ANDERSON COOPER 360 DEGREES Warren Jeffs in Court; 'Prophet' Turned Prisoner; Lost Boys & Lawsuits; FLDS: Cult or Calling?; Facing the Followers

CNN August 31, 2006

ANDERSON COOPER, CNN ANCHOR: The captured fugitive who is wanted in two states now, appeared at his extradition hearing before a Nevada judge. Jeffs considers himself a prophet, of course, and so do his thousands of followers. Today, in the courtroom, with guards on each side and his hands in chains, Jeffs looks more like, well, like any other mortal facing serious criminal charges and possible life in prison. CNN Ted Rowlands reports. (BEGIN VIDEOTAPE) TED ROWLANDS, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Under heavy security, polygamist leader Warren Jeffs was brought into a Las Vegas courtroom. He was shackled and wore blue jail issued clothing. Appearing meek and at times confused, Jeffs politely answered questions from the judge. JUDGE: Are you Warren Jeffs? WARREN JEFFS, LEADER FLDS: Yes. JUDGE: All right. ROWLANDS: Jeffs, who didn't have an attorney for the short hearing, stood and listened as the judge explained that he was wanted in both Utah and Arizona. JUDGE: Do you understand everything I just explained? JEFFS: Yes. JUDGE: OK, what would you like to do? JEFFS: Go ahead and be extradited is fine. JUDGE: You want to waive your rights in regards to extradition and go back as quickly as they can have the -- come pick you up? JEFFS: Yes. JUDGE: All right. ROWLANDS: Jeffs will be transported to Utah where he faces two counts of being an accomplice to rape. Prosecutors there say they're ready for him. RYAN SHAUM, UTAH PROSECUTOR: We have an opportunity now to present our case. We have an opportunity to go forward with the evidence that we believe we have. ROWLANDS: Jeffs had one unidentified supporter in the courtroom -- this man. After the hearing he was followed by a crowd of journalists, but had nothing to say as he left the courthouse. Warren Jeffs is believed to have as many as 10,000 loyal followers across the western United States, Canada and Mexico. Many of them live in the Colorado City Hilldale area which is very close to where Jeffs will be held in Utah. GARY ENGELS, MOHAVE COUNTY INVESTIGATOR: I think the community there, you know, the ones that are his loyal followers, are going to stay loyal to him and they're going to support him and they'll provide him with any amount of money or anything else he needs. ROWLANDS: Flora Jessops, a former member of the FLDS, says she's concerned about Jeffs' followers and what they may do with their prophet in jail. FLORA JESSOP, FORMER FLDS MEMBER: They're going to look at him as a martyr, as he's been the one that's wronged. As a child, I was taught and they're still teaching these children that law enforcement is our worst enemy. And that the streets would run red with the blood of our enemies. ROWLANDS: So far, though, there has been little reaction from the secretive communities where until now Jeffs has held almost complete authority. (END VIDEOTAPE) ROWLANDS (on camera): And the last step here in Las Vegas, concerning Warren Jeffs, is to move him, get him to Utah. And authorities from Utah are coordinating that, they're keeping it a secret. Security is a major concern, moving Jeffs. They do not want the word out of when they're going to do it or how they're going to do it. The last thing they really do want is one of his members, flocks, one of the members of the flock to interfere with it at all. They do not want the media to know about it, so they're keeping it under wraps -- Anderson. COOPER: But at this point, Ted, I mean, he is still the leader of the FLDS. I mean, there's no sign that's going to change? ROWLANDS: No. Clearly, and whether he's in jail or not, those that believe in Warren Jeffs are still going to believe in him. And he can have visitors so he can still direct the faithful from jail with very little trouble. So clearly unless somebody else comes in and makes a play for leadership or leadership role, he's going to still control these 10,000 plus people even though he's sitting in jail. COOPER: Interesting. Ted, thanks. Warren Jeffs doesn't just face trouble in the criminal front. He's also been slapped with several civil lawsuits by people he allegedly abuse and terrorized. Some, his own relatives. CNN's Dan Simon now with that piece of the story. (BEGIN VIDEOTAPE) DAN SIMON, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Warren Jeffs better get used to the jail and the courtroom. In addition to the criminal trials he now faces in Utah and Arizona, Jeffs is also a defendant in at least three lawsuits filed by former members of his FLDS community. SAM ICKE, KICKED OUT OF FLDS: The thing that actually got me kicked out was, you know, I kissed this girl and then she told, you know, told everybody what was going on. SIMON: Sam Icke is one of the "Lost Boys," hundreds of young men who say they were torn from their families by Warren Jeffs, kicked out of their