Vera Black, whose children were taken away because she was a polygamist in a landmark Utah case, dies at 102

Nate Carlisle
Salt Lake Tribune
May 14, 2020

Vera Black, who made international news in the 1950s when she let the state of Utah remove her children rather than teach them polygamy was wrong, died Monday in Colorado City, Ariz. She was 102.

One of her sons, Harold Black, said she died in the home of her oldest living daughter. Black had been bedridden for about 30 years after suffering a series of strokes. Her death happened the day before a new Utah law took effect reducing the offense for polygamy among consenting adults from a felony to an infraction — less than some traffic tickets.

In the more than 60 years since Black let her children go into state care, then got them back after she and her husband made the promises Utah sought, the case of the Black family has been a cause célebrè for both polygamists and their detractors. Polygamists and sympathetic scholars and authors have seen the custody case as a government oppressing a religious minority.

Arizona’s 1953 raid on Short Creek, near its border with Utah, which happened a few months before proceedings against the Blacks began, and the custody case have been cited as a reason for a multigenerational mistrust by polygamists of child welfare and protection agencies. Members of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, to which Black and many of her descendants belonged, compared Utah’s treatment of the Blacks to what Texas did in 2008, when it removed children from the Yearning for Zion ranch.

Critics of polygamy have appreciated the 1955 Utah Supreme Court decision that upheld the children’s removal. That ruling, which has been cited in subsequent polygamy cases, found the religious protections in the Utah Constitution did not extend to polygamy.

The opinion also said the Black kids met the state’s definition of neglected children due to what the Utah Supreme Court described as “an immoral environment.”

“The good name of this State and its people,” the majority opinion said, “committed to sustaining a high moral standard, must not be obliged to suffer because of the unsavory social life of [the Blacks] and others claiming the constitutional right under the guise of religious freedom to bring shame and embarrassment to the people of this state. ... There must be no compromise with evil."

Still, the state’s high court gave Black and her husband, Leonard Black, an option: The children could remain with their mother as long as she did not live with their father. Vera Black also had to sign an agreement to teach her children that polygamy was against the law and that she would discourage them from entering the practice.

The first condition was not an issue. Leonard Black had two other wives with whom he could stay. But Vera Black refused to sign any such statement critical of polygamy.

“It is an upright life,” she said of polygamy.

She changed her mind June 11, 1956, almost five months after seven of her children had entered a foster home in Provo. (Then-4-year-old Vaughn was ill and had been allowed to stay with his mom.) With the state making plans to place at least some of the younger children for adoption, Leonard and Vera Black appeared in front of 6th District Juvenile Court Judge Durham Morris.

Vera Black signed the agreement and gave verbal promises to the judge. Leonard Black testified he would teach his children to obey Utah laws and that he would support them.

The family was reunited two days later.

“I don’t like to go back on some of the things I believe,” Black told The Salt Lake Tribune the day of the reunion, “but my children are my first responsibility.”
Polygamous roots

Black was born into Mormon-based polygamy as Vera Johnson on Dec. 5, 1917, in Fredonia, Ariz., to Warren Elmer Johnson and Viola Spencer. Her paternal grandfather was a polygamist who bought the Colorado River ferry in Lees Ferry, Ariz., from John D. Lee’s widow after Lee was executed for his role in the Mountain Meadows Massacre.

One of Vera Black’s paternal uncles was Leroy Sunderland Johnson, who was the leader of the Short Creek community — later incorporated into the adjacent towns of Hildale, Utah, and Colorado City, Ariz. — and the prophet of what became the FLDS.

The Johnson family belonged to the group of so-called Mormon fundamentalists who lived along the Utah-Arizona line and continued practicing polygamy after the Salt Lake City-based Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints began to abandon plural marriage in 1890.

Leonard Black legally married his first wife, Verna Colvin, in 1928. He entered into a “spiritual marriage” with Vera Johnson about 1934 or 1935, according to court documents, and she started using his surname. Not long after that union, Leonard Black spiritually married Vera’s sister, Larna.

The family’s troubles began — as they did for everyone living in Short Creek — on July 26, 1953. Police and agents from Arizona stormed the community and removed 263 children and mothers, including Vera Black’s two sister wives.

Vera Black and her children lived on the Utah side. Then-Utah Gov. J. Bracken Lee declined to have his state join Arizona in the sweep. But after the arrests, according to “Kidnapped From That Land: The Government Raids on the Short Creek Polygamists” by Martha Sonntag Bradley, the Arizona attorney general called Utah 6th District Juvenile Court Judge David F. Anderson.

The Arizona official expressed concern for Short Creek children north of the state line. Anderson convened a meeting with juvenile probation and welfare agents, and an investigation of the Utah polygamists’ children got underway.

By December 1953, Anderson was considering 20 petitions alleging a total of 80 children were being neglected by parents who were not teaching them proper morals. According to Bradley’s book and later scholarly works, Vera and Leonard Black’s children were picked as test cases.

Vera Black was turning 36 years old. Her children and their ages at some point in 1953 were Orson, 17; Lillian, 12; Spencer, 10; Elsie, 8; Emily, 6; Wilford, 5; Ivan, 4; and Vaughn, 1.

The mother and children lived in a two-room home with no indoor plumbing, according to court records. The austerity and the fact five of Leonard Black’s older daughters with his other wives had already entered into plural marriages became the rationale for the Utah Department of Public Welfare to declare Vera Black’s children neglected.

During a March 1954 trial, the Blacks acknowledged they had a polygamous marriage but said they had not lived together since the raid. Anderson, who visited Vera Black’s home to investigate the living conditions, found her household an “immoral environment” and ordered their children into foster care.

A welfare agent arrived at Vera Black’s door on June 4, 1954, to take her seven oldest children. At the urging of Juanita Brooks, the famed Mormon historian who viewed what was happening to the Blacks as an outrage, Vera Black insisted she accompany her children. She was allowed to ride with them as far as Cedar City before she was directed to get out of the car and say goodbye.
Winning, losing

That same month, Vera and Leonard Black scored a legal victory. A state district court judge in St. George found Anderson’s ruling unconstitutional. The children were allowed to come home within a week of the new ruling.

The 1955 Utah Supreme Court decision then restored Anderson’s order. The children were allowed to remain with Vera Black while she and her husband appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court.

The nation’s top court declined to hear the case in December 1955, ending the parents’ legal options. When the parents refused final offers to disavow polygamy and promise not to teach it to their children, the Blacks received a notice that welfare agents would come for the children Jan. 10, 1956. The notice included a request for Vera Black to have her seven oldest children ready to travel.

A crowd of Short Creek residents gathered at Vera Black’s home in a show of support. But no one tried to prevent the Washington County sheriff and welfare agents from taking the kids. (A similar scene played out when Texas authorities entered the FLDS temple in 2008. Sect members stood in front in protest but did not attempt to stop law enforcement from going inside.)

Journalists from United Press wire service were in Short Creek and published an account that ran in newspapers across the country. The article quoted young Wilford saying, “I’m not going, Mommy, I’m not going.” Ten-year-old Elsie insisted she would take the family cat with her, though the article didn’t say whether the feline made it to Provo.

Two days later, United Press took photographs of Vera Black giving a goodbye hug to her children at the Provo foster home. One photo has since been placed in the Library of Congress.

Vera Black was allowed to visit her children. Orson, who by then was 19 but went with his siblings, was permitted to travel for work and schooling. Meanwhile, public lobbying continued.

When the governor declined to intervene, Vera Black held a news conference in Provo seeking sympathy for her cause.

“I just couldn’t sign that document,” she said. “It was against my conscience and my religion. God help me to regain my children.”
Personal trials

Utah’s plans to place her younger children for adoption changed Vera Black’s thinking. She agreed to the state’s terms and was reunited with her children.

