Links [updated 10/6]

[walton]

http://www.statesman.com/news/conten...radocosts.html

The massive child welfare operation that began in early April with a state raid of a West Texas ranch owned by a polygamous sect cost nearly $7.5 million in the first 19 days, according to records from Gov. Rick Perry's office.

[walton]

http://bankingonheaven.com/

BANKING ON HEAVEN is the inside story of the largest polygamous enclave in the United States, written, produced, and narrated by Laurie Allen, who escaped a similar polygamous sect at age sixteen.

Watch the trailer.

[walton]

http://thehopeorg.org/

The HOPE Organization


The HOPE Organization is a non-profit group dedicated to assisting survivors of abuse within polygamous relationships
on their courageous journey to personal freedom.

Many many stories here. Check the tabs way up on top of the page.

[LLaFren]

Has anyone PM'd CW yet about the lost thread? There were several threads on there that I had not yet had time to read.

If you have PM me and I'll leave CW alone, otherwise I'll PM.

LL

[walton]

http://www.sltrib.com/polygamy

Brooke Adams has been covering the Polygamy issues for years. She has just about everything here.

Her blog: http://blogs.sltrib.com/plurallife/

Polygamy leadership tree: http://extras.sltrib.com/specials/po...amyLeaders.pdf


Much much more at the top link.

[KatyDid]

Church records offer rare look inside polygamist families

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories...MPLATE=DEFAULT

http://tinyurl.com/3nl3qs

[KatyDid]

http://www.wivesofjosephsmith.org/

A biography of Joseph Smith's wives. VERY interesting to read their own documentation about their lives as polygamist wives.

[walton]

http://www.rickross.com/groups/polygamy.html

This page contains information The Rick A. Ross Institute has
gathered about Polygamist Groups.


http://www.rickross.com/
An Internet archive of information about cults, destructive cults, controversial groups and movements. The Rick A. Ross Institute of New Jersey (RI) is a nonprofit public resource with a vast archive that contains thousands of individual documents.



There are many stories here concerning not only this cult but other cults as well.

[KatyDid]

Attorney objects to book by witness in Jeffs trial

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories...MPLATE=DEFAULT

http://tinyurl.com/4j9m4e

(just in case the long link doesn't work)

[KatyDid]

Polygamist sect's finances are murky

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories...MPLATE=DEFAULT

http://tinyurl.com/4og3yo
(just in case the long link doesn't work)

[walton]

http://myeldorado.net/

contains the Bishops list, civil citations and letters the FLDS have written to Gov. Perry, Gov. Huntsman etc.

[walton]

http://www.phoenixnewtimes.com/2003-...-exposure/full

Fundamentalist Mormon prophet Warren Jeffs came close to getting arrested over the last year because the Utah Attorney General's Office believed he wanted disobedient teenager Vanessa Rohbock sacrificed to the Lord in a religious ritual called Blood Atonement.

[walton]

http://www.rickross.com/reference/po...lygamy917.html

On the outskirts of Las Vegas, _Warren Jeffs, the prophet and leader of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, the polygamist sect of Mormonism known as the F.L.D.S., barreled down Interstate 15 in a red Cadillac Escalade. Driving him was Isaac Jeffs, one of his dozen or so brothers. Naomi Jeffs-a beautiful 32-year-old blond with hair to her knees who was both Warren's former stepmother and the wife he reportedly called 91-rode in back. They carried $57,000 in cash in the lining of a suitcase, 16 cell phones, 12 pairs of sunglasses, four laptops, three wigs, a fistful of keys to other luxury vehicles, and a cache of handwritten letters addressed to "the Prophet."



Really good article.

[walton]

http://www.sltrib.com/news/ci_9283126

Mohave County Superior Court Judge Steven Conn heard arguments from both defense and prosecuting attorneys "and has taken the matters under advisement," stated a news release from the Mohave County Attorney's Office. Conn will rule in the matter by minute order, the release stated. A defense motion seeking medical records is also pending.

