Utah and AZ won't prosecute polygamists - for real

http://www.buzzflash.com/articles/editorials/141

Polygamy: the Red State Answer to Family Values. AZ and UT Attorney Generals Won’t Prosecute It. And Then There's Orrin Hatch.


-snip-

Then, a couple of years back, we reported on BuzzFlash that in a town meeting in Utah, Orrin Hatch rebuffed complaints about polygamists who married underage girls and abused their wives. As much as Hatch has left little room to astonish us with his unctuous hypocrisy, we were indeed taken aback when Hatch was quoted as responding something like, "Show me the evidence. All the polygamists I know are good people." (No, we are not making this up.)
So maybe we should have been prepared for a Reuters story on June 12th that indicated that polygamists will not be prosecuted in the states of Utah and Arizona.

"We are not going to go out there and persecute people for their beliefs," said Arizona Attorney General Terry Goddard.

Adds Utah Attorney General Mark Shurtleff: "We determined six or seven years ago that there was no way we could prosecute 10,000 polygamists and put the kids into foster care. There's no way that we have the money or the resources to do that."
-snip-
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Polygamist/misogynist one and the same

women and girls get the short end of the stick

:banghead: :banghead: :banghead: :banghead:

polygamy as practiced by these 'communities' is not illegal. There is no law against multiple religious marriages, or people living together in groups, only against people being legally married to more than one person.

what is illegal is the associated child abuse. that's what people should be targeting.

you can't marry or cohabit if you are already married.

What if a whole bunch of people "cohabit" that aren't married?

adultery is a misdemeanor in Utah as well. do we really want to go around busting everyone who cheats on their spouse? or has an open marriage? please. this wold be stupid.

you are making part of the argument against prosecution.

The problem is some polygamists are law abiding and care for their own. Many do not. A lot of tax payer dollars go to pay support for polygamists because one man with 5 wives and 30 children can't support them all and most don't let women work outside the home.

And arranging "marriages" for their 14 year old daughters, or swapping them for one of 'brother' Samuel's daughter in the next county so they can BOTH have some hot fresh virgin "love".

Open marriage and polygamy are NOWHERE NEAR the same thing and to pretend otherwise is ..... well, it's either very lazy or disingenuous or both.

and certainly for child abuse and child rape. I celebrate doing that.

Right? I think there should be some sort of group that tries to keep track of the polygamist communities and watches for underage 'marriages'. Those cases should be fully prosecuted. But if there's some shmoe who has managed to get several ADULT women to live with him, well whatever. I'd much rather spend our resources keeping track of rapists and child predators.

Check Out www.illegaladvantage.com for more non prosecution from Senators and Alberto Gonzalez, IRS and FBI

nt

Go to the websites www.illegaladvantage.com and look at the evidence,its overwhelming,look at everything the associated links and all.

It's really sad how the surplus young men are abandoned by polygamist communities. Many are kicked out of their homes as teenagers.
The only "winners" in this equation are the few older men who collect young wives.

"Hundreds of Lost Boys Expelled" http://abcnews.go.com/WNT/story?id=851753&page=1

Or better, they are marrying their sisters?

What?

that in many of these communities, boys (besides the direct heir) are kicked out at 12 or so, once they begin to be potential rivals for female affection and male authority. in a world where men have 10 wives (to make an even number) you have to maintain a 10-1 female to male ratio at marrying age (10-12) to make it work.

in these two states amongst those practicing polygamy. Otherwise if there wasn't you can rest assured that they would be crucified in the courts.

The two main communities, Hildale UT and Colorado City AZ contain only about 6000 people. There are other smaller groups of polygamists, but they are not numerous.

Since only one man and one woman can currently be legally married, the "extra wives" and their kids are on the rolls as "father unknown" and the moms and kids get public assistance as single mothers with unknown fathers, so no child support, no nothing for the women and kids save a few chosen boys, the rest get run out of the home after the fathers and elders tire of their unpaid labor and no wages and send them on their way, to marry their daughters off to a new batch of "true believers" while the women sit passively waiting for their checks to roll in from the US.

