Woman Who Escaped Polygamy Breaks Silence
 
KUTV Channel 2
CBS Broadcasting Inc
 
(KUTV) She sparked an investigation that forced polygamist leader Warren Jeffs into hiding. Now for the first time since she escaped her old life Ruth Stubbs is breaking her silence.

"Girls need a choice. They need a choice of whether they can get married or not," said Stubbs.

Twenty-three-year-old Ruth Stubbs is probably not what most people think of when they think of a revolutionary.

"Do you feel like a trail blazer? No I feel like just a normal person," said Stubbs.

Make no mistake about it. This young mother of four has rocked the world the closed and secretive polygamist world along the Utah-Arizona border.

"I was scared when I came out to the outside world ... was scared and I was watching my back and I was wondering who was going to hurt me and who was going to hurt my kids," said Stubbs.

Ruth fled the polygamist town of Colorado city, Arizona in February 2002 with her two oldest children and a third on the way.

"I felt like a slave ... I felt like I didn't have any control over my life," said Stubbs.

At the time Ruth said she was running from the home of her polygamist husband ... a ColoradoCity police officer named Rodney Holm.

At the time ... Holm was 32 and Ruth was just 16.

"I think it's wrong...I wish I hadn't of got married when I was 16...cause I have 3 kids I'm 19...I'm too young to have three kids," Stubbs said.

It was story similar to so many girls in Colorado City. A story that Utah and Arizona officials could not ignore.

In 2002 Utah Attorney Mark Shurtliff prosecuted Holm for bigamy and having sex with an underage girl.

A jury convicted him in 2003 and sent him to jail.

Perhaps even more significant was the impact that prosecution had on polygamist prophet Warren Jeffs.

Most observers agree it was Ruth Stubbs story that sent Jeffs underground more than two years before criminal charges were actually filed against him.

"I think he's an evil man ... I don't think any man of god would destroy people's lives and marry them to other men," said Stubbs.

Ruth is now married to a young man who also fled Colorado City.

They moved to Alaska ... but recently returned to the area around the Utah-Arizona border to settle down and raise their family.
 
KUTV.com
Originally broadcast February 9, 2006
 
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