Posted on 04/25/2008 6:17:33 PM PDT by Hank Kerchief
Imagine: One day you
“The government told us they put a man on the moon, do you believe that?”
If that was the only evidence I had? No, I would not believe anything the government said about anything.
But you know as well as I do, it is not because the government said so that we know men went to the moon, and you knew that was a foolish argument when you made it. Desparation does that, you know.
Hank
You did it, you got another joke out about your like of knowledge of the law. Way to go!!!!
http://www.childrenshealthcare.org/polygamous.htm
I will post this article once more, entire, for the record:
Abuses in Polygamous Sects
by Rita Swan
After decades of ignoring the polygamous sects of the American Southwest, state and federal officials are now cracking down on the child abuse and other illegal activity within them. Warren Jeffs, leader of the Fundamentalist Latter-Day Saints (FLDS), has been convicted of being an accomplice to rape and sentenced to two five years-to-life terms. Mohave County, Arizona, charged eight others for sexual conduct with minors in 2005.
In March, 2006, the federal government fined one contractor over $10,000 in child labor law violations for using FLDS boys.
Washington County, Utah, prosecutor Brock Belnap is investigating deaths of children in the FLDS community popularly known as Short Creek and incorporated as Hildale, Utah, and Colorado City, Arizona. Child advocates have found 180 marked graves of children and 58 unmarked graves of babies in the towns’ cemeteries.
A few victims have also been willing to file civil suits in recent years. A suit filed by six of the so-called “Lost Boys” is now in settlement negotiations over the money and other reparations they seek for the psychological and economic damages inflicted on them.
Discussion and background
In 1953 state and federal agents tried to stop polygamy in Short Creek. They raided the community, jailed the men and separated children from mothers.
Polygamy has long been against the law n all states, but public sympathy turned strongly against the government, charges were dropped, family members were returned, and Arizona Governor Howard Pyle was turned out of office.
Not until the dawn of the 21st century with the Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City fast approaching did the media and state government show concern for the endemic abuses in polygamous enclaves.
Incest victim reports
The catalyst was horrible enough. In 1998 a sixteen-year-old girl was ordered by her father to marry an uncle twice her age. Twice she tried to run away, but was caught. She went for help to her mother for help, who promptly returned her to her father. The father then took her to a remote ranch, beat her savagely, and left.
The girl limped five miles down a dirt road until she reached a truck stop and dialed 911. Juab County Attorney David Leavitt, brother of the governor, filed charges and won convictions of the uncle for incest and unlawful sexual conduct with a minor and of the father for abuse.
Mom shares 13-year-old with husband
The next year Utah polygamist Tom Green had a religious vision that he should proclaim his lifestyle to the world. Breaking with the secrecy of most polygamists, he and his wives went on many national talk shows. He openly bragged that he had married all ten of his wives when they were minors. One was only thirteen when he, at age 37, got her pregnant.
The girl’s mother was then married to Green. The mother encouraged and defends the arrangement. She says her daughter (by her first husband, who had died) sat on Green’s lap and wanted to marry him, so the mother was “happy” to share Green with her.
Victims of polygamy and Utah
Since polygamy is illegal, most polygamists have only one civil marriage; the others are dubbed “celestial marriages.” Many of the celestial wives register with the state as single mothers and draw welfare for their huge families. In one decade Tom Green and his dependents received more than $647,000 in public assistance.
To Leavitt, Green was a pedophile. These little girls were raised “from the cradle” to marry as children and knew only a life of polygamy, Leavitt declared. They are “victims of pedophiles, and they are victims of the state of Utah, which turned its back on polygamy for sixty years,” he said.
Leavitt filed charges against Green and won convictions for bigamy, criminal non-support, and child rape. But the judge imposed a lenient sentence in 2002; Green will serve only six years in prison, total.
Even more startling, the voters turned Leavitt out of office later that year with many saying the publicity was distasteful to them.
Exposure of polygamy abuses continues
Nevertheless, polygamy has not sunk back to the obscurity it enjoyed before the courageous girl reached a pay phone and called for help. Several women who have escaped polygamy speak out publicly about the abuses and provide material assistance for some who are trying to leave.
Civil suits have been filed by a few victims of sexual abuse. Two have won judgments and are attempting to get their money from the United Effort Plan, a communal property trust held by the Fundamentalist Latter-Day Saints. A judge has removed the UEP trustees and appointed new ones. Police officers have been forced to resign for practicing polygamy and refusing to enforce state laws against FLDS members. A polygamist judge was also forced out of office.
While law enforcement officials and judges are now expected to obey laws against polygamy, Utah authorities have reportedly signaled that they will not challenge sexual relationships between other consenting adults. But Utah and Arizona are now cracking down on some of the other abuses found in polygamous communities.
Fugitive prophet charged for sex abuse
Washington County, Utah, prosecutor Brock Belnap has charged fugitive prophet Warren Jeffs with facilitating rape of a minor. According to the victim, Jeffs demanded that she marry a much older man and “replenish the earth” when she was a young teenager. She protested, but Jeffs said her salvation depended on it.
In 2002, the Mohave County, Arizona, prosecutor got a guilty verdict against Colorado City mayor Daniel Barlow for child sexual abuse, but the judge sentenced him only to supervised probation and community service because of letters from his victims and other FLDS members asking for leniency.
God endorses “bleeding the beast”
Undeterred, the prosecutor charged eight more men for sexual conduct with underage girls in 2005.
The states have also tried to crack down on the endemic welfare fraud in polygamous groups. The fraud is even institutionalized as “bleeding the beast,” by which church members mean taking from federal and state governments because the government has persecuted them or their Mormon ancestors.
Two listeners paraphrased polygamous priest James Harmston as preaching that God “wants” them to take from every government program possible. God “doesn’t expect you to wallow in turkey manure. In another lifetime, we were persecuted and thrown out of Jackson County by the government. We’re entitled to everything we can get,” he said.
The reference is to Jackson County, Missouri, where Mormons were persecuted, murdered, and driven out in the 1830s, both by vigilantes and by Governor Boggs’s orders to the Missouri Militia.
Public funds support polygamous towns
With God ordering fraud, as argued by modern-day polygamists, there is plenty of it. Many plural wives claim they don’t know the whereabouts of their children’s father. As many as 50% of Hildale residents were on public assistance in 2001; 33% were on food stamps in 1998 compared to Utah’s statewide average of 4.7%. In 1997 every school-age child in Colorado City was living below the poverty level.
The twin towns have received millions of dollars from the federal government for housing and street improvements. Colorado City got $2.8 million for an airport, which prophet Jeffs has used for his chartered Lear jet.
In 2005, Colorado City’s tiny fire department received $350,000 in Homeland Security funds—the state’s third largest Homeland Security grant.
Arizona has taken over the Colorado City school system because of gross mismanagement of public funds.
In March, 2006, the federal government did fine a contractor over $10,000 in child labor law violations for using FLDS boys.
The response of state and federal government to the abuses of FLDS boys has, however, been severely inadequate in CHILD’s view.
