YFZ Revisited – April 6, 2008 – Media and Diversity

Originally posted on November 18, 2008. There were a lot more cameras and reporters at today’s press conference at Eldorado High School. Marleigh Meisner of Texas CPS confirmed a total of 159 children and 60 adults removed from the FLDS YFZ Ranch to this point. We drive over by the Civic Center where a crew working for Oprah is interviewing Shannon Price of the Diversity Foundation, which helps teens leaving the FLDS sect (above), and Carolyn Jessop, the bestselling author and ex-FLDS member (below). Jessop is the ex-wife of Merrill Jessop, the overseer of the YFZ Ranch. They say they’ve been brought in by Texas authorities to help provide cultural understanding and to facilitate communication with the FLDS. It seems unlikely that Jessop and Price would receive any welcome from the FLDS here in Texas, considering their positions against Warren Jeffs’ fundamentalist church. I photograph Shannon’s badge to make sure I spell her name right. I send in a photo with her name correct, but something else wrong. I heard Shannon say that she had family roots in the Short Creek community and in my caption I mistakenly called her a former FLDS member. Carolyn expressed hope in the possibility of seeing some of the children (from sister-wives) that she left behind when she took her own eight children and left the community. I don’t know if that meeting ever occurred, though it seems doubtful Jessop would receive any welcome under these conditions. There seemed to be this prevailing thought among the people involved in the raid, especially CPS. That is that once the women were safely off the ranch and out of the control of the FLDS men, they would be happy to leave the group for the outside world. As far as we know, not one person caught up in the raid has left the group. They all went back.