FLDS girls flee Arizona safe house
 Child protection officers, police search for teens
 
By Jane Zhang
jzhang@thespectrum.com
 
ST. GEORGE -- Two Colorado City girls who fled to Phoenix amid turmoil inside the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints ran away from their safe house last weekend, prompting a police investigation and a hunt by Arizona Child Protective Services.

Fawn Broadbent and Fawn Holm, both 16 years old when they escaped from the polygamist enclave on Jan. 11, were found missing Sunday from their placement home owned by a private music teacher in Phoenix.

In two signed, hand-written letters dated Saturday, the girls said they were afraid that CPS would send them back to Colorado City, which the agency denies.

"I do not want to go back because I will be locked up and even married," Broadbent, who turned 17 over the weekend, wrote in a single-page letter provided to The Spectrum. "I am not happy with CPS because they are not doing their job and are lying."

The girls' disappearance came two weeks after CPS returned another 17-year-old Colorado City girl, who had run away to St. George and spent two weeks in Utah and Arizona state custody. Despite the girl's claim that her father had hit her in the head and beaten her with a willow branch, officials from both states said they found no abuse in the girl's parents' home.

Flora Jessop, an anti-polygamy activist who drove Broadbent and Holm to Phoenix and helped them obtain a court order to stay in a safe house, said the girls became disillusioned with the state agencies after the 17-year-old girl was returned home. CPS, she said, also removed Broadbent and Holm from their support system, which included her and Holm's brother, Carl, and his wife Joni.

In a statement released Monday, CPS spokeswoman Liz Barker denied that CPS was going to return the two girls to their parents. Jessop was denied visitation with the girls only after the Maricopa County Superior Court issued a "no contact order" based on a request made by one of the teenagers' fathers, she said.

"In a case like this one, the agency may consider the potential for reunification at the same time as pursuing permanent guardianship or independent living case plans if reunification proves to be not in the child's best interests," said Barker, adding that CPS is mandated by federal law to "make reasonable efforts" within a 12-month period to engage the family in its efforts to place a child in a safe house.

Anti-polygamy activists had hoped the successful handling of the first two runaways would lead to more girls and women fleeing the polygamist towns of Hildale, Utah and Colorado City, Ariz., which they said were full of hidden abuses of women and children.

With about 10,000 residents, the border towns are dominated by the increasingly secretive FLDS church, which controls most of the area's land and property through a trust, United Effort Plan. On Jan. 10, one day before Broadbent and Holm fled, the prophet, Warren Jeffs, expelled 21 men from the church, including Colorado City's mayor of 19 years, Dan Barlow.

"Most children escaping polygamy wind up on the streets with nothing, naive, no resources and escape just to survive," Jessop said in a news release. "I was hopeful for a good outcome. Yet fairly quickly it became apparent the AG's office and CPS were breaking their agreement to us."

Barker would not comment beyond the CPS' news release. In meetings with elected officials and officers from Arizona Attorney General Terry Goddard's office and elected officials, Jessop said she received only "lip service."

For each of the two girls, she said, the state only allocated $58 a year. While forbidding her to contact them, Jessop said, the state also asked for financial help for them from Help the Child Brides, an agency set up after Jessop's 14-year-old sister Ruby was returned home after a brief stay out of Colorado City.

Joni Holm, who was planning to adopt Broadbent with her husband, Carl, said in a statement that their plan was interrupted by the court order against Jessop. CPS workers had set up a meeting with the girls' parents, Joni Holm said, which caused the girls to run.

"The State of Arizona does not help girls escape polygamy and abuse," she said. "They are returned to their abusers."

The girls were last seen going horseback riding with Joni's 18-year-old daughter on Broadbent's birthday, Jessop said. As of Tuesday night, Joni Holm said, their daughter said the girls were safe in an unidentified location.
 
TheSpectrum.com
Originally published Thursday, February 19, 2004
 
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