Evidence is emerging that the original report to Texas authorities in which a teen named “Sarah” begged for help escaping an abusive arranged marriage was made by a woman named Rozita Swinton who has a history of making false reports while pretending to be a young girl. From Deseret News:
Police in Colorado Springs have arrested a woman for investigation of making a false report to authorities that may be connected to the Fundamentalist LDS Church’s raid on the YFZ Ranch in Texas.
The woman allegedly has a history of making calls while pretending to be a young girl.
Rozita Swinton, 33, was arrested on a warrant charging her with false reporting to authorities, a misdemeanor, the Colorado Springs Police Department confirmed in a brief statement issued late Thursday. Swinton was arrested at her home on Wednesday in connection with an incident that occurred in Colorado Springs in February, police said.
“The Texas Rangers were in Colorado Springs (Wednesday) as part of their investigation involving the compound in Texas. They left and have not filed any charges on Rozita Swinton as of this time,” Colorado Springs police said.
Colorado Springs police refused to release any other details, saying that the affidavit for the arrest warrant is sealed.
The El Paso County Jail said Swinton posted $20,000 bail and was released.
It is unclear how Swinton is connected to the phone call that sparked the raid on the FLDS Church’s Yearning for Zion Ranch two weeks ago.
[…]
A source close to the situation said the woman first contacted anti-polygamy activist Flora Jessop after the raid began, claiming to need help. That call was being investigated by Arizona child welfare authorities.
“She really did have us convinced,” said Joni Holm, who has sheltered children who have left the FLDS Church. She also spoke to the woman.
“I was positive. She sounded like a little girl. I thought she was real,” she told the Deseret News.
Jessop spoke to the woman pretending to be the teenage girl in numerous phone calls, but when her story started having holes in it, she went to Texas authorities with recordings of the calls. Jessop was unavailable for comment Thursday night.
The woman was reportedly obsessed with the FLDS Church, activists told the Deseret News, and had a history of making similar false calls to authorities in the Colorado Springs area.
Flora Jessop is an activist who works against polygamy, though she plays fast and loose with the difference between Warren Jeffs’ splinter sect, of which she was a victim, and the mainstream LDS church. I’ve always felt Jessop’s story contained a whiff of the S.R.A. and it seems to me that many disaffected members of this abusive sex cult seem to carry with them the poisonous doctrines of conspiratorial evil that Jeffs encouraged.
Just as the F.L.D.S. preaches the total corruption of all those unlike themselves, Jessop and those like her believe in the total corruption of every F.L.D.S. member and anyone who is even superficially similar to them.
Thus Flora attends anti-Mormon conferences where she makes presentations that imply the mainstream Mormon church is the same as Jeffs’ group, and that there’s a vast conspiracy of powerful people who protect them. In other words, she’s allowed her abuse at the hands of mad men to turn her into Alex Jones in drag.
But Rozita Swinton’s allegations were so beyond the pale that even a woman willing to believe almost anything about abuse in the F.L.D.S. was suspicious and turned the information over to the police.
There were many who said this case stank from the start. Bill O’Reilly and Tammy Bruce both said as much on their respective shows, and blogs like Jawa Report cried foul from the start. It should have raised alarm bells for the media that the police had these people under investigation for years, and suddenly after one anonymous phone call they jumped into the lives of these people with a Janet Reno era disregard for professionalism and the safety of the children they claim to want to help.
Don’t get me wrong, this isn’t quite another Waco, not only because there was no violence but because the Branch Davidians, including David Koresh, were known to be people who would surrender themselves to authorities on several occasions. Warren Jeffs was on the lam for a short time aided by the degenerates that make up his flock. For that reason a swift raid on the compound probably sounded like a good idea.
But like Waco, the government acted too fast and without just cause. Luckily no one’s died this time, but any future efforts to stop sex abusers in that community are going to be hampered by this disaster.
And just how did Rozita Swinton become “obsessed” with this cult anyway? The answer leads us back to Flora Jessop who’s something of a media darling with her sensational and often salacious stories.
Rozita Swinton is a deeply troubled woman who was influenced by a zealot named Flora Jessop, a person who has allowed herself to be damaged by her abusive childhood long after she has escaped from the clutches of her abusers.
A former drug addict who ended up working as a stripper to pay the bills because the depraved sex cult that raised her was more interested in brainwashing her than preparing her for adulthood, Flora Jessop radiates hatred for the F.L.D.S. and has dedicated her life to destroying them. She has attracted like minded individuals to her cause, many of whom are troubled in one way or another. Rozita Swinton is one of these.
It is at the expense of the children she wants to protect that she may well realize that combating this sex cult doesn’t require forming a hate cult. In fact, it plays into the alienation that a cult like the F.L.D.S. uses to control those within. This entire episode will not help any of those children, but will make it harder for them to trust outsiders in the future and escape to a better life.
Update: One of the most sinister charges of abuse, that the temple used to worship had a bed in it where children were molested (a charge eerily similar to the rape room in the Satanic temples according to Michelle Remembers) has likely a hoax:
Earlier in the day, a defense witness testified that it is uncommon for a polygamist sect to force girls as young as 13 into marriage, as the state alleged.
Religious scholar John Walsh also addressed a particularly damning piece of evidence: At least one bed found inside a temple that was allegedly used to consummate such marriages immediately after the ceremony.
“Historically, the only use of a bed in a temple is for temple worship itself,” said Walsh, who said he has studied the FLDS practices for 18 years. “The worship lasts a couple of hours, so all the temples will have a place where someone can lie down.”
But, he said, “To my knowledge, there has never been any sexual activity in a Mormon temple.”
Walsh said he also studies the mainstream Mormon church, which renounced polygamy a century ago and has no ties to the FLDS. He said without the polygamy aspect, the FLDS would resemble the Baptist or Catholic religions.
Well, except for the funny clothing. I think the F.L.D.S. church has a more Amish feel to it.
Despite the case falling apart Judge Barbara Walther ruled the children will stay in custody while the state investigates the abuse charges further. Is this a Witchhunt or does the state know something they can’t prove yet?
Update: Dreamin’ Demon has a little on Swinton’s long history of false reporting:
In June 2005, Swinton was arrested in Castle Rock, Colorado after she called an adoption agency posing a teenaged pregnant girl. Swinton told the agency and police that she was young, pregnant, alone and thinking of killing herself after leaving the baby at a fire station. There was no baby. There was no teenager. There was only Rozita Swinton, who had no explanation for what she’d done. Police charged her with filing a false police report, and she is on probation for that case.
In February of this year, a swarm of Colorado Springs police officers went out looking for a thirteen-year-old who said she was locked in a basement. Nope – it was Rozita Swinton again. That case is still pending.
As I stated before, Swinton is a troubled woman, and this time her madness will lead to defense lawyers saving many of the cultists from justice.
