Defense grills former polygamist sect member in Texas trial

Shame in the Southwest US: Shame on John McCain

Abuse and Exploitation of Children in the FLDS Church

By Michael Springer

Recently I decided to take an alternative route into a rural area in northern Arizona. We found a small RV park operated by the Piute tribe and paid for a weeks stay. After a day of settling in we drove to the town of Colorado City to get some gasoline and food. What we stumbled into is the center of the Mormon Fundamentalist Later Day Saints (FLDS) polygamist communities of Colorado City and Hildale that are built on the Utah and Arizona border.

Colorado City is a comfortable 4 hour drive from Las Vegas and about an hour from St. George, Utah. The solitude and quiet provides a welcome respite from the continuous cacophony of light and sound that emanates from Sin City. The towns are located in northwest Arizona in a unique and beautiful area known as the Arizona Strip. The Arizona Strip is separated from the greater part of the State by the Grand Canyon.

Over the past 10 years I had watched several FLDS public relations puff pieces on network TV about women who live in a polygamous household. From what I had seen in the media, I was under the impression that the polygamists were a small, insignificant sect within the US. To underscore why I knew so littile about the FLDS, the Phoenix New Times's Robrt L. Pela wrote that the print and electronic media has portrayed polygamy in a manner that is "just as tidy as a deodorant commercial".

What I found in Colorado City is much different than the images that are being shown on TV or reported in the print and electronic media. The FLDS public relations efforts have succeeded in appealing to the general public’s curiosity and voyeuristic tendencies by showcasing a few polygamist families in a way that makes it appear as though they are no different than any other suburban “family”. The soft focus of the HBO show Big Love could have easily been scripted by the FLDS public relations staff .
With an estimated population of 10,000 FLDS members living in the Colorado City area, polygamy has been flourishing. The term polygamy not only has a specific meaning to law enforcement and in the court system but it has been a common pejorative in the US for almost 200 years. As a result, the FLDS has been pressing the term “pleural marriages” in their literature and whenever they are given an opportunity by broadcast and print and electronic media.

The FLDS leadership has adeptly used the controversy of polygamy to draw attention away from the real problem. The FLDS has spent millions of dollars implementing a public relations campaign and marshaling a legal defense that allows them to practice a deviant, perverse, and illegal lifestyle within the borders of the US. By using religion to justify the controversial practice of polygamy, the FLDS has created a smokescreen that has successfully obscured the greater problem: the shameless abuse and exploitation of the children in the FLDS communities.

Out of curiosity, we drove through Colorado City and Hildale numerous times. There is a modest building in the middle of Colorado City that has a sign above the front door proclaiming it the Colorado City Hall. They have a police force with three to four officers. In the past several years the State has accused the Colorado City police of enforcing the sharia type of laws that are imposed on the FLDS community members. Colorado City law enforcement vehicles are labeled with the term “Marshall” but they remained parked at the city hall while we were in town. Instead, we were followed by an unmarked white sedan as we drove through town.

The sign outside of town states that Colorado City was founded in 1985. The FLDS changed the name from Short Creek to Colorado City because of the negative attention Short Creek had been getting in the press. Colorado City and Hildale were deliberately built on the Arizona and Utah border. This allows the FLDS men to quickly walk across the border and avoid arrest if they are being pursued by only one of the two States’ law enforcement personnel. There is a hardware store, grocery store, gas station, and a dairy but, other than the money that is provided by the welfare system, it doesn’t appear that there is any kind of conventional economic base in Colorado City.

There is a significant amount of wealth here but it is being muted. Although the Colorado City area was settled in 1913, many of the houses look like they were built within the last 15 years. Some of the houses are 6,000 to 10,000 square foot mansions or rambling conglomerates that are composed of various additions built at different times. Many of the original sections of the houses are unpainted and unfinished. To an outsider, it would appear that work on the main part of the house was stopped to allow time to work on one or more of the additions. Other “homes” consist of numerous single-wide trailers which may or may not be connected by breezeways. The explanation I was given regarding the unfinished look of the houses was that Utah and Arizona do not tax unfinished homes.

About 5% of the houses are weathered shells and look as though they were abandoned just after they were built. Some look like they may have never been occupied. A prospective polygamist appears to have begun to erect his own personal fortress to house his “harem” but it looks like something interrupted the process. Each of the occupied compounds has from 3 to 5 working cars, SUVs, pickups and we saw over 20 children’s bicycles parked in many of the yards. Suburbans and minivans are the most popular vehicles. Most of the autos are less than 5 years old. The presence of a swing set in the yard is, in general, not remarkable but the swing sets in the yards here have 6 to 10 swing seats each. We saw only the girls using the playground equipment.

