Jeffs alleged to have smuggled nine girls into U.S. from Canada for polygamous marriages
 
By Matthew Waller
San Angelo Standard-Times
 
SAN ANGELO, Texas — The judge in a case deciding whether polygamy in Canada is protected by freedom of religion has decided to consider allegations from the Ministry of the Attorney General of British Columbia that Warren Jeffs, the head of the polygamy sanctioning Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, smuggled nine girls into the United States from Canada for the purpose of underage marriage.

"He decided that he would consider it," Shawn Robins, spokesman for the attorney general in British Columbia, said about Chief Justice of the British Columbia Supreme Court, Robert Bauman.

Robins said the document filed, a notice of application, was submitted after the deadline for testimony and documents but the judge requested the notice of application on Friday.

Robins said the FLDS can still contest the decision to admit the notice of application.

He said Bauman may make his decision near the end of March on whether the Canadian prohibition against polygamy can withstand a constitutional challenge under the argument that the practice is a religious freedom.

Polygamy is an indictable offense in Canada punishable by up to five years in prison.

The Canadian justice system has been hearing ex-FLDS members talk about their experiences and with some current FLDS members testifying anonymously about their experiences in that church.

The inquiry went on for weeks, with some saying how the members of the organization mistreated their children and that polygamy should stay outlawed, and others said polygamy has presented no problem for them.

"The evidence that the Attorney General seeks to introduce will be in the form of an affidavit appending church records of the FLDS that were seized by Texas authorities during the search and rescue operation at the Yearning for Zion Ranch," the notice of application states.

The 2008 raid came as a result of a hoax phone call from a woman claiming she was being abused at the ranch near Eldorado in Schleicher County.

All of the children in question in the Canadian court application were married to Warren Jeffs. The notice of application alleges that in a single day four of the children entered into a "celestial marriage" with Jeffs.

The youngest girls were 12 years old, the notice of application states.

The children are referred to with letters instead of names in the court documents to protect their identities.

The FLDS teaches that men and women can be placed in spiritual unions which are considered by the FLDS to be legitimate marriages.

An affidavit attached to the notice of application has the sworn testimony of a legal secretary who said a Texas prosecutor provided her with some of the information on which the allegations are based.

"I received an email from Eric Nichols, a Texas prosecutor responsible for the prosecutions of a number of crimes against children in Texas by members of the FLDS church," the affidavit states.

According to the affidavit, the records used in the allegation of child smuggling for underage marriage come from personal dictations from Jeffs and other church records.

Jeffs will be the eighth member of the FLDS to undergo prosecution in Texas. All those prosecuted to date have been convicted or entered plea agreements to charges of sexual assault of a child or bigamy, or both.

Jeffs is in the Reagan County jail in Big Lake awaiting trial. He has reportedly been active in jail, where he has excommunicated dozens of members of the FLDS and sent a letter threatening calamity from God on Illinois. Staff at the jail said Jeffs hasn't been acting up with hunger strikes as he had in Arizona, where he was being held before awaiting trial on charges that were later dropped so that he could be extradited to Texas sooner.

His next pretrial is scheduled for March 30.
 
gosanangelo.com
Originally published March 3, 2011
 
Back