| Persecution, prosecution Second of Two Parts | |||
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By Jane Zhang The Spectrum | |||
Anti-polygamy activists want officers to investigate allegations of abuse and fraud in border towns while FLDS church leaders maintain that members are hurting no one. COLORADO CITY -- On a February afternoon, an amiable-looking Dan Barlow, 71, sat in his quiet town office. For the past 18 years, Barlow said, he has run every four years as a council member and repeatedly has been appointed as mayor by the seven-member Town Council. An elder of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, however, Barlow is walking a blurred line between church and state. The town's accountants and attorneys, Barlow said, make sure the leaders don't "overstep the boundaries." Through the open door, he spotted a boy walking in the hallway. "How are you doing, son?" he called out. The boy stopped, quietly walked into the office and murmured a few words. "How are you doing today anyway?" Barlow asked again. "Good," the boy finally answered. "Good," Barlow smiled. He is known as "Dan" or "grandpa," he said, and he knows everyone in town. On his office wall hang a few framed pictures of Colorado City and a smaller photo with Barlow and former President Bill Clinton. They met in January 2000 at a dedication ceremony for the Grand Canyon-Parashant National Monument, Barlow said. A few friends asked if he would dare to put the picture of Clinton on the wall, which he did. Despite Clinton's morals, Barlow said, "he's the president" after all. Key Statistics Colorado City has tried to attract tourists to its towering cliffs, Barlow said. The town is bustling with its major industries, construction and manufacturing. The area has six to eight general contractors, with some employing 25 workers. The town now has a coffee shop, a grocery store and a RadioShack, but no movie theaters or sports teams. Most residents in Hildale and Colorado City live on church land. Washington County Assessor Art Partridge said that in 2002, 222 houses in Hildale, or 95 percent of the town's residential homes, were built on FLDS properties owned by the United Effort Plan and its trustees, Rulon Jeffs and Fred Jessop. In total, the church and its trustees own 1,083.76 acres, or 72.3 percent of the land within the Hildale city limits. As the population continues to grow, the two towns have increasingly relied on government welfare subsidies. According to the Utah Department of Workforce Services, 1,054 Hildale residents received food stamps in January 2003, up 146 percent from January 1999. According to the Arizona Department of Economic Security, 2,466 Colorado City residents from 269 households received food stamps in June 2002, compared with 1,352 people from 127 households in June 1998. The 2000 U.S. Census showed 37 percent of Hildale families and 29 percent of Colorado City families were below the poverty level, which is defined as a family of four living on less than $17,000, with measurements going up to a family of nine or more living on less than $34,000. In comparison, 7.4 percent of St. George families and 14.5 percent of Cedar City families are below the poverty level. In 2000, 50 percent of Hildale's residents were enrolled in Medicaid, the federal and state welfare health insurance program, said Doug Springmeyer, a spokesman for the Utah Department of Health. The number increased to 60 percent in 2001 and 66 percent in 2002. As of March 2003, 4,138 residents in Colorado City -- almost all of its population -- were enrolled in Medicaid, said Frank Lopez, spokesman for the Arizona Health Care Cost Containment System, Arizona's Medicaid program. Except for pediatrics and child care, however, the usage of Medicaid services in Colorado City is unusually low, he said. A Medicaid recipient in Colorado City, on average, spends $19 per month on obstetrics, but only 30 cents per month on lab work, 49 cents on transportation to hospitals and $7.60 per month on primary care. In comparison, an average member living in Mohave County and La Paz County to the immediate south spends only $4.90 on obstetrics, but $4.25 per month on lab work, $12.50 on transportation and $11.40 on primary care. Turning to Welfare Both Utah and Arizona prosecutors are investigating what they say is tax and welfare fraud in Hildale and Colorado City. But Barlow argued that the states spend less money in the twin towns than other communities of the same size because private school children don't receive state and federal funding. Since Rulon Jeffs' call in August 2000 to pull FLDS children from public schools, about 1,000 students from the twin towns have dropped out of public schools to attend church schools or study at home, Barlow said. For the remaining 25 Hildale children in the Washington County School District, the district has paid $2,685.43 per person to enroll