[KatyDid]

http://www.phoenixnewtimes.com/2005-...rbidden-fruit/

Forbidden Fruit

Inbreeding among polygamists along the Arizona-Utah border is producing a caste of severely retarded and deformed children
By John Dougherty
Published on December 29, 2005

Fifteen years ago, a strange-looking child suffering from severe physical maladies and acute retardation was brought into the office of Dr. Theodore Tarby.



Interview with doctor that treated many of the children with fumarase deficiency.

[KatyDid]

http://attorneygeneral.utah.gov/cmsd...The_Primer.pdf

Page 45:
Psychological Impact on Women and Children
by Dr Larry Beall, Clinical Director of the Trauma Awareness and Treatment Center in Salt Lake City.

He has provided professional services for numerous women and children who chose to leave polygamy.

[KatyDid]

http://www.i4m.com/think/polygamy/index.html

a compilation of numerous documents regarding polygamy and Joseph Smith.

[KatyDid]

http://people.howstuffworks.com/polygamy1.htm


The Dark Side of Polygamy
It's almost impossible to find hard statistics about polygamy, because plural marriages are rarely documented. Many Mormon fundamentalist sects are closed communities that shun contact with non-members. So it's difficult to determine the frequency of abuses such as marrying minors, marriages between close relatives or physical and sexual abuse. However, a wealth of anecdotal evidence suggests that these abuses often occur.
In addition to such traumatic abuses, people who have left (or, in their words, "escaped") polygamist families point out that the structure of such families crushes female independence. Husbands are absolute authorities, and wives and children are completely subservient to them. Because wives are so dependent on their husband and the other wives, they often lack the life skills to live on their own. This makes it especially difficult to leave. In addition, many polygamist wives were born and raised in polygamist families. They have been in the polygamist lifestyle from birth, so they have a hard time seeing a way out.


http://people.howstuffworks.com/polygamy2.htm

[KatyDid]

http://www.apologeticsindex.org/122-...arch-resources

A plethora of links and information at this website.

[walton]

http://www.cnn.com/2008/US/04/17/polygamy.pentagon/

The U.S. government paid more than $1.7 million in defense contracts over the last decade to companies owned by leaders of Warren Jeffs' polygamous sect, with tens of thousands allegedly winding its way back to Jeffs and his church.

The Pentagon had contracts with three companies with ties to Warren Jeffs' polygamous sect.

In fact, some of the deals were made after Jeffs was named to the FBI's "Most-Wanted List" and remained in place while he was on the run.

CNN has learned that between 1998 and 2007, the United States Air Force and Defense Logistics Agency purchased more than $1.7 million worth of airplane parts from three companies owned by members of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which practices polygamy.

[walton]

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/m...3/ai_n16176673

giant green patch stands out from the surrounding Nevada desert. And the greenery may be an important source of revenue for the church led by fugitive polygamist Warren Jeffs.

Over the past two years, families linked to Jeffs have quietly begun operating a large hay farm in a remote valley 30 miles north of Pioche, Nev. Investigators are trying to figure out if farm equipment, and even buildings, have been illegally moved there from the Utah-Arizona border.

A former insider says he believes the Nevada operation, known as Atlanta Farms, was launched with the approval and direction of Jeffs. "It's all his doing," said Sterling Harker.

[walton]

http://www.adl.org/learn/ext_us/Litt...m=little_shell

Law enforcement officers and public officials around the country are encountering members of a new and active anti-government extremist group that calls itself the "Little Shell Pembina Band of North America." Members of the group claim that they belong to a "sovereign" Native American tribe and therefore are not subject to laws and regulations; in reality, the "Little Shell Pembina Band" is part of the anti-government "sovereign citizen" movement. Its members' activities range from driving with bogus license plates to perpetrating insurance fraud schemes to tax evasion.


http://blogs.sltrib.com/plurallife/a...01_archive.htm Brookes blog entry June 29, 2006

You may remember that in May, Terrill Johnson, interim mayor of Colorado City, was arrested during a town council meeting for fraudulent vehicle registration.

Apparently, skipping over the border to register vehicles may not be the only way a few residents in the polygamous community at the Utah/Arizona border try to avoid paying state taxes.

A couple of residents apparently have bought membership in the so-called "Little Shell Pembina Band of North America" in an attempt to gain protection from state laws under its "sovereign nation" claim.

