Child Brides - Part II
 
Submitted by Kiota
Progressive U blog - San Mateo, CA
 
Debbie's story is not uncommon. The only thing unusual about it is her eventual escape. Most daughters of Mormon fundamentalists are forced into marriage in their early teens, usually to men at least twice their age. And yet the law does little.

Let's take a look at 54-year-old Tom Green, married to five wives, with thirty-two children. The oldest of his wives is 22 years younger than him, and the youngest is 29 years younger. Unlike most Mormon polygamists, Green has a thirst for publicity. In 1999, attorney David Leavitt saw Green bragging on national television that he had married all of his wives when they were teens. The youngest of them was only thirteen when she married him, a 37-year-old. Five months after the show aired, Leavitt filed charges against Green, for having sex with five teenaged girls, and for criminal nonsupport of his family, despite receiving over 647,000$ in state and federal assistance.

His youngest wife, Linda Kunz, maintains that she enjoys being his wife. When she was twelve years old, her mother married Tom Green (and has since left him). Linda developed a childlike crush on the older man, talking about him constantly, and eventually asking her mother if she could marry her stepfather. Her mother agreed. Before she was fourteen years old, Linda was pregnant. All because of a childish crush - one not uncommon among young girls today who often have innocent crushes on their older male teachers.

In August 2001, Tom Green was convicted of four counts of bigamy and one charge of criminal nonsupport. He was sentenced to five years in prison. A year later, he was sentenced to a mere five years for having sex with Linda when she was barely a teenager. Basically, he commited statutory rape with five young girls, and was hardly punished for it.

This is not uncommon. The law pays little attention to polygamy and statutory rape among fundamentalists.

Young girls are brainwashed into believing they must marry much older men. The case of Elizabeth Smart is a classic example of this.

On June 5th, 2002, 14-year-old Elizabeth Smart was abducted at knifepoint from her bedroom. Her kidnapper, fundamentalist Brian Mitchell, had been stalking her for months previously. Immediately after kidnapping her, he conducted a self-styled wedding, and then raped her.

For at least two months afterwards, Elizabeth was held at a series of campsites, often chained to trees, and close enough to hear her would-be rescuers calling her name. Nine months after her abduction, she was discovered by a motorcyclist, who called 911. She was wearing a veil, wig, and sunglasses. She initially denied being Elizabeth Smart, conceding her true identity after 45 minutes. On the way to the police station, she cried and repeatingly asked the officers what would happen to Mitchell and his other wife, Wanda Barzee.

Brainwashing Elizabeth had been relatively easy for Mitchell, as she had been raised Mormon. He merely needed to twist this to his advantage and convince her that God intented her to be his wife. Once he'd gained control over her, he often took her to public places, and she did not attempt to escape.

A classic example of the law's failure to protect the young girls is Ruby Jessop. She was 14 years old when observed innocently kissing a boy she liked in Colorado city. In punishment for this 'sin', she was immediately forced to marry a much older man. Like Elizabeth Smart, she was raped immediately after the wedding ceremony - so brutally that she spent her wedding night hemorrhaging copious amounts of blood. Unlike Elizabeth, however, she attempted to flee her marriage and made it to her brother's house. In May 2001, however, she was abducted by members of the fundamentalist church.

Her sister Flora had also fled a marriage, and called the county sheriff to report the abduction. When a deputy came to Colorado city to investigate, he was told that Ruby was 'on vacation.' He accepted this unskeptical and departed. Furious, Flora redoubled her efforts, and eventually Ruby was interviewed by a social worker. However, the interview took place in the precense of one of her abducters, and told the social worker everything was fine. Two years later, at the age of sixteen, she gave birth to a child. Nobody outside of Colorado city has hear

Or take Ruth Stubbs, for example. When she was sixteen years old, she was ordered to marry Rodney Holm, a man twice her age. She wanted to marry someone else, a boy much closer to her own age, but was pressured into the marriage with Holm. When she was nineteen and pregnant with her third child, she left Holm and appeared on television, complaining she had been beaten by her husband.

To date, the Colorado City police department has done nothing to discipline Holm, who is acting like the injured party despite having committed statutory rape by having sex with a 16-year-old, and is trying to obtain legal custody over Ruth's children.

Eventually, Ruth Stubbs vanished, after leaving a handwritten note saying that she did not want Holm to go to jail and refusing to testify against him. This is unsurprising. In April 2002, for instance, Dan Barolow, a fundamentalist Mormon, was charged with molesting five of his daughters over a period of ten years. He claimed he viewed them as his wives. Eventually, four of the daughters, under intense pressure from the community, refused to testify.
 
ProgressiveU.org
Originally published February 28, 2007
 
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