Polygamy Cult 's Civil War

With Warren Jeffs in prison for life, a new “prophet” is trying to seize control of the cult from his family. Carol McKinley on the nasty battle, which includes threats, spies—and the FBI. 

Two weeks after cult leader Warren Jeffs was convicted on two counts of child rape, members of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (FLDS) find themselves torn between dueling prophets trying to wrest control of America’s largest polygamy movement.

The common sentiment inside the cult’s Short Creek compound, on the Arizona-Utah border, remains that “Uncle Warren” was framed, according to insiders, despite heaps of damning evidence presented by prosecutors during his bizarre two-week trial. Meanwhile, Jeffs has told his followers that he’s in jail for life because they were unwilling to repent.

Into this confusion, another so-called prophet, William Edson Jessop, is making a power play. Jessop has been holding alternative Sunday services, and the day after Jeffs was effectively muzzled, arriving at a prison in Huntsville, Texas, on Aug. 10, Jessop sent a typed message to 1,800 FLDS families in Short Creek. “This is a letter as a brother and a friend,” it begins, and warns Jeffs’s followers that if they don’t “come clean,” they will “be going down with the wicked and be damned.”  While Jeffs claims to be above the law, Jessop says he will not ignore the “laws of the land.” In other words, no underage marriages on his watch.

Jessop has been using Jeffs’s own words to position himself as the divinely anointed heir. In January 2007, Jeffs made a tearful taped confession from a Utah jail that he was a phony, calling himself “the greatest of all sinners and the wickedest man.” On the prison video, Jeffs proclaimed that Jessop was the true prophet. While Jeffs later recounted this statement, he gave Jessop an opening, which he’s now trying to leverage.

Jessop warns Jeffs’s followers that if they don’t “come clean,” they will “be going down with the wicked and be damned.”

But Jeffs will not let go of his flock quietly, even from jail. (Beyond the giant statue, they are planning for the convicted rapist.) Within minutes of the mailing, Lyle Jeffs, a younger brother who has been leading the cult in Jeffs’s absence, got word of Jessop’s note and relayed a mass text, ordering families to disregard the “poison.” Many of Jessop’s letters ended up unopened and tossed in the post office’s junk-mail garbage can.

Former cult members claim that such bullying tactics from what they call “Warren’s god squad” are commonplace. “They have spies,” says Andrew Chatwin, who was once in FLDS. “It’s a pattern. As soon as there’s word about any outside influence, the people are ordered to turn it away.” Chatwin believes it will take at least a year before Jeffs’s followers begin to come to grips with his horrible crimes: “He still has a hold on the community. Warren’s con job is still on.”

If the parking lot of the FLDS meeting house is any indication, Chatwin’s take seems spot-on. Short Creek residents report that Jeffs’s church was packed with thousands of worshipers yesterday. Meanwhile, Jessop’s upstart “true FLDS” congregation has been assembling only around 200, though that is well up from the handful who turned out before the conviction.

When I was in Short Creek recently on assignment doing a mini-documentary on the sect, I visited Jessop’s service, held in the back of an excavation business. Just before 11 a.m., cars start pulling up, van doors slide open, and hopeful believers spill out carrying pies and covered dishes to share after the 90-minute service. The day I was there, some of them actually waved, curious about the Gentile lady in the pants. Little girls in braids and prairie dresses and boys in black ties and dusty Sunday shoes peaked at our crew from behind their mother’s skirts. This is a refreshing change from the old FLDS stealth team, which follows outsiders, taking pictures and generally bullying them out of town.

In fact, if you look closely, you’ll see a creepy reminder of Warren Jeffs’s paranoid dictatorship focused on the parking lot. Carved into the high wall of the building next door to Jessop’s church, there is an unnatural-looking hole in what must be the attic. It is a camera, placed there to spy on the folks who dare to show their faces. Anyone caught on the surveillance tape is ex-communicated.  “One day, we got a boy to climb up in there and cut the wires,” one of Jessop’s followers tells me. “They probably went right back and fixed it. But it felt good.”

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(Source: http://www.thedailybeast.com/)

FALL OF A 'PROPHET'

Jeffs maintains control, but time may be limited.

Ranch leadership said to be in upheaval.

Dozers and dump trucks line up just inside the gates of the sprawling Yearning for Zion Ranch near Eldorado. A white temple gleams two miles north of the gates, and a construction crane looms over other buildings on the ranch.

A video camera in a protective bubble serves as a security eye of what's going on at the entrance of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints compound.  Over the intercom, a man fields a request to speak with the bishop of the polygamist sect's ranch about coming onto the property to talk to FLDS members. "I don't think he would be interested," the voice crackles over the speakers.

