Polygamist Sect Gets Millions from U.S. Government
April 17th, 2008Via: McClatchy:
American taxpayers have unwittingly helped finance a polygamist sect that is now the focus of a massive child abuse investigation in West Texas, with a business tied to the group receiving a nearly $1 million loan from the federal government and $1.2 million in military contracts.
The ability of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, or FLDS, to operate and grow is largely dependent on huge contributions from its members and revenue from the businesses they control, according to a former accountant for the church, and government officials in Utah and Arizona, where the sect is primarily based.
One of those businesses, NewEra Manufacturing in Las Vegas, has been awarded more than $1.2 million in federal government contracts, with most of the money coming in recent years from the Defense Department for wheel and brake components for military aircraft.
A large portion of the awards were preferential no-bid or “sole source” contracts because of the company’s classification as a small business, according to online databases that track federal government appropriations.
NewEra, previously known as Western Precision Inc. and located in Hildale, Utah, also received a $900,000 loan in 2005 from the federal Small Business Administration, the data show.
The president and chief executive of the company is John. C. Wayman, identified as an FLDS leader and a close associate to Warren Jeffs, the sect’s “prophet,” who was convicted last year as an accomplice to rape for arranging the marriage of a 14-year-old girl to her 19-year-old cousin.
When Jeffs, who was one of the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted Fugitives, was arrested in the summer of 2006, he was driving Wayman’s late-model red Cadillac Escalade, government officials say.
Wayman did not return phone calls seeking comment.
On NewEra’s Web site Wayman says the company is “an honorable and valuable asset to our country” in helping build military and commercial airplanes that carry people throughout the world. He does not mention its ties to the FLDS.
Steve Barlow, human resources manager for NewEra, said last week that it would be inappropriate to comment, “Given everything that’s going on. I could only give you the company motto: ‘Good parts on time.’. ”
U.S. Rep. Kay Granger, the Fort Worth Republican who sits on the House Appropriations Committee that deals with issues of defense, military and homeland security, said she is surprised that the federal government is doing business with a group accused of mistreating women and children.
“It makes me very uneasy,” Granger said. “It needs to be investigated without a doubt.”
To begin with, she added, federal authorities should look into NewEra’s financial records.
John Nielsen, who worked for the company when it was Western Precision in Hildale, said in a 2005 affidavit that he and other FLDS members were made to work for little or no wages, even as the company was bringing in lucrative government contracts and other work.
At the same time, $50,000 to $100,000 in company profits were going each month to FLDS “and/or” Jeffs, Nielsen said in the affidavit, filed as part of a civil lawsuit.
He said he and other sect members thought their working for free or for extremely low wages would bring them redemption. Instead, Nielsen said in the affidavit, he was found to be “wanting” by the sect’s leadership, ordered off the property and separated from his five young children and his wife. She was “reassigned” to another man, becoming the fourth of his six wives.
“It broke my heart,” Nielsen said in the affidavit. He declined to comment when reached by phone Friday.
In Texas, authorities raided the FLDS’ sprawling YFZ Ranch near Eldorado on April 3, beginning an exhaustive search of its 1,691 acres. Authorities were acting on a tip from a 16-year-old girl inside the compound who said she had been beaten and raped by a 50-year-old man whom she was forced to marry.
Since then, a state district court judge has ordered the removal of 416 children, many of them young girls who have children or are pregnant after forced encounters with their “spiritual” husbands in the sect’s towering white limestone temple, officials say.
“There’s a lot of bad shit in there,” said a high-ranking official with the federal Justice Department who did not want to be identified because of the sensitivity of the case. On Tuesday, the Justice Department executed a sealed FBI search warrant at the ranch.
While the men of the sect have held close rein on their “plural wives” and children, seldom allowing them to associate with the outside world, the male leaders have fanned out into successful public business ventures. They work as government defense contractors, dairy farmers, engineers, construction contractors, log-cabin homebuilders and suppliers of lanyards, the cords used on eyeglasses or nametags.
In addition, JNJ Engineering, a company owned and operated by FLDS leaders, has made millions of dollars in Las Vegas, the Las Vegas Review-Journal reported in September. The company won $11.3 million in contract work from the Las Vegas Valley Water District; all but one of the project workers came from the twin towns of Hildale and Colorado City, Ariz., where most of the sect’s 10,000 members live.
