He is serving thirty-three years in Huntsville State Prison in Texas. Shortly after Allen gave Veda in marriage to Warren, he took an underage bride of his own. Systematic child abuse, rape of boys as young as five to eight years old in the guise of God’s will, and getting underage girls as young as 12 and 13 pregnant by the dozens is apparently commonplace and normal in that environment.Ī recently married and newly pregnant Veda Keate, the thirteen-year-old daughter of convicted child molester Allen Keate. When God wants the prophet to be “sealed” to a 12-year-old girl in marriage, then the father of that child has no choice but give up his daughter. People blindly follow orders, whether the orders are legal or not. You can’t escape the reach of the church leadership, and their word, their will, is God’s word and will. They think they are God’s chosen people, and their leader is the prophet who speaks God’s will. The people have lived in this environment their entire lives and are completely brainwashed about what the “real world” is like. Most children stop school at the elementary level. The flock is not allowed to listen to the radio, watch TV or movies, read books, listen to music or get an education. Some of the faithful didn’t like that, and eventually split off to start the FLDS. When the practice started becoming unpopular in the United States about 100 years ago, the “mainstream” Mormons renounced polygamy. One of the tenets of the religion was polygamy. When he eventually was murdered, Brigham Young, another autocratic child abuser and power-grabbing dictator built up the Mormon church. He started a religion to create a lifestyle for himself. In my opinion, Smith was a pedophile and a con man. The Mormon religion was founded by Joseph Smith in 1820. The FLDS is acult with its headquarters in Colorado City, Arizona and Hildale, Utah, two neighboring towns in a remote and isolated strip of the country, bordered by the Grand Canyon to the south and cliffs to the north. Pretty much all the people who live there are part of the cult. Prophet’s Prey is his chilling exposé of the Fundamentalist Mormon religion and the endless, brutal crimes perpetrated by the “leadership” all in the name of God. It’s the sinking realization, as Krakauer points out, that there are still thousand of FLDS faithful who continue to revere Jeffs, even after his conviction.San Brower is a private investigator who took on the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, or FLDS, as it is commonly referred to, and gradually, over years of painstaking work, exposed it and its leader and “prophet,” Warren Jeffs, as an organized criminal enterprise of massive proportions. Yet among many appalling things cited by “Prophet’s Prey,” the most troubling conclusion may have nothing to do with Jeffs at all. There isn’t much here that isn’t public already. Berg seems to holds her nose as she presents that particular obscenity, but present it she does, as I suppose she must. The film’s toughest moment could be the audio recording of Jeffs raping the 12-year-old he had just taken as his bride. 63 - and no, that’s not a typo - as she describes what life is like after leaving the church? It’s heartbreaking to hear her describe the estrangement from her mother, who is still under the thrall of the FLDS (now run by Warren’s brother, Lyle, who, the film argues, is merely a proxy for the imprisoned leader). It’s hard to say what is most difficult to digest about “Prophet’s Prey.” Is it the testimony of Janetta Jessop, identified as Jeffs’ wife No. Jeffs’ voice, which has a reptilian cold-bloodedness to it, is chilling to listen to, even without the horror-movie soundtrack that accompanies it. Among the litany of mounting atrocities recounted by former church members, Jeffs’s estranged relatives and author Jon Krakauer and investigator Sam Brower (on whose book the film is based), Berg intersperses audio of the jailed “prophet,” as he called himself, taken from recordings of sermons and legal depositions. The reassurance of Jeffs’s confinement is a small balm in a film that feels horrifyingly urgent, even as it is, at times, nearly impossible to watch without squirming. Known as the FLDS, the polygamist religious sect split from the Mormon Church after its renunciation of plural marriage in 1890. Jeffs’ offenses, as meticulously laid out by Berg, include child molestation, rape, financial chicanery, mind control and, it is strongly suggested, the murder of his own father, Rulon Jeffs, who previously had led the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. There is some comfort to be taken in the fact that the odious figure at the center of “Prophet’s Prey,” Amy Berg’s deeply disturbing documentary about polygamist cult leader Warren Jeffs, is now behind bars. Digital Replica Edition Home Page Close Menu
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