I'm a lawyer working in a state "welfare office." You cannot get public assistance if you say you do not know who the father is.

My son's father isn't on the birth certificate. No one ever questioned that...in California or in Arizona. Never lived in Utah, though, so I can't speak for them.

So you're saying that in whatever state you work for, if someone actually doesn't know who the father is, she's denied assistance? That's pretty cruel. Sounds designed to punish "sluts."

but since 1997 all states must establish paternity in 95% of the cases of people on cash assistance.

You must have been part of the 5%. (Good cause is generally considered to be fear of the father. To establish that you truly don't know you generally must provide medical proof of deficiency.

(California might have put you on state funded assistance, a few states do provide state money to cover wht the feds won't. Federal money cannot be used unless for the 5%. I know California does pay more money for things not covered under Federal law but I'm not sure about establishment of paternity. I'm quite surprised that Arizona does. My impression is that Arizona is conservative in extra funding.)

I'm talking about cash assistance. I think you have to cooperate for food stamps too but I'm not 100% sure. I'm pretty stupid about medical assistance as my agency isn't the Medicaid office.

I guess that explains it. IIRC, no one asked if I knew who the father was or why I didn't list him. Arizona was a little tougher than California, but mostly just in the paperwork and bureaucracy really.

Guess life's just tougher for us slutty girls these days. ;)

FWIW, I do know who the father is, and he is now involved in my son's life, but at the time I was (for no rational reason) afraid he would take the baby away from me. I have known people who wouldn't have had a clue, though, about their children's paternity.

With regard to the polygamists, I would suspect that the fathers actually do provide for all of the kids, but I'm just guessing.

I don't mean to imply the father of your child is/was a dead beat. Since I work in the office I've heard all the stories (again, I do NOT mean to imply yours is/was not legit) and I agree with the law. Both parties need to be adult and take responsibility. For all the shit and shame we put women through to get welfare the least we can do is collect from the fathers.

They had done some studies of how many fathers don't pay child support, even after court ordered. Going after the fathers to effectively reimburse welfare has been very effective in bringing down those numbers but the number one most effective method which was part of that same legislation was not issuing passports to fathers who have overdue child support. It is surprising to hear the stories of how much money is collected that way. Usually that's in a different income level but since it stays with them for life...we get it for the moms.)

I met him at a barbecue and when I woke up the next morning he was gone.

The courts and all custodians of the law are looking the other way in these areas.

the mother has to cooperate with locating the father, not just giving a name.

Additionally, if a woman says it could be any one if 5 (or 2 or 100) different men, the state does blood tests of ALL of them. If they all come back negative, mom gets no assistance.

I know there is a myth out there that the law looks the other way but when it comes to finding the dad with cash assistance we would lose all federal funding if we do not identify and prosecute dads for support. The feds audit us and if we fall below a certain number we're fined and if we don't bring it up we can get our funds cut off.

It is estimated that welfare fraud is as high as 6% but it is not in the area of identity of the dad.

I could cooperate fully with attempting to find John White, knowing full well he does not exist and still get "state money".

Enlighten us all please and tell us how we are wrong. Regale us with tales of the socially responsible and moral polygamists.

if you don't find John White, you don't get money.

Granted, they may decide you are honestly trying to find him but you cannot but that is not going to happen with an imaginary person in all likelihood because of the 5%.

You see, they have to establish paternity and "find the guy" in 95% of the cases.

For instance, if you say John Smith worked for XYZ Co. and lived at 123 Main Street they check. If there was a John Smith who lived there and worked there but now cannot be found, they issue an order against him and if he ever comes here again he pays. If they discover no John Smith lived there or worked there they say they don't believe you and you don't get benefits.

I work on "the other side", in the welfare office. Establishing paternity is done in the IV-D agency (basically collections) which is a different agency in my state. I've tried to get benefits for women who we thought were doing the best they could but unless the IV-D agency signs off on it, we can't.

They're tough. We have been successful in getting them to carve out a couple of exceptions (like the women who met a guy at a truck stop and can't remember anything but his first name AND is on SSDI because she is mentally disabled. But not much more. You must prove you are mentally disabled to say I don't know.)