community for minor infractions that Jeffs declared were sins. RICHARD GILBERT, KICKED OUT OF FLDS: I was excommunicated by the Prophet Warren Jeffs at the age of 16 because I decided that I wanted to go to a public school. GREG HOOLE, ATTORNEY FOR LOST BOYS: Another boy was kicked out because he gave a girl a necklace. Another boy was kicked out because he had seen a movie. SIMON: Salt Lake City Attorney Greg Hoole filed what's been labeled the Lost Boys lawsuit on behalf of six alleged victims. The suit claims the real reason for the boys being thrown out was to make polygamy possible so that each man could have multiple wives. And under Jeffs, the suit claims the number of wives for each husband went way up. It claims the FLDS leader established an unlawful practice of reducing the surplus male population by systematically expelling young males from the FLDS communities. HOOLE: If you want multiple wives for the older men, you've got to get rid of the boys. And Warren was doing this with a vengeance. SIMON: Jeffs also faces a lawsuit filed by his own nephew. BRENT JEFFS, NEPHEW OF WARREN JEFFS: When I was around 5 years old to 6 years old, when he had done this to me... SIMON: Brent Jeffs claims his uncle repeatedly sodomized him as a child. (On camera): And there's also this lawsuit from a young woman named M.J., who claims Jeffs forced her to marry and have sex with an older man when she was only 16. The documents say her resulting pregnancies have been painful and emotionally devastating. HOOLE: She was married to a man that she had no desire to be married to. So essentially she was raped and as a result of those rapes she was impregnated. What could be more devastating than that? SIMON: Hoole says Warren Jeffs has never responded to the lawsuits which seek unspecified damages. But now with Jeffs in custody, he says the suits will gain momentum. After all, it's hard to take someone to trial if they're a wanted fugitive. Still, with two criminal trials ahead, it could take several years before these civil cases reach a jury. For now, all of Jeffs' accusers can take some comfort, knowing he's locked behind bars. Dan Simon, CNN, Spokane, Washington. (END VIDEOTAPE) COOPER: Well, Rod Parker is a lawyer who's representing FLDS in some of the lawsuits the sect is facing. He spent a good amount of time with members of the sect in the past. I talked to him a short time ago. (BEGIN VIDEOTAPE) COOPER: I assume you saw Warren Jeffs at the extradition hearing on television. How did he appear to you? ROD PARKER, ATTORNEY FOR FLDS: I saw some still pictures of it, and he appeared very out of place and I think a little bit frightened. COOPER: Were you surprised that he was caught and caught in the way he was? PARKER: I don't know how to answer that, really. I think his capture was inevitable. I think probably everybody would say that. And the method of capture, I don't know that I really have a reaction to that. COOPER: Are you representing him now or do you know, will you represent him in the future when he's brought back? PARKER: I haven't been asked to yet. I don't know what their plans are. COOPER: I want to read something that the Utah attorney general said about the arrest. He said, quote, "I think you're going to see a lot of changes within the FLDS community as far as their feelings about him, their fear of him, their loyalty to him. We're hoping that will start to crumble." Do you think that's true? What do you think will happen to the church? Does Jeffs remain the prophet? PARKER: I have a couple of reactions to that. First of all, I think that he will remain the prophet. I think his office is in their religion a position that's chosen by God and short of apostasy, there's nothing that would change that. But my other reaction to that is that I really question the legitimacy of that kind of an objective on the part of the attorney general. What he's really saying is that his objective is to fundamentally change or even eliminate this church as it presently exists. I think that goes beyond a legitimate prerogatives of his office. COOPER: It was interesting, last night Gary Tuchman was allowed inside the home of someone in Colorado City, a young woman who had a child. And she was clearly heartfelt in her beliefs. I mean, she was confused by what had happened to Jeffs. But, you know, this is really the first time, at least that I and most of our viewers had seen and heard from someone in the FLDS who's still currently in it, who follows Warren Jeffs. And she, I think clearly, just came across as this perhaps naive, but certainly sweet and heartfelt young woman. You're not a member of the FLDS. You've worked with them in the legal system. You've had a lot of contact with them. What are they like? PARKER: Yes, you're right. I'm not a member. I have had a lot of contact with them. And I would say I've had many experiences just like the one you had, being invited into somebody's home or invited to meet them in some other