COLORADO CITY, AZ (ABC 4 News) - Former members of the FLDS polygamist group are saying Warren Jeffs has a perverse, new math when it comes to sex: 15 men for thousands of women.
They say from his jail cell in Palestine, Texas, Jeffs has issued an edict that only 15 men in his group of roughly 10-thousand followers are allowed to have sex. For all others -- even married members -- sex is forbidden.
What's more, they're hearing from friends and family still in the FLDS group that when women are "called" for sex, they have no choice in the matter. "Women have been reduced to nothing more than breeding stock," said one woman who escaped the group years ago, but still has loved ones who are members.
ABC 4 News is being told the Jeffs' edict actually came down months ago and has already been put into practice by "elite" members.
Isaac Wyler left the FLDS group rather than follow Warren Jeffs and his father, Rulon, but still lives among them in Colorado City, Arizona. "If this doesn't break them, what will?" Wyler asked in frustration. "It blows my mind that I've still got brothers and sisters that are still involved in this and haven't walked yet."
Wyler says the more Jeffs pushes people to the extremes, the more tightly they hold on. They even consider his "life sentence" in Texas to be only temporary. He said, "They're under a delusion that the walls of the prison down there are going to come tumbling down and he's going to walk out and rule the world."
Sam Brower, a private investigator and author who knows Warren Jeffs better than another outsider, says the FLDS has been reduced to nothing more than a sex cult. There have been rumors of mass defections because of Jeffs' edict, but he has not been able to confirm them. Wyler said that a few hundred were asked to leave a meeting where the sex order was discussed, but they were not expressing disapproval, only their "unworthiness" to received the "higher law."