By then, Utah had altered its approach to dealing with plural families. Those other Short Creek custody cases were adjudicated without removing the children.

The Blacks returned to Short Creek. Vera and Leonard Black had two more sons, Harold, in 1959, and Sheldon, in 1962, but life didn’t return to normal.



https://www.sltrib.com/news/2020/05/14/vera-black-whose-children/

Short Creek starts to move beyond its past as a fundamentalist fief

A small community straddling the Utah-Arizona border charts a new course

The Economist
December 7, 2019

Judging by its shops, Short Creek seems more like a trendy suburb of somewhere like Portland than a small town on the Utah-Arizona border with just shy of 8,000 people. There are two health-food stores, a bakery and a vape shop. The occasional sight of women in prairie dresses and the huge houses with thick walls are the only conspicuous evidence Short Creek was once home to an American theocracy.

When the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (lds), better known as the Mormon church, abandoned several controversial doctrines in 1890, there were dissenters. Some, seeking to preserve abandoned institutions such as “plural marriage” (polygamy) and communal ownership, formed communities practising “Old-Fashioned Mormonism”. By the early 1930s Short Creek was such a place.

The settlement was largely ignored by the outside world, apart from the occasional court case over polygamy and an ill-advised raid by the state of Arizona in 1953, when 263 children were taken from their parents and held for up to three years, inciting widespread sympathy for the town. Short Creek ultimately incorporated as two places: Hildale City, Utah in 1962 and Colorado City, Arizona in 1985. It was not until the turn of the century that outsiders started paying attention again.

Short Creek’s church, by then called the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (flds), had long been headed by a “prophet”. The church’s most famous, Warren Jeffs, assumed the title in 2002. By excommunicating dissenters—which meant ostracisation by believers, even spouses and children—Mr Jeffs took control of the priesthood and therefore of the town’s resources and government, as most residents and city office-holders were church members. He began to exercise total authority over relationships, starting by marrying many of his stepmothers. He removed all flds children from public school and banned television, books other than approved scripture, toys and red clothing. Mr Jeffs was arrested in 2006 after a stint on the fbi’s most-wanted list for charges related to sexual abuse of a minor. He is serving a life sentence in Texas.

Mr Jeffs’s arrest did not end Short Creek’s legal troubles. The United States began court proceedings against Colorado City and Hildale City in 2012, alleging that city officials and local utility providers had acted in concert to “deny non-flds individuals housing, police protection, and access to public space and services”. The flds filled the local marshal’s office with loyal members who turned a blind eye to under-age marriages and food-stamp fraud. The marshal’s office trained and equipped a formal security force, called “Church Security”, with the primary purpose of helping church leaders evade the law. They held mock fbi raids to be ready for the real thing, and even helped burgle the business of an ex-flds member who had evidence that Mr Jeffs had raped a 12-year-old in the presence of other girls.

The two cities lost their case in 2016. Both then appealed, though Hildale City withdrew in 2018. The ruling was upheld by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in August of this year.

Over the course of the proceedings, Short Creek has changed dramatically. Many true believers have moved away, while the town has seen both the return of ex-flds members and an influx of newcomers. Though the government of Colorado City is still controlled by flds members, Hildale City elected non-flds councillors and an ex-flds mayor in 2017, causing a number of flds city employees to resign.

Most of the towns’ businesses opened recently. The Edge of the World Brewery served its first beer in March 2018. The Black Cloud vape shop opened three months later. Few flds-run businesses remain. And the children have returned to class. An old flds storehouse has since become Water Canyon High School.

With these changes has come a newfound democratic zeal. At a town-hall meeting on October 21st the citizens of Hildale City debated paving the town’s many dirt roads. Mr Jeffs’s name came up only one time, invoked by a man who had moved in relatively recently. There is a long road still to travel to escape Mr Jeffs’s legacy, but the community of Short Creek has set off in the right direction.

This article appeared in the United States section of the print edition under the headline "Theocracy in America"

https://www.economist.com/united-states/2019/12/07/short-creek-starts-to-move-beyond-its-past-as-a-fundamentalist-fief

Brothers get 2 years in prison for tax scheme linked to polygamous sect

Nate Carlisle

Salt Lake Tribune

September 24, 2019

A federal judge on Tuesday sentenced two brothers to two years in prison for filing false tax returns for members of a polygamous sect on the Utah-Arizona line.

Alma T. and Denver T. Barlow, formerly of Hildale, filed over 700 false tax returns for themselves and members of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, according to prosecutors. The brothers had pleaded guilty to a count of conspiracy to file false claims.

Charges against a third brother, Trenton T. Barlow, were dismissed in 2018. His attorney, Rudy Bautista, said prosecutors determined they couldn’t prove he had a role in the fraud.

In a news release announcing the sentencing Tuesday, U.S. Attorney for Utah John Huber said the defendants claimed over $9.7 million in false refunds for hundreds of clients who didn’t know Alma and Denver Barlow were not legitimate tax preparers. Neither Utah nor Arizona lists the defendants as being certified public accountants.

Neither the 2017 indictment nor Tuesday’s news release mentioned the FLDS or where the proceeds went. In 2017, one of the defendants’ half brothers, Ted Barlow, told The Salt Lake Tribune much of the money the brothers received likely went to the church leaders.

FLDS President Warren Jeffs, who is serving a life sentence plus 20 years in a Texas prison on charges related to sexually assaulting girls he married as plural wives, requires members to provide any surplus money to the bishop.

“Alma basically told me one time, ‘We’re told to get money for the church no matter what,’ ” Ted Barlow told The Tribune.

The two defendants have agreed to pay restitution, according to court filings.

The 2017 grand jury indictment describes a simple scheme. When filing their own tax returns, the defendants falsified W-2 forms to show they had far more tax withholdings than they actually paid.

DENVER BARLOW ALLEGED FALSE CLAIMS (p. 4)

View the entire document with DocumentCloud

Alma and Denver Barlow co-owned a clothing manufacturer in Hildale called Most Wanted Jeans. Prosecutors allege Denver Barlow falsified business expenses to receive a tax refund of $45,168 for 2012.

The indictment also alleges the defendants sought out people in Hildale and Colorado City and asked to file their taxes for them. Working from Most Wanted Jeans in a business park with other FLDS-affiliated businesses, the defendants, according to court documents, misreported the filers’ incomes, marital status and number of dependents to make the filers qualify for an earned income tax credit, which can reduce the taxes that low- or moderate-income people pay.

The defendants took 10 percent of the refunds received by the other filers, the indictment says.

In court documents, prosecutors asked that the defendants receive 46 months in prison. The prosecutors argued the false returns caused tax problems for people who thought they were receiving professional assistance. There also was no evidence anyone in the FLDS ordered Alma and Denver Barlow to execute the scheme, prosecutors wrote. Court records say the brothers were kicked out of the FLDS in 2012, yet the fraud stretched from 2009 to 2014.

In their arguments for a lighter sentence, defense attorneys wrote that federal Judge Ted Stewart should take into account the FLDS culture.

“Actions against federal authorities,” defense attorneys wrote, “and federal institutions which benefited the community were proper and just based on the doctrine of that community, even though those acts were criminal acts.”

ALLEGEDLY SOLICITED OTHERS (p. 6)

View the entire document with DocumentCloud

https://www.sltrib.com/news/polygamy/2019/09/24/brothers-get-years/

Ninth Circuit Upholds Verdict Against Sect-Run Arizona Town

Courthouse News Service

August 26, 2019

AMANDA PAMPURO

 

(CN) – An Arizona town that let a Mormon sect run the government deprived non-church members of their constitutional rights, a Ninth Circuit panel held Monday, affirming a federal judge’s 2016 finding.

“We conclude that because of the overwhelming evidence that Colorado City deprived non-FLDS residents of their constitutional rights, it is more probable than not that the court would have reached the same verdict on the United States’ [Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act] claim,” wrote U.S. Circuit Judge Milan Smith Jr., in a 21-page opinion.

