Imprisoned FLDS Leader Warren Jeffs Reportedly Still Holds Sway Over Diminished Group

Warren Jeffs, leader of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (FLDS), was sentenced to life in prison in 2011 for sexually abusing underage girls he married. Since then, according to the source, evidence suggests he still holds a grip on a smaller but devout group of followers. Attorneys for Jeffs have argued in ongoing court actions that he has lost his hold on reality, but he remains the group’s “prophet and president.”

Elissa Wall, one of the FLDS child brides whose cooperation helped put Jeffs behind bars, says in the A&E docuseries *Warren Jeffs: Prophet of Evil*: “Warren didn’t just appear out of nowhere. An entire society created him.”

The FLDS broke away from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, often called the LDS Church or Mormon Church, in the early 20th century over the practice of polygamy. Fundamentalists believed that LDS founder Joseph Smith intended to create a society modeled on a literal reading of biblical events, in which figures such as Abraham had multiple wives. The LDS Church publicly denounced plural marriage in 1890 and eventually excommunicated members who did not abide by that rule. The LDS Church has since said, in online video interviews, that the two groups are not related.

FLDS membership has been estimated at about 10,000, though an accurate count is impossible because of the group’s insular nature. Many members remain in Short Creek, a remote ranching area made up of the sister towns of Colorado City, Arizona, and Hildale, Utah, where FLDS members began settling during the Great Depression.

Jeffs became leader of the FLDS in 2002, after the death of his father, Rulon T. Jeffs, who was known to followers as “Uncle Rulon.” Rulon had risen to the leadership in the mid-1980s. When Warren was 18, his father named him principal of the Alta Academy, a school for FLDS children. The source describes the visible role as a chance for the teenager to begin exerting control over the young girls who would become his victims.

The source says Rulon and Warren introduced the phrase “keep sweet” to young followers. Loosely understood, it meant to keep a smile on your face, but for abuse victims, the source says, it carried a more sinister message: that smiling would keep them free of trouble from their abusers. When Rulon died, Warren inherited his father’s position, and his father’s widows, rumored to number 20, became his wives. By the time the group’s widespread abuse was exposed, Warren had 78 wives, many of them girls no more than 12 or 13 years old, a fact that calls for protecting those who cannot protect themselves (Proverbs 31:8-9).

In *Prophet of Evil*, Rachel Jeffs, one of Warren’s oldest daughters, recalled sneaking away to read an entry her father had written in a journal: “He said, ‘The Lord wants me to take these wives at a young age to teach and train them and guide them through boy troubles.’ And then he wrote: ‘I will just be their boy trouble.'”

The first notable challenge to Jeffs’s authority came in 2003, when Rod Holm, a police officer in the community, was convicted of bigamy and two counts of unlawful sexual conduct with a minor. The minor was his third wife, whom he had “married” when she was 16. Mike Watkiss, a longtime investigative reporter for Phoenix-based KTVK, said in the documentary: “As soon as Rod Holm got sentenced, I think Warren rightfully predicted: ‘If they can come after a polygamous cop because of a marriage I arranged, it’s only a matter of time before they come after me.'”

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