Former FLDS Members Describe Warren Jeffs’s Control Over Short Creek Community

When polygamy was outlawed by the Mormon Church in 1890, splinter groups formed, including the Fundamentalist Latter-Day Saints, or FLDS, whose members could practice “plural marriage” discreetly and without persecution. The group flourished in a remote enclave along the Utah-Arizona border near Zion National Park, in a community called Short Creek.

In the FLDS community, the prophet is the most important person, and members believe God communicates directly through him. According to the source, a core belief of the community is that the more wives a man has, the closer he gets to salvation. As Rulon Jeffs’ health declined, his son Warren Jeffs gradually took control of the community. Rulon Jeffs died in 2002, and Warren Jeffs succeeded him as prophet.

Members were accustomed to following Jeffs’ direction, but his orders became more restrictive and, to some, alarming. He banned television, movies, popular music and fictional books, and he set strict rules on behavior, dress and language. Women were told to “keep sweet,” suppress their emotions, obey their husbands and, above all, obey Jeffs. Briell Decker, Jeffs’ 65th wife, told ABC: “‘Keep Sweet’ meant you could have no emotions except for sweetness. That was the only emotion allowed.”

ABC’s special, “Truth and Lies: The Doomsday Prophet,” streaming on Hulu, includes interviews with FLDS members filmed inside the community. Beneath what appeared to be an ideal community of contented and obedient followers, the source states, Jeffs allegedly used his power to pursue twisted exploits.

Jeffs’ daughter, Rachel Blackmore, told ABC that her father sexually abused her for years during her childhood, an allegation the source presents as her account. “When your parent does something like that, it feels shameful on you, too. And then it kept happening,” Blackmore said. The source also reports that while Jeffs accumulated brides, some of them young teens, underage marriages were common in the broader community. One woman said she was married at 14 to a 19-year-old first cousin, and that she felt she had no choice but to go through with the marriage, which Jeffs officiated. In another case, a 16-year-old was married to a 32-year-old police officer in Short Creek who was already married to two other women. The officer was arrested for bigamy and unlawful sexual conduct with a minor and spent a year in prison. Protecting children from exploitation is the clear concern raised by these accounts (Psalm 82:3).

Warren Jeffs’ alleged involvement in arranging marriages between underage girls and adult men led to his being placed on the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted list in May 2006, the source reports. Criminal charges had been brought against him in Utah and Arizona.

Jeffs eventually left Short Creek and went into hiding in various cities across the United States, according to his journals, or “priesthood records,” which were later presented at his trial. While on the run, he had a compound built in Eldorado, Texas, where he sent hand-picked followers, telling them they were being called to Zion, or “heaven on earth.” He named it the YFZ Ranch, for “Yearning for Zion.”

Charlene Jeffs, a former FLDS member who was married at the time to Warren Jeffs’ brother, Lyle, recalled that “people were slowly disappearing” from Short Creek. Several of her children were called to Zion. “It was supposed to be an honor to have them called forth. But all it was, was heartache,” said Charlene Jeffs, who was exiled from the FLDS community in 2012.

In August 2006, Jeffs’ flight ended when his car was stopped for a routine traffic violation outside Las Vegas. Court proceedings then began.

Source: Read the original report