The U.S. government sued the towns of Colorado City, Arizona, and Hildale City, Utah, in 2012, for letting overseers of the Fundamentalist Church of Latter-Day Saints (FLDS) appoint city leader and marshals.

Following a 44-day trial in 2016, U.S. District Judge H. Russel Holland, a Ronald Reagan appointee, awarded a total of $2.2 million to apostates denied access to water utilities as well as a former city councilman wrongly arrested and charged with felony theft.

Hildale City withdrew from this appeal in 2018, leaving the 4,857-person Arizona town alone in its argument against the court’s use of the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994. Smith noted the act was passed “address systematic patterns or practices of police misconduct.”

Colorado City argued the law didn’t apply since the town didn’t have an official policy on the books committing it to work on behalf of the church.

Nevertheless, the FLDS was handpicking city marshals to “ignore violations of the law – such as underage marriage, unlicensed drug distributions, and food stamp fraud – by FLDS members,” Smith wrote in a summary of the trial.

Law enforcement on the town payroll helped church leaders duck the FBI, kept tabs on unfamiliar license plates that rolled through, hid church leader Warren Jeffs from the FBI for more than a year and destroyed evidence against him.

Moreover, the marshal’s office “selectively enforce[ed] the law based upon religion,” arresting several non-FLDS members without probable cause.

The church also employed its own security detail nicknamed the God Squad.

Colorado City also argued that statements made by FLDS leaders should have been discounted by the court as mere heresy, but Smith said doing so would not have changed the case’s outcome.

But Smith, a George W. Bush appointee noted in his opinion that “the United States presented extensive evidence at trial that supported the existence of a conspiracy between the church and the towns,” including that “Jeffs excommunicated the towns’ leaders who did not follow his orders [and] FLDS leaders determined who would occupy the towns’ government positions such as mayor, City Council members, and police officers.”

Smith was joined in the opinion by two Bill Clinton appointees, U.S. Circuit Judge Michael Daly Hawkins and Chief U.S. District Judge Barbara M.G. Lynn of the Northern District of Texas, sitting by designation.

Spanning the Arizona-Utah border, the Short Creek Community follows the teachings of Warren Jeffs, whom they consider a prophet. The FLDS should not be confused with the Salt Lake City-based Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, which excommunicated many of the sect members.

Jeffs is imprisoned in Texas for life plus 20 years for the sexual abuse of two young girls he had taken as his “spiritual wives.”

https://www.courthousenews.com/ninth-circuit-upholds-verdict-against-sect-run-arizona-town/

Utah company that used child labor from polygamous sect to pick pecans must still pay $200,000 to compensate kids, federal appeals court rules

Nate Carlisle
Salt Lake Tribune
March 15, 2018

A federal appeals court has upheld most of the ruling against a company affiliated with a polygamous church and which was found to have used child labor, though the company did win one point.

The contempt of court finding against Paragon Contractors Corp. and its owner, Brian Jessop, stands, and they still must pay $200,000 into a fund to compensate the children who harvested pecans on a ranch near Hurricane in 2012.

But the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals said a federal judge in Salt Lake City was wrong to make Jessop and Paragon report to what is called a special master — someone who would monitor their business practices. That could be an important ruling for Jessop. Last month, he appeared at a new court hearing where he was accused of failing to comply with that special master.

Jessop is a city councilman in Hildale. Both he and Paragon have ties to the polygamous Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. In December 2012, children from the FLDS were sent to the pecan ranch.

Some of those children later described that harvest and others they worked on at the ranch. They complained of being cold, having limited access to bathrooms and being required to work to keep themselves and their families in good standing with the FLDS. Most importantly, they testified they were not paid for their labor.

Paragon and Jessop had entered into an agreement with the U.S. Department of Labor in 2007 to not use child labor in ways that violated the law. After hearing testimony about the 2012 pecan harvest, U.S. District Judge Tena Campbell found Paragon and Jessop in contempt for violating the earlier agreement. She then ordered the $200,000 be paid and that Paragon and Jessop report their work to the special master.

In Tuesday’s ruling, the 10th Circuit Court in Denver rejected the argument that the children were volunteers or that they were the responsibility of an independent contractor. But the court said that by the time of Campbell’s ruling in 2016, Paragon and Jessop were in compliance with the earlier agreement.

Therefore, the 10th Circuit Court ruled, appointing a special master who would ensure future compliance exceeded Campbell’s authority.

“A coercive sanction cannot be imposed on a party that is currently in compliance just to ensure future compliance,” the 10th Circuit Court judges wrote.

Jessop may still be in trouble for more recent business dealings. At the hearing last month, the Labor Department presented evidence that Paragon had folded into a new company, called Par 2, that should inherit the child labor restrictions imposed in 2007. Inspectors in Arizona found Par 2 building a motel. They also suspected Par 2 of employing two 17-year-olds who were using nail guns.

Federal labor laws says no one under 18 may operate such machinery.

Jeff Matura, an attorney for Par 2, on Thursday said a judge in Salt Lake City can still consider whether Par 2 is subject to the order not to violate child labor laws, but questions about the special master are moot.

“We can’t be held in contempt for violating something that should not have been ordered in the first place,” Matura said.



https://www.sltrib.com/news/polygamy/2018/03/15/utah-company-that-used-child-labor-from-polygamous-sect-to-pick-pecans-wins-one-point-in-appeal-but-most-of-a-lower-courts-ruling-will-stand/

Public Officials In Town With Polygamous Sect Resign After Elections

SARAH VENTRE
NPR
February 12, 2018

Political turmoil in the communities of Colorado City, Ariz., and Hildale, Utah, have resulted in the resignations of nearly a dozen city and utility board employees.

The communities are the longtime home of a polygamous sect, the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, which has been the target of state and federal investigations and lawsuits. FLDS leader Warren Jeffs is serving a life sentence for sexual assault of children.

The resignations follow the historic election last year of non-FLDS followers to vacant Hildale city council seats and the mayor's office. One of the employees cited conflict of religion as the reason for his resignation. He said in his resignation letter that it is against his faith to follow a woman or to work with "apostates," which is the FLDS word for those who have left or been kicked out of the church. FLDS faithful typically do not associate with apostates. Those who leave the church, whether by their own choice or by the decree of church leaders, are shunned.

The adjacent communities are essentially one town and share services.

The newly elected Hildale mayor is Donia Jessop, who left the FLDS church about four years ago with her family. Jessop is the first woman, and also the first "apostate" to be mayor of Hildale and said she respects those who have resigned for following their beliefs.

Still, the resignations suddenly leave the town with empty municipal jobs. Jessop and others on the council were not caught completely off guard. There had been rumors in the communities of the mass resignations. Jessop said she is working on filling the positions with the guidance of a court-appointed monitor named Roger Carter, who is the city manager of Washington, Utah, which is about 45 minutes away from Hildale. The monitor was appointed as a result of a 2016 Justice Department lawsuit alleging institutionalized religious discrimination in the community. Non-members complained that they were denied access to city services because they were not part of the FLDS faith. In 2016, the towns were found guilty of religious discrimination by a federal court jury.

The towns and FLDS church leaders have been the subject of lawsuits and prosecutions ranging from food stamp fraud to sexual abuse for years. Officials in Arizona and Utah have also successfully challenged FLDS dominance of the school system, town marshal's office and a religious trust that once controlled nearly all the land and homes in the border towns.

Hildale and Colorado City have undergone significant changes in the last few years, particularly as population demographics continue to shift with people leaving the FLDS church, which has always been the dominant cultural and political force in the towns.

While the faithful still follow Jeffs' edicts from prison, there is work being done in the community to provide resources and services from those leaving the extremely strict and insular church, as well as efforts to open up the community and make it more welcoming to outsiders.