them in the Colorado City Unified District, which has about 300 students. Church leaders haven't encouraged members to attend college, said Barlow, a high school graduate. But among his children are six school teachers, four nurses, a physician, a paramedic and a school principal. FLDS members have to receive the prophet's permission to attend college, said Pam Black, 51, who has broken ranks with the FLDS church. She dropped out of the 11th grade, but an eighth-grade education was considered enough for girls to manage household duties, she said. While some women from polygamous families have become registered nurses, most women from Hildale and Colorado City still have low-paying jobs. Julia Thomas, Pam's mother, said she supported her family of five by taking odd jobs. She sewed in factories, cleaned toilets at motels and cooked for several years at the Bumbleberry Restaurant in Springdale. Martin Black, Pam's husband, brought home about $500 a month. As the family grew, she quilted, made matching clothes for all her children and worked for a year at the Danco Sewing Factory in Colorado City. Defying FLDS teachings, however, she opened her own bank account. "I quilted," Pam said. "I sewed. I cooked. I was a wonderful Molly Mormon. I was the best, and I was still not good enough to please these men." Like most families in the area, the Blacks turned to state welfare aid to feed 13 children. But whenever the FLDS church asked for donations of $500 or $1,000, Pam said, the family obeyed. Happy Childhood After graduating from Kanab High School in 1959, Martin worked in the lumber industry in Fredonia and Kanab. In September 1965, he was drafted into the U.S. Army and served for 15 months in Korea as a supply sergeant. He sent his Army allowances to support his mother. When he returned to Colorado City, he turned in all of his paychecks to the FLDS church and completed a two-year "work mission," building houses for church members without pay. Before retiring recently after 25 years at the Colorado City Unified School District as a bus driver and maintenance worker, Martin had worked for seven years as a night-watch officer. Martin said Sam Barlow, Dan's brother and a deputy town marshal in Colorado City, instructed him to follow strangers in town and watch community activities all night. As a young child, Martin said he never thought about becoming a polygamist. But he never considered polygamy to be controversial, either. "We just thought that was the way it was supposed to be," Martin said. "We didn't know we were different." Born in 1941 near Cedar City, Martin is the oldest son to his mother, Larna, who had 11 children. His father, Leonard, also raised 12 children from his first wife, Verna, and 11 children by his second wife, Vera. The Black family moved to Short Creek in the early 1930s. While many men left the scarce job market for Northern Utah, Leonard managed to get by doing odd mechanics jobs. Martin remembered a "carefree, happy childhood" without much sibling rivalry or worries about the outside world. "We didn't have much to eat," Martin recalled. "As far as mentally, being happy, yeah, we were happy. We all got along really good with these children. If there's any trouble, I don't know anything about it." Sometimes, when he went to Hurricane to pick up peaches or cherries, people would yell words that were offensive to children from polygamous families. "They yelled, 'Plig, plig, plig.' I didn't know what they were saying," Martin recalled. "(It) didn't bother me because I didn't know much." Raided, Jailed That changed on the morning of July 26, 1953. Waking up in an old car where his mother had made his bed, 12-year-old Martin learned that his father had been arrested along with all other married men in Short Creek, including Dan Barlow. Arizona Gov. Howard Pyle had them jailed in Kingman on charges of bigamy, adultery and rape. Women and children dressed in pioneer-style clothes were placed in foster homes in Arizona after officials painstakingly found out who was related to whom. As his pregnant mother stayed behind, Martin boarded a bus to Phoenix with his aunts, four sisters and three brothers. He said he was more excited than worried. "I didn't know they were going to throw my dad into jail," Martin recalled. "The only thing I knew was we were on a bus ride. Kind of a treat because I hadn't been on many bus rides." Among the 70 people on the bus, 3/4 were children, some as young as 6 months. The older children were excited to see packs of cereal and food boxes from the Army Reserves, Martin recalled, but the younger ones were "going around, yelling, screaming and acting funny." The bus first stopped in a closed warehouse, then proceeded to drop people off at nursing homes and foster homes along the way. The Black children were placed with a foster family in Phoenix. Several months later, Larna joined them and the family moved