Lost boys expelled as surplus
Most of the world first heard of the “lost boys” in 2004 when dozens came to the Utah Capitol and spoke. All said they were forced out by the current prophet, Warren Jeffs. They said more than 400 males, ages 13 and older, have been banished from the FLDS community since Jeffs became supreme ruler in 2002.
They were banished for such infractions as watching movies, ogling girls, wearing short-sleeved shirts, or listening to popular music. Their real sin, most critics say, was being surplus males in a polygamous community.
Many of the boys are taken out of school before they reach eighth grade and forced to do hard labor in the sect’s construction and other businesses on the promise that the prophet will give them the three wives they need to get into heaven.
They are taught from the cradle up that the prophet must be obeyed as God’s representative, that the outside world is evil, and that anyone leaving the FLDS will be ground to dust on earth and damned in the after-life.
Then after years of work for little or no compensation, they are expelled from the only community they have ever known. Several have been dumped out on the side of the road by their own fathers or church elders.
Several of the lost boys have committed suicide. Many are homeless. Many use drugs or steal.
“They live every day like it’s their last day and they don’t care about anything. They’re told they won’t have three wives, and they’re doomed. But they all want to go back to their mums,” said Dave Bills, who runs a foundation to help the boys.
Lost boy Gideon Barlow told of trying to give his mother a Mother’s Day present, but she ordered him to stay away. When he tried to obtain a Medicaid card, he learned that his 73-year-old father was drawing Social Security funds in Gideon’s name. Social Security allows retirement-age parents to collect money to help support children ages 16 or younger who are living at home.
Why no criminal charges?
These are shocking abuses of hundreds of children, and some legislators have asked why parents have not been charged with child abandonment or neglect. Utah Attorney General Mark Shurtleff says the boys do not want to testify against their parents.
He points out that child abandonment is only a misdemeanor in Utah. He feels that prosecution for a misdemeanor would not change the behavior of parents who are willing to cast out their own children on orders from a man they regard as God’s representative on earth.
There are also practical considerations. “If I charge one, do I charge 800? Do I have the resources?” Shurtleff asked.
Safety net and court-supervised probation
With a $700,000 federal grant, his office has formed a “Safety Net Committee,” which tries to help the lost boys get an education, provides other resources for those escaping abuses in polygamous groups, and discusses ways to inform those in polygamous groups of available services. Some women in more “moderate” polygamous groups are on the committee, and Shurtleff praises the fact that the state is now talking “to” polygamists not just “about” them. His office has produced “a primer” about the beliefs and practices of different polygamous groups and how distressed members can get services from public and private organizations.
Brock Belnap tries to help the lost boys function in society by getting those who commit crimes sentenced to court-supervised probation with counseling instead of jail.
Emancipation bill passed
The legislature’s only response to the plight of the lost boys was to pass a law allowing children to petition for emancipation at age 16, so the boys can enter into contracts, enroll in school, rent an apartment, get medical care, or even stay in a shelter without their parents’ permission. Utah’s unemancipated minors cannot stay in a shelter for more than eight hours without parental permission.
Like most states, Utah already had a law providing for emancipation, but the law passed in 2006, HB30, describes conditions for obtaining it in greater detail.
Even this modest effort was controversial. Eagle Forum and some legislators stewed over alleged government interference in family privacy. Some feared teenagers would seek emancipation to get out of a few household chores. Others claimed it would be used to get abortions.
The bill’s supporters pointed out that a petitioner had to be able to prove he was able to support himself and manage his own finances. Few teenagers could qualify, they said.
Thus, by their own admission, HB30 was an inadequate solution for the 16- and 17-year-olds and no help at all for the 12- to 15-year-olds.
Lost boys file civil suit
The greater hope for change in a barbaric religious practice lies with a civil suit filed by six lost boys in 2004 against the FLDS and now in settlement negotiations. They seek money for the psychological and economic damages inflicted on them. An FLDS attorney says the suit is without merit because churches have a constitutional right to set their own standards for ex-communication.
Joanne Suder, a Baltimore, Maryland, attorney represents the lost boys and Brent Jeffs, who seeks damages for alleged child sexual abuse by his uncle, Warren Jeffs.
High child fatality rates
The child fatality rates in the FLDS also raise concern and questions. In 2005, Flora Jessop and Linda Walker, director of the Child Protection Project at www.childpro.org, went to the Isaac Carling and “Babyland” cemeteries in Hildale and Colorado City, videotaped all marked and unmarked graves, and compiled all available information about the deaths. Children are buried in both, but Babyland is exclusively for babies.
Among the 324 marked graves were 180 of children under the age of eighteen. In addition, there were 58 unmarked graves of babies.
Jessop and Walker also list 74 FLDS members who they know have died, but whose headstones are not in the Carling or Babyland cemeteries. Among them are 18 minor children plus eight stillbirths. Some of these children may be in the unmarked graves, they note.
Many deaths and birth defects
Jessop says she saw and heard of many deaths of children while she was growing up in the FLDS towns. After she and her grandmother went to the police and reported that Jessop’s father was sexually abusing her, Jessop was held in solitary confinement from age 13 to 16. Her room was next to the sect’s birthing center, which her uncle was in charge of; Jessop says she became aware during that period that many babies died and were buried in the backyard of the birthing center.
She also has seen many children with severe birth defects. Two of her siblings have cleft palates. Another sister was born with dislocated hips. Nothing was done about it until the baby was about 18 months old. Then both of her hips had to be broken, and she was put in a body cast for months.
Two defectors claim that some FLDS women pray to have Down’s syndrome children because such children have docile temperaments and because the mothers get $500/month in public assistance for a handicapped child.
Are causes of death recorded?
CHILD wrote to the Utah Attorney General asking if there were death certificates and causes of death recorded for all the children buried in the FLDS cemeteries. If not, we asked, “shouldn’t criminal charges be filed for improper disposal of remains? And if some of the babies died from abuse or neglect, shouldn’t that also be a criminal matter?”
The Attorney General’s office replied that they did not have the resources to investigate those concerns, but there is no statute of limitations on homicide, so if we have evidence of homicide, we should bring it to their attention.
Washington County prosecutor Brock Belnap says his office and other law enforcement agencies are investigating the deaths.
Jessop charges that the Mohave County, Arizona, coroner signed off on many FLDS deaths without even seeing the bodies.
Jessop says that until about seventeen years ago the FLDS opposed medical care. Today they have their own pharmacy as well as state-licensed physicians and nurses who are church members and live in Short Creek. Indeed, some women get far too much medication today, Jessop and others charge. They say that women are put on high doses of psychotropic drugs to keep them subservient.
Improper civil commitments alleged
Jessop also believes many FLDS girls are improperly committed to mental institutions to keep them from acting on independent ideas. Jessop says she was threatened with commitment to a mental institution if she refused to marry the man chosen for her.
In Utah and Arizona, children can be committed to mental institutions on school counselors’ signatures, Jessop says. She knows of 15 FLDS women committed to the Guidance Center, a state-accredited psychiatric hospital in Flagstaff, Arizona. A hospital record for one woman stated she was being discharged from her fourth commitment because she “atoned” for her bad behavior toward her husband, Jessop says.