KJZZ chronicled a number of these changes in a series about the community, known collectively as Short Creek.

NPR's Howard Berkes contributed reporting for this story.

https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2018/02/12/585180219/public-officials-in-town-with-polygamous-sect-resign-after-elections

Utah-Arizona border towns pay to settle more lawsuits as effort to boot cops from polygamous community stalls

Nate Carlisle
Salt Lake Tribune
November 6, 2017

Two towns on the Utah-Arizona line have agreed to pay $350,000 to people who allege they were wrongly arrested by police loyal to a polygamous sect.

The settlements noted in court records last week resolve two civil rights lawsuits against Hildale, Utah, and Colorado City, Ariz., and their joint police force, referred to as marshals. The towns are the longtime home of the polygamous Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints.

The settlements arrive as Arizona’s police regulators are seeking to remove six of the community’s seven marshals for allegations including making false arrests, failing to investigate crimes and lying to investigators.

The plaintiffs’ attorney in both lawsuits, Bill Walker, on Thursday said the settlements are “significant victories” for his clients. He also called the payouts further proof that the marshals still favor members of the FLDS and why the state of Arizona should boot them.

“I think it pretty much puts the last nails in the coffin of these marshals,” Walker said.

The lawyer for Colorado City, Jeff Matura, on Thursday said the towns were not admitting any wrongdoing. The settlements, he said, are “a business decision to limit the exposure and settle the case.” The money will be paid from city funds, Matura said.

Seth Cooke and a company he formed, Prairie Farms LLC, will receive $200,000, according to Walker and Matura.

Cooke and another man named Patrick Pipkin in 2015 obtained an agreement from the owner of an old Colorado City zoo to farm and ranch on the property.

Pipkin and Cooke went to take possession of the zoo, and a third man, Andrew Chatwin went with them. The towns’ marshals arrived and said the three were trespassing. Pipkin and Cooke refused to leave and were arrested and booked into jail on suspicion of trespassing for the first time on Oct. 13, 2015.

Four days later, Pipkin and Chatwin returned to the zoo and were arrested again. Pipkin and Chatwin settled their cases in August and received a combined $221,000.

In the second lawsuit recently settled, Isaac Wyler and his girlfriend, Twila Carstens, will receive a total of $150,000. On Dec. 23, 2015, they were changing the locks on a home in Hildale where sheriffs deputies had recently served an eviction.

According to the plaintiffs’ complaint, marshals arrived, accused Wyler and Carstens of trespassing and handcuffed and arrested them. Wyler and Carstens also accused the marshals of taking them to the Arizona side so sheriff’s deputies from Utah couldn’t provide assistance.

The marshals have been the subject of scrutiny for years as a series of civil rights lawsuitshave made their way through the courts. Then in November of last year, Arizona’s police regulators, called the Peace Officer Standards and Training Board, voted to begin the process of removing six of the marshals. The marshals have remained on the job while they appeal. An appeal hearing has still not been scheduled.

Matura on Thursday said the standards and training board during the summer had asked his clients for more records about past incidents involving the marshals. Matura said the marshals have thus far not provided those records.

Matura explained he was trying to ascertain whether the records are part of the ongoing case against the marshals or part of a new investigation. Fact finding has ended for the current case, Matura said, and if Arizona is starting a new investigation, the marshals have a right to be informed of that before any records are provided.

“We’re trying to figure out why, what the scope of this request is,” Matura said.

Jack Lane, the director of the standards and training board, on Thursday declined to specify which records he requested, but said they address issues that have been raised previously. Providing them could be beneficial to the marshals, he said.

“It’s possible that these documents might actually clear some of these matters up that have been brought to the board,” Lane said.

The charges against the marshals include falsely arresting the men at the zoo. The marshals also are accused of failing to investigate crimes ranging from vandalism to child sex abuse, of lying to investigators about what names they have used over the years and whether they served on a church security force.

The marshals facing discipline are Chief Jeremiah “Jerry” H. Darger and deputies Samuel E. Johnson, Hyrum S. Roundy, Daniel R. Barlow, Jacob L. Barlow Jr. and Daniel N. Musser.

A seventh marshal, Curtis L. Cooke, resigned in 2016 rather than face discipline from the Arizona regulators. Cooke’s replacement is the only marshal not under suspicion.

The Hildale and Colorado City marshals are certified in Utah and Arizona. Utah’s police regulators in 2016 closed an investigation into the marshals with no action.

Laws in the two states are different. Arizona’s police board can take action against “malfeasance, misfeasance, or nonfeasance,” according to its regulations.

Utah once had similar language. Then, in 2010, the Utah Legislature changed the law to limit police discipline cases to a few specific offenses, including criminal conduct, sex on duty, and drug and alcohol problems.



http://www.sltrib.com/news/polygamy/2017/11/06/utah-arizona-border-towns-pay-to-settle-more-lawsuits-as-effort-to-boot-cops-from-polygamous-community-stalls/

Exodus of the FLDS: After a century, polygamists are leaving their home on the Utah-Arizona line

Nate Carlisle
Salt Lake Tribune
May 13, 2017

Colorado City, Ariz. • Shannon Darger’s belongings were packed. Her family members have decided to leave their home and move to Oklahoma.

A lot of her neighbors and fellow parishioners in the polygamous Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints have made similar choices, either moving in with other families here or leaving the community altogether.

But Darger wanted to wait for the constable and locksmith to reach her house before she walked away, and as she did, she affirmed her belief in FLDS President Warren Jeffs.

“I know with all my heart Warren is a prophet of God,” she said, “and these homes belong to him.”

Heeding the lessons taught by Jeffs and other FLDS leaders over the generations, the Dargers and many FLDS members have refused to cooperate with the land trust that owns the homes where they have been living. As a result, the people who are synonymous with polygamy are leaving the community that for a century has been North America’s unofficial headquarters of the practice. Loyal FLDS members are scattering throughout Utah and surrounding states.

While the sect is famously secretive, many members last week agreed to discuss their decisions with The Salt Lake Tribune. In interviews here and in adjoining Hildale, Utah, collectively known as Short Creek, the members say they have had enough of evictions and the “apostates” running the land trust, called the United Effort Plan (UEP).

“It’s almost like there’s an exodus happening,” said Hyrum Dutson, who moved to neighboring Cane Beds, Ariz., last year with what he describes as his “large plural family.”

Dutson is closing his grocery store in Colorado City rather than striking a deal with the UEP. In recent years, his was one of two stores in the community where FLDS members shopped for groceries. Dutson said his gross has been a fifth of what it used to be.

That’s the only metric Dutson has to measure how many FLDS members remain in Short Creek.

There have been no Sunday worship services here in about a year, he said, nor do the FLDS still have a bishop in Short Creek.

The previous bishop, Warren Jeffs’ brother Lyle, absconded from a pretrial release in a case involving alleged food stamp fraud in June and remains a federal fugitive.

Dutson frames what is happening in a historical context beginning with what he calls the persecution of Mormon founder Joseph Smith in the 19th century and his eventual murder in Illinois. Dutson says Warren Jeffs, despite his sentence of life plus 20 years in Texas for sexually abusing two underage girls he married as plural wives, has been persecuted, too.

Dutson and Lyle Jeffs were among the 11 defendants accused of fraudulently using food stamp benefits. Dutson pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor and served no jail time in the case.

“We look at all of this going on as a test,” Dutson said. “It’s a test of whether you like these earthly ways better than you like the Lord.”
Moving out

Utah seized the UEP in 2005 out of concerns that Warren Jeffs was mismanaging it and that residents would lose their homes. A judge reformed the terms so the UEP became religiously neutral. Anyone who placed assets into the trust or worked on its behalf is considered a beneficiary of it, regardless of religion.

FLDS members refused to participate. They saw the seizure as government persecution and theft.

