As this Court is well aware, Mr. Jeffs is currently not available to inform his counsel whether or not he agrees to the Continuance. Whether his absence is based on absconding, as oft alleged by the Government in their filings, or whether he was taken and secreted against his will, or whether he experienced the miracle of rapture is unknown to counsel.
—Kathryn Nester, Lyle Jeffs’s public defender, in a motion in support of a continuance. Jeffs is accused of massive food stamp fraud and escaped from his ankle monitor earlier this summer. U.S. District Judge Ted Stewart granted Jeffs supervised release in June, despite prosecutors arguing he would be a flight risk.
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Jeffs is the acting head of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, and the FBI suspects he may be hiding in a FLDS safe house. The FLDS is described by the Southern Poverty Law Center as “a white supremacist, homophobic, anti-government, totalitarian cult.” The church supports polygamy, and its members have been accused of taking ‘wives’ too young to consent. FLDS first came to national attention when Jeffs’s brother, Warren Jeffs, was convicted of raping a child he called his wife.