setting and interact with them and really get a sense of what type of people they really are and how different they are from our stereotypes and our preconceptions of what's really going on down there. I find them to be very family oriented. And they're there because they want to be there. They know they have other alternatives, and they are simply not interested in those alternatives. They are there voluntarily because that's their choice. COOPER: Rod Parker, I appreciate your perspective. Thanks for being on. PARKER: OK, you're welcome. Thank you. (END VIDEOTAPE) COOPER: Flora Jessop married a polygamist husband when she was just a teenager. Eventually she escaped the world of Warren Jeffs, and today she returned to face the true believers and to find her own mother. CNN's Gary Tuchman reports. (BEGIN VIDEOTAPE) GARY TUCHMAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): We drive on the dirt roads of Colorado City, Arizona, behind a woman on a quest. Flora Jessop says she escaped from the FLDS church when she was a child bride. With Warren Jeffs under arrest, she is now trying to find family members she left behind. JESSOP: Let my mother come out and talk to us! What the hell are you afraid of? TUCHMAN: Flora has two mothers. She hasn't seen her birth mother for seven years and believes she lives in a health clinic run by Warren Jeffs' church that's protected by a huge fence. JESSOP: I'm not going away until you come out here! TUCHMAN: But nobody in the clinic opens the gate. And the speakerphone just rings and rings. JESSOP This is America, for God's sake. TUCHMAN: Earlier, Flora and three of her brothers tried to find one of their 21 other siblings who they also believe are afraid to escape. JESSOP: Ruby. UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Does Ruby live here? TUCHMAN: Nobody came out, but a voice inside the house said there was no Ruby. JESSOP: You want me? TUCHMAN: As Flora drove away after another unsuccessful effort -- a local policeman, part of a force believed to be loyal to Warren Jeffs, stopped her vehicle in its tracks. UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Hey, don't get behind me. Back over there. Residents there wish you would stay off the property. JESSOP: We just want to see Mom, to make sure she's OK. That's all we want. UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Can you arrange it to just let us see her, say hi to her for a minute? UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I have nothing to do with that. What I'm dealing with right now is residents calling and saying people are there on the property, they wish they would leave. JESSOP: We are going to be here until I see my mother is OK. TUCHMAN: But as she stood on the car there was still no word. An Arizona state representative accompanying Flora Jessop says he'll talk to fellow legislators about what he witnessed. DAVID LUJAN, ARIZONA STATE REPRESENTATIVE: Yes, it's something I'm going inquire into when I get back to Phoenix, as to if this in fact a public health facility, why does it have a huge fence around it and a lock at the front door so nobody can get in. TUCHMAN: We, too, wanted to find out if Flora's mother was indeed in the medical clinic. But when I called the facility, all we were told was no comment. (END VIDEOTAPE) COOPER: That's got to be so hard for family members who just want to find out some information. Is there anything she can do? TUCHMAN (on camera): Not much she can do, Anderson. Flora was here all day and she did not find her mother or any of her 21 siblings. And who can imagine coming to a town with no more than 10,000 people and not being able to locate your family. But that's the way it is here. There are even people who live here in Colorado City, Anderson, who have decided to leave the church, but because of Warren Jeffs' rules, their family members are still part of the church no longer talk to them and they don't see them either and they still live here. One other point I want to tell you, Anderson. When Warren Jeffs gets extradited to Utah, he'll be about 20 minutes away from Colorado City in the town of Hurricane, Utah. It's spelled hurricane, but pronounced hurricane. And the name of the prison he'll be at is the Purgatory Correctional Facility. And that is not a joke. COOPER: Ironic, no doubt. Gary, appreciate it. Thanks. Warren Jeffs has ruled over thousands of followers in two main communities, Colorado City, Arizona, which you just saw; Hilldale, Utah, as well. Here's the raw data on those towns. According to the 2000 census, the average family size in both Hilldale and Colorado City is between 7 and 8. By comparison, statewide in Utah and Arizona, the average family size is 3. And in Hilldale, 37 percent of people live below the poverty level. Colorado City, it is 29 percent. That's more than three times higher than the statewide figures.

CNN.com Originally broadcast August 31, 2006

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