Jethro Barlow, a former accountant for the FLDS whom Warren Jeffs excommunicated in 2003, said Jeffs ordered sect members, their families and the companies they operated to “give till it hurts….
“And people did.”
Jeffs was able to rally church members to tithe heavily, even if it hurt them financially, because he had convinced them that they had to prepare for the end of the world, Barlow said.
The fever-pitched preparation continued, even after several apocalyptic deadlines had passed. It motivated the rapid construction of the temple at the YFZ Ranch and the erection there of manufactured cabin-like homes made by sect members in Canada, he said.
Barlow, who remains in Hildale, said he believes he and his family were kicked out of the FLDS because they were not among the favored ones in Jeffs’ flock.
Although Jeffs is now behind bars, sect members still consider him their leader and prophet, said Bruce Wisan, a nonmember appointed by the state of Utah to replace Jeffs as manager of a the FLDS’ trust. Established in 1942 to “preserve and advance the religious doctrines” of the church, it is now estimated to be worth between $100 million and $150 million.
Under Jeffs’ direction, Wisan said, sect households are required to tithe at least 10 percent of their gross income to the church, plus an extra $1,000 a month.
Tim Bodily, an assistant attorney over the tax division of the Utah attorney general’s office, said Wisan has received little cooperation from those within the sect, which has traditionally shown distrust for outsiders.
“He’s been provided no records at all, and no one inside the organization has provided any inside knowledge. … It’s a very difficult thing to do,” Bodily said. “Progress moves slow when dealing with these people. Texas has its hands full.”
This looks and smells like a smear story about the poor devils in Texas. The government is desperate to make sure these folk are sympathized by no one.
I for one have been shocked, disgusted, and appalled by the government sending in the bully boys to teach these folk a lesson. I can’t tell if these folk are guilty of anything other than being oddballs and wanting to be left alone.
I just love the idea that 1 phone call which may well be a hoax is justification to snatch the entire community and throw them into what looks like an early concentration camp.
I guess what surprises me most, is that the entire mainstream media and the population has been so conditioned to accept what the government says that no one questions ‘They were hurting the babies’ anymore.
Here is my answer to the press and population in words they will understand: baaaa, baaaa, baaaa
@RobertS,
I think you should reread this article, because your response to it leaves me in a state of “what?”
Two or more teenaged girls blew the whistle on this creepfest – not the government.
Scuse my sneer at you but how can these be “poor devils” when “a state district court judge has ordered the removal of 416 children, many of them young girls who have children or are pregnant after forced encounters with their “spiritual” husbands in the sect’s towering white limestone temple, officials say.
Poor devils you call them.
Sheesh, we may now be into peak oil, food, energy, and money. But that’s no excuse for any person, whatever religion, color, race, or sex to exploit others FEARS and to exchange living in their white temple for sex, money, or power.
I doubt if these children will be sent to a concentration camp. Sounds to me like they just were released from one.
Who says this is so other than the government or their malcontents.
Sounds to me like you feel they don’t even deserve a trial, lets just sting ’em up.
I read somewhere a quote I feel applies: “Sometimes the charges are so horrible, that innocence is an inadequate defense.” I only wish I could remember who said it.
Also, every time a government goes against a sect of non-conformist religious folk out come the accusations of Raping/murdering the children, cannibalism, worshiping demons. Tacitus said this about the Christians, The pope about the Cauthers, The US against the Branch Dividians, and now Texas about the FDLS. I don’t know about you but I see a pattern.
@Eileen
It really comes down to a couple of things:
1) Is the government to be trusted and believed?
I don’t believe anything the government says is true unless it is to their advantage to tell the truth. You apparently disagree with me and feel the government wouldn’t lie about something like this.
2)Even if the charges are partially true, isn’t their response a little heavy handed? I think it is, while I’m assuming you feel it may be a little lenient.
I’m sure the kids will be quite happy in their new foster homes away from their families and with people in a new secular culture. Maybe the foster care system is better in Texas than here, I hope so for the kids sake.
We are just going to have to go through life with our different beliefs. You cant sway me to believe and I can’t sway you to question.