Answer Them Nothing

May 30, 2011
Pedophilia, fraud, and litigation stoke this cogent if overstuffed exposé of a lurid down-home theocracy. Journalist Weyermann probes the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, a polygamist Mormon sect entrenched in the Short Creek area straddling the Utah-Arizona border. Under all-powerful Prophet Warren Jeffs, it's a fertility-cult run amok: unwilling pubescent girls are married off to lecherous church elders (Jeffs is charged with raping child-brides as young as 12); children are beaten, and adolescent boys abandoned; husbands are suddenly exiled and their wives and children given to other men; local government and police, run by the faithful, stonewall outsiders and intimidate dissidents while siphoning public funds into church leaders' pockets. It's a snake pit of bizarre theology, brainwashing, and harem rivalries clad in gingham and overalls, and Weyermann's well-researched muckraking is colorful and gripping. Unfortunately, her reporting on the coalition of runaway wives, pro-bono lawyers, and state prosecutors who challenged the Jeffs regime in recent years rambles between melodramaâ"some women... find the yawning jaws of hell preferable to their situation in FLDS"âand eye-glazing court battles over FLDS real estate. Still, Weyermann presents a disturbing account of how a religious quasi-dictatorship can flourish on American soil.

August 1, 2011

Award-winning journalist Weyermann (The Gang They Couldn't Catch: The Story of America's Greatest Modern-Day Bank Robbers—And How They Got Away With It, 1993) throws open the curtains on the deplorable actions of Warren Jeffs and his polygamous sect.

The Fundamental Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (FLDS) has been portrayed as a persecuted religion with women and children forcefully handled by armed soldiers as the government ran roughshod over their rights to religious freedom. There is another side to the story, writes the author, who tells it through the brave voices of the lawyers, police and brutalized FLDS victims who have all fought to bring down this powerful offshoot of the Mormon church. FLDS established its own prophets and continued to practice polygamy—requiring men to take at least three wives if they wanted to achieve salvation—long after their Mormon brethren abolished it. Mathematically, however, this posed a problem of too many men and not enough women, leading to the systemic rape of young girls through forced marriage to significantly older men and the expulsion of possible rivals, teen-aged "lost boys." All this was brought to a maniacal pitch by Jeffs, who, after declaring himself prophet, siphoned off taxpayer dollars from lobbyists who kowtowed to the powerful FLDS lobby. Weyermann's powerful exposé on the FLDS' origins, it's subsequent rise to power and how it held court over the U.S. political system is essential reading as the struggle for justice continues today.

A masterful exploration of one of America's most shameful secrets.

(COPYRIGHT (2011) KIRKUS REVIEWS/NIELSEN BUSINESS MEDIA, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.)

August 1, 2011
In 2007, Warren Jeffs, the prophet (leader) of the Fundamental Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (FLDS), was convicted on two counts of rape, stemming from his practice of forcing female members of the FLDS into arranged marriages against their will. As journalist Weyermann demonstrates in this detailed and distressing book, Jeffs was essentially a dictator with unrestricted powers, a modern-day feudal lord who treated church membersthe majority of whom were devout fundamentalist Mormonsas chattel. It's a balanced book: the author makes it clear from the outset that she is not writing about all Mormons but only about a radical fundamentalist offshoot of the Mormon church, one that has been known historically for its reprehensible treatment of its members (especially women). The author focuses on the FLDS' victims, of course, but also on the representatives of the legal system who devoted years of their lives to bringing Jeffs to justice. The book is undeniably unsettlingthe author doesn't pull any punches in her descriptions of the FLDS' illegal actsbut it's also definitely worth reading as a reminder of the horrors that can go on in our own backyards.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2011, American Library Association.)