FLDS Church launches new Web sites

John Hollenhorst and Lori Prichard reportingFLDS leaders have turned up the heat in their public battle with Texas officials. They've launched two Web sites offering an entirely new look at the raid on their ranch.

Crying girls, protesting boys and sobbing mothers: That's the imagery FLDS leaders are hoping to get into the public eye and into people's hearts. It's a surprising trend, a secretive group in 19th-century clothing going public, and going to war, with 21st-century technology.

Video captures one of the tense and tearful moments when cops escorted children and mothers from the FLDS ranch. "I don't want to go," one boy says.

You can hear the cries as mothers and children are whisked away by law enforcement. The video may be grainy, the audio fuzzy, but the intended message is crystal clear.

FLDS spokesman Rod Parker said, "It's just heartbreaking." That's what those at the FLDS compound want you to feel: Heartbreak through pictures of children torn from their mothers, of mothers forced to leave their homes.

These scenes are out for public consumption on a new Internet Web site. FLDS leaders abandoned their traditional stance of privacy a few days into the raid.

Parker is back in Utah after more than a week in Texas orchestrating media for the FLDS. "They really feel that they want to keep to themselves, and this is very uncharacteristic for them. But this is such an extraordinary circumstance that it required an extraordinary response," Parker said.

They opened their ranch gates to the media, and FLDS wives have done numerous interviews that were broadcast worldwide.

The FLDS Internet presence now includes an introduction to the faith. It shows the line of men claimed as FLDS prophets, stretching from Joseph Smith and Brigham Young to convicted felon Warren Jeffs.

There are previously unseen photos of armed agents inside the compound, tearful wives and children, and possessions disrupted by searchers. "We're trying to get people to see what's really going on down there, how barbaric it is," Parker said.

Texas officials have fired back in a media duel. "We have a setting within a compound where many of the kids seem to have been sexually assaulted, subject to abuse. Whenever you have a setting like that it's very important to remove all the children from that very dangerous setting," said Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott.

In the long run, FLDS supporters hope their images will turn the tide of public opinion, as happened after the last big raid in 1953. At minimum, they say they're trying to overturn negative myths and falsehoods about FLDS people.

"It's rumor, and now there's someone answering it, and I think, long-term, that's going to have a positive effect on the relationship of these people to society in general," Parker said.

Media expert Kimberly Zarkin, Ph.D., of Westminster College, says to get the public to respond, you have to get the public to care. And to do a better job of that? "There are no names on the Web site," she said. "Names have to go up. What we know about public relations, the more personal things are, the more of the connection."

Zarkin says along with pictures of the children should be simple stories. Instead, there are no stories.

And when there is a written message, like that on the FLDS truth Web site, the wording is not concise, Zarkin says, but rather convoluted.

The site reads in part: "We seek to disabuse the minds of the honest in heart, of the deceptions inherent in reports from malicious and evil disposed persons."

Zarkin said, "They're using very old-fashioned language, which is actually enhancing their outdatedness. They need to start talking to people in colloquial language, in the first person."

Doing battle with the state of Texas is likely to be expensive, so maybe it's no surprise the FLDS Web site is openly soliciting contributions. Your credit card is welcome.

To view the two FLDS Web sites, click the related links.

E-mail: jhollenhorst@ksl.com

E-mail: lprichard@ksl.com

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