Earlier this week, Oprah Winfrey did a one-hour program on the first-year anniversary of the Texas raid on the YFZ ranch, where Warren Jeffs took a 12-year-old bride when he was a fugitive in 2006. Since the raid, a dozen FLDS men, including Jeffs, have been indicted by Texas authorities for a variety of crimes involving bigamy, underage marriage, and sexual assault on a minor. Controversy has erupted among journalists who've covered the Jeffs's case for years who feel that Oprah saw and presented the most pristine and santized view of the FLDS that was possible. Phoenix TV reporter Mike Watkiss blasted Oprah, saying that "she perpetrated a lie" about the sect and "got played likea tool." On May 21, 2008, seven weeks after the raid, I and several other journalists were given a tour of the ranch by FLDS spokesman Willie Jessop and lawyer Rod Parker. We spent most of the time in Zion Academy, where the children studied as Warren Jeffs’s photo stared down at them from virtually every wall. A reporter asked Jessop if he thought it was appropriate to display Jeffs’ picture so prominently to the youngsters, since he’d recently been convicted on two counts of accomplice to the rape of a fourteen-year-old girl. He was also about to be charged with other offense involving underage girls,. Jessop, who’d been friendly and folksy up till now, scowled at the assembled press and declared that Jeffs’ recent trial in Utah had been bogus. Why, Jessop was asked, if the FLDS wanted more credibility in the outside world, it didn’t distance itself from the convicted felon who remained its Prophet and spiritual leader?
Rising up to his full height, Willie sneered and said quite loudly, “For a member of the FLDS to turn his back on Warren Jeffs would be the same thing as a Christian turning his back on Jesus.” It was the most revealing and chilling moment of the tour for me.
The issue in these kinds of cases is usually freedom of religion versus criminal behavior. Oprah focused on the clothes and hair and interaction of the women at the ranch, barely referring to the crimes. Things like incest and rape and the other crimes documented in my book were kept out of sight and hearing range. Oprah got her "exclusive" but we learned almost nothing about what put Jeffs in jail.