Former member of FLDS polygamous cult wants daughter, 17, back after she was 'snatched off street' and found with his ex-wife, the sister of sect leader Warren Jeffs

Daily Mail, UK/February 9, 2015

By Evan Bleier

A former member of the polygamous Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints believes he watched his daughter get kidnapped only days after her rescue from a trailer she was living in.

Ron Rohbock, 63, was looking on at a store parking lot in Mesquite, Nevada, when a white truck registered to a member of the polygamous cult, known as the FLDS, drove up and stopped.

He saw his daughter, 17-year-old Sherilyn, get pulled inside the vehicle.

Rohbock believes the teen was kidnapped, the Salt Lake Tribune reported.

He said: 'You could see it in her face.

'You could see it in her eyes as she was pulled into the truck.'

Only five days before the alleged street snatch, Sherilyn was rescued from a trailer she had been living in since July.

The girl had been placed in the trailer by a 'priesthood caretaker' and was only allowed to leave to go to a nearby house to bathe and wash laundry.

Sherilyn was supposed to be living with her mother, Rahcel Jeffs, but had not been with the woman for at least two years.

Even though the girl refused to provide any information about her mother's whereabouts, it was determined that Mrs Jeffs had been living in Pringle, South Dakota at an FLDS compound.

Rohbock and his wife Geri had Sherilyn with them until she was grabbed in the parking lot.

After Sherilyn was taken in Nevada, her worried father alerted the sheriff's office in Utah's Washington County and a kidnapping investigation began.

As part of the search for Sherilyn, a detective looked into whether marshals in the collective FLDS towns of Short Creek in Hildale, Utah, and Colorado City, Arizona helped cult members find Sherilyn.

Federal Bureau of Investigation agents located the girl with her mother.

Sherilyn reportedly told agents she wanted to stay with the woman.

Mrs Jeffs is the sister of incarcerated FLDS leader Warren Jeffs.

He was sentenced to life in jail for sexually assaulting underage girls he considered his wives and is imprisoned in Texas.

It is believed Mr Jeffs is still heading the cult by communicating via letters and phone calls from behind bars.

An attorney representing Mrs Jeffs, Jim Bradshaw, said: 'The FBI acted responsibly and appropriately, did an investigation and determined this child was in a safe environment.'

He declined to comment about his client's location but has confirmed she was in the truck that Sherilyn got into in October.

Rohbock was kicked out of the FLDS in 2002 and filed for bankruptcy as well as contemplated suicide after his dismissal.

Despite all the bad memories, the contractor now lives with Geri in Hildale.

He said: 'I continually blamed myself and thought I was going to go to hell because they tell you that's exactly what's going to happen.

'But I can tell you: This is hell. It can't get worse this. If this is heaven, you don't want anything to do with it.'

FBI agents have told Rohbock that Sherilyn and three more of his children with Mrs Jeffs - two girls and one boy - are probably in Mexico.

Sherilyn is the oldest.

Rohbock has never filed a custody petition for any of the four children.

Warren Jeffs and the FLDS

The FLDS, which has at least 10,000 members, is a radical offshoot of mainstream Mormonism and believes polygamy brings exaltation in heaven.

They see Jeffs as God's spokesman on earth. The church's traditional headquarters is along the Utah-Arizona border, but it established a Texas compound in 2004.

Police raided the group's remote West Texas ranch in April 2008, finding women dressed in frontier-style dresses and hairdos from the 19th century as well as seeing underage girls who were clearly pregnant.

More than 400 children were eventually returned to their families.

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