Plus, the UEP hired former FLDS members as employees tasked with managing the properties and record keeping. Years later, a judge appointed more former FLDS members to the board of trustees.

FLDS members have been taught that people who leave the church and work against it are apostates who — to quote a discourse Mormon leader Brigham Young once gave on apostasy — should be left “alone severely.”

The FLDS members largely have refused to sign occupancy agreements — sort of a cross between a rental contract and an agreement with a homeowners association — with the UEP or pay a required $100-a-month fee per home. UEP staffers often haven’t known who are living in the houses.

Property taxes also have gone unpaid in many cases. The parcel where the Dargers have been living, for example, has not been up to date on taxes since 2013 and owes $144,545, according to Mohave County.

So in the past year, the board of trustees has sought to replace noncompliant residents with beneficiaries who will sign occupancy agreements and save properties at risk of a tax foreclosure. Tribune journalists watched 15 evictions of homes and commercial properties over three days last week.

UEP Executive Director Jeff Barlow has repeatedly said no residents have to be evicted — they just have to sign an occupancy agreement and keep the taxes paid. The trustees are even willing to defer the $100-a-month fee if that is the only sticking point.

“There’s absolutely no reason an eviction needs to go through,” Barlow told The Tribune for an article published last month.

But the FLDS members have been unwilling to comply. The remaining FLDS families in Short Creek have had to bunk up to stay ahead of the evictions.
Where to go?

Liz had been living with eight children in the basement of the same home where the Dargers live. On Wednesday, she was trying to move.

Rain fell on the couches, chairs and tables in the yard. On the other side of the house, where the second story extends over a patio, sat vacuum cleaners, tools, framed pictures and an aquarium that still had a few inches of water inside. One goldfish was on its side, wagging its fins trying to stay below water.

Liz, who gave only her first name, said she is separated from her husband. She and the children will move in with a sister for a week. Then that sister, according to a notice posted on her door, is due to be evicted, too.

Liz would like to move from Short Creek, but she doesn’t know where she can go or what she can afford.

“I have never purchased anything,” Liz said. “I have no credit.”

Two of her older daughters work in Kanab, Liz said, and the household’s income is about $2,000 a month.

Like most FLDS, Liz eschews going on the internet. Her housing search has relied on the phone book and numbers others give her.

Christine Marie Katas, a former Las Vegas resident who last year moved to Short Creek to help people living there, came to the house and used her smartphone to show Liz a listing for unimproved property near Newcastle Reservoir 30 miles from Cedar City. It’s $2,500 for 2 acres, Katas told her.

Then Katas showed Liz a newspaper article about the ghost town of Garnet, Mont., where the Bureau of Land Management will provide accommodations to anyone willing to live there.

Katas jokes that tourists would like the Old West look of Liz’s prairie dress.
Ends meet

Some FLDS members have moved to the central Utah town of Huntington, where the Davis County Cooperative Society, also known as the Kingstons and which has members who are polygamists, has allowed them to live in some homes in exchange for repairing them.

Perhaps a few dozen FLDS members have moved to Beaver. One 34-year-old member, who identified herself only as Ms. Barlow, said she moved there in August in order to free housing in Short Creek for other members of her church. She is trying to open a retail bakery in Beaver, she said.

In a brief interview outside Beaver’s Cache Valley Cheese store, Ms. Barlow said she’s heard a few ignorant comments from her new neighbors. She declined to share what was said. For the most part the residents have treated her well. They are at least better than apostates, she said.

“There’s not a whole lot we can do [about the evictions],” she said, “except go somewhere else and make ends meet.”

Dutson said he was fortunate to find a place to live with his family in Cane Beds. They bought one house and rented another nearby.

“Zion is growing,” Dutson said. “It’s not getting less. They’ve forced us to be spread out over the whole Western United States.”

Back at the house where Liz and the Dargers were residing, Liz was cleaning her basement living quarters. She believes Warren Jeffs, God or both will put a stop to the evictions and return the land and homes to the FLDS. If she leaves the house clean, it will be returned to her clean, she said.

“We expect to be back,” Liz said.

When the constable, the locksmith and the UEP employee overseeing the evictions reached Shannon Darger’s house, she told them what they were doing was wrong.


After the eviction was served, Darger lamented leaving her friends and family, but she was confident that going elsewhere was the right thing to do.

“I want to be with them, and I love them,” Darger said. “And I want to be worthy to be, I want to be worthy to be with the prophet’s people.”

Statement from the Davis County Cooperative Society, also known as the Kingstons and whose members include polygamists, regarding the evictions in Short Creek:

When families are being displaced and are without food or housing, people must mobilize to aid and provide relief to those people. There is a humanitarian crisis developing in our own backyard.

FLDS families are being evicted leaving thousands of women and children stranded with nowhere to go. As a condition to receive relief, they are being asked to deny their religion.

People have a right to basic needs regardless of whether we agree with their religion or what history brought them to the point they are today.

Our goal is to help, and to come to a solution that doesn’t leave families out in the desert with nowhere to go and nothing to eat. What should a woman with eight children do once she has been evicted from her home? We must come together to find a solution that does not violate their rights as citizens and their human rights.

Who will step in to help the women and children who are now without the basic necessities of life? Who will help them without forcing them to forsake religion and family as a condition to receive basic living essentials?

http://local.sltrib.com/online/sw/short-creek-exodus/

Judge rules polygamous border towns discriminate, but he won't break up the police force

BEN WINSLOW
FOX 13 News
APRIL 18, 2017

SALT LAKE CITY — A federal judge has issued a major ruling in a discrimination case involving the polygamous border towns of Hildale, Utah, and Colorado City, Ariz.

In an order issued late Tuesday and obtained by FOX 13, U.S. District Court Judge Russel Holland ruled the town governments and their police force did discriminate against non-members of the Fundamentalist LDS Church. However, he declined to enforce severe sanctions against them, including dismantling the police force.

“Those findings reflect that FLDS Church leadership insisted upon city officials and CCMO officers advancing church and church members’ interests in preference to the needs and interests of non-FLDS Church residents…” the judge wrote.

The ruling stems from a lawsuit leveled in Phoenix by the U.S. Department of Justice against Hildale and Colorado City, accusing the towns of discriminating against non-FLDS members in housing and services. The police force was accused of acting as de facto agents for imprisoned FLDS leader Warren Jeffs.

Judge Hilland agreed that Colorado City Marshals turned a blind eye to criminal activities, including those involving FLDS leader Warren Jeffs.

“The officers supported Warren Jeffs when he was a fugitive, ignored underage marriages, ignored unauthorized distribution of prescription drugs, ignored food stamp fraud, and failed to cite or arrest the son of a church bishop,” Judge Holland wrote.

Jeffs is serving a life sentence in a Texas prison for child sex assaulted related to underage “marriages.”

However, the judge ruled that he was unpersuaded by Justice Department arguments that the town governments should be dismantled. The feds, along with Utah Attorney General Sean Reyes, argued the Colorado City Marshals should be replaced with the Washington County Sheriff’s Office in Utah and the Mohave County Sheriff’s Office in Arizona.

Instead, the judge demanded outside police consultants and new hiring procedures be implemented, and ordered the Colorado City Marshal’s Office to purchase body cameras.

“The Defendant Cities shall provide yearly training to all CCMO officers regarding the First, Fourth, and Fourteenth Amendments, the state and federal Fair Housing Acts, landlord/tenant law, trespass law, and any other topics that the Defendant Cities deem appropriate. The training shall be conducted by a qualified third person or organization other than the Defendant Cities’ attorneys, and the qualified person or organization must be approved in advance by the United States,” the judge wrote.

For the town governments, an independent monitor will be installed, Judge Holland wrote. He also ordered the subdivision of homes and property in the FLDS towns. For years, the communities have resisted efforts by Utah and Arizona authorities to enact court-ordered reforms to the United Effort Plan, the real estate holdings arm of the church based on the early-Mormon concept of a “united order.”

