Warren Jeffs - on 10 Most Wanted List

[maggie2]

The FBI has placed Warren Jeffs on its 10 Most Wanted List. For anyone who hasn't heard, Jeffs is the self-proclaimed leader of a fundamentalist Latter Day Saints group in Utah/Arizona. He apparently has a following of over 10,000 people.

He is accused of rape and sexual activities with young girls and boys, among other things. He appears to be pretty reprehensible.

I know there are many LDS folks here on RF and I'm wondering if this guy has created any backlash for any of you. Also, do people associate him with your faith? I understand fully that he has nothing to do with the mainstream Mormon church but I'm sure there are many who don't make that distinction. I hope you are not experiencing any problems from this.

Also, I'd like to know what everyone thinks about Jeffs and his group. Why isn't more being done to stop such a group when it is so obvious that women and children are being sexually abused? Girls as young as 12 and 13 are being forced into marriages with grown men, some of them 30+ years older than the girls. This has been going on for years now and very, very little has been done about it until now. Any comments?

 

[robtex]

Here is a CNN link for this thread:
http://www.cnn.com/2006/LAW/05/02/polygamist.prosecuted.ap/index.html

 

[evearael]

Why isn't more being done to stop such a group when it is so obvious that women and children are being sexually abused?

It's an epidemic that people are apathetic to... Too many view the perpetrator as being provoked, and thus not worthy of punishment, and view the victims as harlots who brought it on themselves and deserve it and shouldn't complain. The other issue is the he said she said aspect of the cases... DAs and CAs want to prosecute cases they know they can win, and it can be quite difficult without physical evidence, not to mention the judge is well aware of how many women 'cry rape' falsely.

We need a cultural shift in this country to support the survivors, encourage them to come forward, ensure they get necessary treatment, aggressive pursuit of convictions with much stiffer penalties, especially for cases involving children and repeat offenders. We need to ameliorate the issues that allow these atrocities to flourish.

http://www.cdc.gov/ncipc/factsheets/svfacts.htm

 

[Katzpur]

The FBI has placed Warren Jeffs on its 10 Most Wanted List. For anyone who hasn't heard, Jeffs is the self-proclaimed leader of a fundamentalist Latter Day Saints group in Utah/Arizona. He apparently has a following of over 10,000 people.

He is accused of rape and sexual activities with young girls and boys, among other things. He appears to be pretty reprehensible.

I know there are many LDS folks here on RF and I'm wondering if this guy has created any backlash for any of you. Also, do people associate him with your faith? I understand fully that he has nothing to do with the mainstream Mormon church but I'm sure there are many who don't make that distinction. I hope you are not experiencing any problems from this.

Also, I'd like to know what everyone thinks about Jeffs and his group. Why isn't more being done to stop such a group when it is so obvious that women and children are being sexually abused? Girls as young as 12 and 13 are being forced into marriages with grown men, some of them 30+ years older than the girls. This has been going on for years now and very, very little has been done about it until now. Any comments?

Hi, Maggie.

When I first saw the thread, I thought, "Oh, boy. Here we go again." Then I saw that it was not on the LDS forum and I was kind of relieved at that. Then I noticed who started the thread, and I was even more relieved. So thank you, thank you, thank you for where you put the thread and how you began by pointing out that Jeffs is not a member of our Church.

I'm sure a great many uninformed people do associate him with our Church, which is unfortunate, because we consider him to be as big a slime ball as everyone else does. I hope they catch him fast, and being on America's Most Wanted, there's a good possibility that they will. His group migrates back and forth across state lines and are actually more elusive than you might think it possible for them to be. Let's just hope that they wither and die once their leadership is gone.

 

[aboody]

He is accused of rape and sexual activities with young girls and boys

how bad this guy is! I hope he die as soon as possible

 

[Bishka]

how bad this guy is! I hope he die as soon as possible

I don't. I hope he's languishes in a prison cell, and have everyone there know that he rapes young girls. That's how he should go.

 

[jonny]

I see this as a problem that the government created and now they're dealing with it. If they didn't force these people into hiding by making their religious beliefs (which are harmless) illegal we might be in a completely different place today.

