On the EDge: Judgment does not spell the end of FLDS

September 11, 2017 Utah Channel 3

OPINION — Utah’s 3rd District Court Judge Keith Kelly was appalled when he handed down his $16 million award to a woman who was forced by Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints prophet Warren Jeffs to marry her cousin at the age of 14.

This is the front cover art for the book Stolen Innocence written by Elissa Wall.

Kelly said the conduct of Jeffs and the FLDS church “was so extreme that it went beyond all possible bound of decency and is regarded as atrocious and utterly intolerable in a civilized society.”

It upped the total awarded to Elissa Wall, who last year agreed to a $2.75-million settlement with the group’s communal property trust arm, to $16.75 million.

How much of that Wall will receive is anybody’s guess.

You see, because this cult headquartered along the Utah-Arizona state line is considered to be a church and churches can do just about anything they choose with their money, that cash could be difficult to piece together.

It’s tax-free.

It comes in, for the most part, in cash, which means even if the church did have to report income on an IRS filing, copious amounts could be hidden.

Rest assured, Jeffs and his partners in this hoodoo cult, have hidden their money. It’s in numerous bank accounts, property investments and acquisitions, cash hordes and just about anywhere you can hide money.

Considering the complexities and number of money managers who are expert at off-shoring cash, the likelihood of vast amounts being tucked away in foreign banks is also very high.

Wall was lucky that the settlement she agreed to last year was with the United Effort Plan Trust, the fiduciary arm of the FLDS church. The UEP was taken over by the state a decade ago so at least she should be able to count on that money.

But the recent award?

It’s a crapshoot.

Jeffs and the church didn’t show up to defend themselves in Kelly’s courtroom.

They didn’t hire attorneys to represent them.

They simply did not care.

And, that is an indication that while $16 million may seem like a windfall to the rest of us, but to Jeffs … tucked securely away in a Texas prison after being convicted of aggravated sexual abuse for marrying two underage girls, it as a drop in the bucket.

Just ask Jerry Falwell, Jimmy Swaggert, Pat Robertson or Joel Osteen.

Then, do the math.

Osteen is a televangelist based in Houston.

His sermons are seen by more than 20 million viewers monthly through a network that spans more than 100 countries.

Want more?

Well, you can tune into Sirius XM Radio and catch his “inspirational” raps any time of day or night.

Still want more?

Well, you can buy one of his books – seven have made The New York Times bestseller list.

And, if you really want a megadose of his brand of preaching, you could hotfoot it to Houston and drop by the former Compaq Center, an arena where the Houston Rockets NBA team once played. It’s current capacity is 16,800. Each week 52,000 churchgoers cram into it to hear the gospel according to Osteen who, by the way, owns the place.

Now, figure if each person drops $10 into the collection plate. That’s more than $500,000 a week in donations, not including the soaking his television and Sirius XM followers undergo each week.

And, it is all tax-free money.

The FLDS has been in business for more than 100 years. Jeffs and his clan have been defrauding the government of welfare benefits for at least half that long. They have a scam set up along the lines of organized crime, shifting money through a spider web of businesses and organizations – some legit, others perhaps not so legit – making it nearly impossible to follow this tangled money trail.

It flows in, of course, as a result of people fearful for their eternal salvation.

These Svengali-like shamans are the reason why so many people resistant to the con now claim that they are spiritual rather than religious in their beliefs.

To make matters worse, last May, an executive order lifted the ban on nonprofit organizations and churches that once forbade them from using donations to fund political endorsements.

Of course, we can point to repeated violations of the old law by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, the Catholic Church and hucksters like Falwell, Swaggert, Robertson and their ilk.

The IRS just looks the other way.

But, then, it’s understandable because of the influence these people have.

Osteen, Falwell, Swaggert, Robertson and the others have long been courted by politicians – from Nancy Pelosi to Donald Trump – because of the depths of their pockets and influence over their followers. Whether it is the hard right or hard left, they go after that religious vote with gusto, even those politicians with shallow religious roots.

So it is easy to see why Wall will most definitely have a difficult time in collecting on her latest award. The most practical form of payment would be in handing over property seized by the government for unpaid taxes, which would still leave a fortune laying around in secret caches.

Meanwhile, this judgment will have little, if any, impact on the FLDS church.

You just can’t turn off religious fervor, even misguided religious fervor such as this where pedophilia, fraud and the denigration of women’s rights is a part of the culture.

They may move around a bit, as it appears some of the hardcore FLDS followers are already doing, but this doesn’t spell the end of the church.

If the future of the church was tied to the rule of law, it would have folded when Jeffs was sentenced to life-plus in Texas.

But, as we have seen, that hasn’t happened and it is highly unlikely it will happen in the foreseeable future. There’s just too much money on the table for anybody to fold up their tent and walk away.

No bad days!

Ed Kociela is an opinion columnist for St. George News. The opinions stated in this article are his own and may not be representative of St. George News.

Email: edkociela.mx@gmail.com

Twitter: @STGnews, @EdKociela