to Snowflake, Ariz. "At that time they taught us that God will take care of us, everything will be OK, we don't need to be afraid, things are going to be OK," Martin recalled. "So I wasn't afraid." Leonard and about 20 other men stayed in jail for about a year, but it would be almost two years before the women and children were released from state custody. Tough to Prosecute The 1953 Short Creek raid proved to be a publicity disaster for then-Gov. Pyle, who lost his re-election the next year. No mass prosecution has followed since in Short Creek, which has been renamed Hildale and Colorado City. "America is good," Dan Barlow said. "America has a way of correcting its mistakes. You can go back and look at the way the Japanese were treated during the war. You can look at the way that Negroes were treated." In "a liberal society" where many have advocated same-sex marriages, he said, people will stop "finding fault with our particular religious beliefs." Today, an estimated 30,000 to 50,000 polygamists live in the Western United States. Besides the FLDS group on the Utah-Arizona state line, many polygamists are scattered in the region stretching from Bluffdale, Nev., to St. George to Salt Lake City to British Columbia, Canada. "They are all over the place," Washington County Sheriff Kirk Smith said. "We have them literally in every county in the state of Utah. It's not uncommon in the Western United States." While many polygamists dress in the mainstream style, FLDS members from Colorado City may be recognized on the streets by their conservative clothing. But without witnesses or a paper trail, Smith asked, how do you prove beyond reasonable doubt that they are polygamists? "It's not just us," he said. "This is anywhere because it's a difficult case to prosecute." Since the 1879 ruling of Reynolds vs. United States, however, the U.S. Supreme Court hasn't changed its stand on polygamy, holding common laws higher than religious beliefs. The U.S. Congress outlawed polygamy with the 1882 Edmunds Act. In Utah, the Legislature in March increased the penalty for polygamists marrying underage girls from a third-degree felony to second-degree felony. The child bigamy law goes into effect today. Arizona doesn't have a statute against polygamy, even though the state Constitution has a clause prohibiting the practice. But Dianna Jennings, a spokeswoman for Attorney General Terry Goddard, said Arizona has a "zero-tolerance" policy toward abuses of women and children in polygamous communities. Goddard, who was sworn in three months ago, is looking at "all options" toward polygamy, Jennings said. "A courageous guy," she said, the attorney general won't exclude a massive raid just because of fear of his political future. But to Utah Attorney General Mark Shurtleff, a raid against all polygamists is not practical because the state lacks financial and human resources. Instead, the office's only full-time polygamy investigator, Ron Barton, has focused on welfare and tax fraud, incest and the forced marriages of young girls to adult men. "We are clearly dedicated," Shurtleff said. "I think most people don't want to see it going on." Filing Charges In the first bigamy case since 1953, Tom Green, who lived with five women in a Utah desert, was sentenced last year to five years in prison on bigamy charges. In December, Rodney Holm, a Colorado City police officer, was charged with bigamy and unlawful sexual conduct with a 16- or 17-year-old. His trial is scheduled for Aug. 11-15 in St. George. Both Utah and Arizona laws require that a 16- or 17-year-old have parental permission and a person younger than 16 have a judge's permission before getting married. But many parents living in polygamous societies don't have "the free agency" to protect their underage children when religious leaders summon them for plural marriages, said Jay Beswick, a child protection advocate who has helped women flee polygamous marriages. A lot of young brides don't know their rights, either. "These young women that are brainwashed from birth -- not from just nine months of captivity as with Elizabeth Smart -- deserve a public education that presents resources and options for them that are not available in a closed and isolated society," Beswick said. "They deserve the protection from sexual predators and pedophiles that determine the age of marriage based on puberty." The Mohave County Attorney's Office has focused on sexual crimes between children and adults, said William J. Ekstrom, Jr., Mohave County attorney. Until recently, when several women from the polygamous culture started seeking help from outside, he said, prosecutions against polygamous members had been extremely difficult. "A lot of times, the minors are not willing to testify," he said. "They don't view themselves as victims. They are extremely protective of the culture and religious beliefs." The lack of evidence forced Utah