Governor signs "Lost Boy's" law
 
By Chris Vanocur
ABC 4 TV
Emancipation bill signing

When adult men in closed polygamous communities take two or three or even more young women for themselves, it leaves a lot of young men without potential mates, or even dates. Those young men, boys really, are often the same age as the girls taken as wives by men more than twice their age.

There is no place for these teenage boys, who are often seen as rivals by the older men. The boys are often forced out of their secretive polygamous communities, not allowed to contact their families and former friends. They are alone, with no money and no place to go.

The boys are not the only ones who leave. Some of the young girls, who want more out of life than sharing one man with several other women and bearing as many children as possible; choose to run away.

But when they leave their closed community, they are cast adrift in a strange world. They have no legal identity, no birth certificate, little formal education, and no real knowledge of the world outside. They are underage. They are legally, and often socially, helpless.

Now a new state law gives these lost boys, and girls, new hope.

The new "Lost Boy Law" allows these youngsters legal emancipation, giving them legal status on their own. The law will allow underage boys and girls who leave polygamous communities to obtain legal identification and driver's licenses, so that they can get jobs and go to school.

Governor Huntsman signed the new law which went into effect at midnight Sunday.

chris@abc4.tv
 
ABC4.com
Originally broadcast May 2, 2006
 
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