Culture . 05/02/2008 03:15 AM . Samantha Gebert

Irene married her brother-in-law at the age of sixteen, a husband whom she shared with her step-sister and nine other wives for 28 years. After mothering fourteen of her husband’s 58 children, Irene escaped from five generations of polygamy within the Fundamentalist Church of the Latter Day Saints (FLDS), a splinter group of the Mormon Church (LDS). Now living in Anchorage, Alaska, Irene watched the April 3 raids on the West Texas polygamists compound with a breaking heart. She remembers what it was like to be brainwashed.

“These fundamentalist polygamous groups keep their members isolated while fear is instilled in them, the constant fear of going to Hell,” explained Irene Spencer, now 85 and married to Hector Spencer, her husband of 20 years. “I understand their dilemma. It takes years to be able to throw off the religious dogmas that have been so thoroughly ingrained in one’s psyche.”

After more than 400 children were forcefully removed from the Yearning for Zion Ranch, American society can no longer ignore the presence of polygamy in the 21 century. It began at the FLDS polygamy colony outside of El Dorado, Texas, when a sixteen year old girl in the compound called authorities to report physical and sexual abuse. Now social services and the courts are scrambling to figure out how to assign the children to foster care homes across the state. But trying to keep twelve siblings together, understand their social background, and respect the children’s religious beliefs pose problems that the foster care system has never before encountered.

Polygamy adds to the complexity of child abuse issues because it is an inherently religious act. The ingrained beliefs and fear of approximately 6,000 polygamist nationwide (U.S. census numbers) adds another dimension to the question—what is to be done? This question isn’t new.

In 1953, Governor Pyle of Arizona raided Short Creek (now Colorado City) and separated families. As Spencer watched CNN’s April coverage of women and children being loaded onto buses to be relocated, she experienced déjà vu. Some of her immediate family was caught up in the relocation process after Pyle’s action, and she notes that fundamentalists have lived in fear for over two-hundred years. “In 1944, Utah made raids on the fundamentalists. I was only seven, but the terror I felt has remained with me for sixty-four years.”

Joseph Smith, first prophet and founder of the Mormon religion, began teaching polygamy around 1843, a practice which the LDS Church formally renounced and prohibited in 1904. Members who did not agree splintered off and the Fundamentalist LDS Church emerged.

“We were taught that our husband would become a God someday when he’d married enough women to populate his own world,” explained Spencer. “A woman can’t even make it into Heaven without her husband, who will be her savior, and he will call her through the veil and resurrect her into Heaven.” The FLDS Church claims “the privilege of worshiping God as guaranteed by the Constitution,” according to FLDStruth.org, and this includes their fundamental belief in “plural marriage.”

However, the Supreme Court unanimously ruled polygamy unconstitutional in the 1878 case, Reynolds v. United States: “Laws are made for the government of actions, and while they cannot interfere with mere religious belief and opinions, they may with practices.”

Fundamentalists claim that they are persecuted because plural marriage is such an integral part of their religion. Though most people disagree with the FLDS’ polygamous practices at the Yearning for Zion Ranch, many Americans do not think the Texas authorities and children’s services have a legitimate legal basis for removing and holding the children.

“The Court has authority in this suit to render any order, judgment or decree in the children’s interest that will be binding on you,” declared the 51st Judicial District Court
of Schleicher County, Texas. “Including the termination of the parent-child relationship, a determination of maternity for each child, a determination of paternity for each child, and appointment of a conservator with authority to consent to each child’s adoption.”

Utah resident Connor Boyack started an online petition against the detention of FLDS children on April 15. Since then he has received 2,153 virtual signatures and comments. “While most people disagree with the FLDS religion and its practices, myself included, people are frustrated to see the ways their civil liberties have been ignored and to see the government’s aggression,” Boyack said.

“The Texas CPS officials have stated that the children are being removed because of the potential for abuse in the future,” Boyack said. “But how can this be a reasonable action, when this report clearly shows that the system into which they would be placed is itself riddled with abuse?”

Petition signers agreed. “This gross abuse of government power insults the principles upon which this country was founded,” commented signer Milo Tenney from Utah. “These people are strange, they don’t communicate well, we disagree with their beliefs, but that doesn’t justify ignoring their basic rights. To the extent that they are engaged in criminal activity, prosecute them. But no one even alleges that all of these children are abused, or that all of these parents are abusers.”

FLDS men in the Yearning for Zion Ranch sidestepped U.S. polygamy law by legalizing their first marriage and assuming other “spiritual” wives, which society would recognize as mistresses. Infrequent raids in past years, as well as this latest one, were based on the grounds of child abuse or underage marriage, not the issue of polygamy.

Polygamy is still thriving, despite the many raids conducted over a hundred year span, according to Spencer. She added that with the birthrate among polygamists around 40 to 100 children per father, it is quite possible for the polygamy population to double each year.

Because of persecution and raids, FLDS compounds are reclusive and guarded. The land that the Yearning for Zion compound is built was bought by FLDS members as a “hunting retreat,” but Eldorado residents became suspicious when heavy construction began on the property. On January 1, 2005, FLDS leader Warren Jeffs dedicated the gleaming limestone temple, which can be seen from the edge of the FLDS’ 1,700 acre property. Jeffs, 52, is currently imprisoned in Arizona awaiting trial for forcing a fourteen year old girl to marry her cousin.

“I have several dozen nieces and nephews who are still under Warren Jeff’s regime,” said Spencer. “It’s pained me that my nieces have been placed with men much older than themselves. They never had a chance to court, or choose their own partner. The psychological pain is unfathomable,” she said.

Spencer recounted how one of her nieces was spiritually married to man the same evening she buried her recently deceased husband. “It’s sad that a woman is considered so brainless that she can’t live five minutes without being married to a true Priesthood holder so he can call the shots and think for her,” said Spencer.

“Women are pawns in polygamy,” according to Spencer. “We were no more than the breeding stock that kept these splinter groups expanding and alive. Polygamous women have an average of twelve children. I’ve known many who have given birth to sixteen, eighteen, twenty-one and twenty-two children. It doesn’t matter if you don’t feel up to it, you just continue to produce children for your husband’s future kingdom.”

But women aren’t the only ones affected by the polygamist lifestyle. With more women marrying than men, boys are naturally less welcome because they grow up to become competition for the older men. Many young boys are evicted from FLDS groups with little education and forced to find their way in the world alone, severed from their families. “These boys, referred to as the Lost Boys, are truly lost,” Spencer explained. As Spencer explains in her book, Shattered Dreams: My Life as a Polygamist Wife, published August 2007, polygamy truly affects every aspect of life in the FLDS church and those who live in polygamist compounds.

“Raids and relocation will not change the polygamous scene,” said Spencer. “What is needed is education. These people need to be deprogrammed and shown that they have many choices. I believe the LDS Church should take responsibility and help rehabilitate these women and children from El Dorado, Texas,” she said.

Samantha Gebert is a freelance writer.



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