygamist leader Warren Jeffs. After only three and a half hours of deliberation, the 10 women and two men on the jury found him guilty of sexually assaulting a 12-year-old and a 14-year-old who were his "spiritual wives." More »
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Prosecutors rested their case against Warren Jeffs after playing several audio tapes which they say capture Jeffs sexually assaulting a 12-year-old girl. In the tapes Jeffs is heard instructing several women on how to please him sexually, saying this will please God, and panting heavily. Jurors were also presented with sections of Jeffs' journals, in which he writes that one of his alleged victims, "experienced a heavenly session with us and obtained a greater testimony ... though 12 years old, she has advanced quickly and got close. And she is being prepared to be a strength in the heavenly sessions." Witnesses testified that "heavenly sessions" was how Jeffs referred to sex. More »
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The Warren Jeffs trial got a lot wackier yesterday when the polygamist leader charged with sexually assaulting two teenage girls fired his defense team and declared that he'll be representing himself. So far he's off to an impressive start: He refused to make an opening statement or enter a plea. More »
]]> http://jezebel.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5825828&view=rss&microfeed=true The trial of Fundamentalist Church of Latter-Day Saints leader Warren Jeffs starts today in San Angelo, TX. Jeffs is charged with sexual assault of a child and aggravated sexual assault of a child stemming from his "celestial marriages" to two underage girls. If convicted, he could be sentenced to up to 119 years in prison. More »
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Never-before-seen 1944 photos of Utah's polygamous FLDS community show how much things have changed in the era of Sister Wives — and how much they haven't. More »
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Far too rarely does fashion ask the question, 'What would happen if a bunch of FLDS children hung out with a bunch of goths in an old AOL chat room?' Luckily, for that we have a little magazine called Dis. More »
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In this week's compilation of pop culture crap, James Franco plummets to his death on General Hospital, Stephen Colbert and Andy Cohen reenact a Real Housewives scene, and dogs that sniff butts for cancer. More »
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Polygamist leader Warren Jeffs will leave prison to stand trial again, now that his original conviction for serving as an accomplice to rape has been overturned. Is this justice? More »
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On Tuesday, polygamist leader Warren Jeffs' lawyers asked the Utah Supreme Court to overturn his accomplice to rape conviction, arguing that he didn't know the 14-year-old girl he married to her 19-year-old cousin would be forced to have sex. [UPI] More »
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Five members of the FLDS sect in Texas turned themselves in yesterday to face charges related to child abuse. Five of them, including sect leader Warren Jeffs, were indicted last week on charges that they had sex with minors. The sixth man, Lloyd Hammon Barlow (middle guy in the bottom row) was only charged with failing to report three cases of abuse. These are the first indictments of anyone since Texas authorities raided the camp in April, which sort of makes you wonder exactly why the legal bar is higher for an indictment on misdemeanor charges than it is to remove 440 children from their homes. [AP] More »
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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 »
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New DNA tests have finally cleared JonBenet Ramsey's family from the 1996 killing, freeing them from the infamous "umbrella of suspicion" from investigators and pretty much everyone on Earth.• A combination of increased Internet time, alcohol consumption, and little sleep can result in "gradual gains in body weight" in adolescent girls. Hey! They do the same for non-adolescent women too. • A Danish zookeeper's cat adopted a "rejected" red panda cub to raise. Sadly, there is no video. • Polygamist leader Warren Jeffs has been hospitalized in Las Vegas under an assumed name and police guard. • Hey Jezebels! The winners of our Label Whores giveaway have been announced. Claim your prizes! More »
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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 »
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FLDS church member Willie Jessop says that the state of Texas doesn't have a single teen girl in custody who cries "please save me". (And the preteen in these pictures with spiritual husband and former FLDS guru Warren Jeffs does look happy, doesn't she???) So it's curious, then, that fellow FLDS member Dan Jessop refused to be filmed by CBS News holding the photos seen at left after they were introduced into evidence by Texas authorities in the state and sect's ongoing custody battle, perhaps because the photos depict his little sister in Jeffs' arms. This is the rub of the Texas trial — everyone is fairly certain that sexual abuse is happening, but the evidence is still circumstantial (a Texas appeals court ruled that the removal of children from the Yearning For Zion Ranch was improper last week). However, Texas officials now fear that FLDS families will flee the state, according to the AP. More »
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Whether the state of Texas violated the rights of the Fundamentalist Latter Day Saints when it removed 400 some-odd children from the Yearning For Zion ranch is up for debate. What's not is the creepiness of these photos of former FLDS honcho Warren Jeffs sucking face with his child-brides. The Smoking Gun got a hold of images of Jeffs with two of his spiritual wives, Loretta and Merrianne. Merrianne, pictured here with Jeffs, was 12 when this photo was taken. These photos were used as evidence in the ongoing FLDS custody trials. Jeffs is currently in jail for coercing a 14-year-old girl to marry a 19-year-old. [The Smoking Gun] More »
