Child molestation charges dropped against polygamist

A Polygamist with ties to Utah who fled to Mexico on child molestation charges is free after the charges against him were dropped.

Mexican authorities arrested Orson William Black Jr. on Nov. 5, on suspicion of murdering three American men in the Mexican border state of Chihuahua in September.

They turned him over to U.S. officials in El Paso, Texas, where he was held briefly on an Arizona fugitive warrant. But he was let go because no agency would extradite him, El Paso County sheriff’s spokeswoman Chris Acosta said, CBS News reported.

In 2003, Black was charged with molestation over allegations he persuaded two teenagers to impregnate themselves with his sperm.

Mia Garcia, a spokeswoman for the Arizona attorney general’s office, said the charges were dropped for a lack of evidence, CBS News reported.

The women were of legal age in 2003, when they told authorities that they had impregnated themselves. They refused to cooperate because they had married Black and fled with him to Mexico, leading state prosecutors to decide in May that they didn’t have enough evidence to pursue charges.

“We needed the girls to testify or in some way help us with the evidence,” Garcia said. “That’s really the only evidence,” she said, CBS News reported.

Black, 56, belongs to the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, a sect that advocates for plural marriage.

Former Arizona Attorney General Terry Goddard, who brought the charges against Black, laments that the charges were dropped, and Black will avoid consequences.

“If somebody can just skip the country and then avoid what I believe was a very legitimate child molestation rap, that’s a very sad development,” he said Tuesday, CBS News reported.

Mexican officials said Black was apprehended and is being investigated for the deaths of Jesse Barlow, 23, Robert Black, 19, and Michael Black, 15.

Their bodies were found on Rancho El Negro in September. The young men, who authorities said did not have birth certificates, were believed to have been followers of Black.

Black’s whereabouts are currently unknown.

CBS News reports that he is not in federal custody, according to the U.S. Marshals Service.

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