Photo Essay:Rural advocacy
a view from the window

Violence against women:
what it is

Violence against rural women:
what is different

Definitions

News Archives

Poster 1
Poster 2
Poster 3
Poster 4
Poster 5

Links
Sacred Circle
National Resource Center
to End Violence Against Native Women

Tribal Court Clearinghouse

Women's Justice Center
Centro de Justicia Para Mujeres 

World Rural Women's Day
The Intersection with Violence Against Rural Women

Tapestry Against Polygamy

Help the Child Brides

Violence Against Rural Women  |  Polygamy   Home

"Women who have escaped Bountiful are struggling to overcome a lifetime of abuse, religious indoctrination, psychological coercion as well as fear and threats of retaliation.”(Debbie Palmer, former Bountiful resident) Social Justice Petition on Bountiful (PDF)

Rural Americans Must Speak Up Against Polygamist Sects

Polygamist sects are hiding out in rural places in order to escape notice, interference with and prosectuion of their criminal behavior, primarily the ongoing sexual assault and exploitation of minor girls and women.  Rural people, their law enforcement agencies, social services and activist organizations bear the responsibility for deciding that  we will not allow institutionalized sexual assault and exploitation in the name of religion. We want child protection laws enforced, and we want systems in place that will help people trying to escape a polygamist way of life.   More

- Control over private lives: telling people where they should work; expecting attendance at multiple church services and activities, dictating decisions that should be made by the entire family. 

- Manipulation of marriages: arranging for people to get married; telling women to stay in abusive home situations and accept the abuse as "correction from the Lord". 

- Sexual demands: pressures to perform sexual acts through coercion. 

- Threats or intimidation: threats to "take away" the husband’s attention for "wrong behavior." 

- The group seems perfect: everyone agrees and follows orders cheerfully. 

- The group claims to have "all the answers" to your problems. 

- You begin to feel guilty and ashamed, unworthy as a person. 

- The group speaks in a derogatory way about those outside the religious affiliation. 

- Outsiders are defined as unable to understand and help you with religious matters. 

- Males are believed to have more rights and abilities than females. 

- Leadership is never shared. 

- Someone frequently prefaces his or her remarks with things like "The Lord has told me." 

- An authoritarian leadership that claims exclusive access to God’s will. 

- Total control over members' daily lives. 

- Exclusivity and isolation. 

- Development of unhealthy emotional dependence. 

- Prohibition of critical analysis and independent thinking. 

- Practices methods of ego destruction and mind control. 

- Discouragement of free and independent pursuit of education. 

Source: Tapestry Against Polygamy

VANCOUVER, British Columbia (AP) — The leader of a polygamous community in western Canada said Thursday that authorities are engaging in religious persecution by charging him with practicing polygamy.

Winston Blackmore, who was arrested Wednesday, claimed there are tens of thousands of polygamists across Canada but said his religious sect is being singled out, disregarding his right to religious freedom.

"This is not about polygamy," Blackmore told reporters in the community of Bountiful. "To us this is about religious persecution."

Authorities arrested both Blackmore, 52, and James Oler, 44, who lead rival polygamous factions in Bountiful, a town in southeastern British Columbia. Blackmore is charged with marrying 20 women and Oler is accused of marrying two women.

British Columbia Attorney General Wally Oppal said the charges carry a maximum penalty of five years in prison. He said the case will be the first test of Canada's polygamy laws.

Blackmore, who has about 400 followers in Bountiful, once ran the Canadian arm of the Utah-based Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, but was ejected in 2003 by that group's leader, Warren Jeffs. Oler is the bishop of Bountiful's FLDS community loyal to Jeffs.

FLDS members practice polygamy in arranged marriages, a tradition tied to the early theology of the Mormon church. Mormons renounced polygamy in 1890 as a condition of Utah's statehood. 

Polygamy charges in Bountiful

 January 8, 2009

VANCOUVER — In a legal showdown over Canada's polygamy law that has been 20 years in the making, B.C. Attorney-General Wally Oppal announced charges yesterday against religious leader Winston Blackmore, who has openly talked about having married several young brides, and a rival leader in the religious sect.

The British Columbia government has been debating for years whether polygamy charges should be laid against members of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, a closely knit community in a remote valley in the southeast corner of the province that encourages multiple marriages as an article of faith.

The Bountiful community has been the subject of several police probes since the late 1980s after allegations of polygamy, sexual abuse, exploitation of children and trafficking of teenage brides across the Canada-U.S. border. 

