Netflix Documentary Examines Warren Jeffs and the FLDS Sect’s Control and Abuse Allegations

A new Netflix documentary, *Keep Sweet: Pray and Obey*, focuses on Warren Jeffs and the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (FLDS). The film recounts Jeffs’s arrest on 28 August 2006, when a routine traffic stop outside Las Vegas led to the capture of a man who had been a high-profile fugitive and had recently been moved to the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted list. According to a private investigator quoted in the film, Jeffs had been “living the high life” while on the run, including trips to Disney World and Mardi Gras in New Orleans. Jeffs was in the back seat of the vehicle, and his brother Isaac Jeffs was driving.

At the time of his arrest, Jeffs had been charged in Arizona with two counts of sexual conduct with a minor, one count of conspiracy to commit sexual conduct with a minor, and unlawful flight to avoid prosecution. In Utah, he faced a charge of rape as an accomplice. The arrest led to the first of his criminal convictions, and he was later convicted a second time. The documentary is built on these legal events and on accounts from former members of the group.

The FLDS emerged when the Mormon church discontinued polygamy and excommunicated those who continued to practice it, according to the source. The group was incorporated under the FLDS name in 1991, though its origins can be traced to the early 20th century. It was first based in Arizona near the Utah border and later expanded into Utah and Texas, with communities in other regions. Leroy S. Johnson led the Council of Friends, which the source describes as an early form of the FLDS, from the 1950s until his death in 1986. Rulon Jeffs, Warren Jeffs’s father, then took over and was known to members as “the prophet.”

Former members have described the authority Rulon Jeffs held and how he used it. Rebecca Wall, who was raised in the FLDS, says she was married to Rulon Jeffs, then 85, when she was 19. In the documentary, she describes how a man’s status was tied to the number of wives he had and says that a father’s daughters could be given to other men. Wall says members did not choose their spouses, and that the prophet decided marriages. She describes a handshake that she says signaled that she was to marry him. In a 2015 book disputing his daughter’s account, her father, Lloyd Wall, wrote that “there was no pressure or collusion” in the marriage, while acknowledging that his daughter’s marriage “turned out to be a nightmare.” The source presents these as the accounts of the individuals named, and they are not findings of any court.

When Rulon Jeffs died in 2002, the source reports, members had been taught that the prophet was immortal. Elissa Wall, who grew up in the FLDS, recalls her fear and confusion after his death. Warren Jeffs then succeeded his father as prophet. According to Elissa Wall, he began speaking as though he were “his father renewed,” and he married his father’s wives. Charlene Jeffs, who was married to Warren Jeffs’s brother Lyle Jeffs, says she questioned her husband about the changes and was told that nothing the prophet did was wrong.

The source says Warren Jeffs enforced stricter rules than his father, including a ban on any form of fun and the surrender of firearms, which Lloyd Wall described as a “big” change for him. Many rules applied specifically to women, who were forbidden to wear denim, prints or the color red, and were expected to wear long underwear covering their bodies to the wrists and feet, with hair done and braided. Charlene Jeffs says the women complied because they believed this was their path to salvation, which shows a commitment to protecting the vulnerable (Proverbs 31:8-9).

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