Victim's group offers help to polygamists
 
By Ben Winslow
Deseret Morning News
 
As construction escalates on a Fundamentalist LDS Church compound in the Black Hills of South Dakota, victim advocates are trying to educate themselves about abuses within polygamy.

The South Dakota Coalition Against Domestic Violence and Sexual Assault said it is trying to make resources available to any abuse victims within the FLDS Church's compound near Pringle.

"Our position is that it's illegal," coalition director Chris Jongeling said of polygamy. "However, we don't want to interfere with anybody's religious freedom, either. Our concern is the women and the children in the situation that are being abused and frequently don't have a way to get out."

Within the past couple of weeks, coalition members have begun putting up posters and fliers around Pringle about abuse and domestic violence with hotline numbers. It is their attempt to reach the closed society inside the FLDS compound.

Meanwhile, coalition members said they are trying to educate themselves about polygamy. The group has been keeping up on the FLDS Church and its leader, Warren Jeffs, through news reports.

"Ever since we started hearing rumors about what type of situation is going on in Pringle, the membership decided we didn't know enough about it," Jongeling said Wednesday.

The director of Utah's leading anti-polygamy group recently traveled to South Dakota to speak to them about abuses within polygamy.

"If they were proactive, they could prevent much of what has gone on with other groups like Warren Jeffs' in southern Utah and Arizona," Tapestry Against Polygamy director Vicky Prunty told the Deseret Morning News.

Jeffs, 50, was on the FBI's Ten Most Wanted list until he was arrested outside Las Vegas in August. He is currently facing a first-degree felony rape as an accomplice charge in St. George's 5th District Court, accusing him of performing a child bride marriage. He is scheduled to appear in court on Nov. 21.

Jeffs still appears to exert some kind of control over FLDS faithful from jail. A law enforcement source has told the Deseret Morning News that Jeffs has been making calls to his followers from the Purgatory Jail.

"He makes a call to a group of people waiting to hear from their prophet," the source, who is familiar with the phone calls, said last week. "They sing songs to him, and he goes into dissertations, his prophetic utterances."

Jeffs may be in jail, but work continues on the FLDS Church's compounds. In Eldorado, Texas, where the polygamous sect has a temple, "cleaning up and beautifying the place seem to take precedence over new construction," local pilot J.D. Doyle said in an e-mail to the Deseret Morning News. Near Pringle, the group recently bought more land in the area, and another giant-scale log home is being built.

Jongeling said no one from inside that compound has contacted her coalition about abuse.

"I think the place is pretty new," she said. "We do need to be ready in case somebody does want to get out. The dangers in a polygamous situation are different than the dangers that women in other abusive relationships face. We feel like we're a little bit more prepared."

E-mail: bwinslow@desnews.com
 
deseretnews.com
Originally published Friday, November 10, 2006
 
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