[walton]

http://www.xmission.com/~plporter/lds/kingston.htm From 1998

A young girl's desperate attempt to flee a polygamous marriage to her uncle has put the Kingston clan where it doesn't want to be: in the public spotlight.

The "organization, as insiders refer to it, has maintained a remarkably low profile in Utah at the same time it has built a financial empire that ranks it among Utah's most sizable corporations. Various reports have estimated the Kingston holdings at $150 million to $170 million.

But one source intimately familiar with the Kingston organization's inner workings - and who asked to remain unnamed out of fear of reprisals from the family - says an oft-published $170 million figure is laughably low.

[walton]

http://dir.salon.com/story/mwt/hot/1998/07/28/28hot/

Last week a judge in Brigham City, Utah, ordered John Daniel Kingston, a prominent member of a polygamist group, to stand trial for the recent assault of his 16-year-old daughter. Kingston, a vice president in a Salt Lake City accounting and auditing firm, allegedly beat his daughter unconscious because she did not want to be the 15th wife of his brother, her own uncle, in a marriage arranged by Kingston, 43.

At the pretrial hearing, the teenager -- who is not being identified and is now in foster care -- testified that on May 24 her father took her to a remote family ranch near the Idaho border, ordered her into a barn and made her take off her jacket, then whipped her with his belt at least 28 times for rebelling against the arranged marriage to David O. Kingston, a blood relative twice her age.

[walton]

http://bulk.resource.org/courts.gov/...5.89-4090.html

In the early morning hours of January 16, 1988, a stake house owned by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints at Marion, Utah, was extensively damaged when a dynamite device exploded inside it. Addam admitted that he had created the device, placed it in the building, and set it to explode. After setting the device, Addam returned to the Singer property located approximately one mile east of the stake house where he observed the explosion with others residing at the property. Addam resided at the property with his wives, Vickie's daughters (Charlotte and Heidi), Jonathan, Vickie, Timothy, and six children.



Please read more at the link.

[evalles]

photos of Elissa Wall and Allen Steed after their "marriage" from the trials's Evidence - 1 Black Photo Binder released September 25, 2007

http://www.childbrides.org/Black_Binder.pdf


Read the "M.J." Settlement Agreement with the UEP Trust presented to Bruce Wisan on May 17, 2007 and publically released on September 21, 2007

http://www.childbrides.org/settlementagreement0001.pdf

[walton]

http://www.bismarcktribune.com/series/kahl/

Fifteen ticks, 15 tocks.

Tick-tock, tick-tock.

Thirty seconds that lasted forever. Thirty seconds soaked in blood.

Six men were shot and two were killed in a gunfight that nobody wanted to happen but some saw as inevitable. Lead pierced bone and ruined lives. The shots tore through a security blanket that had coddled an entire state.

The stage was a roadblock on an empty stretch of highway just north of Medina, bathed in the last light of dusk. It was a clear Sunday evening, just before six, warm for February. Federal lawmen from Bismarck and Fargo were there to arrest a man for a misdemeanor probation violation. Maybe you remember his name. If you live around here you do.

Gordon Kahl.

Kahl didn't want to be arrested. His son, Yorie Kahl, and friend Scott Faul were with him. They aimed rifles at the lawmen. The lawmen aimed back.

http://www.adl.org/learn/ext_us/Litt...m=little_shell

Ronald Brakke (Tribal Spokesman). Brakke is a long-time sovereign citizen activist from North Dakota. According to a colleague, he is an "expert on banking, credit, mortgage and entitlement." During the 1980s, Brakke, once a farmer, was involved with Posse Comitatus-style groups that promoted fictitious financial instruments, bogus trusts and similar schemes. In 1991, he was convicted for theft after harvesting crops on property owned by a bank.

[lotty]

http://www.bcmmin.org/polyg3.html

MORMON POLYGAMY - FROM MEN AND FOR MEN?
INTRODUCTION
At times members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints will defend their church's practice of polygamy in the past (about 1832-1890) by saying there was a shortage of husbands therefor some took on more than one wife. Others have said polygamy was practiced to provide a husband for older women. Are these true? Did those that practiced polygamy take their direction from the standard works, their Scriptures? The answer to both of these questions is, "No."
John Farkas

IMO an interesting read.

