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	Ex-Fundamentalist Fears 'Scandal from Hell' She Says Canadian Children Could Have Been Sent to Texas Compound without Their Parents By Daphne Bramham Vancouver Sun April 24, 2008 http://www.canada.com/vancouversun/news/story.html?id=80268308-4afa-4322-b5da-69ef5ccef80f It will be "an international scandal from hell" if Texas officials determine that some of the Canadian children taken from the polygamous compound in Texas were taken there without their parents, says a former member of the fundamentalist Mormon group. And Carolyn Jessop believes that is "a very strong possibility." "I suspect that they [the FLDS] had a whole lot of kids there without their parents," said Jessop, who fled the community in 2003 with her eight children. At 18, she became the fifth wife of Merril Jessop, who is in charge of the Yearning for Zion ranch, from which Texas officials took 437 children earlier this month and put them into protective care. For several years now, children have been reassigned from one father to another and even one family to another as Warren Jeffs, the prophet of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, grew increasingly tyrannical, Carolyn Jessop said in an interview. That helps explain why so many of the children are unable or unwilling to tell child protection officials who their parents are. This confusion over identities is the reason a Texas judge ordered DNA tests for all of the children and asked that parents voluntarily provide DNA samples. Testing began Monday and is expected to continue through the week. Processing the samples will take several more weeks. Even with the testing, Jessop doubted officials will be able to find many of the fathers because some, if not many, of the men are afraid to be tested themselves. Any voluntary DNA samples could be used later in a criminal trial if the mothers were minors when they were impregnated. And while some of the mothers have said they will do anything to get their children back, including leave the reclusive, breakaway Mormon sect, Jessop said Texas ought to require psychiatric evaluations. "I don't think there is one of them who is stable enough to get their children back. Mind control is classed as a mental illness and a child's right to safety far exceeds a mother's rights." "The women in this society will never protect their children. . . . They turn them over to the perpetrators." Jessop said her own children are still in therapy because of the damage her so-called "sister-wives" did to them. Not all of the women are perpetrators of abuse, some are victims of it and they are "pretty good, decent moms within their reality," she said. The FLDS launched an Internet offensive Tuesday. Although the media has been careful to obscure the faces of the children taken from the YFZ ranch, the FLDS has posted dozens of photos and video of them on its website along with a plea for donations to a legal defence fund. But the Texas raid isn't the only FLDS trial. The FLDS prophet's lawyers will be in a Utah court this afternoon fighting for a retrial. Jeffs was convicted last fall on two counts of being an accomplice to the rape of a 14-year-old girl and was sentenced to two terms of five years to life in prison. However, the verdict was reached only after a juror was replaced when it was determined she was biased. The woman, a victim of rape at 13, had lied about that when answering a questionnaire given to all potential jurors and in a subsequent in-camera interview with the prosecuting and defence lawyers. Less than three hours after her replacement joined the deliberations, the previously deadlocked jury reached guilty verdicts on both counts. Jeffs's lawyers will argue that the judge's decision to salvage the deliberations, which had been going on for close to 13 hours, by replacing the biased juror compromised Jeffs's right to a fair trial. They will argue that before Judge James Shumate replaced the juror, he did not adequately question the remaining principal jurors about whether they would be able to set aside the prior 13 hours of deliberations. Their brief says the judge "did not even make a cursory or general inquiry" about whether they were capable of doing that, which "was a death blow to the shield of protection over the integrity of the right to trial by jury." Jeffs's lawyers say Shumate then failed to adequately instruct the reconstituted panel that it must begin its deliberations anew. "Jeffs did not knowingly and intelligently waive his right to trial by jury since the court, prosecution and defence counsel were all acting under the misconception that the alternate juror could be properly substituted after deliberations were underway," reads the brief filed by Walter Bugden and Tara Isaacson. Finally, the lawyers will argue that the law says it is improper to replace a juror once deliberations have begun. "The court, all defence counsel and all prosecutors operated under the misconception that the court had authority to retain, recall and impanel an alternate juror after deliberations were underway," the defence lawyers contend, adding: "Due to the misconception of the law, the court and attorneys did not consider the option of continuing deliberations with the seven original jurors." Jeffs will not be in the Utah courtroom. He remains in an Arizona jail cell where he is awaiting trial on several sex-related charges including conspiracy to commit sexual conduct with a minor. The same victim who testified in the Utah trial will be a key witness for Arizona prosecutors. Contact: dbramham@png.canwest.com
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