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Utahns favor federal help to fight polygamy

Submitted by SHNS on Mon, 08/25/2008 - 14:15

SALT LAKE CITY -- A push for federal help in prosecuting crimes within polygamous communities has the support of a 56 percent of Utahns, a new poll shows.The poll was conducted Aug. 13-15 -- three weeks after a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing at which Sen. Majority Leader Harry Reid called polygamous communities a "form of organized crime" and asked the federal government to "play a larger role in this fight."The hearing focused specifically on the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, which has been the target of state investigations in Utah, Arizona and Texas. Majority support for greater federal involvement held steady across several demographic categories: gender, political party affiliation and religious affiliation.But members of the mainstream Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which first publicly disavowed polygamy 118 years ago, were more likely to oppose federal prosecution than "non-LDS" respondents.The poll found 31 percent of LDS respondents oppose federal prosecution, compared with 19 percent of those identified as "non-LDS."Respondents favoring federal help made comments such as forced marriage of young girls to older men being a form of rape and evidence that states are not controlling polygamy on their own, since a crackdown on one locale seems to cause groups to simply move to another location. Those do did not favor federal invention made comments such as people who are law-abiding and working should be left alone on the polygamy issue. These respondents were reluctant to expand federal powers and said states and local governments are better able to handle specific abuse charges if they are brought.But officials in three states -- Utah, Arizona and Texas, which is at the forefront of the largest ongoing investigation involving the FLDS -- have asked for federal help. "A comprehensive federal response should minimize -- if not eliminate -- the possibility that persons within the FLDS who may be predisposed to commit polygamy, or other crimes, will simply move their operations to another location," said Greg Abbott, attorney general of Texas, in July.He also asked that federal laws be used to investigate crimes within the sect and more federal aid be provided for crime victims.Arizona Attorney General Terry Goddard told the committee he requested federal help in 2005 to investigate possible civil rights violations by the Marshal's Office in Colorado City, Ariz. The town and the adjoining community of Hildale, Utah, are the traditional home bases of the FLDS."I am still waiting for a response to that request," said Goddard, who also asked for federal help analyzing hundreds of boxes of documents and data seized in Texas and at the arrest of sect leader Warren S. Jeffs.Mason-Dixon Polling and Research Inc. of Washington polled 400 Utah residents for The Salt Lake Tribune. The survey's error margin is plus or minus 5 points. (E-mail Brooke Adams at brooke(at)sltrib.com.)(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, www.scrippsnews.com.)