The larger compounds have 8 to 12 foot high walls surrounding them with thick wood or steel gates that were open during the day. These are privately owned fortresses. Some of the larger FLDS estates are not visible from the paved roads but are hidden in the many canyons surrounding the towns. There are “No Trespassing” signs with bold red lettering along every roadside. Other large plywood, hand lettered signs warn that “Trespassers Will be Shot – If They Move They Will be Shot Again”. From the accounts I heard, the threats are real.

Testimonies from Warren Jeffs’ criminal and civil trials indicate that pedophilia and incest are part of the FLDS community’s culture. Just down the street from the City Hall, the State of Arizona has set up a building that is supposed to house representatives from the State Attorneys General’s Office. It was placed in the town of Colorado City to provide a quick response for individuals who might be willing to testify about the child sexual abuse in Colorado City and Hilldale. We saw no cars or signs of anyone in the building during the week we were there. When we called the phone number that is posted in the window, no one answered.

The social and psycho pathology is thick and pervasive here. The induction of Arab children into the Taliban madras’ and the distorted teaching and training they are subjected to must be similar to the socialization the FLDS children receive. Historically, the Colorado City police have been FLDS polygamist cult members. They enforce church doctrine and use the power of their badge to keep the established social order intact and free of any outside influences. Community members are expected to report on the activities of their neighbors. Given what we witnessed in Colorado City, the Taliban may have a natural ally in the Mormon FLDS communities.

By almost any standard, the majority of women in Colorado City and Hildale are plain looking. None of them wear any kind of makeup. Despite the many children we saw and the evidence showing that there were many more confined inside the houses, we did not see wedding rings on the women’s hands. Almost all of the women and girls wear home sewn prairie dresses with a single tie at the waist. The dresses have both half and long sleeves and are made out of a heavy weight pastel colored or gray cloth. A few dresses are made with a material that has a discrete decorative pattern but this style is worn more by the children than the adult women.

The obligatory buttoned collar seems to indicate that the wearer is virtuous. Their long hair is almost always shaped in a “wave” above their forehead and then pulled back and braided. Because they are forbidden to cut their hair or wear their hair in any other style, it extends well below their belt line. Having no time between babies to shed the weight gained during pregnancy, most of the women over 30 are moderately obese to obese.

The polygamists’ primary objective is to produce girls that are to be sent away to live with older men who in turn produce more girls. This town is actually a “puppy mill” but they breed and raise humans here. Although they are not as dour as their Mormon kin in other parts of Utah, their pleasant but distant affect feels as though it is part of a public relations effort designed to blunt the revulsion that is felt by the uninitiated tourist.

The women in the FLDS communities are all married to a man by an FLDS church elder. The FLDS women use a contrived and very convoluted rationalization to claim that they are single when they become pregnant. Once they have a child, they apply for welfare. The children are then used to inflate the woman’s welfare checks every year or two. This is a blatant scam on the US welfare system.

The periodic news reports about the FLDS that are run by the major networks and print media elicit an “Oh my…” from their audience but there seems to be little or no follow up. The process continues unabated. There are “800” numbers posted on a highway billboard that promise anonymity and help to anyone who will testify against those who are abusing or exploiting the children. From what we saw, they don’t seem to be having much of an impact on the community’s primary charter of producing marketable child brides.

As we drove through the streets we saw an occasional young boy working by himself in the yard or longingly staring through an opening between the fence boards. In another area, three boys loaded rocks and weeds into the back of a truck by hand. Almost all of them are under the age of 14. They all stood motionless and stared at us as we drove by. None were given gloves to protect them from the thorns they were loading into the truck.

We were told by non-FLDS locals that we would be stopped by the police if we took any photographs. We surreptitiously shot a few anyway. Because the boys were looking at us we did not keep any photos of them. We did not want to take photos that had any identifying features of the children. We were able to take photographs of the girls that gave no hint of their identity.

In contrast to the boys, we frequently saw and photographed pregnant teenage and young adult women with a stair-step train of 3 to 6 active little girls and pre-teen girls in tow walking to the dairy store, cooperative grocery, or park – all in prairie dresses. Crew cab pickups and minivans disgorge 8 to 10 women and girls in front of the cooperative store every few minutes. We saw very few young boys (between the ages of 1 and 5) in the stores or park. There was also a distinct absence of boys in their late teens.

There is an elementary school in town that had been controlled by the FDLS. It now sits empty. According to Arizona House of Representatives’ Minority Leader, David Lujan, the school board was using school funds to pay church expenses (including the purchase of an airplane) and the FLDS leadership did not want the children exposed to any subject matter other those that extol the polygamist community lifestyle. As a result, the State took control of the school. The elementary school has sat vacant for several years and appears to be deteriorating. Our drive-by surveys were conducted during the weekdays. None of the children were seen near the school. More waste of tax money and a lost opportunity to educate the FLDS children in anything other than the distorted information they receive from the FLDS church.

