Wednesday, May 27, 2009

This Story is Happening Right Now

Well, not so much actually....

I had an interesting exchange today with someone who wanted to know where to find "the laptop article" on Warren. I had to saddly inform them that there was no article. No one ever picked the story up. Then, they went on to encourage me to send it to a particular reporter, so I checked my records, and he already had it.

I said, "I sure do appreciate it, but he got the same copy I'm including below, almost a year ago now. Everyone got it. Nobody would touch it. I was warned repeatedly to leave it alone or I was going to get hit hard by the jerks. They were right, and I don't care. Let them try coming down here to Texas to mess with me. Make my day."

And the other person told me perhaps that I should push again, now. I dunno, I figure if people want to know the truth from the media, it's their responsibility to demand it. In other words, if it bothers you that your right to know might have been infringed, maybe you should call your local media and ask them why they didn't think you had the right to know any of this information?

Swear me in, I'll sing like a bird, so will the eye witness. But don't blame me if the media doesn't think you have the right to know the truth.

****************************************************

August 2008:

This story is happening right now

I have eye witness accounts from two prisoners, who were in the Mojave County Jail in Kingman, Arizona and saw Warren Jeffs allowed having possession of a phone and laptop computer inside his cell. This was barely two months after the Mohave County Sheriff was quoted in the Fort Worth Star Telegram saying that Warren Jeffs was not allowed any electronic devices in his cell.

When I asked a Mohave County Supervisor, Buster Johnson-District 3, to ask the sheriff’s department, he was told by Mohave County Under Sheriff, Jim McCabe, in no uncertain terms-that was not the case and all Jeffs had access to- were “two books and one legal document at a time.” That is what they relayed to Supervisor Johnson when he questioned them, knowing that information was for the public, since he was elected to represent it.

I asked a local journalist if he would ask Mohave County Sheriff, Tom Sheahan if it were true. His response was strictly off the record, that indeed “that had been the case but now the situation has been remedied.”

I have requested the Mohave County Jail logs for that time period and expect to have a lot more eye witnesses to Jeffs’ access to a laptop computer, soon.

I have also requested all written documentation of items allowed to Warren Jeffs for the same time period by staff at the Mohave County Jail, be they written, electronic or telephonic.

Additionally I have requested Jeffs’ visitor logs, wanting to see if visitations happened to have decreased while he was in possession of the laptop in his cell. Does he still have a phone?

Was this special privilege, which has now been removed, documented or not? Who has it now? What was on it? Did Jeffs have internet access and if so was he using the county’s wireless or a phone line to access it on a daily basis? If he had internet access was he communicating with his daughter, Theresa Jeffs, or others who were being called by a grand jury in Texas to testify during that same time period? Was he influencing witness testimony, right from inside the Mohave County jail? Who signed off on the laptop? Whose password was used? Was he able to email? Was anyone disciplined for this error in judgment? On and on…

Sheriff Sheahan is running for his third or fourth term right now, unopposed by either party.

My public records requests are already there, in the Mohave County Manager’s office and they all know, without doubt, that I have caught them in a public lie. When I called the county manager’s office on Monday to ask about the status of my public records request they called back and left me a voice mail explaining that the records I had requested were not in the county manager’s office, so they have now sent my public records request straight over to the sheriff’s department. And another week has gone by, they’ve “gotten me fired” and I still haven’t heard anything on the progress of my public records requests, which are now at the sheriff’s department.

Last Wednesday I was the guest speaker for a local Chamber of Commerce luncheon. My topic was the FLDS in Mohave County. There I presented documentation of the Colorado City cemetery, which is comprised of 50% children’s bodies. I also spoke extensively about the women and children I have met for the past three years who have either left, been thrown out or escaped the FLDS. I also provided documentation on the cemetery and on the death rates for Colorado City, though the press who were present seemed highly disinterested in looking at it. Present for the luncheon was Chuck Rathburn, who is the owner of two local newspapers, along with a photographer and a reporter.

The next day my face was on the front page of the paper with an AP story on the FLDS. The only thing it mentioned about me were how I originally became interested in the story, that I was alleging that Mohave County was not doing enough to stop the abuses within the FLDS and my name and position with my current company.

“Ignatin, media manager at the Avi Resort & Casino, told of how she originally became interested as a radio news reporter in what she described as the plight of the women and children of the FLDS.

Ignatin alleges that Mohave County officials have not been adequately aggressive in pursuing FLDS members.”

I did not introduce myself as representing my company at that luncheon. I am the media manager and publicist for a large resort and casino. I am under no contract and have never been disciplined for my personal interest in, or pursuit of this case.

