Fantastic interview- thank you, Claudia, and Jay Beswick, and especially Mr. Zitting.
I have a few questions for Mr. Zitting, if its possible for him to answer.
One, you mention that emotion is surpressed among the cult. That’s an interesting aside that I hadn’t realized; I’m curious about affection in general- are the mothers generally affectionate with infants and small children, for example? If not, then do you feel this is psychologically harmful (is the blunted emotion so extreme that the kids are likely to be harmed even before the sexual abuse starts, for example?) Or if the mothers are affectionate with the very young children, does that stop at some point (I’m wondering if that has to do with your comment about kids before age of four being mostly OK- or is that comment more your opinion about the general developmental stage at which kids are more subject to harm by this kind of cult?)

Second, I’m always curious about how men can surpress the natural protective or nurturing instinct so strongly in order to satisfy deranged sexual impulses. It seems to me that normally men don’t feel attraction toward young girls because humans are mostly hard wired to feel protective toward children- yet these men seem to lack that instinct (and I feel that’s true in all cases of pedophilia, not just a cult like this.) Do you agree that this is lacking, or is there some sort of strange rationalization that the men are brainwashed to believe that sex with young girls isn’t harmful to them, or is it some combination of both?

And third question relates to law enforcement. To what degree are the legal authorities complicit, in your opinion? Is it that some of the towns (you mentioned Colorado City for example) have law enforcement agencies that are infiltrated with FDLS members? Or that authorities in many cases feel some sort of pressure to look the other way, due to the influence of some of the cult’s leaders? Do political figures seem to be cowed by them as well in AZ and Utah? To what degree do you think that authorities and elected officials willfully turn a blind eye, vs. being unable to prosecute because of insufficient hard evidence (for example, if few girls are courageous enough to escape or seek help, and few or none of the adult women are willing to testify, then it’s a lot like rape crimes in general where the victim is too afraid or ashamed to provide evidence against her attacker, and the law enforcement authorities often then have their hands tied since they can’t convict without that testimony or evidence.

Thanks in advance if you are willing and able to respond to these questions.

After over a decade of involvement with religious freedom issues, I state confidently that unfortunately, ex-members are often the least reliable reporters and interpreters about the beliefs and practices of a religion. This is a problem for two reasons.

First, ex-members often have an axe to grind against their former religion. Often, this is the reason they left in the first place. Other times, bias is a result of after-the-fact desires to justify and explain their decision to leave. Either way, they will tend to exaggerate negative recollections and refuse to accurately report more positive aspects.

Second, ex-members are prone to recruitment by those who hate the religion in question for other reasons. Because they have lost a community by leaving one religion (particularly an insular one like the FLDS), they are vulnerable to promises of community by another group for whom their prior membership is strategically useful. For example, those who leave the mainstream Mormon church often find themselves targeted for recruitment by the many anti-Mormon groups that rely on a supply of "ex-Mormons" to give the veneer of credibility to their longstanding distortions about Mormon beliefs.

Does this mean that Les Zettig is lying? Of course not. It merely means that the testimony of ex-members like Zettig should never be taken as the final and authoritative description of a religious group like the FLDS, especially when they are accompanied by the kind of overt emotionalism and sweeping assertions that are included in the above interview. To accept them as accurate without any need for further investigation (as demanded by the state of Texas in their unprecedented actions and court pleadings) would lead inevitably down the road of the loss of all meaningful religious freedom, as minority religious practices are particularly vulnerable to exaggerations, distortions, and selective reporting. Any religion that departs from the norm would be vulnerable to exaggerations and distortions of ex-members and the application of sweeping communal guilt (e.g. making all members of the group guilty for the crimes of some of them).

Do any of you think that your religious group could stand up to such a standard? Are all Catholics guilty of the sexual abuse of children, Christine? Should Catholic children be seized by the state to prevent them from attending communion because some Catholic priests have abused children? Let’s get a grip on ourselves before suspicion congeals into bigotry and strips away normal standards of caution that inhibit us from taking children away from their parents without INDIVIDUAL evidence of abuse.

Consider that what we are talking about here is taking away the parental rights of 400+ parents based solely on the uncorroborated allegation of a telephone caller who cannot be found in person and an assumption of group guilt based on rumors and innuendos.

Even if it is found that there were some incidents of child abuse, should that result in the loss of the children for ALL members of the ENTIRE FLDS community? Should we also have the state seize the children of all Muslims because some Muslims have forced their daughters into sick "marriages"?

I think this entire conversation lacks a sense of perspective and a sufficient concern for the dangers of acting based solely on partial evidence and bald stereotypes.

I explicitly concede in my comment and my post that this group is spooky and there is more than enough evidence to warrant an investigation. Unfortunately, the state of Texas and people like Mr. Zettig don’t want us to wait for investigations nor do they want us to focus on individuals. They want to just tar the entire religious group with a sweeping brush and they don’t want us to shy away from even the most extreme sanction — the unprecedented step of stripping an entire religion of their parental rights based solely on their membership in that religion.

That kind of standard is scary.

And look how Zettig tells us to presumptively and automatically dismiss all of the first-hand testimony of all FLDS members as "LIES!!!". Such claims that all defenses and contrary evidence should be automatically dismissed highlights the kind of danger we face when we short-circuit individualized investigation with presumptions of group guilt based on stereotypes and biased information.

Yes, polygamy in the legal sense (marrying more than one spouse with sanction of the state) is illegal. But it is not illegal to have more than one sexual partner and if they do not attempt to register more than one spouse with the state, where is the state’s legitimate interest in restricting the practice? I don’t understand how someone can endorse the ban on polyamorous relationships without sweeping up a whole lot of other practices, and it seems blatantly unjust to target polygamists for government enforcement while exempting swingers doing exactly the same thing under a non-religious framework. The FLDS should be targeted but Bill Clinton gets 67% approval rating as president? Bizarre.

OK, I see that now- on the other hand, Mr. Zettig is in fact in the position to know if some of those things being said by the FLDS members are lies or not- so for him personally, he doesn’t have to wait for the investigation.

Crock.  He left the FLDS in 1970.  He has no direct knowledge of what is currently going on in every single one of the 400+ individual lives affected in this case.

Investigation is warranted (and it is warranted entirely without Zettig’s claim of 40-year-old information), but it should be targeted on the behavior and situations of INDIVIDUALS, not sweeping characterizations of entire groups.