Tempest looms for polygamous community In a place forgotten by time, a plural-marriage sect is facing the wrath of ousted members, allegations of child abuse and welfare fraud, and the legal sword of Utah's attorney general

By Eric Gorski Denver Post

COLORADO CITY, Ariz. - The prophet's grave lies in a private cemetery on the edge of town. The man interred below a mound of dirt and an ordinary gray tombstone is a former tax accountant named Rulon Jeffs, or "Uncle Rulon" to 8,000 people who regarded him as God's messenger. He was survived by an estimated 20 to 75 wives. Uncle Rulon was supposed to live forever. But his death in September 2002 at age 92 did nothing to shake the faith of the nation's largest polygamist community, clustered here below red sandstone cliffs on a remote, barren stretch of land called the Arizona Strip. The passing of Jeffs was a turning point for the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, a 69-year-old sect that believes polygamy is the key to the highest reaches of heaven. Under the hard-line leadership of the new prophet, Rulon Jeffs' 48-year-old son, Warren, the church has become locked in a convoluted power struggle and is facing unprecedented scrutiny from the government. The outside world appears to have caught up with the sect at the same time it is disintegrating from within. In the past month, 21 prominent men have been driven from the church and stripped of their homes and families, three underage girls have fled and been placed in protective state custody, and an ousted church member held an unprecedented news conference on church land and compared Warren Jeffs to Adolf Hitler. A joint Arizona-Utah task force, meanwhile, is investigating allegations ranging from sex abuse to welfare fraud, and the Utah attorney general is pledging to take down the prophet himself. That's a meaningful statement considering Utah's long struggle with polygamy. The state is headquarters to the 11.7-million-member Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, better known as the Mormon Church, which banned polygamy in 1890 under political pressure. The Mormon Church has denounced the breakaway sect, known as the FLDS. Warren Jeffs in recent months has become increasingly reclusive, building an 8-foot brick wall around a guarded compound that sprawls over a city block. "He is just fanatic," said Deloy Bateman, a high school science teacher who left the church five years ago and still lives in Colorado City with his 17 children. "The guy has no compassion for anyone. He is losing control, and it appears the whole thing is about to break apart." This could be the beginning of the end to the practice of taking child brides in Colorado City and its adjacent sister city of Hildale, Utah. Or it could be just another bump in the road for a community that has survived past schisms and government raids to preserve a way of life it considers divine. "That community cannot be destroyed because they are too committed, too devoted, there are too many of them, and they can't make the practice or the community go away," said Rod Parker, a Salt Lake City lawyer who represents the FLDS church. "What really needs to occur is a completely different approach, not confrontational but more accepting, so they can be assimilated into society in a healthier way." Towns that time forgot Colorado City and Hildale appear seemingly from out of nowhere below a range of red rock called Canaan Mountain, as if from another time. The women wear hand-stitched prairie dresses and their hair in braids or buns; the men wear dress shirts neatly ironed and buttoned to the neckline. Church members are forbidden to watch TV or read anything but the prophet's writings. Children playing soccer in dirt fields run away when outsiders approach. The geographic isolation drew a handful of polygamists to the area - then called Short Creek - in 1935. They believed the Mormon Church had erred gravely by outlawing polygamy, practiced by church founder Joseph Smith and his successor, Brigham Young. In the decades since, the population has exploded "like a rabbit hutch," as one local man puts it. There is no such thing as marriage for love; the prophet is also a matchmaker. Men must attain at least three wives to achieve the "celestial kingdom," and only the prophet decides when a man is worthy of multiple wives. Women and children are considered church property. If a man angers the prophet, he can lose them to another, "more deserving" man. With the church's urging, young men build their own houses, and the range of incomes in the community shows: broken-down trailers sit next to brick mansions with stately columns. The only catch is that a church trust, the United Effort Plan, owns the land on which the houses are built. The church has sought to evict "apostates" who leave the church, though a Utah judge has found the church must fairly compensate evictees under certain conditions. The towns are in effect a theocracy, with church leaders in charge of the police departments, public schools and government. Girls taught to 'keep sweet' Like all girls who grow up here, Pam Black was taught to "keep sweet, no