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Long before today's debate over the need for a federal task force to probe the FLDS Church, a federal civil rights investigation concluded the polygamous sect was doing nothing worth prosecuting.
Documents recently released under a Freedom of Information request show in 1985, the FBI focused on two FLDS leaders: LeRoy S. Johnson, then 97, prophet and president, and Rulon T. Jeffs, who later succeeded him and is the father of current president, Warren S. Jeffs.
The FBI investigated whether leaders in the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints were committing mail and wire fraud while illegally evicting people from homes in Colorado City, Ariz., and Hildale, Utah.
But after stepping in at the request of Brent D. Ward, then the U.S. Attorney for Utah, the U.S. Department of Justice closed the case without filing charges.
A lawyer who represented evicted FLDS members in a related lawsuit considers the investigation a missed opportunity to curb the power of the sect's leaders.
"Some of the systematic policies that adversely affected young men and young women might have been diminished or possibly stopped," said St. George attorney Clay Huntsman.
Kicked out on a whim: In the early and mid-1980s, dozens of people were evicted from the twin towns. In lawsuits, former residents claimed they were tossed for trivial offenses against FLDS beliefs or at the whim of leaders.
According to notes from a January 1985 meeting with Ward, six FLDS members described their evictions and complained about the removal of 115 names from a list, filed in Arizona, of beneficiaries of the United Effort Plan Trust. Historically, the trust has held nearly all property in the two towns. The notes show Ward wanted an FBI investigation of two questions: Were the FLDS committing civil rights violations by evicting people for religious purposes or without due process?
And did the FLDS commit wire or mail fraud when they altered the list of UEP beneficiaries?
That summer, the FBI interviewed evictees. One woman said she came home to find men sleeping there. Church leaders later accused her of ripping out the home's cabinets and evicted her, she said.
But notes of other interviews show some left voluntarily to find work. And those evicted also acknowledged they were aware that living in the community required remaining in good standing with the church.
Agents also reviewed correspondence between Huntsman and Charles Ditsch, a Phoenix attorney who represented the FLDS. Ditsch wrote that some deleted beneficiaries did not live in Arizona. He also said not being listed did not prohibit receiving benefits.
"There was a lot of agitation in those days by people who had . . fallen away," Ditsch said in a recent interview.
Evicting the 'unfaithful': Albert S. Glenn, then a trial attorney with the civil rights division of the U.S. Department of Justice, recommended closing the investigation in a Nov. 7, 1986, memo.
The changes to the beneficiary list did not violate any federal rights, he said. And specific evictions showed "minimal" or "no articulable " evidence of religious discrimination, he concluded.
"This is not a denial of housing because of the victims' religion per se, but rather because the victims were supposedly unfaithful to the church's requirements," he wrote.
As a landowner, Glenn added, the UEP had the right to evict tenants who did not follow its rules.
Ward now prosecutes obscenity cases for the Justice Department in Washington, D.C., and did not return calls for comment.
The evicted tenants who sued won this concession: The church could buy them out, or they could live in their homes for their lifetimes.
But the UEP is now run by a court-appointed trustee, designated after a judge found FLDS leaders were failing to protect its assets from lawsuits.
Warren Jeffs has been sentenced to serve up to life in prison in Utah for being an accomplice to rape for a marriage he conducted. He is facing similar charges in Arizona.
Huntsman argues federal prosecutors should have considered using racketeering statutes, generally aimed at organized crime. Utah Attorney General Mark Shurtleff, who has expressed interest in pursuing a RICO investigation of the FLDS, said it was one of several tactics discussed at a Wednesday meeting of prosecutors from Utah, Arizona, Nevada and Texas.