Shrouded in secrecy
 Former members of Eldorado sect speak of abusive, closed society, fanaticism
 
By Paul A. Anthony
San Angelo Standard-Times
 
When Jack Cooke took his teenage daughter Rebecca to the edge of the Grand Canyon, the reason was much more sinister than sightseeing.

He took her there to deliver an ultimatum.

"Submit to me," he told her, "or you’ll go over the edge."

Then he raped her.

Rebecca Cooke was not alone in her family — she was one of at least 13 daughters molested or raped by their father, a man with four wives and 57 children, said Laurene Jessop, his seventh-oldest daughter. Jessop was also raped, although her help sending him to prison spared her from the worst of the abuse.

"I think (Rebecca) got the worst of it, being the oldest girl," Jessop said, recounting the incident. "Thank goodness I wasn’t one of the oldest ones."

The abuse occurred more than 20 years ago in Colorado City, Ariz., one-half of a twin-city community that also includes Hildale, Utah, and serves as the home base of the Fundamental Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, a Mormon offshoot to which Cooke and his family belonged that still practices polygamy.

The FLDS has been excommunicated from the mainline Mormon Church, and the two share no affiliation.

Now — one year after the FLDS began construction on a compound near Eldorado, 44 miles south of San Angelo — former members, cult experts and authorities say the church is preparing a move to West Texas in hopes of avoiding a series of lawsuits, criminal investigations and legal maneuvers in Arizona and Utah.

Despite the church’s assertions to the contrary, observers and former members of the FLDS paint a disturbing picture of a closed society that abuses its women and children, follows an increasingly fanatical self-styled prophet, and discourages its members from leaving.

"There is (an) eerie quality, what some would call brainwashing," said Rick Ross, a New Jersey expert on fringe religious groups who has studied the FLDS for 20 years and mediated with groups such as the Branch Davidians in Waco. "Much of their value judgments and critical thinking is handed over to the leader."

Buried secrets

Although many stories of forced marriage, sexual abuse and incest have filtered out of the Hildale and Colorado City, Ariz., communities populated almost entirely with FLDS members, those members maintain its polygamous beliefs, while unusual, have not led to widespread abuse.

The communities have had problems, Hildale Mayor David Zitting said, but no more than any other large group of people. Zitting, as a public official, is one of the only church members willing to comment publicly.

"People get a bit here and there, and they pass it on," Zitting said. "They’re all picking up on the same rumors."

For Jessop, the story is more than rumor. Her father, she said, would come home each day, give the girls a kiss, tell one of them to come into his room, and shut the door. Her mother would pretend nothing was happening.

When the girls began talking to each other about the advances, they realized each was not alone. Together, they told their brothers, who helped turn Cooke over to authorities. He was convicted in 1983 of sexual assault and sentenced to five years in prison.

"We were looked down on in the community because we did that," Jessop said. "The majority (of men) believed they had that right. It was pretty rampant in the community."

Flora Jessop agrees. Although Flora and Laurene Jessop are related through a complicated, interconnecting family tree, the two did not know each other until Laurene Jessop was looking for a way to escape a group that she said institutionalized her four times when she began to speak out.

Women, Flora Jessop said, are expected to bring their children into total obedience by age 2, using techniques such as putting a crying baby’s face under running water and holding a hand over its nose and mouth to cut off the air supply.

"I remember praying that I wouldn’t be able to have kids," she said, "because I didn’t want to do to my kids what I had seen done to other kids."

Flora Jessop fled the group when she was 16 in 1986, unwilling to enter into the marriage the church’s leader had arranged for her. For the previous three years, she said, church officials had kept her locked in her uncle’s house after she tried to turn in her father for sexually abusing her.

After leaving, Jessop founded Help the Child Brides, spurred by what she said was the failure of state officials to stop the forced marriage and near-fatal rape of her 14-year-old sister, Ruby.

Jessop became a key figure in the discovery of the Eldorado compound, which church officials initially told Schleicher County authorities was a hunting retreat.

Other rules carried out by the church’s leader, Warren Jeffs, include the forcible removal of wives and children from a home if the man has been excommunicated or loses favor. Children must give up pictures and keepsakes that would remind them of their father, both Jessops said, and begin calling the man to which they are assigned their father.

