Details of Sect Life Emerge After Raid
A fascinating account over at AOL News about daily life in the FLDS, which was raided last week. As we all know, hundreds of women and girls were taken away from the sect by US federal authorities. Now that the sect has been raided we can finally understand what daily life was like for its members, and more specifically for the sect’s female members.
Until the raid on their compound last week, the woman and girls of the Yearning for Zion Ranch spent their days caring for its many children, tilling gardens, and quilting, dressed in pioneer-style dresses sewn by their own hands.
But it was no idyllic recreation of 19th-century prairie life, authorities say. Since last week, they have interviewed members of the polygamist sect looking for evidence that that girls younger than 16 were forced into marriages with older men…
“Once you go into the compound, you don’t ever leave it,” said Carolyn Jessop, who was one of the wives of the alleged leader of the Eldorado complex, but who left the sect before it began moving to Texas in 2004…
Jessop, author of the polygamy memoir “Escape,” said the women dedicated so much time to raising children and their chores because the community emphasized self-sufficiency: Members believe the apocalypse is near, and they will have to start over when the world is destroyed.
They were not allowed to wear red — the color Jeffs said belonged to Jesus — and were not allowed to cut their hair.
The leaders of this sect should be rounded up, and put in jail for the rest of their miserable lives.
Oh but that’s not even the worst of the details. Here are some much nastier bits:
- Boys as young as 12 (!!) were excommunicated to remove competition for the girls and also to make sure young girls didn’t resist the idea of "marrying" lecherous older men instead of boys their own age. Boys would be expelled from the compound or sect controlled towns under the belief that they were now condemned to hell. Their own mothers would refuse to have anything to do with them from then on.
- Girls taken out of school after the 8th grade. College education is out of the question.
- If a man pisses off one of the leaders, he is expelled and "his" wives and children get "given" to other men. If a man takes a fancy to a daughter in law, even if she’s known him as her father since infancy, he can take her as a wife.
- Serious allegations have arisen from escapees that babies born with severe defects (in part due to incest) have been murdered and quietly buried. These allegations have been totally ignored, like most of them.
- Dresses must be solid or near solid colors. No actual pictures are allowed, not even flowers.
- Children are taught from birth to be terrified of the outside world and people outside the sect. Everyone not of the sect belongs to the devil, basically. They are taught to run away if they see anyone unlike them.
- Warren Jeffs taught, amongst other things, that blacks were an inferior race.
The more you learn the worse it gets.
The Mormon Church (LDS) still holds a belief that blacks were a cursed race until 1976, and that polygamy will be practiced in the afterlife. The FLDS didn’t just make their beliefs up. They stem from their parent-church before they broke away.
I agree, it sounds horrible. It’s a good thing they don’t have any constitutional rights. Probably a good thing the kids will be so traumatized by all of this that their fear of the outside world may become a hate that is well founded.
I really believe that we should turn our kids over to the government at birth so they can raise them, they basically do now as it is, so let them do it for real.
Don’t forget the Menonites and Amish should be next, they are different, too.
Here is a thought. To speak to the issue of young terrified girls and women that have no knowledge of the outside society. Why don’t the authorities or Dept of Family Services, leave the women and children at the compound and haul off all of the dirty old men?
I do not believe there was ever any 16 year old caller. This is an organization process to violate these people rights. Everything we have heard in the news is rumor. They exercised a search warrant on a rumor. They interrupt these people lives because of a rumor. I am bother by the way they are searching their property. They have no right to take children away from their families. Let’s wait and see.
When it’s alleged someone has done something illegal, an arrest is made, and due process begins. However, I cannot fathom what the justification is for removal of 400 of these people from their homes. Why is it that the state feels it’s necessary to rip apart a community that doesn’t fit what most people consider normal. If the law has been broken, arrest and prosecute those that appear guilty. Leave the rest of them alone to worship and live as they choose.
Actually the amazing thing is that they didn’t go in sooner. You think there isn’t any proof of the goings ons of this cult? The evidence is overwhelming, there are teens who have escaped in the past that have testified to it repeatedly. There are activist groups trying to help victims recover who have been howling about the abuse for years, only to be ignored.
Raping young girls is NOT a Constitutional right. Beating children bloody is NOT a Constitutional right. Killing malformed babies is NOT a Constitutional right. Bilking the federal government for millions in taxpayer money is NOT a Constitutional right. This should have happened long ago.
Patricia, I think what you say makes a lot of sense, and it would be far less traumatic for the children. There are a couple of reasons that occur to me though. On the one hand it’s much easier to control the location of perhaps 20 men (keep in mind that the proportion of men to women and children is ridiculous) than hundreds of women and children. On the other hand, the true victims of abuse need to be taken out of the context where abuse happened in order to begin recovery. Finally, not all the women chose to go with the children, though I suspect most did. Quite frankly, I think a good deal of the women are complicit in the child abuse, even if they are so because of complete brainwashing. These are things that are done openly amongst the sect. One survivor was beaten by her m0ther for refusing to allow herself to be abused by her father.