Warren Jeffs has reportedly written a fanatical rulebook based on 'revelations from God' in his prison cell and has had copies sent to members of his breakaway Mormon sect.
Jeffs, 55, is serving a life prison term in Texas after being convicted of sexually assaulting two girls he wed as spiritual brides when they were 12 and 14 years old.
His polygamist sect, which experts estimate has 10,000 followers in the U.S., has been condemned by the mainstream Mormon church and is accused of promoting marriages between older men and girls.
Warren Jeffs has reportedly written a fanatical rulebook based on 'revelations from God' in his prison cell and has had copies sent to members of his breakaway Mormon sect.
Jeffs, 55, is serving a life prison term in Texas after being convicted of sexually assaulting two girls he wed as spiritual brides when they were 12 and 14 years old.
His polygamist sect, which experts estimate has 10,000 followers in the U.S., has been condemned by the mainstream Mormon church and is accused of promoting marriages between older men and girls.
Former members of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (FLDS) said they are concerned about the hold he still has over followers.
They said despite his incarceration, Jeffs has tightened his grip on leaders on the outside having them dictate to followers that men cannot have sex with their wives, parents should throw away children's toys and teenage girls are no longer allowed cellphones.
According to the Salt Lake Tribune, bikes, trampolines and all-terrain vehicles, are being dumped by the roadside near FLDS bases in Colorado City, Arizona, and Hildale, Utah.
The Colorado City compound, which Jeffs lived in prior to his arrest in August 2006, has around 5,000 residents, largely secluded from the outside world.
Willie Jessop, former church spokesman, told the Salt Lake Tribune: 'You forfeit control of your destiny and subject yourself to them. You have nothing that you control.'
Those wanting to join to FLDS undergo intense interviews to see if they fit the sect's requirements. Part of this is to deny that Jeffs did anything wrong when he took underage wives.
If they do not fit the bill according to leaders, they are cast out with nothing after signing over everything they have to the leaders.
At his trial, prosecutors said several marriages Jessop performed involved women who had been married to Jeffs' father before he died.
The FLDS holds polygamy as a fundamental belief and its men take multiple wives in what are termed 'celestial marriages' each performed in a ceremony called a 'sealing'.
With Jeffs behind bars, former members have spoken out about the appalling abuse they suffered within the sect, an extreme splinter group of the Mormon faith which believes in polygamy.
One former child bride, Elissa Wall, revealed how her own mother resorted to holding her daughter's hand at the altar in a bid to calm her down as she was forced to marry her 19-year-old cousin, whom she despised when she was 14.
In a CNN interview in September, she told Anderson Cooper: 'We were given to another man's children. My mother was resold to another man, and my mother didn't have the ability to say no.'