FLDS faithful have long argued a religious right to consecrate their property to their faith. Judge Holland said the town governments needed to recognize it was over.

“It is now time for the citizens of Colorado City and City of Hildale
to come together and accept the fact that communal ownership of residential property in the Defendant Cities is a thing of the past,” the judge wrote. “All residents of the Defendant Cities must be afforded equal access to housing and residential services, to nondiscriminatory law enforcement, and to free exercise of their religious preferences that are not contrary to law.”

In an email to FOX 13, Blake Hamilton, an attorney for Hildale, expressed hope that an independent monitor would resolve the situation.

“As rural, isolated, communities, founded by religious pioneers, Hildale and Colorado City have always recognized that there have been some issues in their collective past. While we do not agree with all of the Court’s findings today, we respect the Court and acknowledge that like any community there is room for improvement,” he wrote.

“The fact that the Court did not terminate any City employees or disband the Marshal’s Office as the Department of Justice requested gives the Cities hope that they can take this opportunity to improve the services they provide to all of their citizens. We are hopeful that the tools provided in the injunction, including a monitor, mentor, and consultant, will be used in a way that enables the Cities to move toward a better future.”


http://fox13now.com/2017/04/18/judge-rules-polygamous-border-towns-discriminate-but-he-wont-break-up-the-police-force/

Members of a Utah polygamous church had to attend a special class on food stamps

BEN WINSLOW
FOX 13 News
APRIL 17, 2017


SALT LAKE CITY -- Members of Utah's largest polygamous church convicted in a massive food stamp fraud scheme attended a special class on the proper use of government benefits.

The class -- created especially for them -- was part of the terms of their plea deals. The U.S. Attorney's Office for Utah, which prosecuted them, confirmed to FOX 13 the class was held last week at Colorado City Town Hall.

By completing the class, nine members and leaders of the FLDS Church are no longer under the thumb of the federal government. They all struck plea bargains with prosecutors in the aftermath of an FBI raid last year on the polygamous border towns of Hildale, Utah, and Colorado City, Ariz.

A federal grand jury initially indicted 11 FLDS members on food stamp fraud and money laundering charges. They accused top ranking leaders and members of ordering rank-and-file members to hand over Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits to the church to do with as they wished. The defense argued a religious right to consecrate all they had (including SNAP benefits) to the church.

There could still be sanctions. The Utah Department of Workforce Services, which administers SNAP benefits for the federal government here, previously told FOX 13 it could open its own investigation and level sanctions against those convicted of violations. Two businesses in the towns have already agreed to no longer facilitate SNAP transactions.

There remains only one defendant left in the case: polygamist leader Lyle Jeffs (a brother of imprisoned FLDS leader Warren Jeffs) who remains a fugitive. As FOX 13 first reported last year, the FBI believes Lyle Jeffs used olive oil to slip out of a GPS monitoring device and escape home confinement.

http://fox13now.com/2017/04/17/members-of-a-utah-polygamous-church-had-to-attend-a-special-class-on-food-stamps/

For a polygamous sect, homes have gone and 'apostates' have come

By NATE CARLISLE

The Salt Lake Tribune
April 9, 2017

Once controlled by the plural-marriage sect, the revamped United Effort Plan is giving former members a new mortgage on life — at the expense of FLDS holdouts.

Hildale

Brielle Decker pulled a latch hidden underneath a shelf on the back wall. Suddenly, the shelves slid and opened a doorway to a secret room.

The room, in the basement of a house that once belonged to Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints President Warren Jeffs, is about 6 by12 feet. A fluorescent light fixture on the ceiling shined a yellowish glow on shelves and an old, open safe about the size of a dorm room refrigerator.

"We think this is where they kept the priesthood records," Decker said.

Now the house, and any secrets it can still reveal, belong to Decker, who says she used to be Jeffs' 65th plural wife.

In November, Decker obtained Jeffs' former home and two other residences sitting on the same parcel via the United Effort Plan. It is a land trust once controlled by the polygamous FLDS. In the past 2½ years, the "UEP," as everyone here calls it, has remade Hildale.

The UEP once owned the vast majority of homes and commercial properties in Hildale. Now, about 85 percent of those properties have been sold or are in the process of being sold to private owners, according to figures provided by Jeff Barlow, the UEP's executive director.

While the UEP doesn't ask about religion any more, none of those owners is believed to still be loyal FLDS members. The results are visible.

Walls and gates erected by the FLDS to shield outsiders' views have been torn down. There are more people in conventional clothing — FLDS women are known to wear prairie dresses and while men don long-sleeved monocolored shirts — and more people waving to one another as they drive down the red dirt streets.

"When you own the property, you see a whole new attitude," Barlow said. "You start seeing fences coming down and remodels going up."

It's not that FLDS members are excluded from the property ownership plan — one with origins as unique as any you'll find. The members refuse to participate because, they believe, the real estate has already been consecrated to God.

Their refusal has led some, both in and out of the church, to say that the UEP is driving FLDS members from the homes and community they built.

Joseph Allred, who is mayor of adjoining Colorado City, Ariz., where the UEP also owns most of the residences, said FLDS members like himself are being given an impossible choice.

"Either they enter into agreements with apostates to their faith," Allred said, "or they lose their home."

Most have chosen the latter. Eviction notices have been served on homes all over Hildale and Colorado City.

The UEP recently took control of what had been called the "Jeffs Block." It boasts a compound of mansions and smaller homes where Warren Jeffs, his late father and his brothers and their families all lived. (Jeffs is serving a prison sentence of life plus 20 years in Texas for sexually abusing two girls he married as plural wives.)

Barlow said the UEP has plans to work with a developer to turn the largest of the Jeffs homes, known as "The Big House," into apartments.

Last month, the UEP filed an eviction lawsuit to take control of the most visible religious symbol in the community — the FLDS meetinghouse in Colorado City. A complaint filed recently in a state court in Arizona asserts the meetinghouse was built as a communitywide resource, but the FLDS allow only their members inside.

Allred said there are cases in which five FLDS families have had to move in with one another because they have nowhere else to go.

Allred said he has extra people living with him because they were evicted. He worries he could be evicted soon, too.

"I have no other housing options at this point," Allred said.

Community chest • In 1942, the people living in Hildale and Colorado City, then referred to jointly as Short Creek, placed their assets in a trust.

Most were polygamists. They all wanted to practice a communal form of living.

Men were expected to work, build homes and contribute money to the UEP. They did so thinking they and their wives and children could live in the homes and operate their businesses or farms on the land.

The UEP carried on even as the faith in Short Creek split around it. A dispute over leadership succession in the 1980s led many of the UEP beneficiaries to create their own church and community in nearby Centennial Park, Ariz. The beneficiaries who stayed in Short Creek reconstituted under the FLDS moniker.

Legally, the UEP was distinct from the FLDS. In reality, the church operated the UEP.

"When I bought those shingles or Sheetrock or two-by-fours and put them into that home, I understood that was a consecration to the church," Allred said Thursday in a telephone interview.

By 2005, there was concern in the office of then-Utah Attorney General Mark Shurtleff that Jeffs was using the UEP to finance criminal activities such as underage marriages or money laundering and that he was mismanaging the trust, placing people who had no part in the abuses at risk of losing their homes.

That year, Shurtleff petitioned a Utah judge to seize the UEP. The judge agreed and appointed a fiduciary and, later, a board of trustees to manage it.

The terms of the reformed UEP specify that it is religiously neutral. Anyone who placed assets into the trust is considered a beneficiary of it, regardless of religion.

It was decided that rather than continue to hold the homes and lands, most would be sold. A few would be given away to the person who built the home if he or she was alive and agreed to pay a few thousand dollars in surveying and closing costs.

FLDS members refused to participate in the process. They saw the seizure as a form of government persecution.

