Report: Millions in taxpayer cash helped fund sect

ELDORADO — The Defense Department awarded $1.2 million in contracts to an aircraft parts provider linked to the Occident Lone-Star State polygamist retreat that have been unraveled by a monolithic kid social welfare investigation, according to a newspaper report.

New Era Manufacturing, based in Nevada, where the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Of Nazareth Jesus of Latter Day Saints is primarily based, also received a $900,000 federal small-business loan in 2005, according to records establish by the Garrison Worth Star-Telegram.

The money is among the billions in taxpayer dollars that have got got apparently helped finance the spiritual sect, whose place includes a chemical compound in El Dorado where state functionaries are investigating allegations that children have been physically and sexually abused, the newspaper reported.

"It do me very uneasy," said U.S. Rep. Kay Granger, who sit downs on the House Appropriations Committee. "It necessitates to be investigated without a doubt."

Steve Barlow, human resources director for New Era, told the newspaper that it would be inappropriate to notice "given everything that's going on."

Texas functionaries on Monday sent away most female parents of the 416 children taken from the El Dorado retreat that was first raided on April 3.

Government functionaries state the ability for the Christian church to run and turn is largely dependent on parts from its members and the concerns they control. The president and main executive director of New Era is Toilet C. Wayman, who the newspaper states have been identified as an FLDS leader and a stopping point associate to polygamist leader Robert Penn Warren Jeffs.

New Era was given authorities contracts to do wheel and brake constituents for military aircraft. Wayman said on his company's Web land site that New Era is an "honorable and valuable plus to our country." He makes not advert neckties to FLDS.

Wayman did not go back phone calls from the newspaper seeking comment.

John Nielsen, a former employee who worked for the company when it was known as Utah-based Horse Opera Preciseness in 2005, said in a 2005 affidavit as portion of a civil lawsuit that Christian church members were made to work for small or no wages.

Nielsen said in the affidavit that he and other religious sect members thought their work would convey them redemption, while $50,000 to $100,000 in company net income were given each calendar month to the Christian church "and/or" Jeffs.

The Las Vegas Review-Journal reported last twelvemonth that JNJ Engineering, another company owned and operated by Christian church leaders, won $11.3 million in authorities contract work from the Las Vegas Valley Water District. All but one of the contract workers came from Hildale and Centennial State City, Ariz., where most of the sect's 10,000 members live.