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Datum: Montag, den 15. März 2004, um 0:19 Uhr

Betrifft: Fortsetzung

FLDS: Time to close the circle

By Hilary Groutage Smith
The Salt Lake Tribune

COLORADO CITY, Ariz./HILDALE, Utah -- In these desert towns, funerals are as much about saying hello as saying goodbye. No surprise, then, when 2,000 people turned out last Sunday to mourn the passing of Dena Olson Zitting Young.
But the memorial turned celebratory when four brothers, told by their leader to leave the community two months ago, also showed up to pay their respects.
It was the first time Dan, Truman, Joe and Nephi Barlow have been back to the communities they helped build. Dan Barlow was longtime mayor of Colorado City. He and his brothers have reportedly been living in a rental house about 40 miles away in St. George since Jan. 10 when their spiritual leader, Warren Jeffs, disciplined them and asked them to leave their wives and homes.
"It was almost like there were two reception lines, one for the casket and the family and another for them," Marvin Wyler said. "They must have had permission to come back."
Jeffs, Wyler said, was absent.
The moment illustrates yet another twist in the politics and religion of these towns straddling the Utah-Arizona border, where the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints owns nearly every inch of land and all residents have some connection to the faith and its troubling cornerstone -- plural marriage, though many men have just one wife. As a tenet of their faith, women wear long-sleeved dresses and don’t cut their hair. Men and children are covered ankles to neck, even under the searing sun.
"We have three parks and a zoo," said Colorado City resident Mathew Broadbent. "Tell me another town this small that has all that."
Family-oriented? Absolutely. But whether plural marriage works in this society is not the question. Whether young girls are being forced into it is.
Since coming here in the late 1920s, residents have developed a culture as distinctive as the Amish or Mennonites, minus the charm. Men in the two communities work mostly in construction trades. There is a cabinet-making plant and a factory, Western Precision, that employs dozens of machinists. If you know where to shop, there’s delectable jam, jelly, cheese, handmade hair clips and hand-stitched baby undershirts.
An outsider wandering in off U.S. Route 59 might not be so lucky. One day you might get polite directions to the local cafeteria. On another you might be told to get out of town.
FLDS church leader Jeffs will not allow his followers to speak with outsiders. And since he ousted many prominent men in a round of "corrections" and "adjustments," residents have been especially tight-lipped.
Church members may have spoken freely to reporters in years past, but now most will say nothing -- and certainly not on the record -- about Jeffs or the church, and tend to answer questions with references to scripture.
"This dispute will not be resolved in the pages of the press," said one longtime resident. Esther and Carl Holm are deeply rooted in the church and have raised 18 children together. There are other wives and children, but neither will say how many. Today, Esther and Carl are embroiled in a custody tussle over their 16-year-old daughter, one of two teens named Fawn who ran away with the help of activist and former church member Flora Mae Jessop.
The two girls are somewhere in Arizona, their parents believe, and want to move to Sandy and live with Esther and Carl’s older son and his wife.
If Jessop or anyone else knows where the girls are, they are not saying, and the Holms are headed for trial next month to assert their right to custody.
"She came in one day a few months ago just loaded for bear," Esther said. "Fawn and I didn’t fight much, but she yelled at me and said: ’I’m not going to be a polyg. I’m not going to stay here and marry a 50-year-old man who has seven other wives!’ I said to her ’As far as I know, you haven’t been asked.’
"These girls are far from being ready for marriage," Esther Holm said. "Her brother and friends were feeding heavy metal [music] to those girls. It made them have the worst attitude. They just got nasty with us. She’s too young. We just wanted her to stay here and mature a little bit," Esther said.
Now the girls’ fates -- if they are found or come forward -- will be decided by Arizona juvenile court.
Wyler, 59, is a lifelong Colorado City resident who left the church in 2001. Ten of his 34 children still follow Jeffs -- he calls them "Warrenites" -- and they refuse to talk to him. Worse, they keep their children, 40 in all, away from their grandfather.
Wyler said he has been asked to leave the stucco home he has cobbled together on Arizona Avenue, but has not been given an eviction notice. His son, Ross Chatwin, has and is battling in court for the right to stay in his home -- the basement of a house his brother also lives in.
"I know God is love and I know that what is going on here is not love," Wyler said. "Our family used to do everything together. We were very close."
Wyler is particularly proud of a photo gallery on the living room wall. A kitchen photo collage has Wyler and church leaders at the center, surrounded by dozens of family photographs.
"It’s just not like this anymore," he said.
And it’s not just the families who have changed. Since January’s expulsions, Utah and Arizona law enforcement have beefed up patrols in the twin cities, an irritation to townspeople who say they are now ticketed for minor infractions like seat belt use.
"Can you imagine how long it takes to buckle 14 kids in a minivan to drive a block?" one woman said.
Utah and Arizona officials have no plans to leave the communities and, in fact, plan a permanent substation near Mohave Community College in Colorado City.
Rod Parker, attorney for the FLDS church, blames the newly tense, secretive atmosphere on Utah Attorney General Mark Shurtleff, who has said he is investigating Jeffs and the FLDS church.
"He has created the very closed society he talks so much about," Parker said.
And, Parker said, there are no underage girls being married off to older men.
Still, the atmosphere in town has turned hostile for Wyler and others. For example, Wyler was married for nearly two decades to Young, who was 73 when she died. He was not welcome, he said, to greet other family members at the service. He remains married to Young’s daughter.
"I sat a few rows back. It ripped my heart out, " he said.
Chatwin said he was close to Young, who was actually both his grandmother and one of his father’s wives.
"I was told the only reason I was allowed at the funeral was because Warren had shown such compassion and forgiveness for me."

