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Participating
in the Public Forum: Why Today's Polygamists Must Be Prosecuted
by
Camille S. Williams
Tom Green's
polygamy trial was front-page news, with national and international
media picking up the story, but his trial for child rape garnered
relatively little coverage, even from the local media. On August
27 Green was sentenced to five years to life in prison and may undergo
psychological treatment to address his pattern of sexual relationships
with girls between the ages of 13 and 15. Green's sentence disappointed
prosecutors, who asserted that while most in Utah will protect their
own young daughters from sexual predators like Green, there is little
political will to protect girls trapped into polygamous, and too
frequently incestuous, marriages.
Tom Green and
polygamy are embarrassments to Utahns and a far cry from the practice
of plural marriage in the nineteenth century.
The system
of plural marriage in the Utah Territory gave every woman who wanted
to marry the opportunity to do so; it fostered a more equal distribution
of wealth; it provided financial aid to poor women who married wealthier
men, and made divorce accessible, particularly to women in unhappy
plural marriages.(1) One demographic
study may indicate that unlike the increased fertility of polygamous
wives today, nineteenth century plural wives had fewer children
than their monogamous sisters,(2)
thus reducing their lifetime risk of death in childbirth.(3)
In the subsistence agrarian economy of early Utah, with immigrants
flooding in, polygamy was one way of absorbing and supporting significant
numbers of women who had no extended family to help them through
very lean times.
But whatever
the virtues of the now-defunct plural marriage system, patterns
of exploitive or even criminal acts distinguish polygamy today from
the plural marriage of the nineteenth century. Today's polygamists
who abuse children, who limit children and women's access to education
and employment, and who defraud individuals or the welfare system
should be tried for their crimes.(4)
Plural
marriage was between consenting, unrelated adults; today's polygamy
includes patterns of incest and child sexual abuse, along with physical
and emotional abuse. Clearly, charges and convictions
against independent polygamist Tom Green, and the rash of charges
and convictions against leaders of the Kingston group suggest that
some polygamists establish incestuous relationships,(5)
and are sexually involved with girls as young as 12 or 13 years
of age, and with their own nieces or step-daughters.(6)
In some instances, boys and young men are molested by their mothers.
Several teenage
girls, and at least one teenage boy have run away from the current
polygamous practice in which young girls are married to older uncles
or half-brothers, and in which young men claim they are required
to provide unpaid labor for family businesses which are estimated
to bring in millions of dollars a year.(7)
Recalcitrant adolescent males may be isolated to induce their "repentance"
and their cooperation in the family business. In some contemporary
polygamous groups, male leaders may "adopt" adult males, giving
the "adoptive father" sexual access to the wife or wives of the
man he "adopts."(8)
Plural
marriage was an economic boon; but today's polygamy is an economic
bust for women and children. In earlier times, with men,
women, and children contributed labor to the farm and household
economy, so polygamy provided additional helping hands. Today, supporting
several wives and numerous children to the age of majority is a
financial handicap, if not an impossibility. Women involved in contemporary
polygamy disagree about whether polygamy helps or hurts families.
Some, such as attorney Elizabeth Joseph, claim that consensual polygamy
among adults benefits women who want both a career and children,
since sister wives can handle home and children while wives who
want to work outside the home.
The women who
fled polygamous marriages to form Tapestry against Polygamy, however,
view the current practice as breeding domestic violence, incest,
ignorance, and poverty for women.(9)
One reason may be that the checks and balances on individuals present
in the plural marriage system are absent in polygamy today. A century
ago, one of the results of plural marriage was economic support
for women, since back then, polygamists had to have the economic
resources to support another wife, and some requests(10)
for another marriage were denied on the basis that the man needed
to take better care of the one wife he had. Both men and women could
freely refuse marriage, or could divorce without fear of physical
violence or loss of their children or their property. Dissenters
from today's polygamous enclaves tell stories to the contrary.(11)
Some fear for their lives even after leaving a polygamous cult.