I have no tales of socially responsible and moral polygamists because I'm not talking about polygamists and I only deal with polygamists who are on assistance. My prejudice tells me those polygamists are not socially responsible and my moral code tells me no polygamists are moral (different story). Polygamist wives do identify the dad. The dad just doesn't have any money or property to go after and they set up separate households so dad doesn't live with her.

If you want to make it a crime to get cash assistance and/or food stamps if you continue to have children out of wedlock with a father who is a dead beat and doesn't make any money to support the kids...you drastically reduce the welfare roles (at the expense of kids IMHO). The life time limit for cash assistance is 5 years (federal limit, states can be less, my state is 3 years some are as short as 18 months). Food stamps has no life time limit but unless you have young children you have to be working. Medical benefits are usually provided under one program or another for kids. We will not pay child care benefits for families "living the lifestyle". It is my understanding Arizona recently stopped to.

I think this is a good thing (I am male) it takes two to tango, so to speak. there are, of course, exceptions (rape, for instance) when the mother has very good reasons to keep this information private, and the courts should allow it. But if you are getting government assistance, the first place that should be gone after is the other person who contributed to creating the child. I don't care if you meant to father a child, if you have money problems or if you are just an asshole, pay the fuck up. everyone not in a penitentiary can pay SOMETHING, even if it's only $25/month (which should then be augmented by assistance for the remainder of the aid needed, of course) if you father (or mother) a child and, in essence, abandon it to the other partner, you should pay something to augment the state's support. the number of people, as you point out, who actually have no idea who the father is is pretty low, almost everyone will have SOME idea, and to not tell, and not put responsibility on the biological father takes resources away from the unlucky few who really have a good reason to have no idea.

less polygamist boys" of Southern Utah. I found some of my notes and here they are:

"According to federal paperwork, Colorado City is filled largely with unwed mothers without any visible spousal support. But Beagley said this has become a polygamist tradition, so that no proof exists of their many marriages through public records. Husbands marry only once in a civil ceremony. Other subsequent marriages are done "spiritually, but not legally. Beagley concluded, 'It's a way of life. You get married, you go on welfare, and that's it.''

http://www.rickross.com/reference/polygamy/polygamy5.html

<15> Wells, Ken, “A Utah Polygamy Clan is Rich, but Women Draw Welfare Benefits”, Wall Street Journal, 02/12/85, page 1.



http://www.polygamy.com/articles/templates/?a=16&z=


"In 1983 he defended John Ortell Kingston when the state sued him for massive welfare fraud. Investigators claimed that at least four wives and 29 children of John Ortell had collected hundreds of thousands of dollars in public assistance over 10 years, despite his estimated assets of $70 million, according to investigators at the time.
John Ortell never admitted guilt but paid the state $250,000 to settle the case. The settlement circumvented court-ordered blood tests that would have established paternity of the children."

_______________________________________________________________________


I would assume that things would be different now since "classic ADC" is gone now as a Clinton Welfare Reform package portion.

But I had read that precisely: the mothers were not legally married to their "Heavenly Husbands," and they did not recognize the US laws as binding, so they had not a qualm one in accepting any govt. benefit they could, including Section 8 housing and listed the fathers of their many children as "unknown." The entire extended Mormon community worked as an adjunct to ensure that the fiction remained undetected by not pressing for paternity testing, in depth interviews, etc.

On paper the women and their children are paupers, but in reality, the entire clan functions as a single economic unit and the monies by and large go into the bank accounts of the Patriarchs in these clans.

I wish I could find the old copy, but it is late and my eyes are tired tonight, and the file cabinet is at my office and I honestly feel like going out to find it. I had a case from Utah where the mother actually she did not know who the father(s) of her multiple kids were!

Just as we've had "welfare reform" since then, we've also had crackdowns on non-paying non-custodial parents (a.k.a. "deadbeat dads").

I don't think anyone here is opposed to consenting adults entering into marital-like relationships with more than one partner, or even raising children in multiple-parent "families."

