| US justice system tries to fight against polygamist sects | |
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By Tangi Quemener and Paula Bustamante Agence France Presse | |
LOS ANGELES (AFP) - Despite last week's capture of the self-named prophet of a polygamist sect who had been one of the United States' most wanted men, authorities face stiff challenges in fighting the illegal practice which is deeply entrenched in certain parts of the American West. Warren Jeffs, who leads the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (FLDS), was arrested in Nevada and will be sent back in Utah, where he is facing a charge of complicity to rape. If he is found guilty, he could spend the rest of his life in prison. Jeffs, 50, also faces charges of sexual assault on a minor in Arizona. The accusations against this tall, ascetic man stem from allegations that he helped arrange illegal marriages between underage girls and grown men from his sect that split from the mainstream Mormon church. Most of the 10,000 members of the FLDS live along the line between the states of Utah and Arizona. In the neighboring cities of Hildale, Utah and Colorado City, Arizona, the sect owns almost all the land and controls the local government, making it very difficult to crack down on the practice of "plural marriage", says Paul Murphy, a spokesman for the Utah attorney general. "Our concern is that they have been so secretive and so isolated, they have control over the city government and the police department, that victims in that community have not been getting the same help as other people," Murphy told AFP. Although polygamy is punishable by five years in prison, Utah has declined to prosecute it when it involves consenting adults. "It's a resource issue," explained the spokesman. "There's around 37,000 polygamists in Utah. If we were going to go arrest everybody practicing polygamy, that would mean 10,000 men going to jail, and try to find (how to) provide for 27,000 women and children." In the 1950s, authorities in Arizona had to back down after a crackdown led to a social disaster and political backlash. Instead, we "have decided to focus on crimes within polygamous communities that involve child abuse, domestic violence and fraud," said the spokesman. According to authorities, Jeffs, who succeeded his father at the helm of the sect in 2002, exercised complete power over the sect, including the power to "reassign" women and children from one man to another. Polygamy is controversial in Utah, where some 57 percent of the residents belong to the official Mormon church, formally known as the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (LDS) with some 12.5 millions members around the world. Having more than one wife has been illegal in the United States since 1862 and the church abandoned the practice in 1890 before Utah became a US state. The Mormon church has always distanced itself from the FLDS. "Warren Jeffs is not a Mormon. Warren Jeffs is not a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints and never has been," the LDS said in a statement after Jeff's capture. Nevertheless, Bryce Nelson, a journalism professor at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, who is a specialist on the Mormon movement, says the current tolerance to polygamy in Utah is explained by the fact that "almost every Mormon family that was Mormon in the 19th century are descendants from polygamists." "There's a lot of opposition against polygamy in some places in Utah, but in some ways I think there's certain sympathy as well, even if people wouldn't practice themselves, it had been practiced by their ancestors, and they wouldn't necessarily consider right off as evil people who're practicing it," the professor explained. | |
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news.yahoo.com Originally published Monday, September 4, 2006 | |
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