I was suspended on Friday and will probably be fired on Wednesday. On Sunday morning friends woke me up banging on my door at 7:30 a.m. They couldn’t reach me and were worried sick. The first they had heard of anything was a dinner they had attended the night before. They heard the “news of my firing” at the dinner from the county under sheriff, Jim McCabe and Chuck Rathburn, owner of the local paper. The two of them were laughing and talking about how easy it was to get me fired. My friends said it was literally vicious.

This is the very same county under sheriff who told Mohave County Supervisor, Buster Johnson that Warren Jeffs only had two books and one legal document at a time allowed to him in his cell.
Fortunately I live on the Nevada side of the river. If I lived in Mohave County, right across the river, I probably would have high-tailed it back to Texas by now.

Not one major media outlet has ever thoroughly investigated the rate of child deaths up in Colorado City, Arizona in Mohave County. The county attorney, the county special investigator, the county sheriff and the county supervisors, with the exception of Buster Johnson from District 3, have never done anything but say that they have checked it out and “everything is normal up there.”

When I confronted one county supervisor, Pete Byers in whose district Colorado City resides, with the astonishing number of accidental child deaths there, he told me that they accidentally run over more of their children up there “because they have more children.”

The FLDS is estimated to have pockets 400 million dollars deep. They have been in Mohave County, Arizona for a hundred years now. They have many friends out here.

I have spoken to women who have fled the FLDS in the past and made reports of abuse, which the county sheriff’s department claims to have no record of. I have women who have tried to flee and were caught who were then sent to a state mental hospital in Phoenix, Arizona. Their discharge papers from a state funded facility say that they were discharged only on condition that “they must see the Prophet.”

The local Mohave County Health Department stopped returning my calls three years ago when I was first investigating the child deaths in Colorado City. They told me it was too statistically small a sample to get a true death rate for the community. They also mentioned how hard they have worked to get to know the community up there so they would immunize their children and that they didn’t want to do anything to risk alienating them.

I imagine having it publicly revealed that there are hundreds of dead children buried in one very small town might indeed alienate the adults there from any authorities. But all of the authorities here, so far, are completely aware of the phenomenon, yet are unwilling to investigate their deaths. They would be unable to continue this close relationship they have built with the FLDS if the truth were known. They might even have to enforce some laws.

Please find attached the following items, none of which are originals or need to be returned: Copies of my three public records request to the Mohave County Manager’s Office. Four Photos of the “Baby Land Cemetery”, located in front of the town junk yard in Colorado City, Arizona, where only the infants are buried.

If we have further contact I will be glad to provide you with a copy of a list of every body buried in the Colorado City Cemetery as of 2005, with only the children’s bodies highlighted. I am including that list in the hard copy of this story proposal being sent to the address above.

Senator Harry Reid is right. There are more laws being broken out here than you can shake a stick at. And local law enforcement is not going to investigate or pursue the FLDS beyond a shallow show of “See? We are doing something.” It needs to be a federal investigation because the corruption now runs so deep.

Why on earth would a convicted child sex offender, who was once on the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted list, need a laptop and a phone in his cell?

k.Dee Ignatin
3800 Desert Marina Drive #162
Laughlin, NV 89029
928.897.9335

Monday, May 25, 2009

The Soul of An Activist

Digging up bones. You gotta wonder what makes a person do it. I know a lot of people wonder why I'm doing what I am with my life.

I've given myself a project this week, of going out into the garage and digging out my first rocking horse, and I really consider it my first horse at all. It was a birthday gift from the governor of Alabama, in 1966, on the occasion of my first birthday.

When I was thrirteen my father almost beat me to death for defending blacks and Jews.

That I was born into a family of somewhat powerful, committed racists, has been a question mark hanging over my head, I believe, since the very day of my birth.

I have no questions at all, though, about what saved me personally from the fate of becoming one of them. One, I was born a redhead. Two, I got to Texas before the age of three.

There were however, things I could not be saved from, like abuse. Most of it was admittedly my own fault, for not just shutting my mouth [probably the red head part]. If not my own fault in spirit, my own in being dumb enough to try repeatedly standing up to it, and I'm lucky he didn't kill me that one time.

I'll say one thing for growing up regularly physically beaten, you get tough on the outside, and "I have a dream" has a very personal meaning, for me, on the inside. Being inspired was not a curse for me, although outward circumstances, if they could have been seen in full light, might have definitely led some to believe it was worse than a curse.



Then of course, there is the question of the inside person, the one people can't help wondering about when you make them nervous. The natural questions arise about, what on earth could make a person that driven, committed, intense or passionate? It violates their sense of balance to see someone throwing themselves into what appears to be nothing but a hurricane of trouble.

