Abuses within polygamy
Vicky Prunty has a similar story, but without the happy ending. Born and raised within the mainstream Mormon faith, she was attending Brigham Young University when she made the decision to convert to fundamentalism. For years she dedicated herself to living as a plural wife, but after two disastrous marriages, she has since become one of polygamy's most visible critics.
In 1998, Mrs. Prunty and a handful of other former plural wives founded Tapestry of Polygamy, which has since evolved into Tapestry Against Polygamy. The group maintains that polygamy is a form of domestic violence and synonymous with abuse. Tapestry also holds that polygamy often leads to other abuses, notably the clandestine marriage of underage girls and incest.
A few months after they organized, a sensational case catapulted their cause into the spotlight. A 16-year-old girl from the Kingston clan told authorities she was beaten by her father, Daniel Kingston, after she ran away from a polygamous marriage to her uncle.
Tapestry leaders were soon being quoted and interviewed throughout the state, accusing the clans of regularly forcing teen-age girls into marriage and drumming up public sentiment against polygamy. Their charges helped fuel the state Legislature's decision last year to raise the age of consent from 14 to 16 and hire a full-time investigator.
Tapestry was also a prime mover behind the child-bride bill, which was signed into law by Utah Gov. Michael O. Leavitt last week. In its final form the law stiffens penalties for parents or others who coerce girls under the age of 18 into marriage.
Daniel Kingston was ultimately convicted of felony child abuse in the girl's beating, but Tapestry members say his case is just the tip of the iceberg. They cite examples of other women forced to wed cousins or uncles and clans that regularly marry off teen-age girls to men old enough to be their grandfathers.
State Sen. Ron Allen, author of the child-bride bill, said the problem is rife in polygamous communities. He says he has turned over a list of 108 girls married off to older men to state and local law enforcement.
"This policy of ignoring it for the past 100 years is not going to solve it," the Democratic lawmaker told the Deseret News. "It is not solving the problem of these poor children who need our help."
The most notorious example is in Colorado City, where 92-year-old clan patriarch Rulon Jeffs is estimated to have at least 60 wives, some as young as 18 or 19. Because Mr. Jeffs suffers from Parkinson's disease, the clan is being run by his son Warren.
LuAnn Fischer, a Colorado City clan member who was excommunicated in September, said Warren Jeffs began assigning dozens of young wives to his father about 10 years ago as a way of preventing them from marrying other men. When his father dies, the younger Mr. Jeffs can then marry them off in exchange for leverage, money or favors.
"The best-looking, smartest girls marry Rulon," said Mrs. Fischer, who is writing a book about her life in the clan. "Warren is going to barter them off when Rulon dies."
It comes as a relief to learn that the elderly Jeffs isn't consummating these marriages. "They call [his home] 'the nunnery,' " she said.
Supporters of plural marriage insist that Rulon Jeffs is the rare exception. About two-thirds of polygamous men have just two wives, while almost 90 percent have two or three. Fewer than 5 percent have more than five, said Marianne Watson, a plural wife who co-authored "Voices in Harmony: Contemporary Women Celebrate Plural Marriage" with Mary Batchelor and Anne Wilde.
The Colorado City group is known for other unusual behavior. Unlike most clans, whose members blend in easily with the rest of society, Colorado City members wear old-fashioned, Amishlike clothing that sets them apart.
About a year ago, the clan pulled all of its 800-some children out of public schools and began educating them in church-run schools or home schools in order to avoid contact with nonbelievers. Sports are forbidden due to their religious opposition to competition of any kind.
There is no official state investigation into the charges of abuse in Colorado City and Hildale, but the Attorney General's Office is aware of them, said Mr. Barton.
"We're concerned about what's going on there and would like to devote some time to it," said Mr. Barton.
Tapestry leaders contend that incest is also rampant within polygamy. After generations of living in closed societies, many of the followers are related, making it difficult to marry someone who doesn't share a bloodline.
Sometimes the incest goes a step further. Leaders of Tapestry say they have spoken to women who say they are being married to their fathers. One woman has said she and her sisters were raped for years by her father. Another claims that as a 12-year-old she was passed around among church leaders for sex.
Plural wives concur with some of the claims, but other charges leave them sputtering in disbelief. They question the memories and motives of some ex-polygamous women, suggesting they have an ax to grind.
They accuse Tapestry of weaving increasingly outrageous tales of abuse in order to keep public opinion on their side and encourage grant giving. They note that Tapestry members rely on controversial techniques such as hypnotherapy to tease out repressed memories of former polygamous women.
"These repressed memories may not have actually existed," said Mrs. Watson, whose family has practiced polygamy since the 1840s. "You really have to highly question their methods."
Leaving polygamy is difficult, according to Tapestry, because plural wives fear they will lose their children and their financial support. Indeed, in some communities, those who walk away often lose their homes because they are owned by the clan or church.