prosecutors to drop charges against Rodney Holm's first wife, Suzie Holm, who had been accused of aiding bigamy and unlawful sexual conduct between Rodney Holm and his third wife, Ruth Stubbs, who is also Suzie's sister. Shurtleff said he's still looking for a breaking case against FLDS leaders who have coerced underage girls and performed plural marriages between minors and adults. While many have said the prophet presides over polygamous weddings, Shurtleff said he needs evidence "beyond reasonable doubt" for any conviction. "What they are doing is wrong, against the law," he said. "(But) we need witnesses. We need documents in order to prosecute a case." The prosecution against a closed society requires cooperation between state, county and city prosecutors, Shurtleff said. Eric Ludlow, Washington County attorney for 12 years, said he was unaware of any bigamy cases submitted to his office. During an interview with The Spectrum in March, he repeatedly refused to answer questions on polygamy. When challenged by anti-polygamy activists during his confirmation hearing in April for the 5th District Court judge's seat, however, he blamed the Washington County Sheriff's Office for the lack of polygamy cases. The Sheriff's Office has only forwarded one bigamy case -- against Rodney Holm -- to Ludlow, who then forwarded it to Shurtleff, Sheriff Smith said. Prosecution against polygamy is not a priority in his office, Smith added, because for more than 100 years, those cases have been difficult to prosecute. "Maybe it's not impossible, but it's not far from it," he said. "If there was evidence, (we) would prosecute. We are just not moving away from the stuff." But anti-polygamy activists blame the lack of prosecutions on the connections between local officials and the FLDS church. Among the names mentioned were Ron Thompson, manager of the Washington County Water Conservancy District, and state Rep. Steve Urquhart, R-St. George. Thompson and Urquhart are partners at the law firm Thompson Awerkamp Urquhart, which has represented the city of Hildale for more than 20 years. Urquhart said he had handled municipal works for Hildale, but has dropped it since January to concentrate on his duties at the Legislature. In March, he voted for the child bigamy bill. Thompson, however, said he is still willing to assist Hildale with municipal works. "Religion has nothing to do with how they operate," he said. "The people have always been polite, their kids well disciplined." Other than the practice of marrying child brides, Thompson added, he doesn't oppose the polygamists' "personal beliefs." "They respect what I believe," he said. "I respect what they believe." Many residents in Utah, including Shurtleff and Gov. Michael Leavitt, are descendants from plural marriages. "It's part of the Mormon culture, there's no question about it," Barlow said. "Then what are you going to do with the rest of the world? What are you going to do with the people over in the Middle East, the Muslims? It's an accepted tradition there." But Shurtleff said his determination to go after polygamists isn't affected by his family's heritage. "That's part of my past, my history, the history of Utah, but I'm talking about the law now," he said. "It has nothing to do with religious persecution." Even after a meeting with Barlow in January, he said he was not convinced that all young girls entered plural marriages of their own free will. "I want to send them a message that we are not going away," Shurtleff said. "I'm hoping if they see we are serious about the cases, maybe they'll stop the practice of marrying the young girls." Breaking Away At least half of the young people in Colorado City and Hildale want to break away from the polygamous community but don't know how, said Benjamin Bistline, a polygamy historian and longtime Colorado City resident. Frustrated, many turn to drugs, smoking and drinking before they are arrested by the local police and driven out of town. "You can't go to Colorado City and stop and talk to any young men or young women," Bistline said. "It's a long struggle. It's a hard struggle." Bistline, who converted to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints about 10 years ago, said he had organized sports activities for three months at the Colorado City Cottonwood Park. About 100 people had participated before the activities were shut down, he added. The LDS church doesn't send missionaries to Colorado City and Hildale because of the "controversial" practice of polygamy, said Donald Jessee, a spokesman for the LDS church. Church missionaries, he said, don't go to Islamic countries where plural marriages are practiced, either. The LDS church requires "special approval" for conversions of polygamists, Jessee said. They must prove that they no longer practice or teach the doctrine. For those who want to seek help from the LDS church, he advised they "leave