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Elisa Wall's testimony — about how she was forced, at 14 years old, to marry her first cousin, and have nonconsensual sex with him — is what helped send Warren Jeffs, leader of the Mormon fundamentalist polygamist sect, to jail. Today she was on Oprah to talk about her experience. She described her upbringing and the lack of education she received, particularly about her own anatomy. Even though she begged to not marry her cousin at a young age, she was forced to go ahead with it, and was given no information about what would happen on her wedding night, explaining that she had thought beds were only used for sleeping, and that the entire experience of consummating her marriage was incredibly traumatic. Clip above. More »
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Sure, there are the sex beds and the surveillance towers and the hairdos and the unprecedented rate of birth defects, but at the end of the day, I am a nerd and the biggest source of curiosity regarding the members of the Fundamentalist Church of Latter-Day Saints is where they get their money and how they are using it. So thank you, Portfolio for your May story about the accountant appointed by the state of Utah to manage the $110 million Pederasty Economy. Bruce Wisan was appointed to privatize the property once controlled by Warren Jeffs, who was a destructive lunatic who played a sort of Stalin to his dad's Lenin. Jeffs would order grain elevators dismantled in the middle of the night; if he decided to purge a man from the community — which happened often when that man coveted one of the others' wives or houses — he trained teams to "move a house in less than an hour." More »
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A group of representatives from the Fundamentalist Church of Latter Day Saints went on Today this morning to answer some of Meredith Vieira's questions about polygamy, child abuse, and poofy hairstyles, except they didn't actually give many answers, evading Vieira's queries with skill of a veteran politician. When asked if they think having sex with a 13-year-old girl is child abuse, one of the men answered, "I would never do such a thing," effectively skirting the question. (FDLS leader, Warren Jeffs, was jailed for coercing a 14-year-old to marry her 19-year-old cousin.) The saddest part, though, was the total lack of affect in the womens' faces when they talked about their children being taken away. "We know they are in desperate need of their mothers. Right now," one of the wives said, her face utterly void of emotion. Clip above. More »
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Slate did the universe a service (yet again!) and read the memoir of a "fourth wife" in the Fundamentalist Church of Latter-Day Saints so we wouldn't have to puke all over the outfit we never took off after getting in last night. In summary, Carolyn Jessop was forced in her teens to marry a 50-year-old named Merril (though never forced to see him naked) who once became outraged when she ordered shrimp at a restaurant because he didn't like it, and wives should never like things their husbands don't. (Interesting philosophy!) They attended "public" schools staffed for and by Fundamentalists which taught children that dinosaurs and walking on the moon were lies. They reared their kids on spooky apocalyptic cowboy-indian games that underscored their belonging in a Master Race. One woman's childbirth involved being "given an episiotomy with sewing scissors and then stitched up with dental floss." More »
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The latest charming detail to emerge from the Texas Church of Latter-Day Old Fuckers Who Prey On Tweens: the "Sex Temple." (Not to be confused with the surveillance tower guarding the Sex Temple.) Click the pic to read two of the creepiest sections of the search warrant. [The Smoking Gun] More »
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So these polygamists: how did they pull it off? How did Warren Jeffs find time time to impregnate 70 women and run from the law? When your spiritual leader is on the FBI's 10 Most Wanted List and you've been chased out of two states and your creepy molestation cult is the subject of a Jon Krakauer book, just how do you go about finding the proper plot in West Texas on which to build your theme park-sized compound and commence bilking the government? Don't these people have a problem with birth defects? What of all the excess dudes? 100 years we've been putting up with this? What, is there some formidable pro-polygamy lobby keeping authorities from charging all these creepy old men marrying 13-year-olds because it will "break up families? (A: yes!) Didn't homeowners in El Dorado fear the whole "Waco" stigma? (Also yes!) Why was a sixteen-year-old who didn't even know how to spell her name the proverbial smoking gun here? And what's with the macro diet? Does it make up for all the inbreeding? Glamocracy's Megan Carpentier and I yearn to know more about Yearning For Zion, and we do all the morbid internet research so you don't have to, after the jump. More »
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Acting on a tip from a 16-year-old church member, Texas Child Protective Services arranged a raid on Friday at the compound of the polygamist sect The Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, 200 miles outside San Antonio. According to the AP, the teen caller said she was married and had a baby at age 15 with registered sex offender Dale Barlow, 50 — a clear violation of Texas law, as girls under 16 are not allowed to be wed, even with parental approval. The most recent reports state that Texas State troopers removed 219 people out of the compound —a former exotic game ranch, now called Yearning For Zion (YFZ) by the controversial church — but they've been as yet unable to locate the caller who notified child protective services in the first place. More »
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Elissa Wall, the star witness in the trial against former polygamist leader Warren Jeffs, is writing a memoir, to be titled, Stolen Innocence: My Story of Growing Up in a Polygamous Sect, Becoming a Teenage Bride, and Triumphing over Warren Jeffs. Walls was married at the age of 14 to her 19-year old cousin. Think she'll reference V.C Andrews? [Deseret Morning News] More »
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