Life experience is what motivates everyone to do what they do. That mine for a long time seemed to be not much more than a series of unfortunate events has led me where I am today, and for that I must be grateful.

Along the way I had a crisis pregnancy, and had to make "the choice". After carrying her to term, and dying on the emergency room operating table, before inexplicably coming back to life once they got her out. I placed her into the arms of a loving couple who could not have children, five days later. I have been married and divorced, twice and have buried the only son I will ever have, who lived with his father, and at the age of 14 committed violent suicide. I have been to jail for protesting outside of an abortion clinic, and served jail time for the offence. I have also danced at the wedding of the little girl I made "the choice" to give a life and a future to. I have faced down American KKK members [in my own family] and Nazis [may their names be erased] up in Wisconsin.

I have many heroes, one of them being my Aunt, Maybell Mitchell. She was a suffragette, holding meetings in her home, standing at the top of her staircase giving loud speeches to huge crowds of women who would gather there, while scaring the Hell out of every man in Atlanta, threatening to get women the right to vote. She was also the only other redhead in our family, besides my grandfather's mother. That my cousin Margaret based the character Belle Watling on her never shocked me. Although, admittedly, basing the character of a whore, on your mother, must say something about some issues you have, lol.

When I saw with my own eyes what was happening to women and children in Utah and Arizona, I had one of those moments. The kind maybe only people like me, who are willing to walk up to the hurricane have.

It was a moment of understanding that there would not be very many people would come along who would know, and understand the kind of despair one feels when they believe no one knows, or even knows to care, what is really happening to you.

I look at my past and I still see hope. I look at the future and I see a fight, one worth the winning.

I don't know why I want to dig the horse out from 30 years of junk and dust, I just feel like I need to do it. Maybe it is to remind me that I'm trying to steal something from my past. The governor liked me so much he made a gift. I'm sure he never imagined what was in the soul of the little redheaded toddler he seemed to love, and if he had, he would have never given it to me.

Ride it like you stole it.

Wednesday, May 20, 2009

Seeking Host Texas Families

Seeking Shelter:
We are only 16 days away and counting before Flora and I hit the road and cover as much of Texas as we can in June.

This is a grass roots effort to reach Texans with the truth of the abuses found within the cultural practice of polygamy in America, culminating with our AAAP Friends & Survivors picnic in San Angelo, Texas, at Glenmore Park on Saturday, June 27 at high noon.

Since this is a grass roots effort, our budget is a proverbial shoestring, and we are requesting help from fellow Texans along the way.

I am looking for families who will host Flora and me for the night, when we visit your city. If anyone has a family member, club, organization or church who might be able to provide us safe shelter for the evening, in or near any of the cities listed in bold with an *asterisk*, please contact me at TripleAP@gmail.com. If you are interested in helping us, please do not post your real name or location to the blog, as it is monitored by way more pro-polygamists than not.

Texans are known for their generosity and hospitality, and Flora and I deeply appreciate anyone willing to assist. We aren't asking for anything fancy, just a safe clean place to lay our heads to rest as we are passing through. Neither of us is too proud to flop on a couch or even spread a bedroll in your barn.

G-d Bless you, and may G-d Bless Texas,

k.Dee Ignatin
TripleAP@gmail.com


The following Texas cities are locations where you can attend a reading and/or signing of her book, CHURCH OF LIES:

Dallas
SMU College Barnes & Noble June 6

Burleson
Borders June 7

Plano
Legacy Books June 8

*Tyler
Hastings June 9

Abilene
Hastings June 10

*Midland
Barnes & Noble June 11

*Lubbock
Barnes & Noble June 12

Amarillo
Hastings June 13

*Denton
Hastings June 14

*Houston
Barnes & Noble June 20

*Waco
Hastings June 21
*Austin
Bookpeople June 22

San Antonio
TBA June 23

Kerrville
Hastings June 25

*San Angelo
Hastings June 26

*San Angelo
AAAP Friends & Survivors Picnic
Glenmore Park, June 27

Saturday, May 16, 2009

Dear K.Dee Ignatin,

It seems that we fight for the same cause on opposite sides of the globe.

Although polygamy was about to end in the modern Iraq, the political mess of the new millennium has introduced us into a new age of politicized misogyny.

The new mutations of Islamism into an uncontrolled beast has made most feminists and egalitarian of the Middle-East lay low.

A few of us are still determined to stand against them and tell the whole world that we, the women in Iraq, reject polygamy, paedophilia (of female children), and submission.

