Crackdown on polygamy group

Small polygamous groups have existed in the southwestern US under the watchful yet fairly benign eye of authorities ever since a sect known as the Fundamentalist Latter Day Saints (FLDS) separated itself from mainstream Mormonism in 1890.

That year, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints banned "plural marriages," a move declared to be based on a "revelation" from God. The decision was also required for Utah to become a state.

Now, FLDS leader Warren Jeffs has been added to the FBI's list of "Ten Most Wanted Fugitives," a move that caps law enforcement's dramatic change of approach toward the polygamous group in recent years. The group's belief that men need more than one wife to reach heaven, which FLDS defenders argue is a matter of religious freedom and pluralism in the United States, is not the main catalyst for the tougher stance. Rather, it's the impact that the group's practices, law enforcement officials say, are having on the most vulnerable within the sect, particularly children and women.

When the FLDS under Mr. Jeffs (and his father before him) grew to some 10,000 followers in several southwestern communities with estimated assets of $110 million; when it became clear that government officials, school authorities, and police in those communities had become intertwined with the sect; when ex-members increasingly reported child and sexual abuse charges (mainly involving underage girls forced to marry older men); and when the sect began to use secluded compounds, state and federal authorities started to crack down more vigorously.

Several models from the 1990s concern them, according to experts who track such groups: "Freemen" holing themselves up - armed and with children present - for months in 1996 at an isolated Montana ranch; antigovernment radicals shooting it out with federal agents at Ruby Ridge, Idaho in 1992; and scores of people, including many children, killed during a gunfight and conflagration at the Branch Davidian compound near Waco, Texas.

"In many ways, Warren Jeffs reminds me of David Koresh," says Brian Levin, associate professor of criminal justice at California State University in San Bernardino and a specialist in extremist groups. Mr. Koresh was the leader of the Branch Davidians who was killed at the group's compound in 1993.

"We've always had unusual religious leaders in this country that end up being at odds with their [church] community or with the government," says Mr. Levin. "This just shows that although we're well into the 21st century, these reactionary, narcissistic, perverted figures just continue to pop up."

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