"The children are part of the system — not human beings," Laurene Jessop said.

Marriages in the FLDS, she said, are arranged by Jeffs, who claims to be a prophet of God and has led the group since his father, Rulon Jeffs, died in 2002. Jeffs is rumored to have dozens of wives.

Jeffs has ruled his congregation with increasing fanaticism since he came to power, former members and observers said, banning holidays, flags and even the words "fun," "I" and "mine."

Teaching that only men with at least three wives will go to heaven — women can go if their husband invites them — Jeffs assigns wives based on how hard a man works and how much money he gives, according to reports.

More broadly, FLDS members must follow four rules, Laurene Jessop said: to follow a puritan-style dress code, not to talk to men outside their families, not to talk to nonmembers, and not to tell family secrets.

The secrets are coming out, anyway.

In 2003, a Colorado City, Ariz., police officer who was an FLDS member was convicted of bigamy and statutory rape for having sex with his 16-year-old third wife, the first such conviction of its kind. Convictions under state anti-bigamy laws are rare because FLDS men legally marry just one wife, taking others as "spiritual brides."

A year later, two 16-year-old girls fled the group to avoid forced marriage, and an Arizona court ruled they could stay in foster care. Previously, Utah and Arizona had sent runaways back to their parents.

Nevertheless, stories of rape and abuse are not representative of the group as a whole, said Zitting, who has been Hildale mayor since 1986.

"I’ve ... seen (more) happy families in this community," he said, "than I’ve ever seen anywhere else."

Legal troubles

Utah and Arizona courts have begun telling a different story.

In 2002, a former FLDS member sued Jeffs and the church for wrongful termination after he was fired from his Hildale job as a cabinet salesman upon leaving the church.

Jeffs and two of his brothers were named by their nephew, Brent Jeffs, in a July lawsuit alleging the men sexually molested him when he was 13.

A month later, a group of teenage boys who say Jeffs banished them from the church and kicked them out of Hildale and Colorado City, Ariz., sued as well. The teens have come to be known as the "lost boys," allegedly excommunicated because the towns are experiencing a shortage of women.

In addition, the Utah attorney general’s office led an investigation that resulted in Monday’s decertification of two Hildale police officers who are FLDS members, said spokesman Paul Murphy, and in giving the Washington County Sheriff’s Office funds to add a substation in Hildale.

"We do not believe they (the two officers) have been effective or supportive of the law," Murphy said, adding that the office is pursuing criminal investigations against several Utah polygamist groups, including the FLDS.

The legal actions are the first against the FLDS in 50 years. A 1953 raid of the towns, known collectively at the time as Short Creek, proved politically disastrous when newsreel footage showed children being taken from their homes.

Until recently, authorities had left the group alone, Murphy said.

"I think for 50 years, the situation was essentially ignored," he said. "We hear the same allegations, the same accusations, but what is absolutely critical is evidence."

The FLDS initially defended itself against the suits; however, the church has since fired its attorneys, and the Utah and Arizona attorneys general have filed a motion asking that a federal court appoint new leaders to the church’s monetary trust.

The trust has been led by four men, said Sam Brower, a private investigator who works for the plaintiff in the sexual-abuse lawsuit. They are: Fred Jessop, who died earlier this month; Truman Barlow, whom Jeffs excommunicated; and Jeffs and his brother, Leroy Jeffs, both of whom have disappeared since the suits were filed.

With no public leaders and no attorneys, the church has stopped defending itself against lawsuits, Brower said. A Utah judge recently declared Jeffs in default in the 2002 lawsuit, meaning the church no longer can contest guilt in the case — only the damages the plaintiff can receive.

"I see the group basically disintegrating," said Ross, the cult expert. "The group is collapsing. When groups collapse like this, it’s a difficult period."

Eldorado retreat

The legal trouble may have led Jeffs to retreat to Eldorado.

The compound has grown exponentially since Flora Jessop called the news conference that unveiled the group’s West Texas presence last March 26. The most visible addition in the past year is a four-story temple, surrounded by dozens of dormlike structures.

Many speculate that Jeffs lives at the compound, citing his disappearance since the construction began.

"What he seems to be doing is cocooning," Ross said, comparing the situation to that of Jim Jones, the San Francisco preacher who in the 1980s fled with his cult to Nicaragua as legal scrutiny increased. Jones and his followers later committed mass suicide when legal pressures continued.