I personally have gained a reputation at that, but it always comes with a high cost. Our current "democratic" constitution has given way to polygamy while it was penalized before the occupation.

You have an ally and a supporter in Iraq.

Keep on leading the struggle for women's liberation and do not wait for appologists to make you stronger. You do not need them.

In Solidarity, Yanar Mohammed

Organization of Women's Freedom in Iraq, president
OWFIwww.equalityiniraq.com

Wednesday, May 13, 2009

Press Release

Americans Against Abuses of Polygamy*******PRESS RELEASE*******Announcing the “Texans Know a Load of Corn When They See it, Oprah!” photo op

Americans Against Abuses of Polygamy’s 2009 Friends and Survivors picnic will be held in San Angelo, Texas on June 27th at Glenmore Park, at noon. There will be many survivors of American polygamy present, hoping to meet Texans and explain the realities of the abuses they experienced, in person.

In 1953, the State of Arizona raided the polygamous community of Shortcreek, in what is now Colorado City Arizona, home of the Fundamentalist Church of Latter Day Saints, currently led by Warren Jeffs, alleging abuse of underage girls, forced to engage in sexual relationships with much older men, under the guise of, “celestial marriage”.

After the Arizona raid, the FLDS leadership responded with a concerted public relations campaign to show America how normal polygamy is.

A piece in LIFE Magazine was the turning point in the public relations war, winning sympathy from across America, and calls for the FLDS to be left alone to practice their quaint religion, which apparently harmed no one.

The man on the front page of LIFE, shucking corn with his concubines, who won the PR war for the FLDS, was Clyde Mackert.

Over 50 years later, we will recreate that scene, at our Friends & Survivors picnic, with smiling corn shucking survivors, backed by Texans around a sign that reads, “Texans Know a Load of Corn When They See it, Oprah”!

Although, this time Kathleen and Rena Mackert, daughters of Clyde Mackert, still unborn at the time of the photos, will be there among the survivors, front, and center. Both escaped polygamy, and both were sexually molested their entire childhoods, by the same smiling, corn shucking man who won the last national PR war for the FLDS.

We will send the photo from LIFE Magazine with ours, to Oprah Winfrey; because we think she is playing the role of LIFE Magazine for the FLDS. Her exclusive interviews inside the YFZ Ranch, a year after the Texas raid, were full of softball questions and concentrated on bread baking and the family nature of the FLDS. She went on to ad her opinion that the U.S. prohibition against the cultural practice of polygamy should be re-examined.

For more information, please contact executive director, k. Dee Ignatin.

Friday, May 1, 2009

Facts are Funny Things

A friend dropped by the blog this week. She read the postings and wrote me a note saying essentially ‘This is why I don’t blog. You cannot reason with some people.’ She spoke of being personally attacked in the past and I understood her stance, for sure.

I told her I didn’t mind being attacked, and that it was my belief that the more rope you gave someone...

I’ve certainly never attacked anyone’s rights to practice their faith. This is a free country. I don’t care if someone wants to worship dirty socks hanging from the low branches of a tree in their back yard. They can ascribe all the power in the universe to the socks for all I care.

They can build a shrine, kneel and pray, offer tithes, offerings and hold group devotional meetings for the socks. They can bring their children to the socks teaching them how the socks created the universe and hold all the power in it.

But the day the adults tell children in the group that the dirty socks want them to disrobe and submit to sex acts in the sock’s name my tolerance for religion ends and my desire to see criminals prosecuted begins.

My investigation of Colorado City had nothing to do with religion and everything to do with abuse and polygamy.

Just as they did after the Arizona raid in 1953, the FLDS has waged a concerted PR effort to sway the public to believe they were persecuted for their religion, rather than prosecuted for their abuse.

When you present the American public with the facts of polygamy, worldwide, Colorado City seems to have the very same problems that crop up in every single known polygamous culture already in existence. Even though the religious beliefs behind the practice differ from culture to culture, the abusive results don’t.

Islamic polygamy produces exactly the same results. They have different gods, different religions, and the same practice of polygamy.

All polygamous cultures exhibit these characteristics

Child Brides
Child labor issues
Pedophilia of female children
Control and limitation of women’s freedom in choice of: life partner, movement, speech, dress, education, career, birth control, and virtually every other aspect of private life
High infant mortality rates
Families in gross poverty

Colorado City, Arizona is the largest all polygamous community operating in the United States of America. If my supposition is that polygamy is abusive by nature and I wanted to look at an American group of practicing polygamists to know for sure, what better place in America is there to look?

So why is it so surprising that I would want the public to know the facts, by the numbers, of what is happening in Colorado City, Arizona, USA?