POCATELLO — When Bannock County Prosecuting Attorney Steve Herzog received the call from the sheriff’s office that it was investigating a possible child abuse case involving multiple boys and the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, he knew it was going to be challenging.

    “It is alien territory,” Herzog said.

    The Bannock County Sheriff’s office had received a call from the FBI July 8 after it interviewed a boy who had escaped from a home on Clifford Drive near Pocatello Creek Road and made his way to the Holding Out HELP group in Salt Lake City. The escaped teen had shared stories about food deprivation, corporal punishment and confinement.

    Bannock County Lt. Toni Vollmer and child welfare investigators visited the home with a warrant on July 10 and found no adult supervision, but nine boys between 11 and 17 in the Pocatello home. The youngsters were taken into protective custody based on the information provided by the escaped teen.

    Herzog said the case then became focused on child protective custody. He said the criminal charges against the adult in charge of the children, Nathan Jessop, were secondary. One of the boys living with Jessop was his son, now 16, and the defendant said three of the boys were his stepsons and three others were his nephews.

    Jessop was charged with three misdemeanor counts of injury to a child and pleaded guilty to those offenses at a Thursday pre-trial conference. He was sentenced to 10 days in jail and placed on two years of probation.

    Herzog said misdemeanor charges were filed because none of Jessop’s conduct met the threshold of felony child abuse.

    But the main focus of the prosecutor early on was the protection of the children and how to navigate the religious freedom issues.

    “The bigger picture is how do you address the concerns that the FLDS culture raises,” Herzog said.

    Chief deputy prosecutor Ian Service was put in charge and Herzog said Service had the most knowledge about the FLDS sect in Southern Utah and Texas. Texas authorities placed hundreds of FLDS women and children into protective custody after raiding the sect’s YFZ Ranch in 2008 only to release them all later after protracted legal maneuvering.

    “Child protection is a job that’s a tough one,” Herzog said.

    An Aug. 11 protective custody hearing was held at the Bannock County Courthouse and there were 12 attorneys representing Bannock County, the children and their mothers present.

    Herzog said it was strange to see the mothers in the courthouse dressed in traditional FLDS attire and hairstyles.

    Ultimately Magistrate Judge Bryan Murray decided to release seven of the boys back to the custody of their mothers and drop the protective custody action. Two remain in the protective custody of the state of Idaho under the supervision of the Department of Health and Welfare.

    “I think this case really highlights some of the limitations in our child protective laws,” Herzog said.

    He also said he didn’t appreciate some of the pressure his office received by the state Attorney General’s office and Health and Welfare to drop all the protective custody proceedings.

    “They were adamantly opposed,” Herzog said about the state’s reaction to the county pursuing the child protective custody cases.

    Herzog admitted his office tried to keep the FLDS cases low profile.

    “It was much easier to sort out if it was kept low profile,” he said.