Runaways from Polygamists in Protective Custody

As I noted yesterday, a number of towns in Utah and Arizona are bracing for a possible influx of polygamists fleeing a couple of communities that are ruled over with an iron fist by the leader of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. Well, more than one young girls has run away from those communities and are being helped by the government already.

Jane Zhang writes for The Spectrum about a 17-year-old girl who is in the custody of Utah State Division of Child and Family Services:

The 17-year-old girl, whose name wasn't released for safety reasons, was picked up from home at around 7:35 a.m. by a man driving a Chevy truck, according to police reports. An undisclosed complainant left her father's cell phone number with the dispatcher, asking officers to "hold the female for return to family." The girl contacted the DOVE Center, a domestic violence shelter, where calls were made to Bob Curran, founder of Help the Child Brides, a St. George agency that targets abuses in the polygamous culture. Hours later, said Paul Murphy, spokesman for Attorney General Mark Shurtleff, a state attorney appeared before a judge and put the girl in the custody of Utah State Division of Child and Family Services.

DCFS will take into temporary custody any child who is abused, forced into marriage or simply scared but with nowhere to go, said Carol Sisco, spokeswoman for the Utah Department of Human Services. The division will not return children in danger to their families, she said. Instead, case workers will recommend to juvenile court to either send them to foster care or to responsible family members. "If the AG holds the ground," said Jay Beswick, a child protection advocate who has helped women flee polygamous marriages, "We'll see more runaways."

The East Valley Tribune reports on two 16-year-old girls who ran away from Colorado City:

Gov. Janet Napolitano ... admitted to the Tribune's editorial board that years of investigation have failed to resolve frequent reports of underage girls being forced to marry older men at the behest of community and religious leader Warren Jeffs. Napolitano said a close-knit society, combined with the broad protections granted to parents under state law, has thwarted efforts to collect evidence of possible child rape and other crimes.

[T]eenagers Fawn Louise Broadbent and Fawn Holm told the Tribune they fled Colorado City to avoid being forced into polygamous marriages. But they have been reluctant to go to Child Protective Services, where officials could start gathering information about who was involved. "The girls are absolutely terrified they will be forced to go back to their parents," said Flora Jessop, who left Colorado City 18 years ago under similar circumstances and has been helping the two teens.

Polygamy itself does not necessarily need to be abuse towards women - there is simply nothing inherent in such a marriage that should be a problem. In practice, however, polygamous societies don't typically respect women's rights. Here we see an example of how that is so: young girls are forced into marriages with older men regardless of what the girls want. Their wishes are simply not given any consideration; the wishes of powerful men, however, become the basis for everything that occurs.

Is that a reason to keep polygamy illegal? I don't know. It's tough to figure out what to do with a system that should be innocuous in theory, but is involved with so many awful problems in practice. One could argue that the abuses can be kept illegal, but that's tough when you have tightly-knit religious communities that manage to keep out government investigators and continue to hide their deplorable, despicable actions. Keeping polygamy illegal obviously doesn't stop this from occurring at all, but I wonder if it ensures that it doesn't happen even more.

Read More:

• Blood of the Prophets: Brigham Young and the Massacre at Mountain Meadows by Will Bagley
• Mormonism
• Recent Books on American Religion