![]() ![]() ![]() He said Brigham Young, one of the church’s leaders, had “70 or 80 wives” and that wives equalled power. “This is (the religion’s) most holy principle and so they broke away from the mainstream church.” “The fundamentalists, the true believers, said ‘bullsh*t, what the f***’,” he said. In an interview ahead of the Sundance Film Festival where the documentary was premiering, Krakauer said polygamy was “everywhere” in Utah in the 1800s but the government soon tried to ban it. Having previously written about fundamentalist Mormonism, he explains how the FLDS came to hold such strong beliefs about women and enabled people like Jeffs to demand multiple brides. Polygamist Warren Jeffs is behind bars but his cult is as powerful as ever.Īuthor John Krakauer features heavily in the documentary. That’s the premise of Berg’s documentary, one that revisits the cult years after Jeffs’ conviction and finds little if anything has changed. His one victim in Texas was barely 12 years old.”Ī review of Brower’s book by Variety concluded “spiritual and psychological bondage does not end simply by putting a monster behind bars”. “I’d heard of polygamy and what was happening to these young girls, but I had no idea how young they really were. “The mafia threatens you with your life, but the FLDS threatens you with your family and your eternal salvation, and people that lose their family are without hope, and that’s worse than death.”īrower said he knew he was likely to come across polygamy - traditionally one man with multiple wives - but he didn’t expect it to involve pre-teens. He said the FLDS community were “more insidious” than the mafia with one subtle but important difference. “It literally took years, baby steps, little bits at a time, getting to know somebody and then them having a brother or some other contact that would slowly begin talking to me. “The community itself is very distrustful, very isolated, very insular,” he said. In an interview in 2011 he explained how he first gained the church’s trust. In his book, Prophet’s Prey - the same title used in the new documentary by director Amy Berg - Brower recounts how, over seven years, he witnessed horrendous crimes under the veil of religion. “Most people think of them as a church, but I think of them as an organised crime syndicate,” he said. Outside his jail cell there are 10,000 loyal followers waiting for his release, convinced he is their saviour.īrower told an audience in 2013 that he believed Jeffs was the leader of more than a church. He was additionally charged with incest and sexual conduct with minors.įour years after he was put behind bars, a new documentary reveals the church continues to operate without him. When he was tracked down he had with him 16 mobile phones, three wigs and one of his wives.īrower’s evidence led to Jeffs’ conviction and a 20-year sentence for child sexual assault. He was briefly a fugitive and briefly owned second position on the FBI’s most wanted list. ![]() Jeffs would eventually answer for his crimes, despite trying to run. “Kidnapping, tax fraud, child molestation, human trafficking, blackmail,” Brower said. Sam Brower, a private investigator who got close enough to Jeffs to write a book about what he witnessed, said the 59-year-old was “committing the most vile crimes imaginable”. Inside the walls of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (FLDS, not to be confused with the LDS which outlawed polygamy in 1890), Jeffs was preaching love and patience and the word of God. For years, Jeffs, a fundamentalist Mormon, was accruing wives - some as young as 12 years old - and forming a cult like no other. He wasn’t disturbing anybody, he didn’t appear to outsiders to be doing anything wrong.Ī closer look revealed the opposite. The documentary details the stories of those who managed to escape.IN the hills between Utah and Colorado City, a man named Warren Jeffs was going about his business quietly. Most horrifically, teenage girls within the organisation were forced to marry men who were much older than them without their consent by the rulers of the church. Not only did Warren have complete control of the members of the church, but he also cut them off financially from the outside world. Prior to Rulon's death, he was the leader and eighth prophet of the Mormon Church who practised and promoted having multiple marriages including with underage girls.Īfter becoming leader, Warren followed in his father's footsteps and, to this day, aged 62, he has a total of 78 wives according to the Washington Post. Warren Jeffs was the leader of the FLDS who took over from his father, Rulon, as the "prophet" after in 2002. WATCH: The official trailer for Netflix's true-crime series, Keep Sweet: Pray and Obey Who is Warren Jeffs? ![]()
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