[KatyDid]

Regarding the census count during the time polygamy was initiated as a religious practice by Joseph Smith.

http://www.i4m.com/think/polygamy/utah_census.htm

"One of the most popular explanations in the LDS church about polygamy is the notion that polygamy became necessary because there was a surplus of women and a shortage of men. This common belief by uninformed Mormons is complete nonsense, and is not true.

The Utah Historical Society includes population statistics in their library. The source for these statistics is the United States Bureau of Census.

Utah population:
1850 total 11,380 male 6,046 female 5,334
1860 total 40,273 male 20,255 female 20,018
1870 total 86,786 male 44,121 female 42,665
1880 total 143,963 male 74,509 female 68,454
1890 total 210,779 male 111,975 female 98,804
1900 total 276,749 male 141,687 female 135,062

The census figures after the periods listed above are irrelevant, but it's interesting to note that there were more males than females in Utah from the early settlement until the 1960 census."

[walton]

http://www.splcenter.org/intel/intel...le.jsp?pid=878

It's a tough town for Engels. The police are followers of Jeffs and are not warm to Engels' presence among them. They follow him regularly, and they carry guns.

Rumors about a cave in the cliffs filled with a stockpile of weapons have been circulating for years. The cave exists, but Engels can't say for sure what's inside. He does offer this: "We do know that in 1982, 150 assault rifles were brought here as well as a few hundred thousand rounds of ammunition."

What happened to the weapons is unclear.

[lotty]

http://extras.sltrib.com/specials/polygamy/Timeline.asp

1928
The first polygamists move to Short Creek, enticed by its isolation.

1935
J. Leslie Broadbent dies. John Y. Barlow is named his successor, causing a rift with those who believed Elden Kingston was next in line. Kingston leaves to start his own group.

John Y. Barlow moves to Short Creek to establish a United Order, in which polygamists share resources. That same year, Arizona authorities raid the town and arrest six polygamists, two of whom are imprisoned.
...
2004
FLDS leader expells 21 men from church



__________________________________________
http://www.polygamy-faq.com/chronology.php
Polygamy
The Mormon Enigma
A Chronology of Modern Polygamy

JMO This timeline runs through 2007.

[lotty]

http://www.watchman.org/old_wf/asset...ds_profile.pdf

Fundamentalist Church of Jesus
Christ of Latter Day Saints (FLDS)

[KatyDid]

The latest on tomorrow's hearings in Texas:

http://www.sltrib.com/polygamy/ci_9295315

Hearings begin Monday
Attorneys want FLDS children treated as individuals in court
Texas officials claim sect supports systemic abuse

By Brooke Adams
The Salt Lake Tribune

Article Last Updated: 05/18/2008 12:32:13 AM MDT


The Jessop family in 2007. Left to right, Ziana, Joseph Sr., Joseph Edson, Lori, and Joseph Jr. The state of Texas has conceded Lori Jessop is an adult, and is allowing her to stay with her children, who are in the custody of Texas child welfare officials. PRNewsFoto (PRNewsFoto)Cases for seven children from one family, five from another and at least two fathered by polygamous sect leader Warren S. Jeffs are among those set for court Monday as the next phase begins in the largest child welfare action in United States history.

In all, attorneys for at least 35 children or their parents will converge on the Tom Green County Courthouse in San Angelo, Texas, for the first day of mandatory status hearings that continue through June 4.

[walton]

http://www.religionnewsblog.com/9696...-for-bountiful

The battle for control of the fundamentalist church has torn a swath through Jane Blackmore’s fragile new life. A slight, intense 48-year-old with jet-black hair and sad, dark eyes, she sits in her Cranbrook home — 90 minutes and a world apart from her past as the first of an estimated 26 wives of Winston Blackmore. She is a nurse and, until her recent divorce from Blackmore, she served as midwife in Bountiful, a role she still fills on occasion. She has admitted in the past to aiding births for mothers as young as 15. She’s delivered many of her ex-husband’s estimated 80 children by other wives. These aren’t subjects for today, she says firmly. If authorities do investigate Bountiful, she says, “I’ll be willing to do my part.” Jane left her husband, lost her faith and walked away from the cloistered world of Bountiful, but it is the disappearance of her 23-year-old daughter Susie and her young grandsons that most troubles her.

