HURRICANE, Washington County — Anthony Jessop turns 14 years old on June 8, one day after his estranged parents are scheduled to face each other in what promises to be a heated custody battle for the teenager and his siblings.
"I want to stay with Father," said Anthony, glancing across at his younger brother, 12-year-old Thomas, who nodded in agreement during a recent interview. "Seeing how Mother is right now, I just don't think she's being herself."
Arizona judges have presided over hundreds of custody hearings involving children from plural families over the past decade. Nearly all of those court cases came and went without media attention or public scrutiny.
But an increasing interest in polygamy by law enforcement agencies, anti-polygamy activists, and others who allege the practice is demeaning to women and children is bringing more attention to these cases.
The Jessop custody case has already been discussed on a nationally broadcast news program and posted on Internet sites that follow stories about polygamy.
The attention is something the Jessop brothers said they don't understand. Why, asked the boys, would their mother fly to New York City with an anti-polygamy activist to talk about their family in front of complete strangers?
"It's like Mother got set up to some radio control and someone's running her," said Anthony. He said he believes his mother is being manipulated. "I love Mother, but I don't like what she's doing, especially with my sisters. I know they don't like what's happening to them."
Laurene Cooke Jessop, 46, is the second or "spiritual" wife of Val Jessop, whose membership in the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints is cited as a danger to the couple's children.
Flora Jessop, a distant relative who left her plural heritage behind as a teenager and now actively campaigns against polygamy, arranged the interview in New York City and participated in the program. She also is providing food and shelter to Laurene and the girls, ages 7, 10 and 15 years old, in her Phoenix home.
The young Jessop girls no longer wear the traditional long-sleeved undergarments, dresses and leggings common to FLDS children. Their long hair has been cut, their ears pierced, and wardrobes modernized — all violations of the FLDS moral dress code, their brothers said.
An Arizona family court judge granted Laurene Jessop emergency custody of her five children a few weeks ago, based on allegations of abuse that she levied against Val Jessop and his legal wife, Marie.
In a complaint filed with the court, Laurene alleges the children have been physically and mentally abused by Marie, and that recent church discipline taken against Val Jessop means the children are in danger.
"Father and the community will punish the children for being in Maricopa County with Mother and refusing to return to the community on their own," Laurene Jessop states in her petition for sole custody. "The punishment could include a blood atonement by which the children would be killed."
Val Jessop, 54, said he is sickened by the accusation.
"That s bizarre. It's disgusting," he said. "I love my children. I want to take care of them like I always have."
Val Jessop's relationship with Laurene, whom he married in an FLDS ceremony when she was 19, has been a rocky one, marred, he says, by his wife's medically diagnosed bouts with severe depression and anxiety. He was awarded sole custody of the children in May of 2000 while Laurene lived on and off over the years in an Arizona mental institution.
During the nationally televised show, Laurene disputed the notion that there was a medical need for her to be institutionalized. She claimed she was being "punished" for disobeying Marie.
Family and friends of Val Jessop have mailed supportive letters to his attorney and 80 others have signed a petition backing his parenting skills.
"I want to stay in the (FLDS) church," said Anthony, who added he will marry and love whomever is assigned to him by church elders when that time comes. "If Mother doesn't want anything to do with our religion, then that's OK. But I worry about my sisters."
Like thousands of other polygamist family members who grew up in Colorado City, Ariz., and in Hildale, across the Utah border, the Jessop family tree is extensive. The Jessop name fills several pages in the local telephone directory published in Hildale.
Nearly everyone in the two towns is related in some fashion or another to everyone else, whether it's by plural marriage or through other family connections.
The 6,000 residents of the towns are also joined in faith as members of the FLDS church, and routinely shun outsiders and modern clothing, music and other forms of media.
The much larger LDS Church, which has its headquarters in Salt Lake City, rejected polygamy in the late 1800s and now excommunicates those who advocate the principle.
E-mail: nperkins@infowest.com