When the cover of "religion" is used to protect child abuse, child rape, forced marriage, and when those "religious marriages" are used to perpetrate welfare fraud, I think most of us believe laws should be enforced.

The founders of the FLDS communities in the Arizona Strip chose that location for its remoteness from outside interference, much the way Mormons of an earlier day fled to Mexico and founded "colonias" there. I worked with a guy whose wife had been raised in a polygamist family in one of the Mexican colonias. Think about it -- if you're planning to set up a whole community of people who are breaking the law from the outset, are you going to do it where you're going to be sitting ducks for the authorities?

they don't want to be the guy responsible when the news camera shows heavily-armed police splitting up families and hauling fathers and/or mothers off to jail. In many cases it involves women of legal age so they're breaking the law too. Do you think the women should be prosecuted or just the men? Who would you suggest should take care of the children?

they prosecuted a bunch of them in the 1950s it was a complete PR disaster, the governor's of both states were roundly defeated for re-election.

A few years ago Utah prosecuted Tom Green for bigamy and criminal non support (statutory rape too if I remember correctly). The prosecutor, who was the governor's brother (Gov.Levitt)was defeated for reelection.

That they have an extraordinary hard time prosecuting these types of cases.

involved.

But--- that said, it would be nice if these right-wing religious crazies could figure out how to extend that "mind your own business" attitude to womens' birth control or reproductive choices, rights (including marriage) for gays and lesbians, and an end to the idiotic drug war.

On both counts.

The young girls are coerced by the community. They are married off to much older men.

If everyone is over 18 and presumably consenting I think a case could be made that it's a different story. I don't know if it actually plays out like that, though.

there are financial and community pressures to let these elders do whatever they want.

:shrug:

and when you are an uneducated girl and they tell you your family will go to hell if you don;t do as your told....
in fact that's another way they "bleed the beast" as they call it. they have schools where no one teaches, police stations that don;t function by any strecth etc.. they are assigned the jobs as rewards from the elders and just draw the paychecks ansd wahtever state or fed funding they can get their hands on. they draw 11$ from the govt in social services for every 1$ they pay in taxes. there are i think three seperate towns that function this way out west, all very isolated and 100% the same sect of Mormons, in one town, the one thing i heard they got busted for was spending a big chunk of the school budget on an airplane, for the elder's use... because they are so isolated. Law enforcement is afraid to go there, lest they just disappear or something, Makes it hard to do a simple investigation.

If the age of consent is higher than 14 then there is a crime and there is a community interest in intervening. Otherwise, consenting adults should not be persecuted for their freely chosen lifestyles. If the thread were: child marriages should be prosecuted, I would heartily agree. Instead the OP wants us to support the persecution of adults for not behaving as the OP thinks they ought to behave, and I will not support that.

These are adults making their own decisions. You may find those choices repulsive, in which case I strongly suggest that you not enter into such an arrangement.

And has anyone ever noticed that it's always men with multiple wives? What the fuck is up with that? Are women just too smart to want more than one spouse or is it that men wouldn't tolerate it?

It baffles me.

Again...I have no real problem if someone wants to have multiple spouses as long as they are consenting adults, but I am revolted by some of the stories of young girls being "married off" to some guy old enough to be their father or grandfather.

That's not polygamy....it's institutionalized slavery and rape.

Polygamists have a lot of political muscle in Utah. One governor was voted out of office after a raid on a polygamist community.

the short end of the stick, but also the young boys that are kicked out of the communities and made to fend for themselves because the more established men don't want them around competing for wives. I'm not against polygamy if this is how people want to live and if they are responsible about supporting their families, but there needs to be a few rules, like marrying girls under eighteen and close relatives. Also, why not multiple husbands?

Can they at least make the sob work to support his kids?

I know more than one young man who's had children with 3 or more women - some do and some don't attempt to be part of all the children's lives.

Or what about women who have 4 children all by different fathers.

Or people who've been legally married 3, 4, 5 times and had kids each time.

Polygamy is a very imperfect system and there are obviously children who can potentially be hurt by it's flaws - but the other systems aren't perfect either and can damage a child's life just as much.