Jessop charges authorities with a double standard on rescuing girls from polygamy. While massive effort was put into finding 14-year-old Elizabeth Smart, who was kidnapped by a Mormon fundamentalist to be his plural wife, law enforcement has not tried to find Jessop’s sister, Ruby, who disappeared after being forced into a plural marriage at age 14 and nearly hemorrhaging to death on her “wedding night,” Jessop charges.
Comment
Utah and Arizona looked the other way for nearly half a century after the failure of the Short Creek raid to stamp out polygamy in 1953. Now they seem to be walking a fine line of letting consenting adults practice polygamy, but filing criminal charges for some other violations of law.
The other violations are massive. In Utah, sex with 14- and 15-year-olds is illegal if one partner is seven years older than the other. Sex with 16- and 17-year olds is illegal if one partner is ten years older. Arizona prohibits all sexual intercourse with persons under eighteen years old. Unlawful sexual conduct with minors is the norm in the FLDS and some other polygamous clans, yet to our knowledge Utah has prosecuted only one case of unlawful sexual conduct in the past decade—that of the girl who called from the truck stop in 1998.
One case each of the more serious crimes of rape, facilitating rape, and incest have been charged in Utah since then, but there must be many more sexual abuses that are not charged.
No federal charges for sex trafficking
The federal government should be prosecuting the trafficking of under-aged girls between the polygamous communities in the American Southwest and Canada and across state lines.
Authorities complain that victims will not come forward nor willingly testify. Those aspects add to the state’s challenges, but they are not an insurmountable barrier to prosecution. David Leavitt won a conviction of Tom Green even though his wives would not testify against him, and a plural wife was recently compelled to testify under subpoena in Mohave County.
Are providers reporting abuse and neglect?
If FLDS does indeed now have state-licensed health care providers caring for its members, why aren’t they reporting abused children to state child protection services? Doctors and nurses are state-mandated abuse and neglect reporters. They can do the math to count backwards nine months and figure out that girls are victims of sexual abuse. If the state began prosecuting health care providers for failure to report child abuse, their attitudes might change in a hurry.
It is unbelievable that hundreds of boys have been expelled from their homes and no criminal charges have been filed. Utah Attorney General Shurtleff says the boys do not want their parents prosecuted, but many sexual abuse victims do not want their perpetrators prosecuted either. Indeed, most abused and neglected children may not “want” their parents prosecuted, but there are times when the benefits of prosecution outweigh the child’s emotional conflict.
Prosecution would at least send a message that child abandonment is a crime, and without it there will likely be hundreds more boys wandering around the Southwest. Utah’s new law clarifying their right to emancipation at age 16 is a severely inadequate tool for preventing the pain and suffering the lost boys experience.
Utah ought to make dumping a 12-year-old boy off in the desert more than a misdemeanor. Utah has a law at Utah Code 76-5-110 making it a felony to neglect a disabled child (unless the caregiver has religious objections to medical care), but it is not a felony to neglect a “normal” child.
Is polygamy a constitutional right?
Some expect that the U.S. Supreme Court will soon rule that polygamy per se is a constitutional right because of the High Court’s ruling against sodomy laws in Lawrence v. Texas, 539 U.S. 58 (2003). Law professor Marci Hamilton points out, however, that the Court explicitly declined to endorse same-sex marriage in that ruling. There is a difference between the state allowing sexual behavior between consenting adults and the state giving it formal recognition in a civil marriage contract.
The state has a compelling interest in protecting inheritance and property rights of women and children and the legitimacy of children. It has an interest in preventing the birth defects caused by incest.
As a democracy, it has an interest in fostering the participation of all citizens in government. Political science professor Thomas Flanagan points out that constitutional democracies have arisen only from monogamous societies and argues that polygamous societies are inherently unequal and anti-democratic.
For all these reasons and more, polygamy should remain illegal.
Sources include John Llewellyn, Polygamy Under Attack (Agreka Books, 2004); Jon Krakauer, Under the Banner of Heaven: a Story of Violent Faith (NY: Doubleday, 2003); Salt Lake Tribune, March 13 and Aug. 23, 2005; Feb. 11, 14, and 19, 2006; March 2, 13, 26, and 28, 2006; and June 21, 2006; Tri-State News Network, Aug. 1, Aug. 3, and Aug. 15-18, 2005; Arizona Republic, Aug. 1, 2004; KSL-TV, Aug. 28, 2004, and www.childbrides.org.
Severe birth defect common in polygamous community
More than half the world’s cases of a severe birth defect called fumarase deficiency have been found in the twin towns of Hildale, Utah, and Colorado City, Arizona, controlled by the polygamous Fundamentalist Latter-Day Saints Church.
The towns have a total population of under 10,000, yet Dr. Theodore Tarby has seen twenty children with fumarase deficiency in these towns since 1990. By comparison, only thirteen cases have been reported elsewhere in the entire world.
The actual total in the FLDS may be much higher than twenty since babies may have died before they were diagnosed with the condition by a medical doctor.
None of the FLDS children with fumarase deficiency has an IQ above 25. Many cannot sit up. Some can barely even move their head and eyes. Frequent and powerful seizures are common. Portions of brain matter are replaced by water. An MRI of the brain of one fumarase-deficient child showed that more than half the brain was missing.
Geneticists agree that the high rate of this birth defect is due to the in-breeding in FLDS with most of the population descended from two patriarchs and with a self-proclaimed prophet arranging all the marriages within the group. It is a simple matter of a 25% likelihood of giving birth to a child with fumarase deficiency when two carriers of the recessive gene for it marry.
Tarby believes the number of FLDS children with fumarase deficiency could rise into the hundreds within a couple of generations.
Birth defects irrelevant in divine mandate
Tarby has explained the science at a meeting of about 150 FLDS members and to many parents individually, but they do not appear to care. “They consider these children to be their responsibility from God and their duty is to produce as many children as possible,” he said. “Sister-wives” often help each other care for handicapped children.
Tarby told one father that his child was handicapped because the father and mother were related. The father replied, “Up there, we’re all related.”
Tarby wasn’t sure whether the man meant “up there in Colorado City” or “up there in heaven.”
Prophet can’t use science to arrange marriages
Another physician doubted the current prophet, Warren Jeffs, could find any outsiders who would want to marry into his church even if he looked for them. Furthermore, a former FLDS member said, Jeffs claims to be carrying out God’s orders when he picks marriage partners. If FLDS members found out he was using science to arrange marriages, they might doubt his status as God’s representative on earth.
Arizona gives more than $12 million a year to help indigent residents of Colorado City pay for health-insurance premiums. The Arizona Departments of Health Services and of Economic Security have been providing services for fumarase-deficient victims and their caregivers for fifteen years, but say federal law prohibits them from disclosing the costs.
Taken from The Phoenix New Times, Dec. 29, 2005; Deseret News, Feb. 9, 2006; and Salt Lake City Tribune, Feb. 11, 2006.
I’m starting to think that this is the first time that you have heard of this cult, and that you don’t know the scale of cooperation that has developed in recent years to end their breeding of girls for child rape.
Is this raid your first awareness of this cult?
Perhaps a couple of those kids will make it...go on and have great live with joy, love and FREEDOM. Wow, you're a bundle of hope.
