US polygamists' children flee amid church leadership crisis
 
Agence France-Presse
 
SALT LAKE CITY, Utah, (AFP) - Teenage daughters of polygamists from a fundamentalist offshoot of the US Mormon church are fleeing their families amid a sect leadership crisis, according to state officials.

Law enforcement and social services officials said several teenage girls had fled their families and the shadowy splinter sect of the Utah-based Mormon church over the past two weeks, apparently to avoid being married off to older men at a young age.

The flight began after the "prophet" of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (FLDS) -- which is not recognized by the mainstream Mormon church -- excommunicated more than 20 male members of his sect on January 10 and threatened to take away their wives and children.

The expulsion by leader Warren Jeffs, outraged many leading citizens of the two small desert towns where sect members live -- Hilldale and Colorado City, which lie along the border between Arizona and Utah, sources said.

At least three young girls seized the opportunity of the crisis to leave their families, and -- despite calls by the fathers to have them returned -- authorities in Utah and Arizona have put the girls into protective care.

"Currently in state custody, there is one girl in Utah and two in Arizona," said Elaine Tyler, a volunteer for the group, Help the Child Brides, in nearby St. George, Utah.

She said Utah authorities had departed from a practice of returning the runaways to the families and had offered them state protection amid concerns over the sect's practice of marrying off girls from the age of around 13.

"The prophet makes the calls as to who the girls will marry," Tyler told AFP.

"They have no say, they have no skills. They dress in pioneer clothing," she said explaining why the girls might have wanted to run away. "The girls are raised to think only of marriage."

Between 300 and 400 people live in each of the two FLDS polygamist enclaves, which earlier attracted the attention of Utah authorities concerned about unions between pubescent brides and older men.

"It's a complex social issue," said Ken Smith, sheriff of Washington County, in which one of the polygamist enclaves is located.

"We will not tolerate (any suspicion of) child sexual abuse and we try to help the children that leave," he said, adding that authorities wanted to help teenagers who rejected their strict communities to become "productive members of society."

More than a century after mainstream Mormon movement abandoned the practice of polygamy, small groups of believers in the practice remain scattered across the US west.

No longer members of the mainstream church, which excommunicates polygamists, they have established themselves under a variety of names and continue to hang onto polygamy as a central plank of their faith.

The sect teaches that men must have at least three wives in order to obtain the highest reward in heaven. It also teaches that wives and children may be taken from a man who does not follow the church's teachings.

Under their doctrine, a member who is excommunicated from the church for not following its lore must lose his "inheritance" -- including his wives, children and belongings.

Among the people who Jeffs expelled were Colorado City's Mayor Dan Barlow, 71, whose family is very prominent in the break-away sect, and his 80-year-old brother Louis, who had been seen as a prospective sect leader.

The expulsions are threatening to tear apart the two communities.

One of the men excommunicated by Jeffs, 35-year-old Ross Chatwin, told reporters in Colorado City on Friday that the sect's leader "had to be stopped" and compared him to Adolf Hitler.

Chatwin, who advocates polygamy but has only one wife and six children, said he was told he "would have to give up his wife and property," but vowed: "I intend to stand my ground."
 
Agence France-Presse
Originally published January 23, 2004
 
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