There is a large building two blocks east of the coop market that looks like it could have been a high school but we saw no signs saying what it was. If there was outdoor athletic equipment, it was not obvious. When we first drove by the large building, there were no cars parked in the extensive parking lot and there was no sign that the building was being used. Two days later, there was a hearse at the loading dock and 700 to 800 cars, SUVs, and pickups parked in the lot and along the adjacent streets. All of the vehicles were relatively new.

The production of young girls for a cloistered market of pedophiles is the primary industry here in Colorado City. The charge these women have assumed in this town is similar to what Arab women have been doing to their children. To be fair, the FLDS women do not teach their children to strap on a vest and, at a predetermined time and place, detonate themselves but they do teach them that it is their religious duty to sacrifice themselves. The mothers in the FLDS communities betray their own children by training them to unquestioningly assimilate into the disturbed, isolated world that awaits them. Other than the price the girls pay to be part of this radicalized community, I doubt I will ever know what the going rate for a virgin 12 year old girl might be.

The 2 to 3 year old children know who is a Colorado City local and who is not. Their curiosity compels them to stare at us. Even the girls who are under one year old do not smile. The natural response of young girls to smile at adults has been trained out of them. There is an unmistakable look of mistrust and a hint of scorn on all of their faces. They are being groomed early in life to not only accept their fate but to defend against any who might want to change the order of their universe.

As six young girls parade across the parking lot into the coop store, each takes a turn looking at us over her shoulder. They don’t point but do whisper to each other as they walk in a staggered line behind their young mother. All of the girls seem to have a sense of shared destiny that has been reduced to a game of follow-the-leader. The metaphor becomes unmistakable as the young girls follow their mother and older sisters into the coop grocery store in the same manner they will be led as child brides to their chosen husbands.

From birth, the girls have been socialized to believe that this is an acceptable even desirable way to live. They are trained to exhibit a sweet disposition toward their “sisters”. Sometime between the ages of 12 and 17, most of them will be given away in a “church marriage” (not recognized by the State) to a man who could be her father or grandfather. She can be the first or eighth wife; she is not to question. She is expected to fulfill her duty within her husband’s house and enter the church’s “factory” system to produce more girls without disruption of any kind. Later she may be given to another husband without her consent.

The initial impression is that other than her obligation to generate larger welfare checks each year, the women in the polygamist communities will never be anything more than a means of satisfying the patriarch’s sexual demands and producing young girls to satisfy their perpetual and disturbing sexual proclivity. It is assumed that the sister-wives somehow derive satisfaction from their interaction with their children but even this will be tainted by the reality that they have to ultimately betray their daughters by conditioning them to assume their role as one of the sister-wives in their future husband’s household.

The girls are being raised for the sexual gratification of the patriarchs and as breeding stock. After marriage, most of them will not be allowed to visit with her biological mother or biological sisters. If she tries to leave, the men will literally hunt her down and force her to return. Representative Lujan stated that the average life span of a woman who lives in Colorado City is 32 years. It would take little to skew this kind of data but the absence of any women over the age of 55 or 60 on the street or in the stores seems to confirm the idea that women do not fare well if they can no longer produce babies.

There is another side of this story that is just as tragic and even more bizarre. The media has conditioned us to see the girls and women as victims but the boys in Colorado City face a future that may not be as disturbing but it is much more bleak. It is difficult for me to describe but there is a void in the eyes of the young boys we saw. There is no hint of initiative, spontaneity, curiosity, or mischievousness. We did not see any of them playing. Their faces are almost expressionless. This can only be the result of systematic and community wide brain washing, neglect, and physical and emotional abuse. Since the objective is to produce child brides, the boys appear to be treated as a byproduct of their parents’ blind commitment to the church’s goals of fulfilling the patriarchs’ sexual appetites.

The church sponsored indoctrination they are subjected to appears to have removed the life force from the boy’s souls and left a utilitarian shell that can be used to rake the yard or dig a ditch. They become a cheap and convenient source of labor until they reach puberty. It is then that they become a threat to the older males, driven out of town, and told not to return. This seems to be a practical approach to managing the perennially vexing problem of teen sexuality but this is a very dark strategy to employ against a naive and unprepared child. I cannot imagine subjugating and then rejecting my own children in such a calloused, cruel, and strategic manner.

The boys are discouraged from or not allowed to spend any social time with the girls. The men and boys are dressed alike. They wear light weight long sleeve plaid (small pattern) shirts that are buttoned at the wrists and neck. Their pants are simple and made out of black or blue denim. The boys’ hair is cropped short and men all have neatly cut and combed hair reminiscent of Ward Cleaver. We saw no beards or mustaches. I read one account that said both the men and women were required to wear long underwear at all times-even in the summer when temperatures are over 100 degrees.