Certainly what
we know of secretive polygamous groups is worrisome: in contrast
to a territorial culture which acknowledged and supported polygamy,
today's polygamists keep their wives and children apart from the
larger society. Girls lose the opportunity for education, and may
be beaten for refusing marriage. Polygamy formerly allowed women
to participate socially as wives and mothers, but now those wives
and mothers remain part of an underground subculture which appears
to run in part at least on coercion and violence.
Plural
marriage redistributed property from richer men to poorer women;
many of today's polygamists rely on the welfare system and on the
property of converts entering their organization. Today
men such as Green are relatively unrestrained in contracting new
sexual relationships or "marriages," and are supported by their
wives, their children, and by welfare. Entire cities, such as Colorado/Hildale
have disproportionately drawn on welfare dollars to support their
lifestyle. Tom Green's family received welfare benefits because
Green wasn't supporting his children. An additional irksome note
for Utahns: the State of Utah may pay for the attorneys appointed
to represent teens who have tried to run away from polygamy, because
their mothers are impoverished, and their polygamist fathers are
sometimes not legally acknowledged.
Disaffected
converts have sued polygamist leaders in both Hildale and Manti,
alleging that their property was taken through false promises, deceit,
or wrongful eviction. In some cases, it is unclear whether the property
is recoverable if the polygamists used it for their own purposes.(12)
Contrasting
social and legal climates. Editorial pages carry letters
about leaving the polygamists alone because they harm no one. Unlike
the last century, where the social and legal climate punished adults
for flouting Victorian mores, today most people are uninterested
in punishing consenting adults, but want intervention to protect
children.(13) But the state, after
the difficulties of the Short Creek(14)
raids, and the Singer(15) stand-off,
wants to be sure that children are truly being harmed before removing
them from the care of their parents. And it appears that genuine
harm to children exists today. It is difficult to investigate and
prosecute crimes committed in secret societies where even children
are afraid to cooperate, and where children and wives may be moved
from one state to another to evade investigators.(16)
Douglas F.
White, attorney for Tapestry against Polygamy, calls today's polygamous
child "marriages" akin to human sacrifice,
". . . when
a 40-year-old polygamist pretends to marry a 13-year-old virgin
in a religious ceremony with the intent [of] having sex with her
and producing 7 to 10 children by her by the time she is 30 years
old[.] This same girl will be involuntarily taken out of public
school in the eighth grade, if she has been allowed to attend school
at all, never to return. This child's children will be born without
medical care. This child at age 30 will have no birth certificate,
no education, no job except what the polygamist's business gives
her, no money, no retirement, no social security, no medical coverage
for her or her children, no community involvement, no respect, no
self-esteem . . . no real life. Dead at age 13. A human sacrifice
in every sense of the word."(17)
Plural marriage
was for a time a way to improve the lot of women and children. Certainly
it was not an easy task for our forebears, but they weathered it
successfully for the sake of the kingdom and their own testimonies.(18)
For many advocates today, the focus seems to be on adult freedom
of association and sexual union. In addition to fundamentalist polygamists,
today an array of "Biblical" or "Christian" polygamists, and gay
activists all seek to change the scope of marriage to accommodate
their specific practices. Some legal analysts suggest that the ACLU
has been involved in defending polygamy as a step toward legalizing
same-sex marriage. David O. Leavitt, Juab County attorney, and the
man who prosecuted the case against Green, notes with irony that
the Reynolds case may have brought plural marriage to an
end in the last century, but it may end up preventing same-sex marriage
in this century.
Whether today's
polygamists are deceived or deceiving, or both, it appears that
their practices don't protect women in the ways plural marriage
did, and that their women and children are suffering. Utah prosecutors
want to go after those who are exploiting young girls, and if the
Green case is an example, there seems to be a genuine concern for
the women and children involved. Leavitt has assisted the Green
wives and their children find the social agencies who could help
them move from the west desert to the Wasatch Front, where their
opportunities for education and work are better. One wife has moved
away from her sister wives and is supporting herself and her children.(19)
Jacob, a Book
of Mormon prophet, observed that those who seek to justify their
sexual sins by pointing to David and Solomon are disobedient to
God. Some contend that because the Lord hasn't commanded the practice
of polygamy in our day, the wives and children of these men will
experience only sorrow and mourning from their husbands' wickedness
and abominations.(20) Certainly
that will remain their lot if people in the mainstream ignore the
plight of polygamous wives and their children. Today's polygamists
should be prosecuted when engaging in welfare fraud, child rape,
incest, and bigamy.
