Austin, USA - Expert witnesses warned a House committee Wednesday that a polygamous sect taking root in West Texas is led by a man who poses a danger to women and children in the sect and has the capacity to incite religiously inspired violence.
The witnesses included Mark Shurtleff, the attorney general of Utah, who told the House Juvenile Justice and Family Issues Committee that he has spent most of his last term in office trying to bring charges of pedophilia, child sexual abuse and welfare fraud against the leader of the Fundamentalist Church of Latter Day Saints. The church, based in two twin communities on the Utah and Arizona border, is currently completing the infrastructure for a town four miles north of Eldorado, south of San Angelo.
The attorney general told the committee that a code of silence, intimidation and the statute of limitations on sex crimes in Utah have thwarted his efforts to prosecute Warren Jeffs, who refers to himself as the prophet of the Fundamentalist Church. But his ongoing investigation of the sect and a decision by the state of Utah to increase penalties for crimes alleged to have been committed by Jeffs and other sect leaders led to the sect's move to Texas, Shurtleff told the committee.
Shurtleff urged the committee to approve House Bill 3006, introduced by Rep. Harvey Hilderbran, R-Kerrvile, which would change Texas law in areas directed at the practices of the church. Hilderbran called on the committee to raise the age of parental consent for marriage in Texas to 16 from 14, to ban people from marrying their stepparent or stepchild and increase residency requirements for people running for local and district offices.
"This is an evil culture," author Jon Krakauer told the committee Wednesday. Krakauer told the committee he has taken on the Fundamentalist Church after six years of research into the sect led to a book about violence in the world of polygamy, "Under the Banner of Heaven.
"It is like this Twilight Zone where everybody answers to Warren Jeffs. He's a freak. He's a sick guy. He is an evil, evil man."
Jeffs, whose relocation to the Eldorado compound has not been confirmed, is wanted for no crimes in Texas or in Utah and Arizona. Jeffs has been accused in a pending civil suit in Salt Lake City of ritually sodomizing a young male relative in the 1980s.
The eyes of committee members widened as Krakauer described the ritual subjugation of women in the sect, who he said are assigned husbands upon the ruling of Jeffs and are prohibited from having formal education and contact with much of the outside world. Hilderbran's bill, Krakauer told the committee, "will not bring Warren Jeffs to justice, but is an important first step."
While the committee took no action Wednesday, Rep. Toby Goodman, R-Arlington, said Texas would bring all of its resources to bear to protect women and children on state soil.
"I hope this group doesn't think it can come to Texas, which is kind of a law and order state, and commit acts of sodomy and child abuse," Goodman said. "This state will literally go after these people."