8 indicted in polygamist case
A grand jury on Wednesday indicted another three members of a polygamist sect that was the focus of a massive raid in Eldorado during the spring.
The state attorney general’s office said four people were named in eight new indictments, but one of them — sect leader Warren Jeffs — had been previously charged.
The grand jury in Schleicher County has now charged 12 members of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.
A sexual assault charge was added against Jeffs, who previously was charged in Texas with bigamy and aggravated sexual assault of a child.
ADVERTISEMENT
Two people were indicted on bigamy charges Wednesday, and another was charged with conducting an unlawful marriage ceremony involving a minor, the attorney general’s office said in a statement.
All but one of the nine men previously indicted are charged with sexual assault of a child. Several of those men also face bigamy charges.
The sect’s doctor is charged only with misdemeanor counts of failure to report child abuse.
Grand jury proceedings are secret by law, but records that law enforcement confiscated from church offices indicated a number of girls, some as young as 12, were given away in marriage to Jeffs and other men in the sect.
The records also showed plural marriages were common but not universal within the sect.
The FLDS is a breakaway sect of the Mormon church, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which renounced polygamy more than a century ago.
The FLDS, based primarily in small communities along the Arizona-Utah line, believes polygamy brings glorification in heaven.
Jeffs has been convicted as an accomplice to rape in Utah, and he awaits trial in Arizona for alleged involvement in underage marriages there.
