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Mark Shurtleff Disseminates Misleading Information about FLDS

2008-06-20 15:56:00

By Donald Richter

 

On April 15, 2008, just prior to the 14-day hearings which gave CPS custody of the children removed from the YFZ community, Texas law enforcement  received dossiers on 16 FLDS members considered to be potential threats of engaging “in acts of intimidation or violence against law enforcement and/or potential witnesses."   The dossiers characterized these persons as religious fanatics, willing to die for a cause, and labeled them with terms typically used for mafia-type “enforcers.” Willie Jessop, for example, was said to be known as “Willie the Thug” or “King Willie.” Lindsay Barlow was labeled Warren Jeffs’ “Muscle.” Willie was reported to have “a passion for violence, weapons (legal and illegal) and explosives,” and authorities were warned that “if anything remotely resembling violence or intimidation occurs, you can be fairly certain that William had a hand in it.”
    
On June 17, 2008, FLDS attorney Rod Parker sent a letter to Utah Attorney General Mark Shurtleff, Washington County Attorney Brock Belnap, and Washington County Sheriff Kirk Smith, referring to the claims made in the dossiers as slanderous and calling upon the Utah authorities “to immediately correct” the misstatements made about FLDS members.
 
According to a Deseret News article on June 18, 2008, Shurtleff’s spokesman Paul Murphy claimed that his office did not compile the dossiers and also said that in making other statements about the FLDS people, “We do the best we can to gather reliable information and pass it along.”  An AP article of June 17 quotes Murphy as saying, “We have tried to gather the best information we can from the most reliable people.”
 
Authorities in Utah, Arizona, and Texas have been heavily influenced by unreliable anti-FLDS individuals and groups, whose information has been proven wrong time after time. Mark Shurtleff, moreover, has been especially notorious for crediting the allegations of these people and passing them along as facts, often parroting the same outrageous claims and using the same inflammatory language that are discrediting such anti-FLDS crusaders in the eyes of fair-minded and thoughtful people.
 
Shurtleff was seen at his most bigoted and inflammatory on MSBC TV August 30, 2006, when he appeared as a guest on the Tucker show shortly after FLDS Prophet Warren Jeffs was arrested and a year before his trial. The following statements are typical of his performance that night:
 
“You haven’t been victimized by this guy. I didn’t do this for you. You have no idea the thousands of women and children who have been victimized by this guy…”
 
 “He kicks the little boys out of town, leaves them in the desert to fend for themselves.” [See “The Truth about the ‘Lost Boys.’”]
 
“Here’s a man who had a whole army supporting him, who thumbed his nose at the law for years, who ran from us, who had people surrounding him with guns, threatening to go down with him. This is a guy who pulled kids out of school. This is a guy who taught them to kill animals with their bare hands, slit their throats so they could…”
 
This is the same Warren Jeffs who, when he was arrested, was unarmed and submitted peacefully to authorities.    His brother Isaac, who was in the car with him at the time, said that at the police station the officers remarked to him that Warren Jeffs didn’t seem at all the sort of person he was said to be. “Of course not,” Isaac responded. “The things they say about him are lies.”
 
Shurtleff’s statement about the killing of animals is typical of the way in which a known fact can be given a false coloring through inflammatory language. As part of a survival class at a private school in Sandy, Utah, over which Warren Jeffs presided as principal, students were taught how to kill and prepare animals, such as chickens. FLDS doctrine, however, follows the teachings of Joseph Smith in stressing a reverence for life and kindness toward animals. When the Prophet Joseph led Zion’s Camp back to Missouri in 1834, he instructed his brethren “not to kill a serpent, bird, or an animal of any kind during our journey unless it became necessary in order to preserve ourselves from hunger.”
 
 By placing the reference to killing animals in juxtaposition to the unfounded allegation of armed gunmen surrounding Warren Jeffs and “threatening to go down with him,” Shurtleff insinuates that this was a sadistic practice intended to harden young people to bloodshed and to prepare them to commit acts of violence.
 
On CBS News―48 Hours, May 27, 2008, Mark Shurtleff made additional inflammatory remarks about Warren Jeffs and demonstrated again how closely his attitude parallels that of other anti-FLDS crusaders. “There’s a certain brand of FLDS under Warren Jeffs,” he said, “that is also, I believe, similar to an organized crime group.” He further remarked, “I’ve gone on record as calling them the American Taliban, in the way they treat women.”
 
In referring to the FLDS as “the American Taliban,” Shurtleff echoes the exact terminology that Flora Jessop and others like her have been using for years. The extent of Shurtleff’s connection to Flora herself is uncertain, but there is little doubt that his attitude toward the FLDS has been shaped by those who share the same radical views. [See "The Truth About Flora Jessop"]
 
From the Deseret News of August 26, 2004, we learn of Shurtleff’s close ties to another bitter ex-FLDS member, Dan Fischer. Shurtleff participated in Fischer’s July 31 news conference on the steps of the capitol building to launch his Diversity Foundation.
 
He also has received considerable input from Carolyn Jessop, author of Escape. Laura Palmer, who co-authored the book with Carolyn, reported in the Arizona Republic on May 11, 2008, that Shurtleff was the person who originally referred her to Carolyn, saying that she had a story to tell and might be willing to be interviewed. “Later I would learn,” Palmer said, “that when Shurtleff first met with Carolyn to learn more about the FLDS under Warren Jeffs, Shurtleff had scheduled a half-hour meeting but wound up listening for 2 ½ hours.”
 
Just how much Shurtleff has been influenced by Carolyn Jessop becomes even more apparent in an article by Doug Robinson in the Deseret News of December 23, 2006: “She sat in Shurtleff’s office and told him stories of children being forced to kill animals with their bare hands to demonstrate obedience, of children being forced to quit school, of women being told that they don’t need a job or an education because their only purpose is to marry and please their husband and have babies; of economic hardships and women having no way out of polygamy. ‘I’m thinking, here’s my witness,’” said Shurtleff.
 
Following Shurtleff’s initial contact with Carolyn, his office, in conjunction with the office of Terry Goddard, Attorney General of Arizona, produced The Primer, a training manual for human services professionals, law enforcement officers, etc., dealing with polygamous communities. The introduction to this manual states, “The need for ‘The Primer’ became evident after government officials and social service providers heard the story of Carolyn…” Although the manual itself is relatively factual, the introduction goes on to relate many of Carolyn’s distortions of life in an FLDS community.
 

Mark Shurtleff and his office may not have been involved in the actual preparation of the dossiers that were used to disseminate misleading information about FLDS members to authorities in Texas, but Shurtleff has received much of his own information regarding the FLDS from sources who purposely distort the facts, and over the years he has been a very fruitful source of misleading information himself.


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