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Conviction offers chance at fresh start
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Tuesday’s conviction in a Utah courtroom of zealot Warren Jeffs could be the beginning of the end of religious tyranny in Colorado City.
Decades of isolation and indoctrination has convinced thousands of people on the Arizona-Utah border that Jeffs was God’s voice on Earth and their sole path to eternal salvation.
In truth, Jeffs followed in the footsteps of his father to become a criminal dictator who demanded blind faith from his followers only to enrich himself. He also used his perverted icon status to justify rampant abuse of the community’s teenagers — ordering the rape of underage girls by male followers under the rubric of “celestial marriage” and forcing underage boys to leave their homes without any support so they wouldn’t grow up to compete with the elders.
Breaking up the Jeffs-led theocracy in Colorado City and neighboring Hilldale, Utah, has been an agonizingly slow process. For years, local and state officials feared widespread rumors that Jeffs’ followers were ready to sacrifice their lives if pushed too far, raising the specter of disasters similar to Jonestown or Waco.
But progress has been made on a number of fronts, as the two states gradually root out the malignant corruption of the “prophets” of this splinter sect. The community trust that owns nearly all of the property in Colorado City was placed in the hands of an outside professional charged with protecting the interests of all of the residents.
The local school district, once a bloated job factory for Jeffs’ loyal followers that teetered on bankruptcy, has been taken over by the state so it can return to its rightful purpose of educating children. Police officers who ignored the law to obey Jeffs’ demented mandates have been stripped of their badges.
The capture of Jeffs after months on the run from authorities, and now his felony conviction by a jury of his peers, has robbed him of any claim to be uniquely blessed and protected by heaven. There’s the possibility Jeffs could become a martyr. But hopefully, his influence over Colorado City will fade entirely as he rots away in prison for years or the rest of his life.
The future path of Colorado City and its residents is far from clear. But one thing is certain: the rest of us should never again allows cries of religious persecution to stop us from standing up to homegrown despots.
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