Three youngsters who vanished inexplicably more than two years ago have been discovered alive in a small, inconspicuous desert community located just south of the border between Arizona and Utah.
The children mysteriously disappeared from their Beaver County, Utah, home in October 2022, sparking a multi-year hunt that has finally come to an end.
In late August, local police received a tip that informed them of the children’s potential whereabouts.
The father of the children may have ‘orchestrated the disappearance and subsequent concealing’ of his three children, according to authorities at the time.
Later, the missing kids were found in the care of their grandmother in Fredonia, Arizona, a little desert hamlet fewer than five miles from the Arizona-Utah border.
The Fredonia Police Department discovered after more inquiry that the children had been purposefully hidden from the outside world, with family members helping to conceal their whereabouts.
Both the aunt and grandmother of the unknown children have been taken into custody in relation to the disappearance in 2022. Their father is still at large in the meantime.
The youngsters reportedly lived with the Fundamentalist Latter-day Saint church, a religious movement that has frequently been likened as a cult due to its engagement in a number of unlawful practices, such as child trafficking, child marriage, child abandonment, and sexual abuse.
Together, the Arizona and Utah law enforcement organizations were able to free the youngsters on September 1st, according to a department press statement.
Since then, the mother has received the children back.
“The Fredonia Police Department would like to thank all involved for their assistance,” the release stated. “As of today, the children are safe with their mother as this investigation continues.”
According to the US Census Bureau, the charming village in northern Arizona, which serves as the entry point to the Grand Canyon’s North Rim, has a population of only 1,203.
Previously, a former member of the Fundamentalist Latter-day Saint church shared what it’s like to live in a commune associated with the Latter-day Saints.
Sam and Melissa, a married couple from Hilldale, Utah, talked candidly about their upbringing in the faith with well-known YouTuber Peter Santanello in December.
The two informed Santanello that they grew up during the time of Warren Jeffs’ polygamous Mormon cult, when “men were living in fear” and girls might be married off as early as 14.
Sam revealed the methods of intimidation employed to instill fear in the members of the church and exposed the reality of the widespread control that exists there.
He started off by describing how his three mothers reared him in a trailer with dozens of children living there at once, all of whom were his siblings.
He said, “My mom was the second wife. That’s a whole interesting story about how the wives got along and all of that—but my mom was the second and I am about the middle child of hers she had 12 kids.”
“I have 36 siblings altogether.”
He explained that birth control was “completely against the rules” and that “the sexual stuff was so taboo.”
“Marriages were all arranged and completely dependent on what Warren Jeffs decided at the moment—if someone deserved another wife, if they were righteous enough, it was up to him,” Sam explained.
The former member said that this often meant people were “forced” to get married, including girls as young as 14 to older men.
Melissa explained: “Most of the men in the community they’re assigned their wives and if the prophet says, Here’s your new wife; she’s 14, are you going to look him in the eye and say, Well, I don’t want a 14-year-old?”
He’s going to look at you and say So your questioning what God wants for you. God told me that this 14-year-old is meant to be your fourth wife. Are you telling me you don’t trust God?
“And that’s what these men are dealing with and so who’s going to question that authority in that sense?”
She continued: “The women can have situations where they are oppressed or in circumstances that there’s abuse or these other things that can happen—but the men also can be victims as well and I think we overlook that a lot.”
“We don’t think about the pressure that this man has to live perfectly and if his family’s not perfect, and if his wives aren’t perfect, and if his children aren’t perfect, if anything in his life and household isn’t perfect, he can lose everything.”
According to Sam, Warren Jeffs frequently expelled people from the group by accusing them of committing a sin and declaring that they were no longer deserving of being there.
“He would force them out and that would open up all of this room for women to be passed around to other men.”
He continued: “Men were living in fear all the time that if I don’t obey perfectly, this will happen to me and I’m gone.”
“He made an example of a lot of people to put fear into the other members of the church.”
Warren Jeffs was later found guilty of two felony charges of child sexual assault and sentenced to life in prison.
