Reunion with family is a letdown

ST. GEORGE — After a year of forced separation that was ordered by his former church leader, Warren Jeffs, Wendell Musser has had a bittersweet reunion with his wife and child.

On Friday inside an auto parts store in Hildale, Musser saw Vivian Barlow Musser and their 18-month-old son, Levi — but his wife rejected admonitions of love and refused to let the 22-year-old father cradle his son.

"He was crushed when he came out," said Greg Hoole, Musser's attorney, who waited outside the store during the 90-minute meeting.

Musser hadn't seen his family since leaving the Fundamentalist LDS Church last July. A nephew of Jeffs, Musser was once a caretaker for the church president's many wives, living for seven months in hiding in a series of Colorado cities beginning in December 2005.

At the time, Jeffs was on the run from lawsuits in Utah and criminal charges in Arizona.

Out of favor after a DUI arrest in Colorado Springs, Colo., Musser was sent away by Jeffs to repent and had his family taken from him. He was been told by his father that Vivian and Levi had been given to another man, a practice common in the FLDS Church.

Musser filed a civil lawsuit against Jeffs May 4 in St. George's 5th District Court. The lawsuit asks the court to force Jeffs to disclose Vivian and Levi's whereabouts.

Jeffs, 51, has led the church since 2002. He is in jail charged with rape as an accomplice in connection with the 2001 spiritual marriage of a 14-year-old FLDS girl to her 19-year-old cousin.

The church, which is based in the twin communities of Hildale and Colorado City, Ariz., has an estimated 10,000 followers. They are said to be blindly obedient and consider Jeffs a prophet who communicates with God.

Musser was traveling from Hildale to his home in Payette, Idaho, Saturday and could not be reached by The Associated Press.

Friday was the deadline for Jeffs to respond to the lawsuit. He didn't, but the meeting arranged by Musser's father, David Musser, could only have happened with church approval, Hoole said.

"They proved our point — that they control every aspect of these people's lives," he said.

"They can make her appear when they want her to appear," Hoole's brother and legal practice partner, Roger Hoole, said.

Like much of what happens inside the secretive, insular FLDS community, the meeting was arranged and carried out with a kind of spy novel flavor.