Property owners along the Pike Lake Road and other concerned Cook County citizens have banded together in an effort to spread the word about the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints who might be establishing a foothold in the Pike Lake area.
The group has invited two of the nation’s leading experts on the FLDS to come and speak on May 17 and May 18. A community forum hosted by WTIP’s Rhonda Silence will be held Saturday, May 18, 2019 at 9 a.m. at the Cook County Community Center.
Toni Tewell and Sam Brower will be the keynote speakers.
Tewell is the founder and executive director of a nonprofit organization called Holding Out HELP (HOH), which provides assistance for people who come from a polygamous culture and need help to transition into society. Brower is a private detective and the investigator who pushed forward the arduous legal battles against the radical FLDS and Warren Jeffs.
A free showing of the Prophet’s Prey will be held Friday, May 17 at 7 p.m. at the Cook County Community Center. The documentary is about Warren Jeffs, the infamous leader of the church.
Although there is no certainty a group from the FLDS will move to the county, the community was made aware last January that property had been purchased on the Pike Lake Road by Seth Jeffs, the brother of the incarcerated FLDS leader, Warren Jeffs.
Warren Jeffs was sentenced to life plus 20 years after he was convicted of two felony counts of child sexual assault. He had been the leader and prophet of the church since 2002.
Seth purchased 40 acres near Pike Lake for $88,000 as the registered agent of Emerald Industries LLC with the intention of building a 5,760-square-foot pole barn complete with living quarters.
The LLC is registered at Seth’s Eden Prairie address and at an address in Helena, Montana. Since December 2018, an attorney from Salt Lake City, Utah, Alan Mortensen, was looking for Seth after Seth had defaulted on a lawsuit alleging Seth had watched and helped arrange for his brother Warren to perform ritual sexual child abuse on underage girls and had done nothing to stop the abuse.
The split
The FLDS church broke off from the Church of Jesus Christ Latter Day Saints in 1898, so they could continue their practice of polygamy where older men often marry young girls. The main branch is located in the twin cities of Hildale, Utah and Colorado City, Arizona, known as Short Creek. Under the rules of the sect, women are assigned to marry men, must keep their hair in a bun and wear prairie dresses that drape to their ankles.
It is estimated that the FLDS has 10,000 followers who also live, or have lived, in El Dorado, Texas, Pringle, South Dakota, Mexico and British Columbia.
In the 1940s the FLDS formed the United Effort Plan Trust, which covered the sect’s land, houses and other assets. In 2005 a court froze those assets and they were estimated to be valued at more than $100 million.
When Warren Jeffs took over for his father Rulon T. Jeffs, who ruled from1986- 2002 until death at age 92, he banned contact with the outside world, split families up, took young girls for his brides and excommunicated young men from the church. He was arrested and convicted of sexually assaulting girls that were aged 12 and 14. He called them his “spiritual wives.”
When Warren was convicted, it was estimated that he had married 80 women and girls.
If you want to learn more about this sect, come to one of the forums on May 17 or May 18.
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