"What Jeffs has done ... is retire into a compound world that he completely controls," Ross said. "That’s ominous."

Jeffs has predicted the end of the world will occur April 6, prompting authorities in Utah and Arizona, as well as the Schleicher County Sheriff’s Office, to step up security for that day, the 175th anniversary of the founding of the Mormon Church.

The prediction, coupled with the furious pace of temple construction, could simply be a target date to move Jeffs’ core followers from Hildale and Colorado City, Ariz., to Schleicher County, Ross said.

While in Eldorado, the FLDS has been cooperative and shown no signs of violence, said Schleicher County Sheriff David Doran, who said he also expects the group is working to finish the temple by April 6.

Likewise, no allegations of the sort raised in Utah and Arizona have surfaced in Texas, he said.

"We’re not getting any feeling of any kind of threat from there," Doran said.

If criminal investigations in Utah or Arizona end with indictments and warrants, however, Eldorado authorities will serve them, Doran said, and follow Texas extradition laws.

Most sects and fringe groups, including those that retreat into compounds, are not violent, Ross said, noting the House of Yahweh in Abilene, 90 miles northeast of San Angelo, has predicted the end of the world several times with no result, as has Jeffs.

Whether the group can be considered dangerous is a matter of degree, he said, adding that he does not expect a violent ending in the Schleicher County compound.

"The group is, in that sense, dangerous to young girls," Ross said. "Whether the group is a threat to the people of Eldorado, I would not say that. But Jeffs has proven to be a threat to his own people."

Zitting scoffs at such statements. The twin cities, which sport a combined population of 7,000, are no different than any other city, he said, especially in Utah, where the mainline Mormon Church exerts a large influence over many towns.

The truth may lie somewhere in the middle, Sheriff Doran said. Those who have left the group and watch it warily tend to hear only the negative; those inside the group ignore and suppress any charges of abuse.

"They do have close unity, as far as family goes," said Doran, who has traveled to the border cities. Because televisions, radios and newspapers are banned, "you see more families interacting in the park with each other."

Because the group shuns outsiders, however, no one can know to what extent abuse happens, he said.

Zitting expressed no concern about the possibility that Jeffs may move a sizable portion of his city’s residents hundreds of miles away, or even that he could be excommunicated, as the Colorado City, Ariz., mayor was in January.

"We live one day at a time," he said. "All kinds of things can happen to any of us. I don’t stay awake at night thinking about it."

Adjusting to America

For Laurene Jessop, who severed her ties to the FLDS in April, and her four children, living one day at a time is an adjustment of tremendous proportions.

When her husband was excommunicated in January 2004, he told her the couple’s children would become the property of the church and be reassigned. Jessop collected her children and fled, setting up a home in Phoenix.

Leaving the group required withstanding intimidating visits from Hildale and Colorado City, Ariz., police, she said, and overcoming years of teaching that those who leave become homeless or prostitutes.

Since then, the struggles have become more cultural.

FLDS home schooling rarely exceeds the lower levels of elementary school, and students are taught the moon landing was faked and that dinosaurs did not live on Earth, she said. Members cheered the 9/11 terrorist attacks and the 1986 Challenger shuttle explosion as signs that God was punishing the wicked, she said.

Jessop’s 14-year-old son, as a male, was given higher authority than his mother in the FLDS; now he must adjust to being a teenager, she said. Her 11-year-old daughter cut her hair and pierced her ears immediately, only to feel shamed when she visited her father.

"She wants to be a typical, normal girl," Jessop said, "but when she sees her father, all those rules come back."

Although Jessop’s husband was excommunicated, he continues paying Jeffs and is working to be reinstated in the church. The parents are fighting over custody of their children.

Jessop spent months watching TV and reading books to catch up on 21st century culture. She said she has not talked to her parents or her siblings since she left because, as members of the FLDS, they are forbidden from talking to apostates such as her.

"It makes enemies with my family when I tell secrets," she said. "They won’t talk to me because I’m still outside the group. I’d love to still be friends with them, but that’s the way it is."

She continued: "Mothers tell their daughters, ‘I’d rather see you dead than outside the group.’"
 
SanAngeloStandardTimes.com
Originally published March 27, 2005
 
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