Legal wife of polygamist cult leader Lyle Jeffs files for divorce 'citing rape and illegal practices within the church'
Daily Mail, Uk/April 24, 2015
By Joel Christie
The legal wife of Lyle Jeffs - brother of Warren Jeffs and current leader of the polygamous Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints - has officially filed for divorce from her husband in Utah, citing rape and illegal practices within the Mormon sect.
Charlene Wall Jeffs, 58, had 10 children with her husband and the two have been married for 31 years, but she claims the church has 'become even more disturbing than it was under Warren'.
Lyle Jeffs has multiple wives within the sect - nine, according to reports - but Mrs Jeffs is legally married to him and has been since 1983.
She claims to have been excommunicated in September 2014, and is now fighting to have her two youngest children, who still live with Mr Jeffs, returned to her.
'Under Lyle's reign as substitute Prophet, the FLDS Church as become even more disturbing than it was under Warren,' Mrs Jeffs says in a petition filed earlier this month and was obtained by The Salt Lake Tribune.
'Of Lyle's multiple wives, I was never the favorite because I have a mind of my own.
'Lyle sent me away from the family to repent for the first time in November 2002 because ''I did not know how to properly treat the Priesthood in my life''.'
FLDS leaders are referred to as 'the Priesthood'.
Mrs Jeffs said she was only allowed to cook and clean during her expulsion and was not allowed to see her children.
'In the FLDS Church, children belong to the Priesthood and can be transferred to different mothers or different parents all together upon an order from the Priesthood,' she said in the petition.
Mrs Jeffs was 'repenting' for two years, but when she was allowed to return to her husband's compound in Hilldale, her children were not returned to her.
The children were split up among Jeff's 'spiritual wives'.
Previous reports claimed that Charlene Jeffs was the first of nine wives.
Mrs Jeffs said she was ordered to leave the compound on September 27 last year for being 'unrighteous'.
She is now trying to get the two children - a 17-year-old boy and 14-year-old girl - to come and live with her.
In the petition she says she is scared for her well-being and her children, who could be 'The Jeffs family is the FLDS equivalent of the British Royal Family and they have their own FLDS ''secret service'' to protect them from the outside world," Mrs Jeffs wrote in her petition.
She added that Mr Jeffs isn't aware she has no plans to return to the FLDS, and is scared of what he will do with the children when he finds out she speaking out against the church.
'If Lyle had any idea that I have gone ''apostate'', he would make my children ,' she said in the petition.
However the most startling of the allegations in the documents spoke of rape, which Mrs Jeffs claims is common practice.
She said a doctrine was enforced in recent years that said women had to be impregnated not by their husbands, but a 'seed bearer' - a group of men selected by the church.
The husbands were to hold their wives hands as the seed bearers had sex with the women.
'In layman terms, the husband is required to sit in the room while the chosen seed bearer, or a couple of them, rape his wife or wives,' Mrs Jeffs said in the petition, according to The Tribune.
Another practice, known as the 'Law of Sara', has FLDS women perform sex acts on each otther in preparation for a sexual encounter with a member of the Priesthood.
Mrs Jeffs said she is worried her daughter will be subjected to such a practice.
Separately, Jeffs received a life sentence plus 20 years in Texas for sexually assaulting two girls he claimed were his 'spiritual wives'.
He is said to still head the polygamous sect from prison.
However the leaders in practice are believed to be Lyle Jeffs and some other bishops, even though the church have never announced the appointments.
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