Kids don't care much about "birth mothers", just the woman, or as in some Plains Indian cultures, women, they call Mom, Mommy, Mama, or whatever.
Another sad fact is that people use this situation to profess Christian ideals, loving their neighbor, forgiving and accepting, whilst slamming the Mormon church. Less thought or work is given to the needs of the children involved during discussions in this forum than the long past sins of church fathers in another denomination. Although I'm not Mormon, I know that the FLDS is not a part of the Utah church. Not that it matters much to these kids. Nor are the comments productive. They are destructive. How do they help anyone? I will now be stoned by the bloc o' Mormon haters with their righteous rocks of indignation. Ah well.....I'll join you in exiting, stage right.
“Try listening to the women who were able to leave such a cult, or read their books.THEN comment.”
Were those books about this specific group, and these specific children, and these specific mothers? Have these women given sworn affidavits related to specific events that took place within this group, naming specific individuals?
If not, they don’t have one damned thing to do with this case. That’s what’s so remarkable about these threads, the number of participants who’ve drawn conclusions of guilt on numerous counts, and not one thing has been proven.
They just heard this and read that, so these people are guilty of everything they’ve heard and read.
It’s a fishing expedition. I think polygamous cults should be broken up, but not with methods that victimize children and force them to bear the brunt of the heavy and clumsy hand of the law.
Here we have reports of how the Great State of Texas cares for the juveniles in their care:
http://toysoldier.wordpress.com/2007/03/07/sexual-abuse-scandal-rocks-texas-juvenile-prison-system/
That should fill everyone with confidence that the FLDS kids are in great hands, with all the excellent oversight of the state’s juvenile detention facilities.
“According to the Dallas Morning News more than 750 rape complaints were filed against guards from the Texas Youth Commission. Apparently only 88 acts have been confirmed, but the likelihood is that the majority of the accusations are true.”
“It’s a fishing expedition. I think polygamous cults should be broken up, but not with methods that victimize children and force them to bear the brunt of the heavy and clumsy hand of the law.”
Took you two sentences to say what took me two paragraphs.
“Took you two sentences to say what took me two paragraphs.”
Well,thanks, but I rambled around a while before I got to the two sentences.
Foster parents in general have little to no rights, have all the legal liability of caring for children that have been traumatized physically and emotionally, and get very little kudos for doing such a fantastic job (in the vast majority of cases).
I think it's very easy to go gunning after foster parents when the people who are truly in question are the bio parents and CPS. All foster parents do is try to pick up the pieces of the shattered lives of these children and give them a soft place to fall.
To vilify all of them because of the actions of a very few is simply wrong. To try to shift the argument away from the overreaching hand of the government and/or alleged abuse of the bio family is lazy and shameful.
Although thier own efforts to help heal these children are heroic, good foster parents will tell you that the real heroes are the children that they serve.
Texas 911 Calls Linked To 33-Year-Old in Colo
Woman Has History of False Claims
By David Fahrenthold
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, April 24, 2008
I see that Wingnut Daily is trying to hold on to it’s nickname. Yeah, those bastards the Texas Rangers. Stupidity knows no bounds.
OK, if you've had any "problems" with what the laws on our penal codes say is "abuse," I would assume you've lobbied our government in some manner to change them; otherwise, I find the timing a little bid odd for it to become a "sudden" issue for you.
Crying about how a 13 year old was married off to a 50 year old man, welp, that happens all over the world every day, folks. Is it right? No. Are we running into Africa or Syria and yanking young women out of their homes based on that truth? No. It's their “custom”. Acceptable there but not here? A dilemma.
You know, there's just a teeny, weeny, small issue here that you forgot to mention that kind of destroys your argument, and that's called "national sovereignty." (Despite the Left's claims to the contrary, the US has not declared itself to be the police force of the world.) Oh, and BTW, it's only an American who is already predisposed to hand over a 13 yo to an already 50 yo married man that this situation constitutes a "dilemma." (For the rest of us, not exactly a big tug of war as to whether you remove a victim of statutory rape from the paws of an already married man--who may also be a pedophile--but who already has a harem of 2 or 3 or 4 all the way up to 40 or so wives).
Do you spank your child? Is it right? Some say yes, some scream abuse. There's no way to make an unbrella declaration without some parent and/or some child having pain. That's a very sad reality.
"Pain" isn't usually the issue CPS acts on. Rather it's usually anything that leaves a mark or is an obvious assault. (Of course, with liberals as social workers, this could change more & more)
Another sad fact is that people use this situation to profess Christian ideals, loving their neighbor, forgiving and accepting, whilst slamming the Mormon church.
Tell you what. Christ can hear you in prayer. (Why don't get on his case for the way he "slammed" the religious Pharisees of His day as He went about practicing his ideals, loving his neighbors, and forgiving & accepting others...well, at least that way you'll show some consistency).
I will now be stoned by the bloc o' Mormon haters with their righteous rocks of indignation.
Hmmm...I seemed to recall Jesus being a bit on the "indignant" side when he took a whip & overturned the money-changers' tables in the temple. I guess by your standards that would have made Jesus a "money changer hater," eh? (And tell us again why it's OK for you to stone other posters in here with your condescending "righteous rocks" by accusing them of being "haters?")
LOL
God bless you. I know it won't be an easy job...
Here’s one from “this cult”:
John Nicholson worked for church-run companies. Sundays were spent at the temple, where Uncle Roy told followers he would live forever. Kathy Jo believed him. He died when she was 15. She began to see her faith as “a big lie.”
She grew rebellious at the church-run Alta Academy, where Warren Jeffs was headmaster. He forbade students from watching TV. “Hard metallic music,” he’d preach, “is the devil.”
Jeffs made girls wear “prairie dresses” of the same fabric — “we looked like we were on a wagon train.” If students disobeyed, they were beaten, physically or emotionally.
“We had to pray Warren’s way,” Nicholson said. “We got to sing songs that Warren approved. He just systematically ripped us of every individual thought, or action or unique trait you could possibly have.”
Caught passing a note to a boy, Kathy Jo was expelled and sent to work at a church-run factory. There, she fell in love with a man named Matt. He was seven years her senior, worldly, but also questioning the faith.
They eloped, married by a justice of the peace. The church refused to sanction the union. Their families shunned them.
(snip)
http://www.rickross.com/reference/polygamy/polygamy872.html
and another:
Polygamist sect leader Warren Steed Jeffs was found guilty Tuesday of being an accomplice to rape for using his religious authority to push a 14-year-old girl into a marriage she did not want.
Jeffs stood with his hands folded and didn’t appear to react as the verdict was read.
A few feet away, his accuser had tears in her eyes.
“When I was young my mother taught me that evil flourishes when good men do nothing,” said Elissa Wall, the prosecution’s star witness, who was “placed” by Jeffs in an arranged marriage at 14.
She told reporters that the trial “was not about religion or a vendetta, it was simply about child abuse and preventing further abuse.”
“The easy thing would have been to do nothing, but I followed my heart,” she said, urging other girls and young women who feel trapped by polygamy to come forward.
