FLDS teen asks to dump attorney

SALT LAKE CITY, June 23 (UPI) -- A teenage daughter of polygamist Utah sect leader Warren Jeffs has moved to fire her attorney because she's being kept from seeing her father.

Teresa Jeffs, 16, told The Salt Lake Tribune that she wants to dump Natalie Malonis, her court-appointed attorney, because Malonis is trying to ban contact between her and her imprisoned father, the former leader of Fundamentalist Church of Latter Day Saints sects in Utah and Texas.

The newspaper Monday published a copy of an e-mail message Teresa Jeffs wrote to Malonis, which read in part, "The most help you will be to me now is for you to step aside and let me get a different lawyer that I feel like can help me."

Malonis, Teresa Jeffs told the newspaper in an interview, is "fighting my own father and made it so I can't write to him." Malonis, however, has alleged that the girl's push for a new attorney was due to coercion from FLDS spokesman Willie Jessop.

Warren Jeffs is serving two sentences for up to life in prison in Utah after being convicted of rape as an accomplice.