Note and Brief from Marci Hamilton on Clergy Crimes

Dear All:

This follows on the heels of the news release that was posted yesterday and sent out on the network “First Amendment Does Not Protect Criminal Activities”  You can see the news release at www.stoppolygamyincanada.wordpress.com

I have done a very quick run through of my lists and selected you to receive this brief.  It is well worth the read if you are planning on participating in the polygamy reference hearings in B.C.; or, if you are planning on submitting a brief.  For guide lines, please write to the Honourable Michael de Jong, Attorney General of B.C., mike.dejong.mla@leg.bc.ca

I have not garnered any law faculties from Canada on my network over the years.  If you wish to forward this note and attachment to legal counsel or law faculties or any other organization interested in clergy crimes, please feel free.

Marci Hamilton, a FindLaw columnist, is the Paul R. Verkuil Chair in Public Law at Benjamin N.

Cardozo School of Law and author of Justice Denied: What America Must Do to Protect Its Children

(Cambridge 2008). A review of Justice Denied appeared on this site on June 25, 2008. Her previous

book is God vs. the Gavel: Religion and the Rule of Law (Cambridge University Press 2005), now

available in paperback.

The campaign to Stop Polygamy in Canada is mentioned in Marci’s God vs. The Gavel: Religion and the Rule of Law.  Thank you, Marci, for your great contributions to this campaign.

Sincerely,

Nancy Mereska, Coordinator

Stop Polygamy in Canada

From: Hamilton02@aol.com [mailto:Hamilton02@aol.com]
Sent: Tuesday, December 15, 2009 3:43 PM
To: nmereska@MCSnet.ca
Subject: Re: FW: First Amendment Does Not Protect Criminal Activities

Hi Nancy–  I am so glad Andrea sent out this notice.   I actually brought the amicus groups together in the Ramani case and wrote the brief.  I am attaching it so you can decide to which of your listservs to send it.  It would be good if those litigating the polygamy issues in Canada read it.

Best regards and happy holidays, Marci

Ramani.AmicusCuriaeBrief.filed

First Amendment Does Not Protect Criminal Activities By Staff At Religious Organizations, Says Americans United

Church-State Watchdog Group Joins Legal Brief In Sex-Abuse Case Before Nevada Supreme Court

December 14, 2009

The First Amendment’s religious liberty provisions do not shield houses of worship from liability when their staff members or volunteers commit crimes, Americans United for Separation of Church and State has told the Nevada Supreme Court.

Americans United and several other organizations filed a friend-of-the-court brief Dec. 11 in Nevada’s top court asserting that point.

The case in question, Ramani v. Segelstein, deals with a woman who says she was sexually assaulted by a cantor at her synagogue after a service. When she reported the assault to the head rabbi, he allegedly ignored the complaint and proceeded to solicit her for sexual favors.

“The principle of religious liberty must not be sullied by making it a shield for criminal activity,” said the Rev. Barry W. Lynn, executive director of Americans United. “The First Amendment was never intended to be interpreted that way.”

To see the rest of the news release, go to:

http://www.au.org/media/press-releases/archives/2009/12/first-amendment-does-not.html

Submitted by Andrea Moore Emmett, author of God’s Brothel

Lawyer appointed in polygamy reference case

Photograph by Glenn Baglo, Vancouver Sun.   “A mother and her children head home from school in Bountiful, B.C.”

Dear Network: 

When you click on the pdf at the bottom of the article, you will be linked to the 18-page ruling.  I invite all groups associated with this campaign to submit a letter to the Honourable Michael de Jong, Attorney General of British Columbia before December 15, letting him know that you are interested in the reference proceedings; and, that you wish to receive,

• A copy of the reference questions; and
• A letter inviting you or your group to apply to the Court to be added as a party or intervener in the manner outlined in the ruling (page 15) 

Hon. Michael de Jong  mike.dejong.mla@leg.bc.ca 

Once again, I remind you that history is being made.  This is our chance to stand up and advocate for the women and children, young men and boys, whose lives have been crushed and/or permanently altered because of the cruel dictates of a religion gone awry.  Religious law cannot trump civil law in Canada.

Bauman agrees to appointment of Vancouver lawyer in polygamy reference case

By Daphne Bramham, Vancouver Sun

December 4, 2009

B.C. Supreme Court Chief Justice Robert Bauman agreed Friday to the appointment of Vancouver lawyer George Macintosh as an “amicus” in the constitutional reference case to determine whether Canada’s anti-polygamy law is constitutional.

Macintosh will argue that Criminal Code Section 293, which prohibits having multiple spouses, is unconstitutional and ought to be allowed. He will be making the case against the combined forces of the B.C. attorney general’s ministry and the Canadian justice department.

The decision is the first step in an unusual and unprecedented reference case. It is the first time in B.C. and possibly Canada that a constitutional reference has been heard in a trial court where lawyers for both sides can call witnesses.

Bauman also directed that any interested persons or groups that wish to intervene in the case should be notified and agreed that they would be heard. In his written ruling, Bauman said that he anticipated that both Winston Blackmore and James Oler would participate as intervenors. Blackmore and Oler were the two leaders from the fundamentalist Mormon community of Bountiful who were charged with one count each of polygamy. Those charges were quashed by a B.C. Supreme Court justice and rather than appeal her ruling, Attorney General Mike de Jong decided to pursue a reference case.