In a recent conference on polygamy, it was reported that the teen age children in FLDS communities have an educational level equivalent to the 3rd or 4th grade. They are allowed little to no interaction with the outside world (no TV, radio, Internet, etc) and have no education or skills that would allow them to survive outside the house they grew up in. We saw cell phones being used but the triband service we subscribe to was unable to find a signal even when we were less than 50 yards from the town’s cell phone tower. The intrinsic level of paranoia here in Colorado City is heightened by the periodic presence of State and County law enforcement personnel but creating a local cell service that has a unique frequency and limited range was, like many other things in Colorado City, extraordinary.

When the boys are forced out of Colorado City in their mid to late teens, they are reportedly functioning at the emotional level of a typical 12 year old. Their lack of marketable skills makes it difficult for them to find any kind of job. Living on the street, they fall prey to any who want to exploit them during this vulnerable time. Some are plied with alcohol and drugs and enticed to prostitute themselves to other sexually repressed, “non-homosexual” Mormon males in the larger towns and cities.

They often pool the little money they beg for or earn and rent an old trailer, shack, or small apartment that they call the “butt house” (where you can put your butt when not on the street). The communities in which they try to live refer to them as the “lost boys”. Support networks have been formed in the larger towns like St George and Salt Lake City. Unfortunately, they do not have the resources to adequately meet the unique needs of all the boys who are ejected from these communities. Many are left to fend for themselves on the street.

All of the land in Colorado City was originally owned by a trust that was set up by its founders and controlled by the church leadership. It is estimated that the Fundamentalist Mormon church controls hundreds of millions of dollars. Despite the arrest of Warren Jeffs, they continue to operate within their domain with impunity. Any dissenters within their ranks are dealt with severely. Since the “trust” owned the land, the board had the power to evict a man from the land his house was built on. Theoretically they cannot do this any longer but the FLDS leadership can shun him and give his wife and children to another FLDS man.

The State does not appear to have the will or resources to bring about any substantial change in the way the children are socialized and abused. The attorneys who work for the polygamists seem to have advised the founders of Colorado City well. Since the 1950’s, State and Federal agencies have periodically attempted to suppress polygamy in this region but their efforts have failed. It is stunning to see that their impotence has allowed the mechanized procreation of girls to continue in Colorado City and other FLDS communities. I am dismayed by the government’s ineptitude. The FLDS women are allowed to continue playing such a pivotal role in this archaic and obscene process without any government intervention. I am also surprised that civic and religious groups across the US have not made an absolute demand that this practice be stopped.

Colorado City’s well documented history and the articles published after the arrest of Warren Jeffs make it obvious what is going on here even to a naive traveler who just stopped in for some gasoline. Jeffs and a dozen of this closest supporters fled to states like Texas and to places as far away as Mexico and Canada to avoid being arrested.

They used a fleet of large trucks to empty their houses and left just before their arrest warrants were served. Many of the day to day activities in Colorado City are illegal but very few of the remaining women or male adult church members will be criminally charged. Since there has been little done to stop the exploitation of the children in FLDS communities, it appears that some of their wealth is being used to influence or outright buy off officials and politicians at the State and Federal level.

According to Representative Lujan, the local children’s cemetery is approximately two acres in size and contains hundreds of marked and unmarked graves. No one knows if they are practicing infanticide or how many of the graves are filled with the bodies of young girls who died during childbirth. Because the State has allowed this process to go unabated, Arizona says that it does not know what to do with the potentially thousands of children they would have to take charge of if their polygamist parents were jailed. If the State did assume responsibility for them, the children’s fate would not be any worse than the one they face today.

We drove several miles into the hills south west of town hoping to get a cell phone signal from either St George or Hurricane. The place where we stopped was next to an improvised shooting range. There are shell casings and the shredded remnants of a large ATT Yellow Pages volume that looks as though it has been used as a target for an automatic weapon.

I have been unable to accept ideas that do not reflect aspects of the real world or take into account the intrinsic nature of the human mind and our ability to physically survive. Throughout history sociopaths have led others into their delusional world and to a point where their physical existence is threatened. When they reach the critical point where their physical existence is threatened, paranoia will dominate their thinking and panic will ensue. Often a violent reaction will be triggered. Colorado City has all of the earmarks of a Jones Town massacre or Waco shootout and suicide in the making.

The plight of the children is sad and tragic beyond measure. Allegations of incest and child rape have been made by a few who have escaped. If the State and Federal governments continue to implement their strategy of containment and fail to intervene on the behalf of the children, things will get much worse. I find no solace in the belief that the polygamists will be judged in heaven.