- Up to 1,000 teenage boys have been separated from their
parents and thrown out of their communities by a polygamous sect to make
more young women available for older men, Utah officials claim.
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- Many of these "Lost Boys", some as young as
13, have simply been dumped on the side of the road in Arizona and Utah,
by the leaders of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day
Saints (FLDS), and told they will never see their families again or go
to heaven.
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- The 10,000-strong FLDS, which broke away from the Mormon
church in 1890 when the mainstream faith disavowed polygamy, believes a
man must marry at least three women to go to heaven. The sect appeared
to be in turmoil yesterday, after its assets were frozen last week and
a warrant was issued in Arizona on Friday for the arrest of its autocratic
leader, Warren Jeffs, for arranging a wedding between an underage girl
and a 28-year-old man who was already married.
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- Mr Jeffs is also being sued by lawyers for six of the
Lost Boys for conspiracy to purge surplus males from the community, and
by his nephew, Brent Jeffs, who accuses him of sexual abuse.
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- Warren Jeffs' whereabouts yesterday were uncertain, but
Utah officials said they believed he may be hiding in an FLDS compound
near Eldorado, Texas, and they have contacted the Texan authorities.
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- Some have voiced concern that an attempt to corner the
sect leader could provoke a tragedy like the 1993 siege of the Branch Davidian
sect in Waco, Texas.
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- Jim Hill, an investigator in Utah's attorney general's
office, told The Guardian yesterday: "From everything I've been able
to discern about Warren Jeffs, he is someone who is capable of some very
different things. Whether that includes a mass suicide, I don't know. But
I worry about it all the time."
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- FLDS officials and the sect's lawyer, Rodney Parker,
did not return calls seeking comment, but have previously argued that the
Lost Boys were exiled from their communities because they were teenage
delinquents who refused to keep the sect's rules.
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- Mr Hill said although the boys may have been rebellious,
their expulsion had more to do with the ruthless sexual arithmetic of a
polygamous sect.
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- "Obviously if you're going to have three to one
or four to one female to male marriages, you're going to run out of females.
The way of taking care of it is selectively casting out those you don't
want to be in the religion," the investigator said.
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- Dave Bills, who runs Smiles for Diversity, a foundation
in Salt Lake City set up by an ex-FLDS member to look after the Lost Boys,
said it was difficult to estimate their numbers because they had been scattered.
But Mr Bills said the figures could be "as low as 400 and as high
as 1,000".
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- "They live every day like it's their last day and
they don't care about anything," Mr Bills said. "They're told
they won't have three wives, and they're doomed. But they all want to go
back to their mums."
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- One of the boys, Gideon Barlow, said he was expelled
from a FLDS community in Colorado City, Arizona, for wearing short-sleeved
shirts, listening to CDs and having a girlfriend. He said his mother rejected
him on orders from the sect's leaders.
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- "I couldn't see how my mum would let them do what
they did to me," he told the Los Angeles Times. After his expulsion,
he attempted to give her a Mother's Day present but she told him to stay
away. "I am dead to her now," he said.
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- Joanne Suder, a lawyer representing some of the Lost
Boys in a case against the sect, said there had been "a conspiracy
to excommunicate young boys to change the arithmetic so there are more
young girls available for polygamy."
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- She said some of the boys were simply driven out of town
and dumped on the side of the road, leaving them traumatised. "I think
anyone who finds themselves ousted from the only environment they ever
knew and left in the middle of nowhere, and then is not allowed to be with
their family and loved ones, and is led to believe that they can no longer
go to heaven, is going to be troubled," Ms Suder told The Guardian.
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- Polygamy is illegal in the US, but the authorities have
been wary of confronting the FLDS for fear of provoking a siege or inviting
political attacks for religious persecution.
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- State investigators have also found it hard to persuade
FLDS members to give evidence against Mr Jeffs. However, authorities in
Utah and Arizona have recently increased the pressure on the sect's leader,
Last week, a Utah judge froze FLDS assets, and the attorney's office in
Mohave County, Arizona, charged Mr Jeffs for arranging a marriage between
a 28-year-old married and a 16-year-old girl. If convicted he could serve
up to two years in prison.
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- Mr Jeffs inherited the leadership of the FLDS three years
ago after the death of his father, Rulon. Since then, he has ruled its
enclaves on the Arizona-Utah border, in Texas and Canada with fearsome
discipline. At the age of 49 he has reportedly fathered at least 56 children
by 40 wives.
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- There have been no confirmed sightings of Mr Jeffs for
over a year, but a photograph of a man resembling the sect leader was taken
in January at the FLDS 1,700-acre Texas ranch near Eldorado.
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- Randy Mankin, the editor of the local newspaper, the
Eldorado Success, said: "People on the ranch don't have contact with
the outside world. Two men only do whatever is necessary to do their business."
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- What is the FLDS?
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- The Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day
Saints split off from the Mormon church in 1890, when the mainstream faith
disavowed polygamy.
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- The sect has communes in Utah, Arizona, Texas and Canada.
It is the biggest polygamous group in the US.
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- What does the FLDS believe?
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- Polygamy allows a higher birth rate, increasing the "righteous"
population. No man can go to heaven if he has less than three wives. The
sect believes black people are inferior, the offspring of Cain. It teaches
that America was first colonised by a lost tribe of Israelites and was
visited by Jesus after his resurrection.
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- Who runs the sect?
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- Warren Jeffs, 49, inherited the leadership in 2002 after
his father, Rulon, died. He has pursued a hard line against sect members
deemed to fall short of "perfection", and has purged hundreds
from the ranks, mostly men and boys. He is estimated to have 40 wives and
56 children. His whereabouts are uncertain but he is widely thought to
be holed up in the FLDS compound outside El Dorado, Texas.
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- Who are the "lost boys"?
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- Among those purged from the sect are between 400 and
1,000 teenage boys and young men. The FLDS describes them as delinquents.
Utah authorities say they were thrown out to make more girls available
as wives for older men in the sect.
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- Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited
2005
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- http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,12271,1505997,00.html
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