Click here to view the PDF.

http://www.vancouversun.com/life/Bauman+agrees+appointment+Vancouver+lawyer+polygamy+reference+case/2304070/story.html

Raymond Jessop sentenced to 10 years and fined

Dear Network,

I’ve put in bold an interesting fact.  Raymond Jessop was her second “spiritual” husband.  Look at her age when she was “reassigned” to him.  This means she was Raymond’s brother’s “spiritual” wife at the age of 14.

They just can’t bring this cult down fast enough to suit me!

From: Info-Secte [mailto:infosecte@qc.aibn.com]
Sent: Wednesday, November 11, 2009 6:54 AM
To: Info-Secte
Subject: 10 years for polygamist sect member in sex assault

10 years for polygamist sect member in sex assault

(AP) – November 10, 2009

ELDORADO, Texas — The first polygamist sect member to face criminal trial following the raid of a West Texas ranch was sentenced to 10 years in prison Tuesday for sexually assaulting an underage girl with whom he had a so-called “spiritual marriage.”

Jurors who last week convicted Raymond Jessop, 38, handed down the sentence that includes an $8,000 fine. His attorneys had sought probation for the conviction that could have brought him up to 20 years in prison.

Jessop, who prosecutors allege has nine wives, still faces a separate bigamy charge to be tried later. He is the first member of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints to go on trial since authorities raided the sect’s Yearning For Zion Ranch in April 2008.

The girl in the assault case, now 21, was previously in a spiritual marriage with Jessop’s brother before being “reassigned” to Jessop when she was 15, according to documents seized at the ranch. She became pregnant at age 16.

An appeal, planned “as quickly as it can be filed,” will challenge the search warrants initially obtained with what authorities now acknowledge were false calls to a domestic abuse hot line, said Willie Jessop, an FLDS spokesman and Raymond Jessop’s distant cousin.

“We believe he will be released when the government is held accountable,” Willie Jessop said in an interview Tuesday.

The weeklong ranch raid was hounded by missteps early on. After scouring the ranch for days in April 2008 in search of a caller who claimed to be an abused girl, law enforcement acknowledged “Sarah Barlow” didn’t exist.

Forensic experts who testified during Raymond Jessop’s trial said there was a nearly 100 percent probability Jessop fathered the now 4-year-old daughter of the woman in the case. The woman was on the prosecution’s witness list at trial, but did not testify.

Eleven other sect members, including its jailed leader Warren Jeffs, still face separate trials for charges ranging from failure to report child abuse to sexual assault and bigamy.

The FLDS is a breakaway sect of the mainstream Mormon church, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which renounced polygamy more than a century ago and does not recognize the FLDS.

Jeffs, revered by the FLDS as the group’s prophet, has been convicted in Utah as an accomplice to rape. He awaits trial in Arizona on charges related to underage marriages there. He’ll then face separate sexual assault and bigamy charges in Texas.

Jeffs led followers six years ago to buy a 1,700-acre Texas ranch, where they built a towering limestone temple and sprawling log cabin homes. They remained an insular group until Texas authorities raided the ranch and swept 439 sect children into foster care.

Appellate courts forced the return of the children to their parents or other relatives, but documents seized in the raid were used to build criminal cases against sect men.

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5hBU8uyQITnik8O4KnPAr1aXka0PAD9BT1RK80

Polygamist Sect Leader Convicted of Sexual Assault

Dear Network,

We circulated this news last night thanks to Americans Against Abuses of Polygamy and the Eldorado Success Newspaper.  Thank you, Info-Secte, for passing this along.  I’m sure we’ll be seeing many more articles come out of this trial.  Perhaps more charges will be brought against Warren Jeffs.  We can only hope!

I truly believe that men who seduce young women and girls into becoming “spiritual” wives (concubines) in their harems in the name of “religion” are the scourge of the earth.  They belong in prison, off the streets and away from those to whom they cause so much harm.

Polygamist Sect Leader Convicted of Sexual Assault

New York Times

By JAMES C. McKINLEY Jr.

November 5, 2009

ELDORADO, Tex. — One of the leaders of a polygamist sect was convicted Thursday night of sexually assaulting an under-age girl whom the church elders had assigned to him as one of his nine wives.

A jury of seven men and five women deliberated 2 hours 20 minutes before returning a verdict of guilty in the first trial of a dozen members of the Yearning for Zion Ranch just outside this rural hamlet in West Texas.

