More FLDS members indicted on sexual assault charges
 
CNN
Warren Jeffs

The latest charges come two months after Warren Jeffs and five followers were indicted in Texas.

(CNN) -- Three more members of a polygamous sect led by Warren Jeffs are facing sexual assault charges, Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott said Tuesday.

On Tuesday, a Texas grand jury indicted the three male members of Jeffs' Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints compound outside Eldorado, Abbott said.

Each faces one felony count of sexual assault of a child. Two of them also face felony bigamy charges.

The identities of the men were not released because they had not been arrested as of Tuesday afternoon.

In July, the Schleicher County grand jury indicted Jeffs and four of his Texas FLDS followers on child sexual assault charges. Jeffs was charged with sexually assaulting a child under 17. A fifth follower was charged with failure to report child abuse.

The charges stem from a state and federal investigation into the sect's Yearning for Zion Ranch. In April, child welfare workers removed more than 400 children from the compound, citing allegations of physical and sexual abuse.

After a court battle, the Texas Supreme Court ordered the children returned in June, saying that the state had no right to remove them and that there was no evidence to show the children faced imminent danger of abuse on the ranch.

Jeffs, 52, is the leader and "prophet" of the estimated 10,000-member FLDS, an offshoot of the mainstream Mormon church. The FLDS openly practices polygamy at the YFZ Ranch and in two towns straddling the Utah-Arizona state line: Hildale, Utah, and Colorado City, Arizona.

Jeffs, who is facing a sentence in Utah of up to life in prison and is awaiting trial in Arizona, could face another life sentence in Texas if convicted on the latest charge.

In Utah, he was convicted on accomplice to rape charges for his role in the marriage of a sect member to a 14-year-old. He faces similar charges in Arizona.

His attorney in Arizona, Michael Piccarreta, has questioned the motives of Texas authorities. He said in July that the state's investigation into Jeffs and his followers is an effort "to cover themselves up on the botched attack on the ranch in Texas."
 
CNN.com
Originally published Tue September 23, 2008
 
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