FLDS Leader Warren Jeffs Sentenced to Life in Prison for Sexual Assault

Texas child welfare authorities raided the Yearning For Zion Ranch, a Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (FLDS) community near Eldorado, Texas, in April 2008. More than 400 children were taken from their parents during the raid. Most were later ordered returned to their families by the State Supreme Court, which ruled that state child welfare authorities should not have treated the entire community as a single household to justify seizing the children (Psalm 82:3).

The charges against Warren Jeffs, the group’s former leader, stem from that raid. He faces charges of sexual assault of a child and bigamy. The Texas Attorney General’s office says that twelve members of the Eldorado FLDS community have been convicted of sexually assaulting children. That office’s statement is its own account and is not a finding in Jeffs’s case.

A report dated December 1, 2010, from kut.org said Jeffs had arrived in San Angelo, Texas, at 9 p.m. the previous night to face trial. The Texas Attorney General’s office announced his arrival in a news release. CNN reported that Jeffs was scheduled to appear in Tom Green County Court at 11 a.m. for arraignment.

On January 5, 2011, Jeffs appeared in court in San Angelo for a pre-trial hearing, according to a kut.org report from that date. The hearing was part of his trial on the charges of sexual assault of a child and bigamy, and he had been extradited from Utah to Texas to face them. The report said the indictment was obtained by Schleicher County and contains detailed accounts of the alleged crimes, though the specifics remain confidential. It also said Jeffs had secured legal representation in time for the hearing after his attorney initially struggled to find counsel.

The same report said that Jeffs faced trial on January 24, 2011, despite requests from his Nevada-based attorney to delay the proceedings. The sources do not state whether that trial date held.

An NPR report on the case says Warren Jeffs, who leads the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, was sentenced to life in prison for sexual assault after a trial in Texas. According to the report, a jury deliberated for less than an hour before finding Jeffs guilty of aggravated sexual assault against two people. The NPR text ends mid-sentence at that point, so the report does not fully specify the count or the number of victims. The sources provided do not give the date of the verdict or the sentencing.