Utah Struggles With a Revival of Polygamy

August 23, 1998

Utah Struggles With a Revival of Polygamy

By JAMES BROOKE

ALT LAKE CITY -- As this state rebuilds highways and hotels to play host to the 2002 Winter Olympics, modern Utah is wrestling with a social institution inherited from its 19th-century Mormon pioneers -- polygamy.
In this conservative state, "don't ask, don't tell" means that sheriffs and judges turn a blind eye to polygamy, a felony that has not been prosecuted here in almost half a century.
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, whose founder sanctioned polygamy, has excommunicated polygamists for more than a century. But in the current laissez-faire legal climate, the number of Utahans living in polygamous families has increased tenfold in the last 50 years and is now at about 40,000 people, or 2 percent of the state's population, social scientists say.
In today's open climate, the debate over the practice is led by two rival groups savvy in the modern ways of Web sites, news conferences and television talk shows.
Tapestry of Polygamy, a self-help group of former polygamous wives, says it seeks to "free" women and children from polygamy. The Women's Religious Liberties Union, an association of women content with their lives in polygamous relationships, seeks to legalize what it calls "plural marriage" and to win a ban on discrimination against polygamists.
"This is going to be a mini-civil war -- we are going to free the slaves," said Carmen Thompson, the spokeswoman for the Tapestry group, which is setting up a network of "safe houses" to help women and children escape polygamous households.
Mary Potter, the spokeswoman for the opposing group, retorted: "Women in my group are happy in their relationships. They don't want other people to narrow their rights."
What has fueled the issue of polygamy statewide as well as nationally is the case of a 16-year-old girl who stumbled into a remote gas station in northern Utah this summer. Covered with fresh bruises on her legs, arms and buttocks, authorities said the girl had run seven miles through the night, fleeing her father's belt and the future he had ordained for her: marriage to her uncle, and life as his 15th wife.
The teen-ager's 911 call has resulted in a charge against her father, John Daniel Kingston, a leader of a wealthy but secretive polygamous clan based in a Salt Lake suburb. Rowenna Erickson, a Tapestry member who left the clan in 1991, said that incest, child marriage and birth defects were becoming more frequent in the clan, which numbers about 1,500 people.
Although Ms. Erickson said the value of the clan's ranches and companies totaled more than $150 million, she asserted that women and children in the group often lived in poverty, earning minimum wages from business and receiving food stamps.
Ms. Erickson said that John Daniel Kingston had fathered 10 children with a half-sister and that the 16-year-old girl who fled was his eldest child. Identified only by her initials, M.N., she testified in late July in court here that last fall she had been secretly married against her will to an uncle, David Kingston. After she ran away twice, she said, her father drove her 80 miles north of here to a ranch that the clan uses for disciplining what it considers wayward women and children.
"I could taste the blood in my nose," she testified, recalling how her father punched her on the drive to the ranch. After taking her to an old barn, she said, he began whipping her with his belt.
"He said he was going to give me 10 licks for every wrongdoing. He said there were three," she told the court between sobs.
After being whipped 28 times, she said, she passed out.
Her father was charged with felony child abuse and her uncle with one count of incest and one of sexual abuse of a minor. The father, who has pleaded not guilty, is scheduled to go on trial in October. The charge carries a penalty of one to 15 years in prison.
The uncle, who appeared in court on Aug. 17, did not enter a plea. He is scheduled to appear again on Sept. 1. Each count carries a penalty of up to five years in prison.
Now 17, the girl lives in a foster home and plans to return to high school next month. One year ago, she worked as a receptionist for Carl Kingston, the lawyer who now represents her father. The lawyer, a cousin of the father and the uncle, did not return repeated calls to his law office here.

