Ex-FLDS members fear their children are being kidnapped by radical Mormons

Former members of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints believe their children were abducted by the Mormon group.

Four mothers, Lorraine Jessop, Miranda Johnson, Elizabeth Roundy and Sarah Johnson, believe their eight missing children have not run away, as court documents suggest, but are in fact being hidden by their former church.

The FLDS is a polygamist offshoot of Mormonism best known for its prophet Warren Jeffs, currently serving a life sentence for sexually assaulting girls as young as 12.

Jeffs remains the leader of the church and releases prophecies from behind bars, experts say.

In a prophecy last June, and seen by ABC Newscalls on Jeffs to let children of ex-members rejoin the fold.

Lorraine Jessop, whose three youngest children, Nathan, 16, Summer, 13, and Benjamin, 12, have been missing since February 2023, told ABC she believes “church authorities” took her children.

“I checked them at midnight,” 42-year-old Jessop said of the night her children disappeared, “and my daughter was awake. And I thought, “That’s strange.”‘

“At 5 a.m. I woke up in a cold house because the front door was wide open and the kids were gone,” Jessop continued. “It was horrible.”

“I feel like either someone took it upon themselves or was told by church authorities to pick these kids up,” Jessop told ABC’s Nightline.

Another mother, Elizabeth Roundy, 49, claims her children were also taken by the church.

Roundy’s daughter Elintra ran away in January 2023, but Roundy claims the church told her how to run away.

“I’m sure FLDS is hiding Elintra,” Roundy said.

The missing child of an ex-member, a girl just 10 years old, was found last year and returned to her parents.

Warren Jeffs’ cousin, Heber Jeffs, was charged last December with the kidnapping of his 10-year-old niece, whose parents had left the FLDS.

Heber followed his uncle’s prophecies and directives, including regarding the return of children of ex-members, the indictment documents claimed.

When a member leaves the FLDS, the community labels him a “renegade.”

“If you leave, you’re considered an apostate and you’re treated harshly by the people who stay at the church,” explains Roger Hoole, an attorney representing some of these mothers.

“It’s often a very long process before someone leaves, and then it’s a long process before they’re emotionally able to make the real adjustment. It’s not something that’s done overnight.”

The mothers told ABC News that the renegade label scared their children and encouraged them to run away.

“Our concern is, how do they run away on their own?” said Hoole.

‘Are they being helped? Do we see a pattern here?’

In the Church, women are considered second class and expected to be submissive to men.

“Growing up, our goal… was to get married,” says Sarah Johnson, whose son Salome has been missing since March 2021.

“I decided in the very beginning that I would be the most obedient, the most perfect woman I could be.”

She says she was engaged to a man 25 years older than her at the age of 17. One of her four sister wives was her biological sister and among them they had more than 30 children.

The FLDS was founded more than 130 years ago after polygamy was banned in the Mormon church.

The current prophet, Warren Jeffs, is a 67-year-old convicted pedophile who, according to experts, had about 80 wives, many of whom were minors.