Las Vegas
Warren Jeffs, leader of a breakaway Mormon sect that practices polygamy, was arrested this week near Las Vegas and charged with arranging a marriage between an underage girl and an older, married man. Jeffs, 50, is head of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, a sect denounced by the mainstream Mormon church. It is one of several Mormon splinter groups in Arizona and Utah that practice plural marriage, which the mainstream church banned in 1890. Few people familiar with the groups expect them to abandon polygamy. “It’s been here 100 years and it’s not going to go away because one guy got arrested,” said Flora Jessop, who left the Fundamentalist Church in 1996.
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