SALT LAKE CITY - Six former members of a breakaway polygamous sect banished or excommunicated from the church filed a conspiracy lawsuit Friday against the church's prophet and one of his assistants, claiming a pattern of unlawful activity and conspiracy to get rid of surplus boys and men.
The plaintiffs, all so-called 'lost boys' and former members of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, based in Hildale, Utah and Colorado City, Ariz., included in the court complaint portions of federal racketeering statutes sometimes used in organized crime prosecutions.
The plaintiffs are Richard Jessop Ream, Thomas Samuel Steed, Don Ronald Fischer, Dean Joseph Barlow and Richard Gilbert, all of Salt Lake City, and Walter Scott Fischer of Macon, Ga.
They claim that FLDS church president and prophet Warren Jeffs and Sam Barlow, a former Colorado City police chief and close associate of Jeffs, have engaged in assault, terroristic threats, unlawful dealing of property, theft by extortion, child kidnaping, official misconduct and theft of services.
Jeffs, 48, who assumed leadership after the 2002 death of his father, Rulon Jeffs, reportedly has banished hundreds of men and boys from the twin border cities of Hildale, Utah, and Colorado City, Arizona, whose estimated 9,000 to 10,000 residents make it the largest polygamous group in the West.
Utah and Arizona prosecutors have been investigating allegations of welfare and tax fraud, incest, child abuse and forced marriages of young girls to adult men in the FLDS community.
According to the complaint filed in 3rd District Court, the church has engaged in 'systematic excommunication' of adolescents and young men in order to reduce competition for wives and those banishments have intensified under Rulon and Warren Jeffs. Rulon Jeffs reportedly had 70 wives at the time of his death, and Warren Jeffs is reputed to have at least 50 wives, the complaint states.
The plaintiff allege that the banishments have cost them lost wages, lost educational opportunity and lost monetary benefits paid to and to have been paid from the United Effort Plan Trust, a communal organization that holds real and personal property for the Utah and Colorado church members.
The lawsuit seeks compensatory and punitive damages, as well as a takeover and accounting of the FLDS and UEP assets by a new trustee.
Salt Lake City attorney Pat Shea filed the case on behalf of the plaintiffs. He did not return a telephone message requesting comment. The lead attorney in the case, Joanne Suder of Baltimore, Md., declined comment on the lawsuit. Another Salt Lake attorney, Rodney Parker, who has represented the FLDS in legal matters, said the lawsuit lacked merit.
'The core allegations are that the church does not have the right to make its own membership decisions, and that those decisions should be made under the supervision of the courts,' he said.
FLDS teachings are common to most churches, Parker said. 'They're adding a spin to it that distorts,' he said.
Friday's legal action is the third to be filed in the past month. In late July, former FLDS member Brent Jeffs, 21, filed a lawsuit that alleges Warren Jeffs and his brothers Blaine Jeffs and Leslie Jeffs sodomized him when he was a child. Brent Jeffs claims the three told him the actions were a way to make him a man. Suder, who is with the law firm that sued the Baltimore Catholic Diocese over child sexual abuse, is also the lead attorney in Brent Jeffs' case.
Last week, Shem Fischer, a former Hildale resident who claims he was wrongfully terminated from his job because he no longer adhered to FLDS tenets amended his 2002 lawsuit to include the church and Warren Jeffs. Fischer, who is related to two of the six plaintiffs in Friday's action, alleged church officials interfered with his relationship with his employer and blacklisted him.