Smith pursues abuse charges
 
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Tri-State News Network
 
KINGMAN, Ariz. – Eight men from the polygamous northern Arizona community of Colorado City, who are charged with sex offenses involving their underage ceremonial child brides, left the Mohave County Jail in Kingman Monday afternoon in a convoy of three SUV's and a pickup truck.

One of the defendants David Romaine Bateman, 48, was arrested at his home Friday and the others evaded Mohave County Sheriff's deputies who were looking for them over the weekend. Their Monday morning surrender came as a surprise to both Sheriff Tom Sheahan and County Attorney Matt Smith.

Smith said Flagstaff attorney Bruce Griffin called him Monday morning, indicating a number of indicted defendants would turn themselves in at the jail. The attorneys stipulated that each of the men would be released on bond after they were fingerprinted and photographed. Griffin said he accepted when unidentified attorneys asked him if he would handle Monday's affairs at the jail as well as Bateman's arraignment.

Judge James Chavez scheduled an Aug. 5 case management hearing for Bateman after taking his not guilty plea. Charges vary from defendant to defendant but many face prosecution for sexual conduct with a minor and conspiracy to commit sexual conduct with a minor.

Smith said another Colorado City man charged with offending an underage wife did not turn himself in with the rest of the group due to an illness in his family.

Smith has emphasized the cases are not about prosecuting polygamy. Rather, he said, they're about holding male adults accountable for sexual offenses committed upon female minors who become their wives in church-sanctioned marriages not recognized by law.

Warren Jeffs, 49, the leader of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, the church that controls a trust and most of the property and assets in Colorado City and the neighboring town of Hilldale, Utah., has also been indicted for alleged sex offenses.

Smith said Jeffs is not charged with physically offending the underage women, but instead as a conspirator for helping arrange the marriages through his position with the church.

Jeffs has neither surrendered nor been located. He's the subject of local and federal arrest warrants and an FBI manhunt.

Defendants released from jail Monday include Bateman, Rodney Hans Holm, 38, Donald Robert Barlow, 48, Vergel Bryce Jessop, 45, Terry Darger Barlow, 23, Dale Evans Barlow, 47, Randolph Joseph Barlow who is also charged with Sexual Assault 32, and Kelly Fischer, 38.

Smith credited special investigator Gary Engels in the case investigations along with cooperation afforded by Sheahan and Arizona Attorney General Terry Goddard.

"Matt Smith has done an admirable job in taking investigative leads and aggressively pursuing charges of child abuse," Goddard said in a news release. "No community is outside the law."
 
Tri-State News Network
Originally published July 13, 2005
 
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