I don't feel any backlash, but I'm in Utah and no one I've talked to really seems to care about it.

 

[jonny]

It's an epidemic that people are apathetic to... Too many view the perpetrator as being provoked, and thus not worthy of punishment, and view the victims as harlots who brought it on themselves and deserve it and shouldn't complain. The other issue is the he said she said aspect of the cases... DAs and CAs want to prosecute cases they know they can win, and it can be quite difficult without physical evidence, not to mention the judge is well aware of how many women 'cry rape' falsely.

We need a cultural shift in this country to support the survivors, encourage them to come forward, ensure they get necessary treatment, aggressive pursuit of convictions with much stiffer penalties, especially for cases involving children and repeat offenders. We need to ameliorate the issues that allow these atrocities to flourish.

http://www.cdc.gov/ncipc/factsheets/svfacts.htm

They tried doing something about it in the 50s or 60s and it was PR disaster for the state of Utah. Since then no politician wants to be responsible for doing anything about it. I've been told that the images of families being torn apart didn't go over too well.

 

[jonny]

Here is a reference to what I described above. I guess it was Arizona that did it.

The decades of the 1940s and 1950s saw considerable conflict between the fundamentalists and government officials, as well as some internal conflict. In 1953 a raid by the Arizona state government to break up the community by taking children away from parents was a dismal failure. Though 263 children were seized, within three years all had been returned to their families in what had become an expensive and unpopular public embarrassment. The raid was traumatic for all and today has gained legendary status. This would also represent the last legal prosecution of fundamentalists affiliated with the Short Creek community for practicing plural marriage.

http://historytogo.utah.gov/utah_chapters/utah_today/thenewpolygamy.html

 

[jonny]

Here are some more articles:
http://www.childpro.org/2001-2002 media/2001-02 media 01.htm
http://historytogo.utah.gov/salt_lake_tribune/history_matters/052001.html

 

[Booko]

I'm sure a great many uninformed people do associate him with our Church, which is unfortunate, because we consider him to be as big a slime ball as everyone else does.

I was very unhappy to see Anderson Cooper on CNN reporting in front of the Mormon Temple, though this guy has nothing to do with you. Would he stand in front of the Crystal Cathedral in CA and report on Jim Jones? Somehow, I don't think so.

I sent CNN a letter about it. They did say there was no connection bewteen LDS and Jeffs in their story, but you know about those pictures and 1000 words. It added nothing to the story but potential confusion.

 

[Bishka]

I was very unhappy to see Anderson Cooper on CNN reporting in front of the Mormon Temple, though this guy has nothing to do with you. Would he stand in front of the Crystal Cathedral in CA and report on Jim Jones? Somehow, I don't think so.

I sent CNN a letter about it. They did say there was no connection bewteen LDS and Jeffs in their story, but you know about those pictures and 1000 words. It added nothing to the story but potential confusion.

Thank you. Unfortuanley the media loves to connect the Mormons to just about anything, and will.

 

[standing_on_one_foot]

It's not just that people blamed the victims...the police in the area were pretty much on the side of this group of religious nuts. Apparently, if you tried to report abuse, they'd often just send the complaint to the religious leaders (like this guy). It's an unpleasant sounding community.

And besides the allegations of abuse, there's stuff about very young girls being forced into marriage, boys being driven off because they'd be competition for women (since with the polygamy this group has, the ratio ends up skewed), kids having to leave school young to do dangerous jobs...very unpleasant.

From the articles I've read they've been careful to mention that this isn't connected with or condoned by the LDS Church; it's a little troubling about the picture.

 

[Katzpur]

I was very unhappy to see Anderson Cooper on CNN reporting in front of the Mormon Temple, though this guy has nothing to do with you. Would he stand in front of the Crystal Cathedral in CA and report on Jim Jones? Somehow, I don't think so.

I sent CNN a letter about it. They did say there was no connection bewteen LDS and Jeffs in their story, but you know about those pictures and 1000 words. It added nothing to the story but potential confusion.

Wow, Booko! That was way, way nice of you. Yeah, it really sucks that such a supposedly reputable news agency as CNN would stoop to that level. I hope you told them you weren't LDS.