Lawyer Throws Open Secretive Sect's Gates to Media
Before authorities raided their western Texas compound, the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints was a closed, secretive community. All inquiries from the media were uniformly rejected.
But, as the Associated Press reports, when hundreds of children from the polygamous sect were rounded up and removed from their homes on suspicions that they were being abused or at risk for abuse, the posture of members changed.
And a lawyer for the sect, Salt Lake City attorney Rod Parker, threw open the gates to coverage. Mothers spoke openly of the heartbreak of being separated from their children and today, on The Early Show, three male sect members spoke to CBS.
“This was just such a heinous thing that the normal rules didn’t apply,” said Parker, who has been serving as a spokesman for the church and has handled civil and criminal court matters for the FLDS since 1990. “What we were trying to do was inject a human element into what was happening here. Put names to faces and not just think of these people as being so different.”
Parker is quoted saying that the media blitz was anything but planned. “It was a spur-of-the-moment decision to do this,” he says. “It was literally made as we were standing at the gate.”
The AP reports that critics of the media interviews say that the women were coached into saying only what church leaders allowed. But Parker asserts that the women were told to speak only if they wanted and to focus on the children.
Parker reportedly has long urged the FLDS to speak more openly. And the doors may close back up if the Texas lawyers for the FLDS so advise.
