Joseph Smith, Jr. (December 23, 1805 – June 27, 1844) was an American religious leader and founder of the Latter Day Saint movement, which gave rise to Mormonism. At age twenty-four Smith published the Book of Mormon, and in the next fourteen years he gathered thousands of followers, built cities and temples, and created a religious culture that survived his death.

Smith was born in Sharon, Vermont; but by 1817, Smith's family had moved to western New York, an area repeatedly swept by religious revivals during the Second Great Awakening. Smith family members held divergent views about organized religion, but they believed in visions and prophecies and engaged in folk religious practices typical of the era. According to Smith, beginning in the early 1820s he had visions, in one of which an angel directed him to a buried book of golden plates inscribed with a Christian history of ancient American civilizations. In 1830, he published what he said was an English translation of these plates as the Book of Mormon, and organized the Church of Christ as a restoration of the early Christian church. Church members were later called Latter Day Saints, Saints, or Mormons.

Emma Hale Smith Bidamon (July 10, 1804 – April 30, 1879) was married to Joseph Smith, Jr., until his death in 1844, and was an early leader of the Latter Day Saint movement, during Joseph Smith's lifetime and afterward as a member of the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (RLDS, now the Community of Christ). She was also named in 1842 as the inaugural president of the Ladies' Relief Society of Nauvoo, a women's service organization.

Emma was born July 10, 1804, in Harmony Township, Susquehanna County, Pennsylvania, as the seventh child of Isaac Hale and Elizabeth Lewis Hale. Emma first met her future husband, Joseph Smith, Jr., in 1825. Smith lived near Palmyra, New York, but boarded with the Hales in Harmony while he was employed in a company of men hoping to unearth buried treasure (specifically a silver mine for Josiah Stowell, a farmer whose home still stands on the north side of the Susquehanna River on New York State Route 7 in Nineveh, New York, just west of Afton). Although the company found no treasure, Smith returned to Harmony several times to court Emma. Isaac Hale refused to allow the marriage because he considered Smith's occupation disreputable. Finally, on January 17, 1827, Smith and Emma eloped across the state line to South Bainbridge (Afton), New York, where they were married the following day. The marriage site is now the Afton Fairgrounds, located on New York State Route 41 on the east side of the Susquehanna River; and a New York State Historical Marker commemorates the location. The couple moved to Smith's parents' home on the edge of Manchester Township near Palmyra.

Daniel Arlon Vogel (born 1955) is the author of a number of books related to early Mormon history. He is a former member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, an atheist and a skeptic.

Vogel was awarded the "Best Book" award in September 2004 by the John Whitmer Historical Association and the "Turner-Bergera Best Biography" award by the Mormon History Association in May 2005 for his biography Joseph Smith: The Making of a Prophet.

In this Smith biography, Vogel argues that Joseph Smith was a pious fraud--that he essentially invented his religious claims for what he believed were noble, faith-promoting purposes. Vogel identifies the roots of the pious fraud in the conflict between members of the Smith family, who were divided between the sometimes skepticism and universalism of Joseph Smith, Sr. and the more mainstream Protestant faith of Lucy Mack Smith. Vogel interweaves the history of Joseph Smith, Jr. with interpretation of the Book of Mormon, which is read as springing from the young man's psychology and experiences.

The term sexual predator is used pejoratively to describe a person seen as obtaining or trying to obtain sexual contact with another person in a metaphorically "predatory" manner. Analogous to how a predator hunts down its prey, so the sexual predator is thought to "hunt" for his or her sex partners. People who commit sex crimes, such as rape or child sexual abuse, are commonly referred to as sexual predators, particularly in tabloid media or as a power phrase by politicians.

According to the NBC news program Dateline, as of January 2006, law enforcement officials estimate that as many as 50,000 sexual predators are online at any given moment. That number has been cited by Attorney General Alberto Gonzales in speeches touting the dangers of child predators. However, the origins of that figure have been questioned by Legal Times, and Dateline says it will no longer use it. Janis Wolak of the Crimes against Children Research Center at the University of New Hampshire found that many parental fears about Internet sex predators are misinterpretations of the danger.