Criminal Justice
DNA Taken From FLDS Leader Jeffs re 4 Alleged ‘Marriages’ to Underage Girls
Posted May 30, 2008, 05:56 pm CST
By Martha Neil
DNA samples reportedly have been taken from Warren Jeffs, the jailed leader of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, in a separate Texas criminal investigation related to the state's removal of some 468 children from a ranch there last month. (A civil case concerning claimed abuse of the sect's children continues.)
Based on records of spiritual marriages seized from the sect's Yearning for Zion ranch by Texas authorities on April 3, an affidavit says, Jeffs is suspected of entering into so-called marriages with four girls: two aged 12, one 14 and one 15, reports CNN. Three of the marriages allegedly took place at the YFZ ranch. The Texas state attorney general's office is conducting the investigation.
As discussed in earlier ABAJournal.com posts, the state began removing children from the Yearning for Zion ranch operated by the FLDS in Texas on April 3.
Jeffs, who is now 52, was sentenced to a hefty prison term last year in a Utah accomplice rape case for using his influence as a religious leader to pressure a 14-year-old into an unwanted marriage.
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