(snip)
http://www.rickross.com/reference/polygamy/polygamy724.html
And from just one article:
Lenore Holm discovered the penalty for dissent in this theocratic community. She objected six years ago when the prophet came for her then-15-year-old daughter, Nicole. Jeffs told the mother that he had selected her teenager to marry a 39-year-old man. “I told Warren I would never give my consent to have my daughter marry that man,” she said. “He didn’t say much because he was so angry. He told us to get out.” The entire family was ordered out of their home.
Ruth Stubbs was 15 when she asked then-prophet Rulon Jeffs, Warren Jeffs’ father, if she could marry her sweetheart, Carl Cooke. The senior Jeffs said he’d “take it up with the heavenly father,” Stubbs recalled. When she returned, accompanied by her sister’s husband, Rodney Holm, Rulon Jeffs told her: “It comes to me that you belong to Rod.” Stubbs said she burst into tears. “He asked if I was willing to do whatever the prophet asks and I said I was,” Stubbs recalled in a recent interview. “They didn’t even give me 24 hours.”
Richard Holm, a Colorado City town councilman, had both of his wives and his children taken from him and given to his brother. Then he was kicked out of town. “Warren told me that the Lord had told him to get rid of me,” Richard Holm recalled. “I thought there was some kind of misunderstanding.” Church rules provided no avenue for appeal.
Sam Icke was one of more than 400 youths expelled. They are now known as the Lost Boys. His crime was having a girlfriend. He met with Jeffs before his exile. “He asked me graphic sex details and took notes,” recalled Icke, who was 18 at the time. “I was told to repent, so I went on a repenting spree. I wanted to stay. I was afraid, like a bird being pushed out of its nest. My dad got a call a few days later from Warren and he said I should leave.”
The boys said FLDS leaders often sent police to harass and ticket them. Some boys said they left because they couldn’t pay their fines. “The cops would stalk me and try to give me curfew violation tickets,” said Carl Ream,, 17, who was thrown out at age 14. John Jessop, also exiled at 14, said police would wait for him to get home at night, then cite him for a curfew infraction. “The cops care more about religion than the law,” he said.
“If there was a young kid in town they didn’t like, they would get rid of him,” said Paul Musser, the former (police) dispatcher. “I was in the station. I heard all the calls. The police were watching for people they thought were not good influences. They would wait for probable cause or maybe they wouldn’t.”
Pennie Petersen was born and raised in Colorado City. Independent-minded even as a child, she read voraciously, even books banned by the FLDS like the works of Zane Grey and Louis L’Amour. Yet all the time, she said, she was fending off sexual abuse from every direction. “My best friend got married at 14. Her husband … started getting on me. I went to my parents; big mistake…. The prophet Leroy Johnson decided I should marry [the abuser],” Petersen recalled. “I’d be his fifth wife and he was 48.”
Internal frictions mounted as Jeffs imposed increasingly draconian punishments. He called a rare town meeting in January 2004 and read the names of 21 men he called “master deceivers,” including Colorado City Mayor Dan Barlow. They were excommunicated, and Jeffs gave their wives and children to other men. “Warren looked at us and said, ‘You know what you have done,’ “ recalled Isaac Wyler, who was on the list and didn’t know why. The 21 were instantly divorced by Jeffs’ decree, and their families were ordered to stop talking to them. “He told us to keep working, keep sending him money, and to repent from afar,” Wyler said. “I sent him a 25-page letter of repentance listing anything I might have done. He never answered my letter.”
In 2004, Brent Jeffs named his uncle Warren Jeffs in a civil suit seeking damages for alleged sexual abuse suffered as a boy. He charged that his uncle routinely sodomized him as a 5-year-old in the bathroom at an FLDS school where Warren Jeffs was a teacher and principal. Brent Jeffs kept quiet for years, he said, until the nightmares became unbearable. He said he would wake screaming, “Don’t hurt me! Don’t hurt me!” When he finally told his family, two of his brothers said the same abuse happened to them. Warren Jeffs did not respond to the suit. He has not been seen in public since the lawsuit was filed. Brent Jeffs, now 23, is seeking a default judgment. His brother Clayne shot himself in the head shortly after sharing his long-held secret. “I have no doubt our son’s death was due to Warren,” said Ward Jeffs, Brent and Clayne’s father. “He would put the fear of God into people, telling them that perfect obedience assures heaven. Now he’s running like a scared rabbit. Eventually the man will have to pay for doing such bad things to people.”
Colorado City Police Officer Sam Roundy and another officer were decertified last year and lost their badges. The church hierarchy has relocated to a sprawling compound in Eldorado, Texas, where a new temple recently was completed. Enclaves have emerged in South Dakota and Colorado. FLDS groups also operate in Nevada, Idaho, British Columbia and Mexico.
http://www.rickross.com/reference/polygamy/polygamy453.html
There’s lots of information available . . . if you look. Here’s a good starting place: http://www.rickross.com/groups/polygamy.html
Here’s a short video: http://bankingonheaven.com/flash/BankingTrailer092006.html
And some books:
Escape by Carolyn Jessop and Laura Palmer
Daughter of the Saints: Growing Up In Polygamy by Dorothy Allred Solomon
Banking on Heaven by Jon Krakauer, Ruth Cooke, Elaine Jeffs, and Carolyn Jessop
Colorado City Polygamists: An Inside Look for the Outsider by Benjamin G. Bistline
His Favorite Wife: Trapped in Polygamy by Susan Ray Schmidt
Under the Banner of Heaven by Jon Krakauer
God’s Brothel: The Extortion of Sex for Salvation in Contemporary Mormon and Christian Fundamentalist Polygamy and the Stories of 18 by Andrea Moore-Emmett
Shattered Dreams: My Life as a Polygamist’s Wife by Irene Spencer
Stolen Innocence: My Story of Growing Up in a Polygamous Sect, Becoming a Teenage Bride, and Breaking Free of Warren Jeffs by Elissa Wall and Lisa Pulitzer
Inside the World of Warren Jeffs by Dr. Carole Western
The Polygamists: A History of Colorado City, Arizona by Benjamin G. Bistline
Inside the World of Warren Jeffs: The Power of Polygamy by Carole A. Western
________________________________
A seven-member Priesthood Council once governed the FLDS church but the council lost in a power struggle that resulted in “one-man rule”. People were like a big family. In recent years, however, the increasingly secretive FLDS church has tightened its grip on its members. They changed from a religion to a cult, an organized crime cult. It’s all about money, sex, and power.
One of the most recent contracts awarded to JNJ was for restoring habitat at Clark County’s Wetlands Park area. JNJ was to remove invasive tamarisk trees and replace them with native trees and shrubs in what is an ecologically fragile park on the east side of the valley. However, instead of improving habitat, the county says JNJ killed hundreds of expensive trees that were raised just for this project. One estimate of the damage is more than $500,000.
Paragon Contractors Corporation, another FLDS construction company, was fined more than $10,000 by the U.S. Department of Labor for employing minors aged 12, 13 and 15, and failing to pay them for their work.
In 1985 Arizona allowed Colorado City to incorporate, which made the town eligible to receive state and federal grants. Since then it has received over $1.8 million from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development to pave streets, upgrade fire equipment and build a water-storage tank. Hildale got $94,000 for its fire station. And the government-financed airport on the edge of Colorado City cost $2.8 million.