Susie, like most teen girls in Bountiful, and like Jane herself, married young to a man assigned by the church. Her appointed husband was Ben Johnson, a devout fundamentalist whom Susie, then 17, hadn’t met. “She flew with her father to Salt Lake City, met him and married him five minutes later,” says Jane. They settled in Colorado City, where Johnson later took a second wife. Trouble began when Jeffs gained control of the church. Johnson is an ardent follower.

[walton]

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,230711,00.html

Prosecutors allege the bride, who is referred to in court documents as Jane Doe No. 4, told Jeffs she didn't want to marry — she believed she was too young. Later, she begged to be released from the union, saying she didn't like marital relations.

But Jeffs said the marriage was her religious duty and threatened her with the loss of her salvation, court documents state.

[walton]

http://www.rickross.com/reference/po...lygamy440.html

A southern Texas ranch owned by a Utah-based fundamentalist religious sect is facing more than $34,000 in fines for environmental violations related to construction on the property.

Documents obtained by The Associated Press show the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality has filed two separate enforcement actions against YFZ Land LLC, the holding company that owns the 1,691-acre ranch near Eldorado, Texas.

[walton]

http://www.rickross.com/reference/po...lygamy817.html

Kauffman and Laurie Allen, who escaped from polygamy, drove around one such community, in Colorado City, Ariz., and saw many mammoth homes built to accommodate multiple wives and children.

How the man of the house can afford to build such super-sized dwellings! The answer: He can't. He doesn't pay for them, you do.

As Allen explained to Kauffman, "What happens is a man marries one wife, she's his legal wife, then he marries ten other wives in the church, and all the other wives are, by law, single women, so they have all these children with him, and they all get welfare."

[walton]

http://www.rickross.com/reference/po...lygamy772.html

Hoole represents Johnny Jessop, who sued Jeffs in hopes of being reunited with his mother, Elsie Jessop. The teen spoke with his mother several times after filing his lawsuit last year, but has had no contact with her since.

"He just wants to be back with his mom," Hoole said of Jessop, 19. "There is only one person who can do that."

[walton]

http://www.sltrib.com/news/ci_5778176

Story originally published April 29, 2007
For seven months, Wendell Musser served in Warren S. Jeffs' inner circle, working as a courier and family caretaker for wives of the fugitive polygamous sect leader. Musser's clandestine "mission" had a story line drawn from a spy novel. There were midnight rides to secret locations; shifting hideouts; disposable phones; high-tech tracking equipment; a fleet of expensive vehicles; disguises.


http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIP...17/acd.01.html

TUCHMAN (voice-over): Warren Jeffs is now in jail, awaiting trial. He's accused of arranging marriages of young girls to men. He's pleaded not guilty to the charges against him.

But for those still devoted for the church, devotion to Jeffs, who they believe is a prophet, often takes precedence over one's own flesh and blood.

(on camera) Do the officials in the church know where she is?

MUSSER: Yes, they do.

TUCHMAN: And what do they tell you when you say you want to be brought back to your wife?

MUSSER: They tell me to walk away. To -- that they're not mine, that they've been placed to another man.

TUCHMAN (voice-over): Musser says he has 45 brothers and sisters and three mothers. And he had a special relationship with Warren Jeffs.

MUSSER: He is my uncle, my real uncle. My mother is his sister.

TUCHMAN: In the winter of 2005, he received a phone call from the so-called prophet, who Musser estimates has around 180 wives.

[walton]

http://www.rickross.com/reference/po...lygamy595.html

Johnny, a so-called Lost Boy ordered out of Hildale five years ago, has written Jeffs several letters pleading for help.



"I don't know what I did that was so bad as a 13-year-old to be forever cut off from my family," Johnny wrote in the first letter, sent a day after Thanksgiving. "I know that you alone have the ability to allow her to see me again. . . . All I want is to see her and be her son."