Prosecutors up to this point have refused to proceed with charges, anticipating that provisions in the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms that guarantee freedom of religion would overrule evidence of polygamy.

But Mr. Oppal, backed by an opinion from Vancouver lawyer Terry Robertson, believes the police have finally collected sufficient evidence to obtain convictions of polygamy against the two leaders.

"Some people are of the view that people of consenting age ought to have the right to enter into polygamous relationships under religious principles," Mr. Oppal told reporters at a news conference yesterday. 

"I disagreed with that," said Mr. Oppal, a former judge on the B.C. Court of Appeal.

The Criminal Code prohibits polygamous practices, he said. "If that section is invalid by virtue of freedom of religion, we should let some court decide that. As far as we are concerned, that is valid law and charges laid are laid under valid sections of the Criminal Code." 

He dismissed previous advice to the government to refer the contentious constitutional issue for a court ruling before laying a charge. Courts don't like to give rulings in a vacuum without any kind of facts available to them, Mr. Oppal said.

Mr. Blackmore, 52, was charged with "practising a form of polygamy or practising a kind of conjugal union" with 19 women between May 1, 2005, and Dec. 8, 2006. James Oler, 44, faces the same charge for his relationship with two women between Nov. 1, 2004, and Oct. 8, 2008. The maximum penalty if convicted is five years in prison.

Despite the charges, authorities did not announce any measures yesterday to remove children from the homes of the men.

The charges were welcomed by activists who have pressed the government for such action. Marci Hamilton, a leading scholar on law and religion who has criticized attorneys-general in the United States for not enforcing polygamy laws, said the charges in B.C. could open a door to investigating child abuse in Bountiful. 

Prosecutors in Canada and the U.S. have hesitated to press polygamy charges because of what Ms. Hamilton called "weak" arguments about religious freedom. That's left vulnerable children at risk, she said. "It has been put off far too long, far too many children have suffered," Ms. Hamilton, author of God vs. the Gavel, said in an interview from Pennsylvania.

Grant Huscroft, a constitutional law professor at the University of Western Ontario in London, said he anticipated the court will consider the constitutionality of the polygamy law before the two men are put on trial. The process could take several years, he said.

Mr. Blackmore was the FLDS bishop in Canada from 1984 to 2002, when the U.S. leadership replaced him with Mr. Oler. The shift in leadership divided the community of about 1,000 people.

The police came to their homes yesterday morning in street clothes and unmarked cars. Four officers took Mr. Oler and Mr. Blackmore to the police detachment in nearby Cranbrook. Four officers remained behind to speak to members of the community. 

Police sought to minimize the impact of the arrests on the community, ensuring that members knew police were not proponents of apprehending children, RCMP Sergeant Tim Shields told reporters. "The arrests were done in a sensitive way, if you can say arrests were done in a sensitive way," Mr. Oppal said.

The RCMP had recommended that the men be released from custody yesterday afternoon on condition they surrender their passports, report to police twice a month and refrain from entering into or performing celestial marriages.

A member of a polygamist sect based in Texas that has been making national headlines owns a 100-acre property with several buildings in the Four Corners area.

The land near Mancos, Colorado – about an hour north of Farmington – was quietly purchased in 2003 by a man named David Allred, the son-in-law of self proclaimed prophet Warren Jeffs.

Their sect – the Fundamentalist Latter Day Saints – broke away from the Mormon Church when it renounced polygamy.

Jeffs is currently in prison for arranging marriages between underage girls and older men, but other sect members are still circulating.

Tom Vaughan, the retired editor of the Mancos Times, has been following the development of the property since its purchase and says he has no idea how many people live there.

While the population remains a mystery, Vaughan knows a lot about the buildings.

“There’s a salmon colored house, original property that the previous owner built,” says Vaughan.

Then there’s what used to be a barn with its first floor open: “They closed in the barn, and so now it’s carried on the tax rolls as a four-bedroom, four-bath residence,” says Vaughan.

“Then there’s this little house that’s speculated Uncle Freddy was hidden out in,” he adds.

Uncle Freddy was an elderly man, once viewed as a rival to Warren Jeffs, who some claim was kidnapped and held against his will for about a year. He mysteriously emerged at a Colorado hospital and died days later.

“There’s the big house that’s alleged to be six bedrooms and six baths,” Vaughan continues. “They wondered if this was going to be a hideout for Warren Jeffs.”

Vaughan says that in recent years a light colored, late-model BMW SUV registered to one of David Allred’s wives has been at the big house on the property.