The Defense Department awarded $1.2 million in contracts to an aircraft parts supplier linked to the FLDS.
New Era Manufacturing also received a $900,000 federal small-business loan in 2005. John Nielsen, a former employee who worked for the company when it was known as Utah-based Western Precision in 2005, said in an affidavit as part of a civil lawsuit that church members were made to work for little or no wages. He and other sect members thought their work would bring them redemption, while $50,000 to $100,000 in company profits were given each month to the church “and/or” Jeffs.
Dan Barlow, who moved into a St. George home after being expelled by Jeffs, is the father of 71 children, who at the time of his exile ranged in age from 1 1/2 to 53. Jeffs reassigned Dan Barlow’s wives and children, including Gideon’s mother and his six full siblings, to other men. Last July, Jeffs ordered his brother to kick him out. The Glausers agreed to take him in. Stacha Glauser recalled her astonishment when Barlow’s parents willingly relinquished their son. “It was just not that big a deal,” she said. Barlow puts it less subtly: “Once you leave or you’re kicked out, no one gives a damn about you.” But the elder Barlow continued to use his son to claim government benefits, drawing Social Security funds in his name. In addition to Barlow, Dan Barlow has at least eight minor children living with their mothers in Colorado City.
With God ordering fraud, there is plenty of it.
Many plural wives claim they don’t know the whereabouts of their children’s father. As many as 50% of Hildale residents were on public assistance in 2001; 33% were on food stamps in 1998 compared to Utah’s statewide average of 4.7%. In 1997 every school-age child in Colorado City was living below the poverty level.
The twin towns have received millions of dollars from the federal government for housing and street improvements.
Colorado City got $2.8 million for an airport, which prophet Jeffs has used for his chartered Lear jet.
In 2005, Colorado City’s tiny fire department received $350,000 in Homeland Security funds—the state’s third largest Homeland Security grant.
Arizona has taken over the Colorado City school system because of gross mismanagement of public funds. (*that’s a story in itself for another post)
The FLDS owns property in Texas, in the twin towns of Colorado City and Hildale on the Utah-Arizona border, in Benjamin Hills, Mexico (south of Nogales in the state of Sonora) and another near Encinada, Baja, in Canada, in Custer County, South Dakota, and in Mancos, Colorado.
Local historian and former member of the sect, Benjamin Bistline said 90 percent of people in the area are blood relatives of two men — John Y. Barlow and Joseph Smith Jessop. They claim to be the chosen people, the chosen few, and their claim is they marry closely to preserve the royal bloodline.
“CPS first goes to the home and interviews the child and the parents. MOST of the calls are followed by determining if there was abuse or just a random call. If there are difficulties very often the family is set up with counseling appointments, anger management and substance abuse help for parents and ongoing visits. In these cases, children are NOT removed. CPS even does family counseling and parenting help( like the nanny show) by therapists IN the home.
Only if there appears to be serious abuse is the child removed ( medically verified sexual or physical abuse ) or parents who are so unfit ( drug users, etc)”
I’m sick of hearing them held up as social angels. They are anything but. They are State, and don’t tell me the State doesn’t try to destroy the family. Not after I’ve watched them do it.
Prescott Daily Courier - a four part series written by Al Herron
Focusing on polygamy on the Arizona - Utah line 6/30/03
Something very disturbing is happening up along the Arizona - Utah border. It is illegal, immoral, traumatic for most of the people involved, and you and I help pay for it. We’re talking about polygamy.
Those who have lived in Arizona for more than a few years have heard about the renegade Mormon settlement up in Colorado City AZ and Hilldale UT. (It is really one community with the state line going through it.) Do not confuse this group with mainstream Mormons who gave up polygamy over a century ago.
Not much space for history, but we need some: The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (LDS) was founded in 1830 as a religion which advocated polygamy. Joseph Smith, the founder, had more than 30 wives. Brigham Young, his successor and the church’s most important leader, had from 21 to 56 wives, depending on how you define marriage. Church doctrine said that a man needed at least three wives to be able to attain the highest level of heaven.
The LDS settled in Utah in 1847 and subsequently applied for statehood, but Congress made it clear that the Utah Territory would not become a state as long as the Mormons practiced polygamy. Congress also passed legislation making plural marriages illegal in U.S. territories, but Brigham Young and the church refused to give it up. The U.S. military forcibly removed Young as territorial governor in 1858, but he remained the most influential person in the territory until his death in 1877.
The LDS church did renounce polygamy in 1890, and Utah was admitted to the union six years later. But those two events did not mean that all Mormons changed overnight — many continued with plural marriage in enclaves around Utah.
One of those groups moved to the Arizona Strip in the 1930s. They are still there, still practicing polygamy, openly and brazenly, even though it is illegal in both states.
I was astonished to learn what goes on up there.
This is the first of four columns dealing with the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints — which we shall shorten to FLDS. Other polygamous groups still exist in Utah, but the one in Colorado City/Hilldale is the only one legally using this name. The FLDS also have a smaller branch in Canada and another in Mexico — which comes in handy when someone is running from the law, or to exchange girls for “spiritual marriage.”
Two people helped greatly with these columns. John Dougherty, a reporter for the Phoenix New Times, spent five months investigating the FLDS church, and has written several articles about it. Much of what I’ve written stems from his articles — with consent from Dougherty and the New Times.
Flora Jessop was born into an FLDS family in Hilldale. She ran away at age 13, but was caught and brought back, and was kept locked in one room for the next three years. She escaped again and now lives in Phoenix — married, with two children — but the rest of her family is still FLDS. Mrs. Jessop sent me additional information.
The next column will be about life, marriage, and making babies in this polygamous community. It’s different, to say the least.
Then a column about the school situation, which is outrageous. The FLDS members took all of their children out of the public school system in 2000. But they still elect the public school board, and that board now uses tax money to benefit church schools and officials.
Lastly, a column about how our tax dollars are being used to feed and support the huge FLDS families and pay for their medical care.
The Arizona Constitution forbids polygamy, but our legislature and governors seem to have closed their eyes to it.
Stay tuned.
Polygamy is alive and flourishing within the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (FLDS). This sect in Colorado City AZ and Hildale UT is not affiliated with the mainstream Mormon church. In the last column we reviewed their history; today we look at life, marriage, and making babies.
The FLDS leader is called the Prophet, and he controls the members’ lives by allocating wives. The more wives and children a man has, the greater his stature in the community, and in heaven, so this is a big deal. The Prophet assigns a wife to a man without regard for her wishes. He can also remove wives and children from a man who disobeys the Prophet, and reassign them to someone else. This is spiritual control — you can’t get to heaven without the Prophet’s help.
Members believe that the Prophet has direct communication with God, and they treat him like God. He controls all levels of local government, plus the public school system, and most of the land in town — just like a medieval fiefdom. He tells members how to vote, and controls property through an FLDS collective called the United Effort Plan.
Colorado City was incorporated in 1985 because incorporation provides more tax income, but there has never been a contested election. Dan Barlow has been the one and only mayor. The City Council is still the same seven people. The population was 3,334 in 2000, but in 2002 only 86 people voted. There is an occasional contest for the School Board, but the FLDS candidate always wins. Almost all of these officials are openly polygamous.