Days earlier, a Tom Green County jury had convicted Warren Jeffs — the self-appointed prophet of the FLDS church — of sexually assaulting girls 12 and 15 years old, based largely on evidence collected during an April 2008 raid of the YFZ Ranch.
Jeffs is serving life plus 20 years in prison.
The ranch remains isolated from the outside world — an order issued by Jeffs to all FLDS members to block coverage of his fate in a San Angelo courtroom.
Local leadership at the YFZ Ranch is in upheaval, with bishops at the isolated compound coming and going.
"They now rotate out weekly," said Willie R. Jessop, an FLDS member and advocate for YFZ Ranch residents.
While Texas authorities have succeeded in locking Jeffs away, that hasn't immediately severed his authority over the FLDS church, especially at the YFZ Ranch.
Observers say they aren't sure how long Jeffs will be able to maintain control of church's 10,000 members and more than $110 million in assets across the United States and Canada.

They also fear that the underage marriage and sexual assault of children could continue if Jeffs maintains absolute rule.

Jeffs' fall in the Texas court system has renewed an earlier challenge from William E. Jessop, an exiled member of the FLDS, who claims he was given legitimate authority to rule from Jeffs' father, the previous "prophet."
William E. Jessop on Aug. 10 sent a letter to Warren Jeffs' brother, Lyle, and FLDS members in their community that straddles the Utah-Arizona border condemning "abominations" by Jeffs.
"You condone the immorality by your failure to accept once again the terrible deeds that were done, by believing you can sit in the halls of the court and turn off the evidence and deny the abominations of Warren Jeffs," Jessop wrote.
The letter, which was mailed to FLDS members, calls for openness in information about Jeffs' confession to his brothers about not being the true FLDS leader.
For now, Warren Jeffs has turned to Lyle Jeffs for help leading the church. Lyle Jeffs, it seems, is acting as the de facto leader. He denied a Standard-Times request to visit the ranch during his brother's trial.
Lyle Jeffs is the bishop of the Hildale, Utah, and Colorado City, Ariz., border twin cities known collectively as Short Creek.
He helped his brother in the courthouse, retrieving and distributing documents. At times, Lyle Jeffs sat with another FLDS member in the hallway, shying away from media inquiries about YFZ Ranch residents' reaction to the trial.
"What he will be doing is managing in the name of Warren till Warren dies," said Carolyn Jessop, a former FLDS member. She grew up in the FLDS church and still stays in close contact with FLDS members.
Ken Driggs, an attorney in Georgia who has written academic work on the FLDS, said he doesn't believe Warren Jeffs will remain in control for long.
"I don't see how Warren can continue as the absolute leader," Driggs said. "His communication is going to be diminished."
Jeffs, like other Huntsville inmates, will be allowed to establish a 10-name visitors list and permitted to phone the people on that list for a total of 15 minutes a day, to a maximum of 240 minutes a month. In the Reagan County Jail where he awaited trial in Texas for seven months, Jeffs had unlimited access to the jail pay phone using prepaid phone cards.
Warren Jeffs continued as prophet from his jail cells before his trial. Jeffs excommunicated dozens of men and reassigned families from behind bars, members in the sect said.
Willie R. Jessop, once an ardent defender of Warren Jeffs, is working with William E. Jessop, who is said to have about 200 followers. Willie R. Jessop is calling for the removal of the guard tower at the YFZ Ranch to make the community a more open society.
"He is a leader out of respect," Willie R. Jessop said. "Warren is a leader out of a usurpative dictatorship."
In 2007, Warren Jeffs said he was not the prophet and never had been the prophet, but that William E. Jessop had been the rightful successor all along. Jeffs later retracted his confession. He said it was a test of faithfulness for his people.
Following the clash with Jeffs, William E. Jessop was removed from the church.
He is described as a reserved farmer who finds peace in his fields after being exiled from Short Creek, where he was bishop. He tried unsuccessfully to take hold of the "FLDS corporation of the presidency" and "presiding bishop" by filing documents with the Utah Division of Corporations and Commercial Code.
In that filing, William E. Jessop wrote: "Warren S. Jeffs informed me that he does not hold priesthood and that he had been immoral. He also informed me that he was aware of my ordination performed by his father, Rulon T. Jeffs, and he acknowledged that I am the Key Holder, (i.e., the person appointed to be the prophet of the FLDS church)."
State officials in Utah rejected Jessop's efforts, leaving Jeffs in control of the corporations.
Utah commerce regulations don't automatically bar criminals from holding these types of positions, said Jennifer Bolton, a spokeswoman for the Utah Division of Corporations.The division would only act to remove a criminal if "ordered to do so by a court of law," Bolton said.
Willie R. Jessop said the issue of who controls the official presidency and presiding bishop in the corporation is important. For real progress to happen in the FLDS, it must be a grass-roots effort that will take education and a change of leadership, he said.
"This crisis has got to be fixed from within," Willie R. Jessop said.

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(Source: http://www.gosanangelo.com)