Answer Them Nothing
Bringing Down the Polygamous Empire of Warren Jeffs
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- USD 12.99
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- USD 12.99
Descripción editorial
The compelling story of the struggle by law enforcement and activists to dismantle the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (FLDS) is finally told. In 1953, when police raided the Short Creek compound of the FLDS, it soon became a political and publicity nightmare eventually costing the governor of Arizona his job. Thus began 50 years of skittish public officials turning a blind eye to heinous offenses such as child abandonment, kidnapping, statutory rape, and incest, as well as massive tax and welfare fraud. Warren Jeffs became the new FLDS prophet and president in 2002, and anti-FLDS activists watched in horror as he used his boundless authority and the resources of a tax-supported community to devastate thousands of lives on cruel whims. This exposé presents a detailed, chilling account of how a hostile, destructive group can manipulate the U.S. judicial system. It is a mesmerizing journey into one of the United States's darkest corners, a story that stretches over three states and deep into the history of the powerful Mormon Church.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Pedophilia, fraud, and litigation stoke this cogent if overstuffed expos of a lurid down-home theocracy. Journalist Weyermann probes the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, a polygamist Mormon sect entrenched in the Short Creek area straddling the Utah-Arizona border. Under all-powerful Prophet Warren Jeffs, it's a fertility-cult run amok: unwilling pubescent girls are married off to lecherous church elders (Jeffs is charged with raping child-brides as young as 12); children are beaten, and adolescent boys abandoned; husbands are suddenly exiled and their wives and children given to other men; local government and police, run by the faithful, stonewall outsiders and intimidate dissidents while siphoning public funds into church leaders' pockets. It's a snake pit of bizarre theology, brainwashing, and harem rivalries clad in gingham and overalls, and Weyermann's well-researched muckraking is colorful and gripping. Unfortunately, her reporting on the coalition of runaway wives, pro-bono lawyers, and state prosecutors who challenged the Jeffs regime in recent years rambles between melodrama "some women... find the yawning jaws of hell preferable to their situation in FLDS" and eye-glazing court battles over FLDS real estate. Still, Weyermann presents a disturbing account of how a religious quasi-dictatorship can flourish on American soil.