Nowhere else in the United States is there an incorporated town controlled by a religion whose leader performs polygamous marriages and has several dozen wives himself.
Anyone who is in the religion and then leaves is an “apostate,” consigned to eternal hellfire. Any outsider is considered a “heathen.”
The church-controlled United Effort Plan owns most of the property. A worthy family can be assigned a building space but they pay for building their own house on it, and then it belongs to the U.E.P. Homes are built piecemeal and expanded as necessary — pay as you go, no mortgages. Since a home is rarely finished, the tax bill stays small. If a family leaves or is evicted, they own nothing. (Financial control also — you stay “in harmony” with the Prophet or lose your home.)
FLDS girls rarely get more than an eighth grade education. Dating is forbidden, and many girls like the idea of marrying early because it’s the only thing they know. They typically marry as teenagers and have 8 or 10 kids by the time they’re 30 — and a bloated body. Some are not eager to marry, but a father can ask the Prophet to assign his daughter to a husband anyhow, which may help that father get another wife for himself. (I am not making this up!)
Young men who are deemed unworthy are run out of town so they can’t compete for wives. Older men want the girls.
A man’s first wedding is legal; after that they are called “spiritual unions.” The Prophet just does it, and then the girl disappears into the home of her new husband. Spiritual marriage is good enough to get into heaven.
“Poofer” is FLDS slang for a girl who vanishes into her husband’s abode. “One day she’s here, the next day she’s gone. Poof!”
It’s extremely difficult for a girl to flee. She has no money, no transportation, the community is isolated, and the church will send out a posse to bring her back. (Physical control as well.) She must adopt the “keep sweet” mantra that the religion pounds into women’s heads.
One Prophet admitted, “We are in the business of making babies here.”
Colo. City district thriving, thanks to AZ taxpayers
7/28/03
Until the year 2000, all of the children in Colorado City AZ attended public schools. But then the FLDS Prophet, Rulon Jeffs, ordered the faithful to stop all contact with heathen and apostates — which meant anybody who is not FLDS. So about 650 children left the 950 student system. Imagine the chaos that resulted from this religious edict.
Even though all the church¹s children left, the School Board has remained 100 percent FLDS. Remember this as you read.
Most of the remaining students were from polygamist families also, but they belonged to a smaller, dissenting group called the 2nd Warders — apostates, doomed to hellfire — who live three miles away.
This is a very poor school district, and the board never tried to build its own schools. Instead, they leased space in buildings owned by the FLDS church. After the edict in 2000, the district did not need as much space, so even though some leases were paid up for several years in advance, the board relinquished most of it. Now the church has that space for its own schools.
Every negotiation was a sweetheart deal which favored the church at the expense of the taxpayers.
Next, the school board pleaded poverty to the newly created Arizona School Facilities Board. The facilities in Colorado City were indeed bad, so in 2001 the state built them a new $6 million K-12 school, and we taxpayers paid for it.
At about the same time, Arizona launched a program to provide a financial cushion for schools in the event of a rapid decline in enrollment —something usually caused by a major employer shutting down. After the FLDS suddenly removed two-thirds of the students, the Colorado City district qualified. They have received about $1.5 million per year for the past three years under this ‘rapid decline’ program, and will for three more years — about $9 million total. So we paid again.
FLDS teachers were forbidden to teach the heathen and apostate kids, so most of them moved to the new church schools. Most other employees stayed, and the public school district remains the largest employer in the area. It still has 100 employees, for only 300 students now — an outrageously high 3 to 1 ratio.
Every student is now bussed to the new school from outlying areas. And guess what — all the school bus drivers are FLDS who kept their jobs and earn an average salary of $30,000. (The new teachers earn $20,000.)
This amazes me! Starting with the Prophet¹s edict in 2000, the FLDS have crafted a scheme that defrauds Arizona taxpayers on several levels, and it seems that nobody even realizes it. Or nobody cares.
District School Supt. Alvin Barlow has been in his job longer than any other superintendent in the state, so he¹s knowledgeable. (Incidentally, he also has four secretaries and four administrative aides.)
Barlow goes to state surplus property sales and gets school equipment and supplies on the cheap, then shares them with the church schools.
One of the perks of being a public school official in Colorado City is free transportation. The district owns 15 vehicles (mostly big SUVs, vans, and pickups) which are assigned to various administrators and principals who happen to be FLDS. They¹re supposedly for official business, but they get a lot of personal use with the district paying for fuel, maintenance, and insurance. Free use of a large vehicle is a great benefit for a polygamist family.
This little 300 student district also bought an airplane last year — a used Cessna 210, for $220,000 — so the officials can get to meetings easier. Then they contracted with the son of the school board president to fly it for them.
Board President Bistline says, ‘If the people don¹t like it, they can go to the polls and get someone else.’
Next: the welfare rip off.
Polygamists also excell at ³bleeding the beast² 8/11/03
It was a nice coincidence that Jon Krakauer’s new book, Under the Banner of Heaven — A Story of Violent Faith, went on sale last month. It¹s about fundamentalist Mormons, and Krakauer confirms much of what I¹ve been writing. A best seller — I recommend it.
counts is the number of people living together. Consequently, they’re usually eligible for food stamps, child care, and
medical care at government expense.
The following numbers are estimates based on year-old statistics; and they’re all rising rapidly.
Arizona’s AHCCCS program provides most of the medical insurance for residents in Colorado City AZ. Last year over 4,000 residents were enrolled, costing the state about $8 million a year. I don¹t know what Utah does for those across the line in Hildale.
About half of the fundamentalists receive food stamps, compared to five percent statewide. This costs the state and federal governments over $3 million a year for those polygamists in Arizona.
Five years ago there were no Colorado City children getting child care assistance, but last year there were about 200 — which cost the state another $600,000. These benefits can be paid to care-providers who are related to the children, so sometimes one wife can get paid for taking care of another wife¹s kids.
Colorado City gets back about eight dollars in benefits for every dollar the residents pay in state taxes, while for the rest of Mohave County it¹s about one for one.
In the well publicized case of Tom Green and his five wives in Utah, the state documented that the Green family received $647,000 between 1989 and 1999. Then they estimated that the grand total (for a longer period) was over $1 million — just for this one family.
In addition to the public assistance programs, Colorado City has recently received about $2 million from HUD to pave streets, improve the fire department, and upgrade the water system. And the FAA built a $2.8 million airport that serves hardly anybody but FLDS leaders.
Remember also, last column we talked about the new $6 million school and $9 million in ‘rapid decline’ funds which the school board shrewdly harvested from the state after the Prophet withdrew two-thirds of the kids from the public school system.
The various FLDS prophets justify taking tax money like this by saying that it is really coming from the Lord. Fleecing the government is called ‘bleeding the beast’ by the Fundmentalists, and is regarded as a virtuous act. It¹s the Lord¹s way of using the system to take care of his chosen people.
Actually, ‘bleeding the beast’ goes back 160 years to Joseph Smith and Brigham Young. Young was about to be arrested in connection with it in Illinois in 1846, and this forced the LDS to leave Nauvoo early — in the middle of winter — causing great hardship.