Plus, the UEP hired former FLDS members as employees tasked with managing the properties and record keeping. Years later, a judge appointed more former FLDS members to a board of trustees.

For generations, FLDS members have been taught that people who leave the church and work against it are apostates who — to quote a discourse Mormon leader Brigham Young once gave on apostasy — should be left "alone severely."

Meanwhile, the municipal governments in Hildale and Colorado City, where the elected and appointed officials have historically been FLDS members, refused to accept a UEP plan to subdivide properties. The Utah Supreme Court, in 2014, ruled in the UEP's favor for the Hildale plan, but the litigation continues in Colorado City, where some entire city blocks are listed as one parcel at the county recorder's office.

So while the UEP has been slowly giving people deeds to homes on the Hildale side, it has largely been unable to do the same in Colorado City.

However, the UEP is giving people in Colorado City what it calls occupancy agreements. An occupancy agreement is sort of a cross between a rental agreement and the terms of a homeowners association. Occupants agree to pay $100 a month to live in the home and are responsible for upkeep and paying property taxes.

Evictions, negotiations • Many FLDS members signed occupancy agreements in 2008 after receiving permission to do so from church leaders. Barlow said the UEP has continued to honor the deals for the signers who have remained in their homes and have stayed up to date on the taxes.

But many FLDS members have moved out of the homes they signed to occupy, he said, and moved into other places without permission.

Meanwhile, many homes have been delinquent on property taxes. In Utah and Arizona, authorities can foreclose on any house five years behind on taxes.

Barlow said the UEP started evicting people from homes four years behind on taxes to ensure no homes were lost. Those evictions have been completed, and the UEP has moved onto homes 3½ years delinquent.

In both states, the eviction process takes months and requires multiple notices be served on the occupants. Those notices also inform the occupants that the evictions can be halted if they work out an arrangement with the UEP. Barlow said there have been a few cases in which FLDS members have signed an occupancy agreement and paid the taxes to stop the eviction. The trustees are even willing to defer a $100-a-month fee if that is the only sticking point to keeping people in the homes, Barlow said.

"There's absolutely no reason an eviction needs to go through," Barlow said.

The UEP would even consider negotiating through an intermediary, such as an attorney, if an FLDS member didn't want to deal with the trust directly, he said.

That's a solution David Bistline would like to see. Or, he would be OK with if the UEP stops the evictions and lets FLDS members stay where they are.

Bistline used to be an FLDS member. His wife and 10 of his 11 children are still in the group and living in a mobile-home park in Colorado City, he said. He doesn't want them evicted.

Bistline, who lives in a home in Colorado City under an occupancy agreement he signed, uses the term "ethnic cleansing" to describe what he sees.

He believes the UEP has created policies to drive the FLDS out of Hildale so people not in the church can vote themselves into government offices in municipal elections scheduled for later this year.

"There's people here that are caught between a rock and a hard spot," Bistline said. "They have [church] leaders that are telling them one thing, and the UEP saying, 'You have to do what we want or we'll evict you.' "

While FLDS members try to take in parishioners who have been evicted, there is no formal support system for FLDS members who are evicted, Allred said.

The consolidation of households cause problems unique to the FLDS. The church has strict rules about dating and courtship, and Allred said multiple families under the same roof have led to what he called "inappropriate conduct" among youths.

Some FLDS members are leaving Short Creek. On March 21, Beaver's planning board approved an application from a Hildale-based company called Mountain Home Resources to build two modular homes in that town. The board also approved a proposal from Mountain Home Resources to subdivide six lots in Beaver.

On Thursday, FLDS men loaded a modular home onto a flatbed trailer, and drove it out of Hildale. Insulation fell out of the home as it rolled down Utah Avenue toward the highway. The lot where the home resided for years had been served with an eviction notice.

Allred acknowledged all FLDS members have the right to choose whether to participate in the UEP.

"It's not a question of whether it would hurt their standing in the church," Allred said. "It's a question of whether it would violate their personal beliefs."

Moving back • For beneficiaries willing to follow the process, there are rewards.

With occupancy agreements or deeds in hand, a few businesses have started. A chicken restaurant opened over the summer. A motel is under construction along Utah's State Route 59. There is hope Short Creek can become a stopover for tourists traveling between Zion and Grand Canyon national parks, or maybe a destination itself.

Shawn Stubbs' father was born into what became the FLDS. He later converted to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which officially quit practicing polygamy in 1890 and excommunicates members found practicing it, and raised Stubbs and his siblings in that church.

Stubbs grew up in Kanab. As a child, he was in Short Creek about once a month playing with relatives in the washes and slot canyons around the towns. When he was old enough, he participated in FLDS service projects, including work on homes that belonged to the UEP.

Stubbs, 31, qualified as a beneficiary. He and his wife, Alex, recently agreed to buy a four-bedroom ranch-style home in Hildale with a huge yard and garden for their three daughters. The county assessor says the home's market value is $97,800, and that's about what they will pay, counting the purchase price, closing costs and bringing the taxes up to date, Stubbs said.

"This is an awesome community," Stubbs said as he stood in his new driveway and gazed around the neighborhood. "Chances are I'm related to the people in that house, that house, that house and that house."

Even if he is related, not all of Stubbs' neighbors are neighborly. The FLDS members have little interaction with those who don't belong to their church.

Lorin Cooke grew up in Short Creek, but has been living in Elko, Nev., working in mining construction. He wants to move back. The UEP recently agreed to sell him a large home on Hildale Street with room for the wife and seven children living with him now, plus room for his adult children to come stay with him. He also hopes his second wife will leave the FLDS one day and return to him.

But first, the UEP needs to evict the people living in the house it is supposed to sell him.

"I don't even know who's living there," Cooke said. "Chances are I'm related to them."

The property awarded to Decker has a market value of about $1.2 million. She said the UEP counted her labors and contributions to the trust toward the purchase price.

Decker is pursuing financing for some of the improvements she wants to make on Warren Jeffs' former house. It has two industrial kitchens, and she wants to use the bigger of the two and its adjoining dinning room to launch a restaurant. She wants to convert some of the bedrooms, maybe even the one where Jeffs slept, into lodging, rentals or emergency housing for people exiting the FLDS.

Not that they have to flee the FLDS to get in.

"We need this to be a place for tourists, for ex-FLDS and it would be a place for FLDS," Decker said, "but they have said they won't come here because of me."

http://www.sltrib.com/home/4843521-155/for-a-polygamous-sect-homes-have

Land trust board files lawsuit seeking to take control of polygamous sect’s meetinghouse

The LSJ meetinghouse in Colorado City, the building
ex-members say houses the FLDS church's surveillance
 camera operation.

NATE CARLISLE
The Salt Lake Tribune
March 21 2017

The land trust that owns much of the real estate in two polygamous towns on the Utah-Arizona line has filed a lawsuit to take over the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints' meetinghouse.

The building, which sits in Colorado City, Ariz., has been the spiritual and logistical headquarters of the faith for almost three decades. The United Effort Plan (UEP) filed the lawsuit March 9 in Mohave County Superior Court in Arizona. A copy was first obtained and published by Courthouse News Service.

The lawsuit contends the UEP already owns the Leroy S. Johnson Meetinghouse — just called the "LSJ" by residents — and the 7 acres it sits on. The FLDS merely have a special-use deed to control the property, the suit claims.

That deed was issued in 1988 and required the FLDS to operate the building in accordance with the tenets the church had at that time. In its lawsuit, the UEP argues that the FLDS have stopped using the LSJ as it was intended.

In an interview Tuesday, Jeff Barlow, the UEP's executive director, said the LSJ used to be open to the public for funerals or community programs. But under Warren Jeffs, who succeeded his father and became FLDS president in 2002, the LSJ is closed to all except FLDS members.

"It was built as a community project and should benefit the community," Barlow said.