It's men keeping women. Plain and simple. Polygamy is when someone has more than one significant other. A harem is when one man basically 'owns' several women and calls them spouses.
I have nothing against regular polygamy(not my thing, but it works for some people)... however keeping a harem, especially when it involves the kind of religious and cultural brainwashing that it so often entails, is without a doubt, wrong on MANY levels.

However the practice of it in this these cases is about older men owning the young women, i.e. harem.

outlawed if they're not going to prosecute? Why don't they just change the damn law?

They sure find time to prosecute cannibis users, don't they?

But it's very, very difficult.

First of all, understand that Hildale UT and Colorado City AZ are not your 1967 free love hippie communes. These communities are geographically isolated from the rest of the respective states; the Grand Canyon separates a whole section of Arizona from the rest of the state, and that's where Colorado City is. Most of the local law enforcement personnel are members of the communities and have no interest in changing the status quo. It's not like raiding a crack house in central Phoenix or a meth lab in Peoria: the logistics of enforcing the anti-polygamy laws of Utah and/or Arizona are complex, difficult, and expensive. The Arizona AG and Mohave County Sheriff's Dept have at times set up mobile enforcement centers, but it's difficult to prosecute a crime that no one reports.

from http://www.phoenixnewtimes.com/2005-06-30/news/on-a-wing-and-a-prayer/2

"Even Colorado City's police force has pledged allegiance to the FLDS ahead of the state. Arizona AG's investigator Ron Gibson says he's learned from a search warrant served on the school district that members of the Colorado City Marshal's Office made statements to that effect."

A poster upthread made what I assume to be a sarcastic remark about young men being kicked out of their homes, as if this is no different from any "normal" parents sending their sons off to college or work or marrying someone other than their sister. The "lost boys" of the FLDS communities are not sent out to be independent members of the greater community: frequently they are first accused of crimes against their communities, then they are excommunicated, then they are literally taken outside of town, pushed out of a car, and left to fend for themselves, often with little education, no job skills, no awareness of the world outside. They do not have television or radio or "popular" music. Their "public" schools are controlled by the church. They have no concept of any other life but the one they've grown up in.

Except for the burka, this is the Taliban in America.

Many of the so-called "consenting adults" are girls as young as 13 or 14, married to men in their 50s, 60s, 70s. Most of the time, they have never even met the men who become their husbands until the day of the "wedding." The marriage is "arranged" by church officials and the parents; the girl's wishes are not considered. Sometimes even the parents' wishes aren't considered. If a favored elder decides he wants a particular girl, he usually gets her, no matter what.

The husband may install all his wives and their children in one home or have several separate establishments. Welfare fraud is not unknown, but there are also substantial business interests involved with the FLDS -- construction companies, real estate, etc. -- that provide a hefty income to the organization. (And allowed fugitive "Prophet" Warren Jeffs to build a multi-million dollar "temple" in El Dorado TX.)

Here's an interesting account of the arrest of Jeffs in August 2006, and includes substantial background on Jeffs and the FLDS sect. Note that when arrested he had VERY large amounts of cash in his possession:

http://messengerandadvocate.wordpress.com/2006/08/29/flds-leader-warren-jeffs-arrested/


And here's an NPR report on the Nov 2006 testimony of one woman who was ordered by Jeffs into a marriage against her will and when she was only 14 years old.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=6520837


One of the problems in prosecuting is that often the witnesses/victims are so terrified, so brain-washed, that they refuse to testify and the cases have to be dropped. This is one reason Green was prosecuted for welfare fraud, not bigamy; there was sufficient evidence that didn't rely on the testimony of a woman or girl who had been raised to believe she would go to eternal damnation if she didn't do as the Prophet and/or elders ordered.

I have no problem with consenting adults who freely choose to live in multiple partner relationships. I don't care how many or what gender they are. But I do have enormous problems with groups and/or individuals who use "religion" as a means to make other people enter into relationships against their will, especially when those other people are young people -- male or female.

I do indeed consider the FLDS to be no better than the Taliban. I also consider those who see this as a matter of "free choice" to be woefully ignorant.