Cut from a different cloth
Those who try to paint all polygamists with the same broad brush can expect an earful from Mr. Allred. His group opposes arranged marriages, incestuous unions, the marriage of young girls and even polygamy when the man involved cannot properly support more than one wife. He recently urged the church's young people to delay marriage until the man is at least 22 years old and the woman 20.
Mr. Allred, whose eight wives all qualify for senior-citizen discounts, also believes in "free agency," in which church members may decide for themselves whether they want to practice polygamy. Of his own 23 adult children, about half are living "in the principle." The others have chosen monogamy, which is fine with him. "[Polygamy is] not for everybody," he said.
As for the women of Tapestry, he is surprisingly sympathetic. "I know them. They were treated wrongly when they tried to live in plural marriage," said Mr. Allred. He pauses, then adds wryly: "But no one in monogamy was ever treated wrong."
Whatever the actual extent of the abuse, Mr. Zolman, the former state representative, suggests the best cure is the purifying glare of sunlight.
"What if a whiff of democracy and the openness of our society got into there? By opening that society, we'd be able to expose the rotten ones and put them where they belong," said Mr. Zolman. "You don't do that by taking a club to them and hitting them on the head every time they stick their necks out."
Love, polygamy style
Dr. Thompson would be the first to attest that the life of a polygamist husband is not the erotic fantasy it's cracked up to be. Balancing the emotional needs of two wives and dealing with their inherent jealousies and insecurities is more taxing than most men realize, he said.
"It's not an easy way of life. It's hell unless you have the conviction that what you're doing is right," said Dr. Thompson. "You can't overcome the fear and jealousy that come with this unless you rely on the Lord. I think most men would crack under the pressure."
There are men who enter polygamy solely in order to have sex with more than one woman, but church members say they don't last long. "Men who have tried it ultimately lose their families," said Melanie Thompson. "Where that's happened, the wives stay here and the man is kicked out."
In a day and age when sex outside of marriage and cohabitation are often seen as socially acceptable, she said, men no longer need the cover of polygamy to lure multiple partners. "It's a lot more trouble than people think," said Melanie Thompson. "If [sex] is what you're looking for, there are easier ways to do it."
For some women, living in polygamy allows them to make their relationship with God and their family the center of their lives. "It's not about our individual relationship with our husband — it's about our working together as a family," said Mary Jane Thompson.
A polygamous courtship follows certain rules. Within the Allred group, a suitor must first ask permission from a woman's father and Mr. Allred before he can ask the woman for a date. That's how it worked with Jeremy and Melanie Thompson, who became engaged about six weeks after their first date.
A wedding portrait in one of their home's two master bedrooms shows the couple posed in front of the Salt Lake Temple. As fundamentalist Mormons, they were forbidden from entering the temple, but they still wanted to pay a visit. "We still consider ourselves Mormons, even if the church doesn't," said Melanie.
Four years later, it was Melanie who urged Jeremy to seek another wife. "I'd always be elbowing him at church, saying, 'What about her?' But he is related to a lot of people here so there were a lot of people he couldn't marry," she said.
Eventually they met Mary Jane, who had recently moved to Utah from the church's sister community in Pinesdale, Mont. The three had lunch together a few times and Jeremy took Mary Jane out on a couple of dates. Three weeks later, he and Mary Jane were engaged to be united in a marriage recognized by their church but not by the law.
Like most young polygamists, the Thompsons still share a house, but they're busy building a new home that will give the wives their own separate apartments. At a whopping 10,000 square feet, the house will also include two more apartments, just in case.
The future of polygamy
Certainly public opinion continues to run against plural marriage. In November, fundamentalist Mormons lost their best friend in the Legislature, Mr. Zolman, when he narrowly lost his re-election bid, a defeat he attributes to his defense of the constitutional rights of polygamists.
Tapestry's Rowenna Erickson wants to see the state enforce its anti-polygamy statute. Ideally, she'd like to see plural wives removed from their polygamous marriages and "deprogrammed" of their beliefs.
"There's a criminal motive underneath it all. It's power and control," said Mrs. Erickson. "I struggled to come out of it. It's a cult."
But given the difficulties of proving polygamous relationships, not to mention the First Amendment issues involved, that's unlikely to happen. Indeed, in a day and age when Playboy founder Hugh Hefner can announce that he's living with eight Playmates, the lines between the lifestyles of polygamists and the rest of American society are becoming increasingly blurred.
Tapestry may have delivered polygamy a setback, but Mr. Zolman predicts that it will be temporary. As polygamists continue to move tentatively out of the shadows, he says the day will come when their way of life gains greater acceptance in Utah society.
"I think the toothpaste is out of the tube," he said, "and it will never go back to where it was."