Even though they are not members of the Mormon Church, most polygamists in Utah call themselves "Mormon fundamentalists," reaching back over 150 years in church history to the early 1840s, when Joseph Smith, the church founder, sanctioned the practice.
According to his belief, "true Mormons" could attain the highest levels of heaven by conceiving as many children as possible so that they would bring more souls out of the limbo of pre-existence.
In the 19th century, polygamy was the pivotal issue that delayed statehood for the Utah territory for almost half a century after the first request by Mormon pioneers. Statehood came only in 1896 after Wilford Woodruff, president of the church, formally disavowed polygamy and after Utah approved a state constitution with the clause: "Polygamous or plural marriages are forever prohibited."
Until the early 1950s, men found to be living in polygamy were routinely jailed by the state. The last major raid on a polygamous colony, on the Utah-Arizona border in 1953, backfired in the face of negative public reaction to photographs of children being torn from their parents and taken to foster homes.
Since then, Utah has largely taken an increasingly tolerant stance toward polygamy. In 1991, the Utah Supreme Court ruled that polygamous families were eligible to adopt.
In July, Gov. Michael Leavitt, a Republican, speculated that polygamy might enjoy protection as a religious freedom. After protests from women who had left polygamous marriages, the popular Leavitt quickly amended his stance, saying that "plural marriage is wrong, it should stay against the law, and there is no place for it in modern society."
In Salt Lake City, easily Utah's most liberal city, support for prosecuting polygamists is tepid -- 54 percent, according to a poll of 1,000 area residents this spring, published in The Salt Lake Tribune.
Polygamy is difficult to prosecute because the men generally obtain marriage licenses for only their first wives. Subsequent marriages are performed secretly, and the additional wives often present themselves to society as single women with children.
Citing the difficulty of proof, Utah Attorney General Jan Graham announced recently that she had advised prosecutors to avoid prosecuting cases of consensual adult bigamy, which carry jail terms of up to five years and fines of up to $5,000.
"Do we want polygamy squads looking in windows to see who is sleeping with whom?" asked chief Deputy Attorney General Reed Richards. Referring to what are sexual crimes in Utah that are committed by consenting adults, he added: "If you are not making any effort to prosecute fornication, adultery or gay people indulging in sodomy, why polygamy?"
Instead, Utah officials have reached a consensus to crack down on crimes that sometimes surround polygamy -- child abuse, statutory rape, welfare fraud and incest.
This year, the Utah Legislature raised the age for statutory rape to 17 from 16. Next year, the Legislature is expected to raise the minimum marriage age to 16 from 14.
To the women of Tapestry, male manipulation and exploitation are the glue of polygamy.
"Once you threw out the religion, all of us women realized that it was made for the benefit of men," said Vicky Prunty, who left two polygamous marriages with a total of six children. "He would stay with the other women until I ran and dropped on my knees and asked forgiveness -- which I did a couple of times."
Carmen Thompson, who had five children in two polygamous marriages, agreed, saying: "He would pit the wives against each other; as long as there was turmoil, there was more control. He would come for a sexual favor, saying the other women wouldn't do it for him."
But Irwin Altman, a University of Utah psychology professor who studied 24 "Mormon fundamentalist" families, said: "The stereotype that men are cynical and just in it for a good time does not hold up with our data. The man is a nomad. He rotates around. He doesn't know where his clothes are half the time. For privacy, some will go into their cars."
Poverty is often a hallmark of polygamy in this country. The border towns of Hildale, Utah, and Colorado City, Ariz., targets of polygamy raids in the 1950s, are now heavily subsidized by federal and state aid, according to a study of welfare and tax records by The Salt Lake Tribune.
The two towns, with a total population of about 6,000, rank in the top 10 in the states in the mountain time zone for receiving federal aid for poor women and children. With an average household of 8.5 people, Hildale has the lowest average federal tax return of any Utah town, $651 for each filer.
With household incomes about half the state average, the Tribune study found, the two towns have received almost $5 million in recent years in federal and state aid to build better houses and sewers.
Yet because of high birth rates and conversions to Mormonism, polygamy in Utah has rebounded from a low point involving a few thousand people in the 1950s, Altman said. Recalling that federal troops and judges tried to eradicate polygamy more than a century ago, he said of Utah's polygamists, "They are here to stay."
Indeed, four years ago, Wilford Woodruff Steed died in Colorado City at age 94. He left six wives, 43 children and 235 grandchildren. Steed was born 10 years after his namesake, Wilford Woodruff, proclaimed the Manifesto -- the first church order to all Mormons to stop practicing polygamy.

Other Places of Interest on The Web
Tapestry of Polygamy, ex-wives of Polygamy and others offering support, choices and services.
Practical Polygamy, first-hand accounts of what worked and what didn't work in polygamous relationships.
Mormon Polygamy, past, present and future of polygamy.

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