Tansy Gold

They can't prosecute for polygamy because it is truly part of their religion and therefore protected by freedom of religion.

However, that hardly means they lay off the polygamist sect of Mormons on the Utah and Arizona borders. They go after them for all sorts of things, including misuse of state funds when they marry, then divorce their wives and make them go on welfare because they don't work and have children to support. These wives actually still live with their husbands and have to turn over all welfare money to them. They also go after them for statutory rape since most of the girls forced into these marriages are under 16.

Most famously, Warren Jeffs is currently in jail awaiting his trial for sexual assault on a minor and with conspiracy to commit sexual conduct with a minor for allegedly arranging, in 2002, a marriage between a 16-year-old girl and a 28-year-old man who was already married. Then on April 5, 2006, the state of Utah issued an arrest warrant for Jeffs on felony charges of accomplice rape of a teenage girl between 14 and 18 years old. And on May 27, 2006, Bruce Wisan, the court-appointed accountant in charge of the FLDS' trust fund, filed civil suits against Jeffs. Wisan claimed that Jeffs is responsible for "fleecing trust assets."

On August 28, 2006, around 9 p.m. Pacific time, Warren Jeffs was pulled over on Interstate 15 in Clark County, Nevada, by Nevada Highway Trooper Eddie Dutchover because Jeffs' red 2007 Cadillac Escalade's temporary license plates were not visible. One of Jeffs' wives, Naomi Jeffs, and his brother, Issac Steve Jeffs, were with him, and Jeffs had four computers, 16 cell phones, disguises (including three wigs and twelve pairs of sunglasses), and more than $55,000 in cash. In a Nevada court hearing, Jeffs waived extradition and agreed to return to Utah to face two first-degree felony charges of accomplice rape. Each charge carries an indeterminate penalty of five years to life in prison. Arizona prosecutors are next in line to try Jeffs. Jeffs is currently in the Washington County, Utah jail pending trial on two counts of rape as an accomplice for his role in arranging a 2001 marriage between a 14-year-old girl and her 19-year-old cousin.

it has been tried. It doesn't work. Just like it's not a defense to say "god told me to murder her."

Read Under the Banner of Heaven.

(I wouldn't start out with a topic line like yours and then spout something as inane as your lead sentence.)

(Unless you are going to continue to be rude - in which case, I won't respond again, so don't bother to either.)

As for polygamy, it is hard to convict for it when the first marriage is claimed as the "civil" marriage and the rest are not - the rest are claimed to be "spiritual only" as mandated by their religion. Show me an example where that was overcome and I'll be the first to admit I'm wrong. I don't have any issue with that - I'm not insecure.

Sorry, didn't realize I had to write Polygamy 101 in my first post. Who's inane now?

links to two prosecutions where the defense was raised, and rejected, are in post 50.

Sorry.

as was Holm. (Bigamy is the name of the crime, or cohabitation.)

Freedom of religion was used as a defense in both cases as it was in the Lafferty case. Court struck it down. Although Lafferty was not a bigamy/polygamy case the use of the defense of freedom of religion was pretty interesting. Both sides had experts and their testimony (both sides) was pretty entertaining since they had to defend some religions beliefs as not bizarre but say the Lafferty brother's belief that God told them to kill their sister in law was bizarre. God would never say that!(?)

Freedom of religion does not allow you to do some things. You can't break the law.

http://www.btinternet.com/~familyman/ontrial.htm (article about Green case, he was sentenced to 5 years)

http://www.tucsoncitizen.com/ss/local/43109.php (article about Holm case, he was sentenced to 1 year in jail.)

Even though there were no "legal" marriages in either case after the first one. Only chruch or religion sanctioned marriages for other wives.

Edited to make clear Lafferty is not a polygamy case, just a case that dealt with freedom of religion in a polygamist setting and edited to add links to the case.

I didn't mean to be rude but your subject line implied the person who started the thread did not know what he/she was talking about because you said you can't prosecute bigamy/polygamy due to freedom of religion. You can. And we have.

and polygamy is allowed in Arizona and Utah

this is very sad but true