While appeals and efforts to suppress evidence by attorneys for the odious cult calling itself a church, the Fundamentalist Latter Day Saints continue in San Angelo, the Canadian authorities have stepped in to stop the cult's leaders in British Columbia.

Cult lawyers make this claim:

Texas Ranger Brooks Long and other officers failed to make a single call to corroborate or verify the caller's information and left out critical information about the caller in his affidavit seeking a search warrant, the brief states.
In that affidavit, Long also stated Dale Evans Barlow was at the ranch, though he had not confirmed the man's whereabouts and knew, as a condition of probation for a previous offense, was not allowed to leave Arizona.

Those lawyers are apparently following a long tradition of favoring prophets' authority and demands over facts in place, while ignoring the very nature of law enforcement response to reports of a crime in progress: you take the complaint and you go investigate. You don't refuse to respond until you're absolutely certain everything is over with, and you don't automatically assume that any report from a woman is a hoax. One judge in Utah appears to have figured out, too, that you don't set aside "black letter law" in favor of the wishes of cult leaders.

Stolen from the Southern Poverty Law Center Summer 2009 Intelligence Report:

Canadian authorities in Bountiful, British Columbia, arrested two leaders of a racist, polygamist cult that also has a major U.S. presence this January.

Winston Blackmore and James Oler pleaded not guilty to charges of polygamy, and both are expected to go to trial later this year.

Both men are leaders in the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (FLDS), whose chief "prophet" was already serving a prison sentence in the U.S. on sex charges and preaches that blacks are descendants of Cain, "cursed with a black skin," and selected by God to be the "servants of servants."

Blackmore, who is 52 and has at least 19 wives, is an outspoken defender of polygamy who's appeared on "Larry King Live" and in other major media. Oler, a 44-year-old mechanic, has at least three wives whom he married as teenagers. The marriages were reportedly arranged by FLDS prophet Warren Jeffs, now serving two five-years-to-life prison terms in Arizona after being convicted in 2007 on two counts of first-degree felony rape, as an accomplice, for arranging child-bride marriages.

Blackmore and Oler head up rival FLDS splinter factions in southeastern British Columbia, as well as two private FLDS schools which together have received nearly $1 million from the Canadian government, according to a report by The [Spokane, Wash.] Spokesman-Review. Most students are forced to drop out before the eighth grade to work for the church.

Until 2003, Blackmore was an FLDS bishop in line to assume control of all FLDS churches in the U.S. and Canada. But he was ousted in a dispute with Jeffs, while Oler remained loyal to the "prophet."

Authorities in British Columbia had been investigating the FLDS there since 2005. The Spokesman-Review reported that federal law enforcement agents in both the U.S. and Canada "are watchful for 'human trafficking' cases involving teenage girls in the group." To date, no such arrests have been made.

There are believed to be some 10,000 FLDS members in the U.S., spread out among communities in Hildale, Utah; neighboring Colorado City, Ariz.; Edgemont, S.D.; Eldorado, Tex., and four small Colorado mountain towns. FLDS members believe they are carrying on the original teachings of the Mormon Church, which urge men to take numerous "celestial wives." The Mormon Church, from which FLDS long ago broke away, has outlawed polygamy since 1890.

The State of Texas last year raided that Eldorado site in response to a telephone tip that a young girl was being forced into sexual activity withan older man -- common practice in the FLDS, according to the author of "Escape," Carolyn Jessop. A UK news story appears to reinforce the ongoing practice of polygamy in Mormon-dominated Utah.

The "Sarah" tip turned out, on investigation, to have come not from a young girl in the compound but from a woman whose history included mental disturbances and previous instances of, not to put too fine a point on it, filing false reports.

A Texas district judge had every minor in the compound rounded up and taken into protective custody; the politically vulnerable Texas Supreme Court ruled the children must be returned, and that the judge had overreached in her attempt to prevent lawbreaking (to wit: statutory rape and bigamy, both illegal in Texas and both regarded by this cult as sacraments).

But books describing the corruption Jeffs and his followers have wrought continue to come out, including at least one written by a man whose marriage displeased the FLDS "Prophet," resulting in a kidnapping.

Jason Williams gives a detailed account of his life in the Mormon fundamentalist community. Jason married the woman of his choice (and was told by the prophet that he was stealing from the ’Priesthood’) the couple were ostracized for one year, before being let back into the community again and re-baptized. In 1999 FLDS leader Warren Jeffs told Jason’s wife that she and her two young children had “zero chance of salvation whilst married to him [Jason]” and kidnapped his family. Shortly after her return, she was “placed” into a religious marriage as a second wife, while she was still legally married to Jason. He then filed a ten million dollar suit against Warren Jeffs and his father Rulon for ’alienation of affection’. He sued for custody of his children and wrote his aptly named book, ’Zero Chance’

Religious freedom as enshrined in the First Amendment, which predates the founding of the original Mormon Church not to mention the FLDS pedophile/polygamous cult thrown off thereby, more than likely wasn't written as a defense for pedophilia and polygamy in the first place. However, the rights of the individual to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness are certainly at stake in the cases of women and children forced into the slavery of spirit, body and pocketbook practiced by the FLDS.

Applause is due the Canadian authorities, and I hope the Texas juries soon to sit in court on charges that children were endangered, underage girls were raped and women were forced into bigamy by the church elders in the YFZ compound have the wit and wisdom to consider the facts and follow the law and find these abusers guilty. In justice, Warren Jeffs should never draw another breath outside prison -- and nor should his child-raping apostles.