Next time, a wrap-up: recent court decisions, need for legislation, and more.
AZ legislature should speak out on polygamy 8/25/03
We¹ve shown how the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (up on the Arizona - Utah border) marries teen-age girls against their will to older men with several wives already. Also, how they use public assistance programs to support their huge families, and how the school district is defrauding the state¹s taxpayers. They excel at ‘bleeding the beast.’
Three years ago, the Arizona Attorney General’s office began an investigation into charges of illegal marriage with underage girls, sexual assault, statutory rape, incest, and other such pleasantries up in Colorado City, but so far nothing has come of it. It¹s difficult to get witnesses because they are told by the Fundamentalist Mormon church that they will be shunned for life and then spend eternity in hell if they talk.
Also, the Arizona Auditor General¹s office has begun an investigation into practices of the Colorado City School Board. They routinely use the schools’ credit cards and vehicles for personal use. They spend funds extravagantly, such as buying an airplane, and then make the students raise money to go see The Wizard of Oz.
The students and teachers (none of whom are FLDS any longer) claim that the board members (who are all FLDS) are running the district primarily to benefit the private FLDS schools instead of its own schools.
County school officials told state officials that the district is spending state funds improperly, but nothing more has happened. It¹s an ‘ongoing investigation.’ I sure hope it gets there someday.
Recently the State of Utah prosecuted Colorado City police officer Rodney Holm for illegally cohabiting with his teen-age third wife, and the jury found him guilty. Hooray for Utah! They have more gumption than Arizona.
But then the Utah Attorney General said, ‘We are not prosecuting polygamy itself, but only the crimes, particularly against children, based on religious beliefs.’ Well, why not prosecute polygamy itself? It¹s illegal. I don¹t understand why prosecuting it seems to be unthinkable.
This Rodney Holm case will be appealed. Fundamentalist Mormons claim that they have a First Amendment right to practice their religion as they choose, even though in 1879 the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that ‘religious doctrine could not become superior to the law of the land.’ It will be interesting to watch.
Our Arizona Constitution explicitly forbids polygamy. Article XX says: ‘Polygamous or plural marriages, or polygamous cohabitation, are forever prohibited within this state.’ So why has it survived and flourished long after Arizona became a state?
Primarily, because the legislature has never enacted laws necessary to make polygamy a crime. Arizona has no law that says if a man has multiple wives he goes to jail or pays a fine, or some other penalty. The state cannot enforce laws that don¹t exist. So, the perpetrators do not become felons; they remain entitled to all the benefits of law-abiding citizens. They continue fleecing the tax system without fear of prosecution or removal from office for being polygamists.
Now you¹re wondering why the Arizona legislature has never passed such laws, and I do not know the answer. I¹ve heard that it¹s because our legislature has been dominated by Mormons through the years, as it certainly is today, and they are personally sympathetic to polygamy even though the LDS church officially denounces it. But hearing that doesn¹t prove it.
In Arizona, several powerful political clans have polygamous backgrounds: the Flakes, Farnsworths, Udalls, Tenneys, and others. It could be awkward to criminalize what your grandfather did that brought you into the world.
I would like to hear our legislative leaders speak about polygamy — how they feel about it, their interest in eradicating it, and what efforts they¹ve made.
Wouldn¹t you?
Some thoughts on polygamy 9/8/03
There¹s been a startling development within the polygamist community up in Colorado City/Hildale. The FLDS prophet, Warren Jeffs, announced last month that all church services would be suspended immediately, and he would no longer perform polygamous marriages. Both suspensions are to last indefinitely. Imagine the shock.
The prophet said that he had received a revelation from God telling him that his members had been disobedient. Jeffs sermonized, ‘Until this people honor the word of God, this privilege (spiritual marriage) is withdrawn from them.’
Some observers say that the prophet took this action because of political infighting with the Barlow family. (John Y. Barlow founded the community, then called Short Creek, in the 1920s, and other Barlows hold many of the top political offices now.) Cynics say that Jeffs is preparing to flee the area ahead of Utah authorities. And, of course, I could claim that he read these columns in the Daily Courier and was overcome with great fear and trembling. Who knows?
(This one will be published next Monday, October 13. AL)
I¹m sorry that Bill Wolf thinks I¹ve been conducting a ³McCarthy-like anti-Mormon crusade.² He says that my ³diatribes² about Mormon control of the Arizona legislature, which even asked about the rumor that they might condone polygamy, ³is outrageous and morally reprehensible .... spews hatred and promotes religious bigotry .... is more at home in Nazi Germany.² Wow! But if he feels that way, others may also, so let¹s clear up a few things.
First, there is a big difference between the polygamist sect up on the Arizona - Utah border and mainstream Mormons. In each of my columns I pointed out that they are different groups. The polygamists are a tiny fraction of the Mormon faith, and their actions are an embarrassment to the others. Utah, which is 75 percent Mormon, is far ahead of Arizona in prosecuting polygamists.
I also made it quite clear that I do not know how mainstream Mormons really feel about polygamy today. The Arizona Constitution (adopted in 1912) says that polygamy shall forever be prohibited in this state, but we still have no laws to punish anybody who does it. The prevailing rumor is that our Mormon legislators remained sympathetic to polygamy through the years, and were unwilling to pass such legislation. So I asked about that rumor. If that makes somebody uncomfortable, I¹m sorry, but if it¹s a false rumor let¹s clear it up.
I asked Ken Bennett to let us know his thinking about polygamists and their fraudulent activities, and what is the feeling at the legislature. He is the senator from this district, and is also President of the Senate. Is it so terrible to politely ask an elected official for that information? (I said please.)
Bennett hasn¹t responded, which is his right, but I¹m quite sure those questions will come up again at election time if they aren¹t answered beforehand. Hopefully this issue will be raised with legislators all over the state.
The polygamy problem is just now coming to the forefront. On Sept. 26 the Arizona Republic had several articles about it — half of the front page, plus two full pages inside, plus opinion pieces by the Attorneys General from Arizona and Utah.
Something is finally starting to happen, and faster in Utah than in Arizona. I just hope that we can thaw the iceberg at our legislature a little bit.
In case Mr. Wolf missed it, Mormons really do control the Arizona legislature even though they make up only five percent of the population.
In the House, they hold these key positions: Speaker, Majority Leader, Speaker pro tem, Chairman of the Rules Committee, and Chairman of the Appropriations Committee.
In the Senate they hold: President, Majority Whip, Minority Leader, and Chairman of the Appropriations Committee.
It amazes me! That¹s about 80 percent of the top leadership spots in the hands of a 5 percent minority. They cannot dictate everything that gets done, but they sure can prevent anything they don¹t want.
I am not anti-Mormon. I think they are good people — hard working, conscientious, probably more honest and truthful than most. We have some in our family and love them dearly, but that doesn¹t mean that I¹m never going to question Mormon political activities in Arizona.
In Utah, with that 75 percent majority, they can do whatever they like — so long as they abide by the U.S. Constitution and don¹t try to impose a ‘tyranny of the majority.’
http://helpthechildbrides.com/articles/prescottcourier.htm
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