All for one
 
By Dan Rosenburg
Le Soleil de Châteauguay - Quebec, Canada
 
A few years ago, a friend of mine pointed out a house a stone's throw from Chateauguay City Hall. She confided to me that the inhabitants were practising polygamy.

For the uninitiated, polygamy is when the family patriarch has two wives or more. They and their kids (all from the same father) live under one roof, supposedly as one big, happy family. Although polygamy is against the law, the practitioners are apparently immune from prosecution, under the guise that this behaviour is part of their religion.

When I took my friend grocery shopping a few days later, she nudged me, indicated two women standing in line at the cash, and whispered into my ear, "Those are two of the sister wives."

I gave the two women the once-over, noting that they both wore long dresses that hung down to their toes. They looked very pale. They kept to themselves, communicated in hushed tones and spoke to no one. This image remains in my head to this day.

And so it was that I stumbled upon a virtually unannounced TV documentary called "Inside Polygamy" that aired on the A & E network at noon last Saturday. I began watching it with an open mind, but the program was shocking. Last Tuesday on CJAD radio, Kim Fraser interviewed a former "sister wife" who had escaped a polygamous relationship after 15 years and now denounces it. She gave listeners an earful.

Previously, it was thought that polygamy was largely confined to Utah and Arizona; some pockets of B.C., and foreign countries. But the practice has apparently spread.

On CJAD, the reformed "sister wife" explained that polygamy is far from being the utopia its practitioners pretend it to be.

"My husband had eight wives," she said. "It was my turn to be with him on Tuesdays." She said the wives weren't allowed to show any signs of affection towards him except when it was their "day" to do so. This arrangement fostered jealousy, bickering and feelings of competitiveness among the wives, she noted. She said "sister wives" were trained and encouraged to behave like the Stepford Wives in the movie of the same name.

But the worst thing was how the patriarch's daughters were treated. "It was not unusual for girls aged 9, 10 and 11 to be raped (often by their father)and married off," she explained.

Andrea Moore-Emmett, who researched the "Inside Polygamy" documentary for A & E, says she saw first-hand how devastating polygamy is to the lives of women and children alike.

"I saw human and civil rights violations of denying an education to girls; forced marriages, and incest as the doctrine of 'God'," she recalls. "I encountered the trafficking of girls across borders to marry older men already with numerous wives. And I saw physical and sexual brutality reaped on women and children. Women are a vessel to be worn out in childbirth, and children have no childhood."

This must be stopped!
 
cybersoleil.com
Originally published January 29, 2005
 
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