Pastor Warren Jeffs Loses Phone Privileges in Jail
Prison authorities said on Tuesday that they have suspended the phone privileges of Pastor Warren Jeffs, Polygamist leader of a Mormon breakaway sect.
Last week, the Texas Department of Criminal Justice announced it was launching an investigation into whether or not Jeffs used his phone privileges to deliver a Christmas sermon to his congregation after records show Jeffs made two 15-minute phone calls on Christmas Day.
"It would be a violation of the rules if the person called were to place the call on speaker phone or record the conversation. The Office of Inspector General has asked us to suspend the accounts of certain individuals on his calling list while they continue to investigate," Jason Clark, a Criminal Justice Department spokesman said, according to CNN.
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Jeffs, the leader of the 10,000-member Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is currently serving a life-term in Texas for sexually assaulting two underage girls, 12 and 15, which he called his "spiritual wives." Jeffs is under protective custody in Powledge Unit prison, near Palestine, Texas.
"He has no cellmate. No prison job. And the only time he leaves it (his cell) is for a shower and recreation," Clark said, according to CNN reports.
Many of Jeffs’ parishioners have impugned him because of his convictions, but others are defending him and insist he is being persecuted. The mainstream Mormon Church, which renounced Polygamy over a century ago, has also condemned Jeffs’ practices.