No, indeed,
this is not your great-grandfather's polygamy.
ENDNOTES
1.
Kathryn M. Daynes' More Wives than One: The Transformation
of the Mormon Marriage System, 1840-1910. Urbana and Chicago:
University of Illinois Press (2001), p. 14. Daynes' study is of
marriage in Manti, Utah, but she reviews and incorporates or refutes
prior scholarly works on Mormon polygamy.
2.
That is my interpretation of some of the demographic data in
Phillip R. Kunz, "One Wife, or Several? A Comparative Study of Late
Nineteenth-Century Marriage in Utah." In The Mormon People:
Their Character and Traditions, edited by Thomas G. Alexander,
53-73. Provo, Utah: Brigham Young University Press, 1980.
3.
The risk of dying in childbirth was about 1 in 3 until the
advent of antibiotics and sterile obstetric practice.
4.
See the commentary of Edwin B. Firmage, "Attempts to Use Law
to Eradicate Polygamy are Brutal, Ineffective," The Salt Lake Tribune,
August 27, 2000. Firmage, a University of Utah law professor, argues
that the use of the criminal law should be to stop spouse abuse,
child abuse, and incest, just a s we should prosecute the unmarried
or monogamous who commit those crimes, but that prosecution of polygamy
itself will simply drive those crimes further underground.
5.
In the nineteenth century marriage between uncle and niece
was legal, though apparently rare among LDS plural marriages; only
a handful of states consider the practice legal today. Marriage
of half siblings was and is typically prohibited.
6.
Tom Green is charged with sexual intercourse with a child under
the age of consent, which was 14 years at the time the crime took
place. The victim in the rape case is Linda Green, his current first
wife. LeeAnn, who is wife number 3 currently, as a young girl ran
away from home to avoid marriage to Tom (her mother, June Johnson,
was married to Tom for a time). The crimes against her were never
brought against Tom for some reason and the statute of limitations
prevents prosecution now.
A year long
investigation by The Salt Lake Tribune found numerous incestuous
relationships in the Kingston group:
-- John Daniel
Kingston and his wife, Susan Nelson -- the parents of the
girl who testified
against David Kingston (charged with incest and sexual abuse of
a minor) -- are half-brother and sister and the parents of 10 children.
-- David Kingston
is married to at least two other of his nieces.
-- Clan lawyer,
Carl Kingston, supposedly performed a ceremony marrying his minor
daughter to David Kingston as his third wife; Kingston Church president
Paul Kingston is married to his half-sister as well as several other
women. Both are attorneys who have sworn to uphold the Utah Constitution,
which prohibits polygamy.
-- Former auditor
for the Utah State Auditor, Jason Kingston, and his niece Rosalind
are married, according to their marriage certificate.
-- Jesse and
Janice Vesta Johnson also are half-sister and brother, according
to their marriage certificate and court documents. From "Polygamy
May Bring New Prosecutions," Stephen Hunt, The Salt Lake Tribune,
reproduced at http://www.polygamyinfo.com/plymedia%2099%20103%20trib.htm.
7.
See Tim Gurrister, "Boy May Eventually be Returned to His Family
If Certain Conditions Met," Ogden Standard Examiner, November
27, 2001, at http://polygamyinfo.com/plymedia%2001%20167stanx.htm.,
and Tim Gurrister, "Kingston Custody Battle Paid for by Taxpayers,"
http://www.polygamyinfo.com/plyinfo.com/plymedia%2001%20166stanx.htm;
Brooke Adams, "Kingston Inc.: Polygamy's Entrepreneurial Empire,
A Company, a Clan, a Corp. with a Plan," Salt Lake Observer,
Smart Local News ©) 1998 Silver King News Corp., August 14-27,
1998.