matter what." She said she married at 16 and was raped on her wedding night by her husband, Martin, a 27-year-old member of the local police force, "The God Squad." Black said her husband was a kind, gentle man for the most part. But the couple constantly quarreled, largely because Pam Black refused to be submissive. Church leaders berated Martin Black for being unable to control her and didn't allow him to take any more wives. Pam Black said she prayed to God she would die during childbirth because the church taught her that her soul would be instantly saved. Martin Black gave his wife's books to the prophet and secretly tape-recorded their arguments to prove her insubordination, she said. He threatened to divorce her and take the couple's 13 children away. But both eventually left the sect, as did all but one of their daughters, a plural wife of the Colorado City town clerk. Martin Black died of cancer two years ago believing his religion was a lie. "I'm 52, and I feel like a kid," said Pam Black, who lives on 7 acres of family land outside Hildale. "I didn't have any experience in the world. Even adults in the religion, they don't know they have a choice. They just do what they've been told since childhood. "Even after I left the religion, I blamed myself for everything, because that's how we were programmed." The current turmoil is tied to uneasiness about Warren Jeffs and whether he has the right to lead. Some townspeople consider the Jeffs family, which has roots in Salt Lake City, to be interlopers. Warren Jeffs served as de facto prophet in his father's later years, and after he became prophet, he clashed with the Barlow family, whose ancestors founded the settlement. On Jan. 10, Jeffs took the first step toward excommunicating 21 men, including some of his own brothers and several Barlows. The men reportedly were told they could not live on church land or lead their families. Dan Barlow, 71, the longtime Colorado City mayor who portrayed the town in Mayberry-like terms to the media for years, was among the ousted. He resigned from office the next day. The men apparently still have a chance to redeem themselves. Each man must compile a list of his sins, and if it does not list the sins Jeffs claims he has received from God, they are banished for good. "The Barlow boys went from using the potty outside to seeing a million- dollar-plus airport put in," said Pennie Petersen of Phoenix, who left the church 20 years ago when she was 14 to flee an arranged marriage to a 48-year-old man. "They were respected in that town. Jeffs couldn't handle that. He had to take total power. "People are walking on eggshells. They figure if it happens to them, it could happen to anyone." A few days after the purge, an anonymous letter riddled with spelling errors circulated describing the dream of a young man who foresaw one of the Barlow brothers reclaiming his "birthright" as prophet. Rumors of violence prompted sheriff's departments on both sides of the border to increase patrols. But there is no known history of bloodshed in the community. Most observers discount the possibility of another bloody standoff like the 1993 Branch Davidian siege in Waco, Texas, but hedge their bets by saying Warren Jeffs is not like benevolent prophets of the past. Some former members with contacts on the inside believe that Jeffs has been extracting large donations from members so he can flee with his harem of teenage brides and members of his inner circle to a new compound in Mexico. Polygamy rarely prosecuted The FLDS has splintered before, peacefully. Twenty years ago, a doctrinal disagreement led to the establishment of the smaller "2nd Ward," which conducts services with its own leaders right down the highway. Fred Barlow, 32, an FLDS member, a reserve marshal in Colorado City- Hildale and a relative of some of the ousted men, said in an interview outside his car-painting and repair shop that all is calm. "We feel like we treat people fair, and we wish people would treat us fair," he said. "There's a lot of religions in the world and a lot of societies. Because ours is different, we feel targeted. "I'm sure any religion has its challenges." When asked how many children he has, Barlow replied, "A few." He wasn't as forthcoming when asked how many wives he has. Polygamy is illegal in Utah and Arizona, but it is rarely prosecuted. The Utah attorney general's office says it lacks the resources to pursue charges against consenting adults. Instead, it's focusing on marriages involving underage girls, which can lead to charges of unlawful sex with a minor. But two years of investigating the FLDS church has led to only one arrest and zero changes in church members' behavior, said investigator Ron Barton, the so-called "polygamy czar" for the Utah attorney general's office. "People feel an obligation to protect other family members who may have engaged in criminal conduct, and this community is just a large, giant family," Barton said. "People feel they can't betray other people, and if they do, they'll be shunned by the rest of the community. It makes it difficult to get information from anybody." The government also is still