The law has been slow to step in

By Pamela Manson
The Salt Lake Tribune

It always came back to the Short Creek raid, the disastrous attempt more than a half-century ago by Arizona authorities to crack down on polygamy.
On July 26, 1953, lawmen swept in the dead of night, arresting men and over time removing hundreds of women and children, some of whom were in foster homes for up to two years. Critics howled, saying no one had the right to tear apart families because of their religious beliefs.
The fallout, including a ruined political career for Arizona’s governor, seemed to paralyze efforts for years to investigate claims of forced marriages, child abuse and fraud. But now, officials in Utah and Arizona -- home to the twin communities of Hildale and Colorado City, respectively, where nearly everyone supports the concept of plural marriage on religious grounds -- say they are taking steps to tackle the problems associated with polygamy.
So far, some claim, they’ve yielded little.
In Utah, there has been a handful of prosecutions, including that of Tom Green, who was convicted in 2001 of four counts of bigamy and one count of criminal nonsupport of his children and sentenced to five years in prison. In a subsequent prosecution, Green was convicted of child rape for impregnating his "head wife" when she was 13 and he was 37 and ordered to serve up to life behind bars.
Others include Rodney Holm, of Colorado City, and three members of the Kingston family, a northern Utah polygamist clan.
Green’s case, Utah’s first polygamy trial in nearly 50 years, focused more attention on crimes in closed societies, said Utah Attorney General Mark Shurtleff.
"This caught my interest," said Shurtleff, who is running for reelection. "Why is there a part of Utah that seems to be immune to the protect-and-serve attitude?"
Shurtleff said his office lacks the resources to bring charges against adults whose only offense is to willingly enter into a plural marriage. So far, only county or district attorneys have prosecuted polygamy-related cases.
In 2000, Utah hired Ron Barton as its "closed society" watchdog, an investigative post created by lawmakers alarmed by reports of polygamy-related abuse. In cases where polygamists are charged with child abuse or sex with a minor -- so far, only by county or district attorneys -- bigamy can be another count, said Barton, who works for Shurtleff.
In Arizona, progress tackling problems related to polygamy seems to be slower -- too slow for 27 state legislators who last month sent a letter to Attorney General Terry Goddard urging him to take whatever action necessary to ensure the safety of teenage girls and investigate lawbreakers.
The letter’s author, Rep. John Allen, R-Scottsdale, said the two most recent attorneys general, Goddard and Gov. Janet Napolitano, have talked about polygamy but done little about it. Even Utah, he said, has done more.
Allen said he was pleased that Goddard now has outlined the resources and legislation, such as a measure outlawing child bigamy, that he needs to combat crimes in the polygamous culture. He also cited the case of Orson William Black Jr. of Colorado City, who has been charged with conspiracy to commit sexual conduct with a minor and sexual conduct with a minor.
Goddard said Arizona and Utah are coordinating law enforcement and offering social services to the residents of Hildale and Colorado City. Authorities check out every claim of a crime; some pan out and others turn out to be "highly imaginative," he said.
Goddard said the 1953 Short Creek raid remains a terrifying memory. "The scars are still there," he said. "Many fear the state more than an abuser in the family. I think Arizona made a serious mistake there and they’ve been paying for it ever since."
These days, the two states are taking a less confrontational approach.
In August, the Utah Attorney General’s Office organized a "polygamy summit" in St. George that brought together law enforcement officers, social service officials and plural wives. Public servants are working with the private sector to offer help to those who want to leave the life and those who stay.
And in a rare meeting of minds, anti-polygamy and pro-polygamy groups are working together.
The combined effort intensified when a January purge of members from the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints produced fears of an exodus from Hildale and Colorado City.
Police patrols have been stepped up. Offers of food, clothing and money for women and children who leave the polygamous life have flowed into shelters and aid groups.
A new center is going up in Colorado City that will house law enforcement and social service agencies. Workers staffing a domestic violence hot line are trained to deal with plural wives who might call for help.
But the turmoil also led to a split in Help the Child Brides, a St. George group that once was a lone voice calling for an end to underage marriages and more aid to women and children.
Robert Curran, a founding member, resigned on Feb. 3 after questioning fellow board member Flora Mae Jessop’s tactics in helping two Colorado City runaways get to Phoenix. Jessop had left the community when she was a teenager.
Shurtleff said since the government stepped up prosecutions involving polygamy, he’s been criticized by both sides for doing too much or too little. But there are those who, so far, are pleased.
"We believe that the Attorney General’s office has good intentions and we appreciate their efforts to help victims coming out of polygamy," said Vicky Prunty, director of the Salt Lake City-based Tapestry Against Polygamy.
But Linda Kelsch, community action director of Principle Voices of Polygamy, an advocacy group for polygamous families, thinks there is less crime among polygamists than the general population.
"I don’t believe polygamy is the problem here," she said. "I believe it is a lack of understanding of the culture that creates the impression there is more crime."