8.
Conversation with Juab County Attorney David Leavitt, March
25, 2002, in Provo, Utah.
9.
See Tapestry Against Polygamy's website statement to the media:
Dear Media Friends:
Welcome to
Utah: Home to the Polygamists
More than 100,000
people practice polygamy in the United States but it is particularly
concentrated in the western states, especially Utah, where this
illegal practice is increasing each day.
In the Spring
of 1998 TAP brought worldwide attention to the horrific abuses that
occur within these secret polygamous societies such as incest, statutory
rape, underage marriage, welfare fraud, tax evasion, lack of education,
trafficking of minors across boarders for the purpose of sex, medical
neglect, and extreme forms of domestic abuse & mental torture.
The Mormon
fundamentalist tradition has been interwoven into Utah's culture
for so long that today it is being protected by the ACLU, local
NOW, and much of the state of Utah as a religious freedom without
any regard for the polygamous women and children whose human rights
are being violated. Today Utah's state government still refuses
to take any preventative or pro-active measures to rid Utah of polygamy.
As a State
and as a Nation, we must not forget the tens of thousands of polygamous
children and adults who are being coerced into this Taliban
way of life.
At http://www.polygamy.org/media.shtml.
See also the
contentions of polygamy critics such as Vicky Prunty, "Anti-Polygamy
Group angry about Abuse Bill's Failure, Deseret News, January
29, 2000, after the failure of "HB62, Tapestry leaders are now getting
behind SB8, sponsored by [Sen. Ron] Allen, which would allocate
$500,000 to be used in prosecuting crimes within polygamist communities,
including welfare
fraud, tax fraud,
forced marriages and child abuse. The bill also seeks to establish
a telephone hot line to help members of the mostly isolated communities."Also,
see the observations of a state domestic violence investigator,
Greg Burton, "Society's Lures: Is Polygamous Sect Circling The Wagons?"
The Salt Lake Tribune, August 3, 2000; Peggy Fletcher Stack,
"Coalition to Battle Polygamy: Human rights group targets abuse
against women and children, The Salt Lake Tribune, Thursday,
February 14, 2002.
10.
LDS plural marriage of the nineteenth century required the
consent not only of the first wife, but also the man's bishop, stake
president, and the President of the Church. Daynes, at 194.
11.
Not to be ignored is the violence among rival polygamists groups
today, some of which follow the notion of "blood atonement," their
style. See the contentions in http://www.exmormon.org/violence.htm.
12.
See, for example, Associated Press, "Jury awards $290,000 in
Religious Fraud Case," January 30, 2002, at www.childpro.org/news/juryawards.htm;
Hilary Groutage Smith, "Couple Fight Eviction by Religious Group,"The
Salt Lake Tribune, Aug. 23, 2000
13.
The age of consent was lower, 12 for girls and 14 for boys,
but it appears that most brides were 16 years old or older. See
Daynes' discussion at pp. 68ff.
14.
See Martha Sonntag Bradley, Kidnapped from that Land: The
Government Raids on the Short Creek Polygamists, Salt Lake
City: University of Utah Press, 1993 (paperback, 1996).
15.
For information about John Singer, see Allen Kent Powell's
entry for Singer in the Utah History Encyclopedia, originally
published by the University of Utah, at http://www.media.utah.edu/UHE/s/SINGER%2CJOHN.html.
16.
See Greg Burton, "Polygamists Claim Partial Victory: Panel
softens bill aimed at protecting girls from abuse and coercion into
early Marriages,"The Salt Lake Tribune, February 17, 2001;
Greg Burton,
"Polygamists Pull Kids From School," The Salt Lake Tribune,
August 2, 2000.
17.
Douglas F. White, The Salt Lake Tribune, May 7, 2000.
18.
For a discussion of the relative success of polygamous families,
see Jessie L. Embry, Mormon Polygamous Families: Life in the
Principle, Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1987,
esp. pp. 187ff.
19.
LeeAnn Beagley, now an adult, may have achieved the separation
from Green that she could not manage as a young girl.
20.
Jacob 2:23-31.
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