Jeffs is serving a sentence in Texas of life in prison plus 20 years for crimes related to sexually abusing two girls he married as plural wives. The FLDS do not have a spokesperson. No lawyer has filed notice of representing the church in the lawsuit nor has the FLDS responded to the suit.

The lawsuit accuses the FLDS of using the meetinghouse to "further criminal activity and other disruptive, non-religious purposes." The UEP doesn't specify what it believes has occurred at the meetinghouse.

In other legal proceedings, former FLDS members have testified the LSJ had a control room from which church security could monitor cameras all over Colorado City and adjoining Hildale, Utah. The security force watched who drove into town, who they spoke to and warned people if law enforcement arrived, according to testimony.

Church leaders, including former FLDS Bishop Lyle Jeffs, kept an office in the LSJ. In an episode in 2006, according to testimony in another legal proceeding, the FBI arrived at the meetinghouse to serve Lyle Jeffs and other men with subpoenas. FLDS members, trained by the Hildale and Colorado City police force, slowed the agents so Lyle Jeffs could escape on an ATV stored in the meetinghouse basement, according to the testimony of one of his former confidants Dowayne Barlow.

Court records in a criminal case in federal court in Salt Lake City also have suggested Lyle Jeffs stayed in the LSJ after he absconded from a pre-trial release last year. Lyle Jeffs is the last defendant in what prosecutors have called a scheme to defraud the food stamp program, and he remains at large.

The lawsuit also makes a technical argument. The special deed issued for the meetinghouse was not valid because the church was not incorporated in 1988, the lawsuit claims.

The UEP was formed in 1942 by members of what eventually became the FLDS. Fearing Warren Jeffs was mismanaging the trust and using it to further his lawbreaking, the state of Utah seized it in 2005.

A judge in Salt Lake City still oversees the UEP, but has granted authority to the board of trustees, some of whom are former FLDS members. Current church members have consistently refused any interaction with the UEP since the state takeover.

Barlow said the UEP Board of Trustees placed taking control of the meetinghouse near the top of its priority list when the trustees gained increased authority from the judge about a year ago. The trustees, Barlow said, are open to letting the FLDS continue operating the meetinghouse, but church members will need to abide by the 1988 terms.

"If the FLDS want to work something out with the trust, I'm sure the trustees would be very happy to hear from them," Barlow said.

http://www.sltrib.com/home/5086229-155/lawsuit-seeks-to-take-over-polygamous

CCMO marshal denies claims of unlawful conduct

Kevin Jenkins , kevin@thespectrum.com
The Spectrum
February 18, 2017

The attorneys representing Hildale and Colorado City in a lawsuit that seeks to disband the marshals policing Southern Utah’s stateline polygamous community are asking a federal judge to accept a correction to what they say is false information about an officer’s criminal background.

Attorneys Jeffrey Matura and Blake Hamilton, in a motion filed Thursday, asked Arizona District Judge Russel Holland to receive an unscheduled rebuttal to what was expected to be the government’s final word on the matter last month.

In the government’s filing, prosecutors repeated prior arguments that the law enforcement office in Hildale and Colorado City, collectively known as Short Creek, in the rural strip of land that straddles the Utah-Arizona state line between Grand Canyon and Zion national parks, has defied all prior efforts at reform amid residents’ claims that the marshals selectively enforce the law to favor the polygamous church that counts most city officials among its members.

Holland is expected to make a ruling in coming weeks on whether to disband the marshals, require Colorado City to subdivide multi-resident land parcels for taxation purposes, and establish a court-enforcement “monitor” to oversee changes in the way the cities administer building permits, utility connections and city fees.

Holland’s decision would constitute a “post-trial” judgment on matters not fully resolved after jurors found the Short Creek municipalities guilty of violating federal fair housing and anti-discrimination laws last year.

But in the government’s Jan. 24 filing, prosecutors included information that the Arizona Peace Officer Standards and Training Council had rejected the application of a new marshal – identified as Taylor Barlow – because he has a criminal history that includes felony conduct.

POST Compliance Manager Mark Perkovich’s statement filed with the Arizona court said Colorado City’s law enforcement administration should have identified the problems with the officer’s application but instead allowed him to work as an officer.

Perkovich also states that Barlow has Utah police certification, but states Barlow’s description of his criminal activity to Arizona POST has “discrepancies” in comparison with his earlier application to Utah POST.

The motion filed this week by Matura and Hamilton includes Barlow’s affidavit disputing Perkovich’s claims.

Barlow, 26, states he is a resident of Centennial Park, a polygamous community that separated itself from Colorado City and the community’s dominant Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints more than 30 years ago.

Barlow states he has never been a member of the FLDS church and that none of his ancestors have been part of the FLDS church. Although Perkovich does not claim Barlow is FLDS, Barlow’s statement appears to imply that he has no reason to profess the fealty to the FLDS church that other officers have been accused of.

While nearly all of the Colorado City marshals are the target of disciplinary investigations by Arizona’s POST council as a result of claims leveled during last year’s trial, Barlow was hired more recently and works for the marshal’s office on the Utah side of the state line.

Barlow’s affidavit denies he worked as a marshal on the Arizona side of the state line without proper certification. Rather, he states that during field training required for POST applicants, he participated in exercises with the CCMO that occasionally required him to ride along with officers when they were dispatched to calls on the Arizona side of the line.

“I never identified myself as a certified officer in Arizona; rather, I only (exited) the vehicle on the orders of the Field Training Officer,” Barlow states.

Regarding the criminal history that Perkovich states was troubling to Arizona POST, Barlow adds information about two youthful incidents in an attempt to refute the claim he was involved in serious crimes.

When he was 14 years old, he and his friends entered a commercial building “and took some items,” but his guilty conscience led him to turn himself in the next day “and do what I could to atone for my conduct,” which ended with a juvenile court referral, he states.

Arizona POST alleges that Barlow stole a vehicle and sold marijuana when he was 17 and 18 years old, respectively, which Barlow denies. His affidavit states some people he was walking with got into a water truck and took it “for a ride around town” during the alleged incident, and that he and other acquaintances followed the truck for a while but weren’t involved in taking it.

Barlow’s affidavit further states that he and a friend “received marijuana for experimentation” in the second incident, but then changed their minds and gave it to someone else. He thought he might have received money for it, but after speaking with other people present they determined no one had paid or received money.

Barlow states he withdrew his Arizona POST application to clarify the issues and was told by another compliance officer that doing so would not brand him as having been rejected by the council, contrary to Perkovich’s claims.

Barlow also states he has not been sent a denial letter by POST, and that POST has not referred his case for discussion in any of its meetings. Perkovich did issue a letter to Chief Marshal Jerry Darger on Dec. 20 stating Barlow’s application would not be accepted because of the three “felonies,” however, and that a case would be presented to the board because of concerns about Barlow being employed with the CCMO.

The case was closed when Darger asked to rescind the application Dec. 30.

The filing by Matura and Hamilton this week also asks the court to recognize the government’s recent resolution of two other law enforcement investigations that the defendants argue are more serious in nature but resulted in penalties that didn’t include disbandment.

The first involved an investigation of claims of unconstitutional stops, searches, arrests and retaliation by the Baltimore Police Department that settled for training and temporary oversight monitoring. The second involved an investigation of claims the Chicago Police Department was involved in unconstitutional conduct that included shooting unarmed citizens, attempted rape and beating witnesses and victims, which also resulted in a push for additional training, community outreach and oversight for implementing new policies.

“These recent resolutions further confirm that disbanding the CCMO is an extreme and inappropriate remedy,” the defendants argue. “This Court should therefore reject the United States’ request to disband the CCMO and instead use a more measured and commonsense approach.”

No date has been announced for Holland’s decision on the issues.

Follow reporter Kevin Jenkins on Twitter, @SpectrumJenkins. Contact him at 435-674-6253.