During a pass over the property, no people were visible from Chopper 4 but there were plenty of signs of life.

Trucks, motorcycles, water that’s trucked in, three well maintained raised-bed gardens and what could be the beginnings of a much larger garden were visible, but no people.

Mancos Marshal Bryan Jones shares the same road with the property’s occupants and lives within a mile of the compound. They share the same dirt road and are just a driveway away from each other.

Asked if he has any interaction with them, Jones said, “I wave and occasionally the gentleman driving the truck will wave back and that’s been it.”

Asked if he’s seen a woman or any children, Jones says, “Nope.”

“I really don’t think this is a retreat for the rank and file,” said Deputy County Assessor Scott Davis. “This is the guys on top.”

Davis says the workers in Texas that have been the object of such attention “weren’t allowed to watch television, but here there’s a satellite dish attached to the house. Somebody gets to watch television.”

With the heat on in Texas, some people in the Four Corners area are wondering if the sect is getting the compound ready for new arrivals.

Montezuma County authorities are keeping an eye on property near Mancos owned by the same religious sect whose Texas compound was raided last week, but they have no reason to believe anything illegal is happening there, Sheriff Gerald Wallace said Thursday.

"There's not a lot of activity," Wallace said of the two parcels located deep in southwest Colorado's San Juan National Forest. "We have not even seen any women or children."

Members of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints bought land - a 60-acre parcel and a 40-acre parcel - northwest of Mancos in 2003 and 2004. 

At the time they told local authorities they were building a hunting retreat.

That was the same explanation FLDS leaders gave for their 1,700-acre property in Eldorado, Texas, authorities said.

Wallace said that at the Mancos properties, which are about a quarter-mile apart, authorities have never seen more than a dozen men at one time. 

They usually are doing construction, he said.

But what exactly is going on, authorities aren't sure.

The property is secluded and any activity occurs far back from the main road and out-of-sight. The land is surrounded by barbed-wire cattle fences, and men are working on building a bigger fence, Wallace said.

There are locked gates at all entrances to the land, and a guard travels the perimeter of the property on an all-terrain vehicle.

Both properties were bought by David Allred, son-in-law of Warren Jeffs, the polygamist leader or "prophet" of the FLDS. Jeffs was sentenced last year to 10 years in prison for using his religious influence to coerce a 14-year-old follower to marry her 19-year-old cousin.

Allred also was listed as the buyer of the land in Eldorado, Texas. 

The sect also has property in Arizona, Utah and Canada, police said.

The Colorado land now is owned by two corporate entities related to the church, authorities say. 

Though Davis has not been allowed on the property to assess it, the office has estimated its current value at $3.1 million. 

The sect paid $1.4 million for the parcels, records show.

by Sara Robinson published on Alternet, Orcinus

" . . . A careful reading of Daphne Bramham's excellent The Secret Lives of Saints reveals that there are plenty of other questions we should be asking about the FLDS -- and months worth of stories we're not hearing about right now, but which need to be discussed and generally understood if the country is going to deal with the group appropriately and effectively.

And the country will be dealing with it -- probably for quite some time to come. Throughout its 60-year history, the FLDS has dealt with prosecution (or persecution) by seeding itself into new states, laying down roots for new communities that it can migrate to. (Eldorado itself started out as one of these.) New compounds are coming together now in Idaho and South Dakota; and there are rumors of others being staked out in Colorado and Nevada as well. Hildale/Colorado City may have been effectively taken over by the state of Utah, and Eldorado is in crisis; but with somewhere between 40,000 and 100,000 adherents, this is a group that's not going to pass from the American scene any time soon. . . . Complete article on Alternet

Texas authorities said on Thursday they identified 25 more mothers below age 18 among those removed from a polygamist compound, raising to around 460 the number of minors at the heart of a huge abuse probe. 

The 25 additional teenage mothers who have been sorted from the adults and who initially claimed to be adults may provide prosecutors with more ammunition if it was found for example that some had become pregnant when they were in their early teens. Officials would not say how old the mothers were beyond the fact all are believed to be under 18. 

Polygamy is an issue for rural citizens, rural law enforcement and judicial systems, rural service providers and rural activists because polygamist sects build compounds in rural areas in order to escape notice, interference with and prosecution of their criminal behavior, primarily the ongoing sexual assault and captivity of young girls.

The media is now focusing on polygamy since the authorities raided a polygamist sect outpost in Texas and made over 400 children wards of the state. This has promoted the most recent public discussion on the issue. 

