Crime Thoughts: Warren Jeffs and the FLDS Church

I don't often blog but that doesn't mean there aren't many things I would like to express my opinion on. I'm just really lazy to put down my thoughts on paper, or in this case, in a digital platform.

A few nights ago, I stayed up to catch the special presentation about Warren Jeffs: Fallen Prophet produced by Bio Channel and shown on Crime and Investigation Channel on its 10 pm time slot on Sunday. If you're into watching real life crime and how the investigators across the world work to solve them, it's definitely a time slot you want to check out.

I first got acquainted with the case through another blog, prairiechicken.blogspot.com, around mid-2009. Back then, I was just following the case of Casey Anthony when I stumbled on her posts regarding the Fundamentalist Church of the Latter Day Saints or FLDS. It was a post about the raid in the FDLS compound known as the Yearning for Zion Ranch in El Dorado, Texas and since then, I've been hooked on this story.

To give you a brief background, Warren Jeffs was a fugitive being hunted down in Utah, where the FLDS Church was based at the time, due to his alleged (at the time) arrangement of illegal marriages between adult male members of the congregation and underage girls. He had fled to Texas and had his followers contribute big amounts of cash to establish a large compound with a huge white temple under the guise of the compound being their new home. Caught in August 2006, he was tried in the Utah court and was convicted in 2 counts of rape as an accomplice in September 2007 and was sentenced to 10 years to life in November 2007. The ruling was overturned in October 2010, but not before the raid on the Yearning for Zion ranch occurred in 2008.

Instigated by a prank caller unrelated to the sect posting as a 16 year old married to a 50 year old man, the call had become in effect the smoking gun that had led to the discovery of over 400 children, married, unmarried, with and without child. A circus of sorts ensued with this discovery as the State took charge of the children found inside the compound and custody battles in court took place. Among those in custody are 24 underaged girls of the 78 wives of Warren Jeffs, the youngest of the his wives was aged only 11 at the time of her marriage.

After being extradited to Texas to stand trial, Warren Jeffs was sentenced to 20 years and life in 2011 in connection with charges of one count of aggravated sexual assault of a child and one count of sexual assault of a child.

To know more about this guy, you can definitely find this wikipedia article quite helpful.

There were a number of intimate details that are of course not provided on the wikipedia article but can be found online in relation to this case. Photos of Jeffs with his 15 year old and 12 year old brides, as well as other underage brides, have been posted online before and had become part of the evidence that has been used by the prosecution in their case. If you read through the case files, you'll probably notice how the focus of the prosecution was placed on the pedophilia charges to which Jeffs was convicted and currently serving his sentence. However, I can't help but feel that there should have been more charges filed against him. But then again, a number of his fellow church leaders had also been booked and sentenced. It still feels lacking because of how he manipulated everyone just to serve his own greed and apparent sexual appetite for girls of all ages. It's so sad at how isolated he made everyone in the compound be, the psychological effect this must have on the people involved. It's like he trapped them all in a frozen state of time, with no ties to modern society. It would also be great if he would be tried for the abandonment of quite a number of underaged boys known as the Lost Boys.

I feel that the people involve, most especially the children have been deprived justice for this man's own selfishness and I just hope they will wake up from their warped sense of reality and live a life free from the machinations of this man.

Movie Thoughts: Breaking Dawn Part 2

I don't usually post movie reviews, but then again, I don't get to watch a lot of movies to write about to begin with. It's not that I don't like watching movies, I just usually have limited free time to allow for it. Anyways, less about me and more about the movie.

Just a brief background, Breaking Dawn Part 2 is the fifth and the final installment of the Twilight movie franchise. The story follows Bella Swan as she awakens to her new life as a vampire, motherhood and her initiation to keeping their secret a secret and still lead a normal life.

Photo credit: Hollywood Reporter

 

The movie provides quite a lot of eye catching panning, and if you're into landscape scenery, you'll definitely find the movie worthy of eye candy. Story-wise, it pretty much follows the book with a twist that highly suck you in near the end. As much as I would like to share tidbits about the movie, I don't want to spoil it for those who have yet to catch the flick.

One thing to do watch out for is the montage at the end. It definitely is a fitting way to end the series that had captivated millions when it was still nothing more than printed matter, spawned near rabid following when it hit the big screen, and now that it had come to an end, it will very much turn into a legend, one that will most likely be appreciated by the generations to come.