living down the legacy of a disastrous 1953 raid on Colorado City carried out by Arizona authorities. Images in the local and national media of fathers in handcuffs and children being stripped from their mothers' arms generated sympathy for the polygamists. Within a year the Arizona governor was voted out of office, and the community resumed life as it had been. "The result of that PR nightmare was, they've had 50 years of hands-off freedom out there to do whatever they want," said Bob Curran, former treasurer of Help the Child Brides, an advocacy group in nearby St. George, Utah, that, along with Salt Lake City-based Tapestry Against Polygamy, has pressured politicians to make changes. The 1953 raid remains the sect's defining moment, and church leaders continually cite it as an example of what happens when the outside world encroaches. Utah was able to make a case against Hildale police officer Rodney Holm, who was convicted last year of bigamy and unlawful sex with a girl he took as a third wife when she was 16. Holm, 37, was sentenced to a year in jail, and his police certification was revoked. Some advocacy groups say decriminalizing polygamy among adults could encourage more people in the communities to report abuse, but the idea lacks support from lawmakers and prosecutors. Utah Attorney General Mark Shurtleff said an Arizona-Utah polygamy task force is investigating Warren Jeffs for child abuse and forcing child brides to marry older men, as well as white-collar crimes such as welfare fraud, tax evasion and racketeering. Utah and Arizona officials last summer developed a new strategy for Colorado City-Hildale, including establishing a safe house, a sheriff's substation and a central office for social services that have been difficult to provide because of the community's isolation. Shurtleff said it's just a matter of time before Warren Jeffs is charged, especially as more people leave the sect with their stories. "This isn't just a group of peaceful people quietly living their strange religious beliefs, and live and let live," Shurtleff said. "I don't particularly care what your religious beliefs are, but you cannot use your religious beliefs to commit crimes against children." The pressure also is mounting on the other side of the border. In a letter released last week, 27 Arizona state lawmakers urged state Attorney General Terry Goddard to more aggressively investigate reports of child abuse and welfare fraud in the polygamist town. "For too long," the letter said, "Arizona has allowed this grave problem to deteriorate." Prophet called 'evil dictator' The church's defense of the plural marriage of underage girls is complicated. In Utah, it's against the law to have sex with a person who is a minor if there's a 10-year age gap and the couple aren't married. A person can legally marry in Utah at age 16 with the consent of one parent. But in the Holm case, Parker argued that the officer could not obtain a marriage license from the state because he already was married to someone else. He believes the state's ban on polygamy encroaches on the liberty of Holm and his teen bride, who he said were willing participants, joined in matrimony in the church's eyes. Parker, who has represented the FLDS church for 12 years but is not a member, said the latest allegations of abuse and upheaval are coming from disgruntled former church members whose stories keep changing. He contends law enforcement is overzealous. "I don't think this can be taken apart by brute force," Parker said. "That's what happened in '53, and they learned the hard way it couldn't be done." Some pressure, however, is coming from the growing list of church members who've been expelled. On Jan. 23, 35-year-old Ross Chatwin invited the media to his basement apartment in Colorado City and branded Jeffs an "evil dictator" while a dozen sheriff's deputies brought in for security scanned the area with binoculars. Chatwin, who has one wife and six children and formerly bought and sold cars for a living, said he was excommunicated two months ago for alleged business wrongs. The church, however, says Chatwin stalked two teenage girls as potential wives. The girls' father obtained a court order last spring to keep Chatwin from his daughters, then 15 and 17. Chatwin said the girls approached him to help them flee the community. Only later, he said, did he come to consider one of them as a potential wife, which he now says was wrong. Chatwin said he opposes the current prophet, not the belief structure of the community where he grew up the son of a plural wife. "I'm not anti-polygamy," he said. "I've seen a lot of beauties in it. But it takes a certain frame of mind to be able to handle it." An FLDS trustee served Chatwin with an eviction notice. He intends to ignore it. His 32-year-old wife, Lori, has pledged to stay with him. She said she turned down the church's offer to provide her with a new husband. The Chatwins don't plan to add any more wives to their family. They say they no longer believe their salvation depends on it.

DenverPost.com Originally published February 8, 2004

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