![]() ![]() The FLDS leadership was especially ruthless at using news headlines to manipulate their flock into cowering submission, using such outside “threats” as Y2K and the 2002 Salt Lake City Olympics to suggest the day of God’s judgment was near - all the more reason for them to give up everything they owned and even more rigorously cut themselves off from the outside world. Neutralizing the threat of male protest by stripping men of their priesthood, and taking advantage of a culture that already treated women like chattel, Jeffs lured his entire membership - which included much of the local law enforcement - into a state of mindless complicity, fostering an environment where his word was law and, in the words of one interviewee, “You kowtow or you’re out.”Īs others note here, Jeffs preyed on his people not just sexually but also spiritually and financially, forcing them to sacrifice their wealth to the church as proof of their faith and devotion. Shocking as these revelations are, what makes “Prophet’s Prey” so unsettling is the sense that Jeffs didn’t even require the usual veil of secrecy to act as he did, given not only the church’s porous boundaries between pederasty and marriage, but also his assumed status as God’s earthly representative. By far the most horrific and irrefutable testimony here is a single audio clip that plays over a black screen, in which we hear evidence of Jeffs performing what sounds like an act of ritual consummation with a 12-year-old girl. Janetta Jessop, who became Jeffs’ 63rd wife at age 16, recalls the nightly ritual of lining up with his other wives in order to kiss him good night, one by one. ![]() (A rumor of foul play is raised but never corroborated.) Taking charge of his father’s many widows wasn’t enough to satisfy Jeffs, who would regularly call young children into his office and rape them behind closed doors, according to the testimony of Ron Rohbuck, the church’s former head of security, and Jeffs’ nephew Brent, whose disgust is palpable as he bravely describes his firsthand experience of abuse. Restrictive and backwards as this state of affairs will seem to the viewer, Berg’s interviewees concede that things became far worse with the rise to power of Warren Steed Jeffs, who assumed leadership of the church after his father, Rulon, died in 2002. The ratio of wives to husband can soar as high as 50 to 1, sometimes even higher. Television, movies and other forms of worldly media are strictly banned children’s education is limited to church history and little else and women wear prairie dresses and are often drugged into docile submission. As outlined by Jon Krakauer, author of the 2003 book “Under the Banner of Heaven: A Story of Violent Faith” and the chief outside expert here, the church’s long-standing practices include the subjugation of women, near-total separation from the outside world, and blind deference to a prophet-leader descended from the Jeffs clan’s “royal” bloodline. All of which makes Berg’s skillful and scrupulous examination that much more essential, especially in light of its chilling implication that Jeffs continues to wield enormous authority over his flock, which numbers about 6,000 to 10,000 members across the U.S.īerg begins with a brief animated overview of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints proper, whose renunciation of polygamy in 1890 led to the emergence of the FLDS movement, the seat of which was until recently located in Short Creek, Ariz., on the border with Utah. Nor have Jeffs’ abuses generated as many headlines as the rampant cycles of abuse uncovered within the Catholic Church (which Berg tackled in “Deliver Us From Evil” and Gibney documented in “Mea Maxima Culpa: Silence in the House of God”). Premiered at Sundance in advance of its Showtime airdate, Berg’s film didn’t kick up quite the same fuss as Alex Gibney’s “Going Clear,” the festival’s other incendiary takedown of a dangerous cult “Prey’s” commercial impact looks to be slim by comparison, not least because the FLDS Church lacks the Church of Scientology’s worldwide reach and explosive cultural profile. ![]() Berg’s interviews with past members of the polygamy-practicing Mormon denomination make for damning testimony, but the lasting power of “Prey” is its grim insight into the mentality of the deceived, and its despairing recognition that spiritual and psychological bondage doesn’t end simply by putting a monster behind bars. She does it again to deeply disturbing effect in “Prophet’s Prey,” a gripping, authoritative account of the myriad abuses of Warren Jeffs, the currently incarcerated leader of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. In her devastating 2006 documentary “Deliver Us From Evil” and last year’s controversial Hollywood expose “An Open Secret,” director Amy Berg brilliantly uncovered the face of sexual deviance in corridors of power. ![]()
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