Honeymoon is over for US polygamists
 
Katherine Biele in Salt Lake City
The Scotsman - Scotland
 
FOR decades they have thought nothing of marrying a 15-year-old cousin who is also an aunt, but the 100,000-strong polygamist community in the United States is facing a new crackdown as those no longer willing to turn a "blind eye" confront what many consider to be no more than criminal behaviour.

A number of recent events in Arizona and Utah have refocused attention on plural marriage which has gone on quietly for many years despite being outlawed by mainstream church leaders and state authorities.

Most controversially a power struggle within the polygamy-orientated sect that dominates the town of Colorado City in Arizona has seen some men ex-communicated and their wives and children simply "reassigned" to other men.

And last week a member of the Kingstons, a large clan in Utah that has long-practised bigamy, was sentenced to a one-year prison term for taking as his wife a 15-year-old cousin who was also his aunt.

Now authorities in Arizona and Utah, with an eye on Colorado City, are stepping up investigations into the sect there - so-called fundamentalist Mormons - including concerns about forced marriages involving underage girls.

"We have all just turned a blind eye to what’s going on," said Utah attorney-general Mark Shurtleff. "It’s an embarrassment."

Shurtleff is at the forefront of a two-state investigation along the Arizona-Utah border involving Colorado City and Hildale, a nearby Utah town.

Both states have constitutions banning polygamy, but only Utah has enacted laws to criminalise it, although there have been few successful prosecutions. "It was not on my radar screen," said Shurtleff. "It just hasn’t been for 100 years of our history."

He is a Mormon, a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, which disavowed polygamy in 1890 amid federal pressure. But for the breakaway sect, which calls itself the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (FLDS), taking plural wives is an ecclesiastical mandate.

Along with Arizona attorney general Terry Goddard, Shurtleff is now concentrating efforts around Hildale and Colorado City, formerly known as Short Creek. Since the men’s ex-communication from the latter, three 16-year-old girls are known to have run away from the enclave. Two are in foster care in Phoenix, and the other is in state custody in Utah.

In Hildale last August, police officer Rodney Holm was convicted of bigamy and sexual misconduct with a minor whom he took as his third wife.

Shurtleff has now begun moves to decertify the police department in Hildale. "The law has not been there to protect women and children," he said. The town is "in the absolute control of a religious zealot".

Sex crimes are just part of the focus of criminal investigations. Shurtleff’s office is also investigating allegations of welfare fraud, tax evasion, and organised crime in which polygamist groups may launder money in offshore accounts.

Some former plural wives have formed a group, Tapestry Against Polygamy, designed to help those trying to break free from bigamous marriages.

Vicky Prunty, a founder of the Tapestry group, was raised a mainstream Mormon but began gathering with polygamist groups. She says that after her husband brought a second wife into the home, she began to question the lifestyle. But it was only after a two successive polygamous marriages that Prunty sought aid and ultimately helped form Tapestry.

However any fight to stamp out the practice of polygamy faces a community with both influence in places such as Salt Lake City and a willingness to fight tooth and nail for what they see as their human right.

Rodney Parker, an attorney for the FLDS community, has called the probe of the sect a "complete waste of taxpayer money".

Parker, who is not a member of the FLDS or the mainstream Mormons, believes the real issue is whether the institution of marriage will be extended to polygamists.

That is the issue at stake in the lawsuit filed earlier this month by a couple who have been denied a plural-marriage licence in Salt Lake County. The case will test the possible broader implications, beyond affirming privacy rights of homosexuals, of the US Supreme Court’s ruling on sodomy last June in the Lawrence v Texas case.

Shurtleff argues overturning the Texas sodomy law would open the door to challenges of other banned sexual behaviour, including polygamy.

But Dani Eyer of the American Civil Liberties Union of Utah, said the state will "have to step up to prove that a polygamous relationship is detrimental to society". "The model of the nuclear family as we know it in the immediate past is unique, and may not be necessarily be the best model. Maybe it’s time to have this discussion."

But some experts say the Utah couple will have a hard time using the Texas case - which involved private behaviour, not marriage - to apply to polygamy.

Andrea Moore Emmett, president of the Utah branch of the National Organisation for Women, agrees with Eyre that the nuclear family has changed. "But to understand polygamous relationships, you have to understand cult dynamics," she said. "In every case of polygamy, human rights are being violated - education is denied to young girls, marriages are forced, incest and physical abuse are practised."
 
NEWS.scotsman.com
Originally published Sunday, February 8, 2004
 
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