their lifestyle, renounce it and live somewhere else." "(But) most of them can't leave their lifestyle," Jessee said. "Most of them can't leave the pressures of the family." Many LDS converts have left Colorado City and Hildale for fear of eviction or retaliation, Bistline said. "It's extortion," he said. "It needs to go to the state Legislature." While prosecutors have ignored polygamists since 1953, Beswick said, they can't turn a blind eye now on the abuses when more people like Pam Black are speaking out. "I think it's a matter of time," Beswick said. "The day will come when I believe the cities of Hildale and Colorado City will lose their incorporation status. And those in violation of their oath of office may also be replaced by an authority that is responsible to civil and constitutional laws over the selective enforcement and current loyalty to the priesthood." Barlow, however, called Beswick "nothing but a rabble-rouser." "You know what's interesting, that America allows all the other cultures and yet somehow it's an offense for the Mormon people to have a particular philosophy and belief," he said. "America is big enough that people can live and believe in their own religion. They are not harming another person. They are doing what they think is right before their God. I think eventually that they will come around. I know it always has, to some degree." Making Changes About 20 months ago, Pam Black gradually started her transformation. She stored away her long dresses, put on makeup and went to see a hairdresser. When her waist-long hair was falling, she cried. "I was scared to pieces," she recalled. "That's a lot of programming behind a woman's hair. You just don't cut your hair here." In a community dominated by the fear of God and authorities, Pam said, the family's first step toward becoming apostate was filled with apprehension and isolation. "If I leave, then I (am) considered a son of perdition, then I'll suffer the second death, which is the spiritual death," Martin said. "I'm not afraid of death, so I don't believe that anymore." Though a proud grandmother, Pam said her seven grandchildren born in a polygamous marriage have been told she was "an outcast." Her three young children, who attend the Colorado City Unified District, have been labeled as "inferior" to FLDS children, she said. With help from advocates and other women who have fled the FLDS church, Pam started to speak out. For the first time in her life, she attended a public meeting last November. Accompanied by Robert Curran, a child victim advocate who leads Help the Child Brides in St. George, she pleaded before the Washington County School Board for intervention at the Colorado City public school. Her children, she said, had been spit upon in hallways, ridiculed on buses and abused in crowded classrooms. As 35 years of marital control and rebellion against control subside, Martin also has opened up to his wife. But Pam still sought a divorce, which came through last month. "I want to have the change in my life," she said. "I want to show it's OK that a woman has rights. It's OK to have anything in your life." The couple, however, sang in vocal harmony when a visitor played the guitar. While television and musical records were labeled "wicked," she said, they had listened to Elvis Presley. "We were listening to it like we were going to hell, but we were listening," Pam recalled. "I was a normal person, having normal feelings, but I thought I was wicked." Doctors have found a tumor in Martin's brain the size of a golf ball. Instead of chemotherapy and radiation, he has chosen to rely on his former mother-in-law's herbs and belief "in God more than I ever did." Diagnosed with stomach and lung cancer 50 years ago, Julia, Pam's mother, has survived on herbs and "God's power." "I have a blessing of strength most women don't have," said Julia, who still believes in polygamy. "I do have a beautiful outlook of what life could be if men respect women, women respect men." Her comments quickly drew protest from her daughter. The physical, sexual and emotional abuses in the polygamous community have taken a toll on a lot of people's lives, Pam said. Some kids have become suicidal, she added. "The abuse is very serious here," Pam said. "Some were physically abused, and it was all hidden." Julia shook her head. The church here is not practicing "God's polygamy," she said. "We are not struggling against polygamy," Julia said. "I'm struggling against immorality." The Spectrum & Daily News is examining polygamy in Southern Utah through the eyes of one family struggling with the issue, as well as people both for and against the lifestyle. Read the first article in this two part series Struggling with Polygamy | |||
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TheSpectrum.com Originally published Monday, May 5, 2003 | |||
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