Polygamist leader Jeffs still a force from jail

By Jason Szep

HILDALE, Utah (Reuters) - From a cell in the Purgatory jail 10 months after his arrest, fundamentalist Mormon leader Warren Jeffs is still God's voice on Earth to thousands of polygamists in this isolated community.

"Warren Jeffs isn't 'gone'. He doesn't have to be there to rule the place," said Enos Steed, a 21-year-old former member of Jeff's Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (FLDS), a polygamist sect that broke from the mainstream Mormon church 72 years ago.

To about 10,000 followers in the twin border communities of Hildale, Utah, and Colorado City, Arizona, Jeffs remains a spiritual leader who channels divine revelations and a feared prophet, even 25 miles away in Purgatory, a jail in the Utah city of Hurricane where he awaits trial.

"As long as he is alive he will be the prophet, unless he stands up before them and renounces the religion, denounces what he's been doing for the past decade. That's the only way, besides dying, he will not be the prophet," said Steed.

Steed is one of hundreds of so-called "lost boys," males who are exiled from the sect partly to reduce competition for young brides.

Jeffs, 51, was declared on May 28 mentally fit to stand trial in September, charged as an accomplice to rape for using his authority to order a 14-year-old girl against her wishes to marry and have sex with her 19-year-old cousin.

The mainstream Mormon Church, based in Salt Lake City, introduced polygamy before the Civil War but banned it in 1890 and now excommunicates any member who practices plural marriage. The FLDS, the nation's largest polygamist group, consider themselves Mormon purists.

POWER SHIFT