READ COMPLETE ARTICLE

Taking Stock of the 2008 Intervention at the Texas FLDS Compound

Texas FLDS Compound On Its One-Year Anniversary: The Lessons We Must Learn to Effectively Protect Children in the Future

By MARCI A. HAMILTON

Thursday, April 16, 2009

This month marks the one-year anniversary of the valiant attempts by Texas Child Protective Services (CPS) to save the child sexual-abuse victims in the Fundamentalist Latter-Day Saints (FLDS) group situated at the Yearning for Zion (YFZ) Ranch outside Eldorado, Texas. In this column, I’ll take stock of related events since then, and explain the lessons they teach. The authorities’ concerns were triggered by a call to a hotline, and confirmed when they entered the compound to discover a significant number of underage mothers – who were, plainly, victims of statutory rape — and clear evidence of bigamy involving underage persons, a first-degree felony in Texas. Not only did CPS have clear visual evidence of these crimes, but it also had written recordsshowing that girls had been married off to much older men, even after those men had taken other spouses, and some disturbing pictures, including one particularly disgusting one of their prophet, Warren Jeffs (who is now in jail on other charges), passionately kissing a 12-year-old girl who wassitting on his lap.

The promise of the YFZ raid to free oppressed children, though, was never fully realized. All of thechildren but one has been returned. As I discussed in a prior column, the Texas appellate courts bear much of the responsibility. They refused to back up CPS’s actions, because they discounted the claims that girls had been victims of statutory rape, if those girls were over the legal age of consent at the time of the raid. The courts’ reasoning was offensive to victims of statutory rape, and made a mockery of Texas criminal law. It was also just another moment when the interests of child sex- abuse victims were trivialized for no good reason.

Guilty!

From: k***** On Behalf Of k.Dee Ignatin
Sent: Thursday, November 05, 2009 6:24 PM
To: Nancy Mereska
Subject: GUILTY!

THANK YOU, K.DEE!  AND THE ELDORADO SUCCESS, A NEWSPAPER THAT IS PART OF OUR NEWS GROUP!!  YIPPEE!!  HOORAY!!  LINE THEM UP ONE BY ONE AND PUT THEM BEHIND BARS ONE BY ONE.  IF ONLY THIS WOULD HAPPEN IN CANADA!

6:30 p.m. Thursday
November 5, 2009
GUILTY
A Schleicher County jury found Raymond Merril Jessop guilty moments ago on one county of Sexual Assault of a Child.
The penalty phase of the trial is slated to begin Monday morning followed by sentencing.
Jessop was led from the courtroom in handcuffs and is currently being booked into the Schleicher County Jail.
Read more about the trial from the Eldorado Success

Polygamy Articles from Professor Marci Hamilton

Thank you, Jesse.

Audrey Vance of Creston, B.C., who co-chairs the committee Altering Destiny through Education has often told me that the only way to get rid of polygamy is through education.  But, how?  Do we set up government sponsored “reform” schools for those in polygamy?

The GREATEST measure of education that is going on presently is the information highway to the general public that the problem of polygamy is more widespread in North America than any can imagine.

A new study was released today showing Canada to be the 4^th most desirable country to live in—not in my book, not as long as polygamy and female genital mutilation have a foothold here!

——————-

From: Jesse Loffler [mailto:*****
Sent: Sunday, October 04, 2009 4:16 PM
To: *****
Subject: Polygamy Articles from Professor Marci Hamilton

Hello Nancy,

I am Professor Marci Hamilton’s research assistant and she asked me to forward the following few articles to you.  We have also been following the court decisions regarding Bountiful and the continuing saga in Texas and Utah.  Of particular note is the most recent article at the top of the list below which was posted on Findlaw.  The other articles are Professor Hamilton’s FindLaw columns with relation to the FLDS, Polygamy, and Sex Abuse from the last two years.

– The Two P’s of Gender Inequality: Prostitution and Polygamy – How the Laws Against Both Are Underenforced to Protect Men and Subjugate Women – http://writ.news.findlaw.com/hamilton/20090709.html

– Taking Stock of the 2008 Intervention at the Texas Fundamentalist Latter-Day Saints Compound On Its One-Year Anniversary: The Lessons We Must Learn to Effectively Protect Children in the Future – http://writ.news.findlaw.com/hamilton/20090416.html

– The United States Senate Judiciary Committee Holds Hearings on Polygamy Crimes: What Needs to Be Done at the Federal Level to Protect Children from Abuse and Neglect – http://writ.news.findlaw.com/hamilton/20080724.html

– Why The Costs of Sexual Abuse and the Costs of Non-Enforcement of Anti-Sexual-Abuse Laws Are Too High (w/ Reference to the Texas FLDS Compound) – http://writ.news.findlaw.com/hamilton/20080626.html

– Why The Texas Supreme Court’s Ruling Regarding the FLDS Mothers Is Significantly More Protective of the Children Involved than the Media Have Painted It To Be – http://writ.news.findlaw.com/hamilton/20080603.html

– Why a Texas Appellate Court Seriously Erred In Concluding that Texas Child Protective Services Should Not Have Rescued All of the Children at the FLDS Compound – http://writ.news.findlaw.com/hamilton/20080529.html

– The Rescue of Children from the FLDS Compound in Texas: Why the Arguments Claiming Due Process Violations and Religious Freedom Infringement Have No Merit – http://writ.news.findlaw.com/hamilton/20080501.html

Please let me know if you have any questions about the above material or you can speak with Professor Hamilton directly .

Best,

Jesse R. Loffler

J.D. Candidate, 2011

Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law

Chief Research Assistant to Professor Marci Hamilton