Utah A-G declares war on polygamy:
 B.C. ignores cult that is focus of attention in the U.S.
 
By Daphne Bramham
Vancouver Sun
 
Utah Attorney-General Mark Shurtleff grew up with evidence of polygamy all around him.

He went to school with polygamists' kids and even has some polygamists in his own Mormon family background.

"It was kind of an embarrassing fact of life in Utah that people just tried to ignore," says Shurtleff.

No more. Despite his background, Shurtleff and the Utah government are aggressively pursuing the estimated 20,000 to 30,000 polygamists in the state.

Right after Shurtleff was elected four years ago, county prosecutor David Leavitt -- brother of Gov. Michael Leavitt -- said he needed money and investigators to go after polygamists. He told the A-G that it was nearly impossible to prosecute, especially in Colorado City (population 10,000) and its twin city, Hildale.

Both -- like Bountiful, B.C. -- are owned and controlled by the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints or FLDS. Everyone from the mayor to the school principal to police officers are polygamists who are unwilling to accept that it is a criminal offence to have multiple wives and that taking 13- and 14-year-old girls as wives is sexual abuse.

The more Shurtleff learned, the more difficulty he had sleeping at night.

He kept thinking about all of the young girls being denied the opportunity to go to school or work, being handed over to older men and raped and about women and children treated as chattels.

Shurtleff quickly concluded that it was his responsibility to do something about it, even though several of his predecessors in the job were defeated for doing exactly what he was going to attempt.

He appointed a special polygamy prosecutor, who a year later helped convict Tom Green on four counts of bigamy and one charge of criminal non-support of his family.

What he and his officials determined is that wherever possible, they would lay bigamy charges -- the U.S. equivalent of Canada's polygamy offence. But the main thrust was to investigate and prosecute for rape and sexual abuse. They also decided they would use whatever laws possible to go after the "husbands," including welfare and medicaid fraud and tax evasion.

Shurtleff is also going after the police in Colorado City. Later this year, one officer will go before the state disciplinary board for failing to uphold the law.

The most recent tool Utah is using is the human trafficking law because it is well known that women and girls are frequently traded between Colorado City and Bountiful. U.S. President George Bush has made ending human trafficking a priority and because of that, Utah has squeezed $900,000 out of the national government for its anti-polygamy investigations.

Some of that money will also be used to help build supports, including a 24-hour domestic-violence hotline, shelters capable of accommodating FLDS women with their unusually large numbers of children, and lawyers to work on custody cases.

Shurtleff says unless women have safe places to live and secure access to their children, as well as job training and education, they are unlikely to provide evidence for criminal trials.

Right now, Shurtleff and other experts are also concerned that FLDS may be morphing into a more dangerous cult since Warren Jeffs succeeded his father, Rulon, as the leader or prophet two years ago.

As Jeffs cements control over Colorado City, Hildale and Bountiful, he is excommunicating men and reallocating their wives and children to other men.

Shurtleff is careful not to vilify Jeffs, since FLDS members believe he either speaks directly to God or is a God himself.

But Shurtleff says that under Jeffs, "it is clearly a fact that women do not have the right to education and jobs. They are forced to marry older men."

He says there are increasing numbers of men being excommunicated by Jeffs and their wives and children "reallocated" to other men.

Among those who may have been reallocated are some of Winston Blackmore's family. Blackmore is the former bishop of Bountiful. Jeffs demoted him last summer before wresting control of the government-supported Bountiful elementary-secondary school from Blackmore and his followers with the help of a B.C. Supreme Court order.

Jeffs is doing all of this, says Shurtleff, under the threat that people will burn in hell if they don't comply and under Jeffs' threat that he will bring back "blood atonement." Blood atonement is the sanctioned murder of "sinners" by slitting their throats and disembowelling them.

Some Utah legislators have warned that FLDS under Jeffs is no different from Afghanistan under the Taliban.

That, coupled with Shurtleff's concern that polygamists are starting to move their operations to other places such as B.C., Texas and Mexico, which are viewed as friendlier jurisdictions, is why he's in Texas next week talking to his counterpart.

And it's why he met with B.C. Attorney-General Geoff Plant last summer in Victoria.

"He didn't seem to have much knowledge about FLDS," Shurtleff says of their hour-long meeting.

Shurtleff refuses to talk about B.C.'s hands-off position on polygamy and Bountiful.

(For decades, the government has ignored Bountiful and virtually legalized polygamy because a succession of attorneys-general, including Plant, say a polygamy case would be thrown out because of the constitutional guarantee of religious freedom.)

But when I asked why he took on polygamy, knowing that it's defeated many of his predecessors, Shurtleff says simply: "There should not be a place in Utah where American citizens are treated as chattels and property."

There also shouldn't be any place in Canada where citizens are treated as chattels and property.

But here we don't have an attorney-general with the will to use every law and lever available to take these abusers on.
 
Vancouver Sun
Originally published Friday, June 4, 2004
 
Back