About the Screening
Prophet's Prey, the new film from Oscar-nominated director Amy Berg (Deliver Us from Evil) continues her trenchant investigation of patriarchal abuse couched under the protective guise of religion, and the systemic flaws in our criminal justice system.
The documentary, which debuted at this year's Sundance Film Festival, is set against the deceptively bucolic scenery of the American heartland. Berg's focus is the Fundamentalist Church of Latter-Day Saints (FLDS), a polygamous, unsanctioned offshoot of the Mormon Church run by the tyrannical, self-proclaimed prophet, Warren Jeffs.
When Jeffs' father, Rulon, died in 2002, his son greatly expanded his control over the congregation, which reportedly consists of as many as ten thousand members in several states and is said to be worth more than one hundred million dollars. Naming himself president, he ruled the FLDS as a private kingdom, limiting members' access to the outside world, tithing all earnings, favoring and expelling members according to whim, marrying most of his father's wives and adding additional wives, some of whom were underage. His abusiveness did not stop there. Even before he officially took over the FLDS, he was covertly molesting and raping children, intimidating them into silence by threatening them with expulsion and perdition.
Though he was placed on the FBI's most-wanted list and, eventually, captured and sentenced to life in prison, Warren Jeffs continues to prey on the FLDS community in absentia, his power largely unchecked and unchallenged to this very day.