WESTCLIFFE, Colo.—A member of a breakaway Mormon sect says the group is likely practicing polygamy on some of the properties it owns in Colorado.
“Polygamy, meaning is there men here with multiple wives with them? Absolutely, I think so,” Lee Steed told KCNC-TV in Denver on Monday.
Steed is a member of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, which is believed to own up to eight properties in the state.
Steed, who says he has only one wife, lives in Fremont County.
He was interviewed by KCNC at an FLDS compound near Westcliffe, 100 miles south of Denver. KCNC says the compound was set up for widows and older women and has 20 or 30 residents.
The FLDS church believes polygamy brings glorification in heaven. The larger Mormon church, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, renounced polygamy more than a century ago.
FLDS leader Warren Jeffs was convicted in Utah last year on two counts of rape as an accomplice in the marriage of a 14-year-old girl to her 19-year-old cousin. He faces similar charges in Arizona.
Dorothy Barlow, a resident of the Westcliffe-area FLDS compound, told KCNC that Jeffs was “falsely accused.”
Another resident, Margaret Jessop, said her grandchildren were among those seized from an FLDS compound in Texas during a raid in April.
“They were taken away from their parents and kept two nights without a mother,” she said.
Jessop said she and other FLDS members came to Colorado seeking refuge from persecution.
“I think we just came here for a place of safety while this goes on. We’re not going to settle here,” she said.
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Information from: KCNC-TV,