The danger is when the media begins a sympathetic portrayal of "families ripped apart," the public reacts, elected officials become afraid to do their jobs, and the abusers are allowed to continue the systematic abuse of children. The Austin American Statesman article on Sunday, April 27 is called, "Did Texas go too far in polygamy case?" 

Out of sight, out of mind?
In the Eldorado, Texas case,  Child Protective Services (CPS) investigators reported to the judge that they found several pregnant underage girls at the "Yearning for Zion" compound. 
CPS caseworkers initially took 18 girls, from 6 months to 17 years old, into emergency custody on April 4, and later removed all 462 children from the FLDS compound.

CSP reported they found "an overwhelming amount of evidence showing not only specific abuse against specific children, but a pattern of abuse that endangered them all." 

The compound in Texas is a 1,700-acre (a little over 2.5 square miles) community outside of Eldorado, owned by the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (FLDS).  Anti-polygamy activists revealed the existence of the YFZ Ranch outside of Eldorado back in 2004. According to reports in the Deseret News, originally, the Schleicher County sheriff was first  told the ranch was a hunting retreat. 

Predictably, attorneys for FLDS members are saying the state has no right to interfere with their religious freedom.

A district court judge said, "No religious belief allows an adult to have sex with an underage girl."

North of the border in Canada people are calling for criminal prosecution of polygamist offenders, saying the criminal offense trumps freedom of religion.

An Angus Reid poll released Saturday, April 26, shows that a strong majority of Canadians would welcome legal action against the Bountiful, British Columbia polygamous community. The highest levels of support for prosecuting the community came from BC residents, women and older Canadians.
 

According to the press report, British Columbia Attorney- General Wally Oppal said he will decide "soon" what to do about the polygamous community of Bountiful. 

The FLDS Church is estimated to have 10,000 members residing in Hildale, Utah; Colorado City, Arizona; Mancos, Colorado (Montezuma County, Colorado Sheriff Department); Creston and Bountiful, British Columbia; and Pringle, South Dakota (Custer County, South Dakota Sheriff's Department), in addition to the Texas compound.

More information
Tapestry Against Polygamy
Help for victims and news stories

Call law enforcement agencies in areas where compounds are located and ask them what they are doing to enforce laws to protect women and children.

Law enforcement offices in areas where other compoundes are located include:
Mancos, Colorado
Montezuma County, Colorado Sheriff Department

Custer County, South Dakota Sheriff's Department

Mesquite, Nevada
Clark County District Attorney

Bonners Ferry area, Idaho
Boundary County Sheriff

"We are here in Arizona, we are here in America, but we are locked up" 
The only right they have is to obey their husbands - who have multiple other wives. Their babies are born without limbs and other mutations because the father has been a close relative for many generations. They don't know the words "I," "me" or "fun," and they have no identity. Those women and children live in Colorado City, Ariz. Full story

HOPE organization's links to articles on the FLDS compound South Dakota.

The newly released document showed that Jeffs, 51, made the statements in several conversations from his Utah jail with family and members of the breakaway Mormon sect earlier this year.

Jeffs, revered by followers as the leader of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, or FLDS, will be sentenced on November 20. He was convicted in August in Utah on two counts of being an accomplice to rape by forcing a 14-year-old sect member to marry her first cousin.

The trial riveted Utah, the Western state with a majority Mormon population, many who consider polygamy to be a thorn in the side of their faith. The FLDS, whose estimated 7,500 members live in an enclave along the Utah-Arizona border, is not part of the mainstream Mormon church, which has long renounced polygamy.

While in jail awaiting trial, Jeffs made a series of phone calls recorded by authorities in which he said he "had been immoral with a sister and a daughter" when he was 20 years old, a court document released on Tuesday showed. Jeffs did not elaborate on the nature of the conduct.

"He renounced his role as prophet, explaining that the Lord revealed to him that he was a wicked man and has not held the priesthood since he was 20 years old," the document said.

He later retracted his renouncement in another recorded telephone conversation after being treated for depression, according to the document. The audio and video recordings were not presented at Jeffs' trial on the grounds they would prejudice the jury.

Jeffs' word was considered God's will to his followers. Women were taught to be submissive and "keep sweet," while dissent led to exile and religious damnation, witnesses testified at the August trial.

Jeffs, who pleaded not guilty, had been on the run for 15 months and was on the FBI's most wanted list before being arrested in August 2006. After being sentenced in November to a possible 10 years in prison, he is expected to stand trial on similar charges in Arizona.