Lighting dark corners
Justice is opening the curtains on polygamy cult
 
Opinions
The Arizona Republic
 
In Colorado City, Ariz., three towheaded children peer through a window with solemn expressions. They stare until a woman in a 1880s-style dress pulls them back and yanks the curtains shut on a sun-lit morning.

In the darkness of isolation, a polygamous cult festers amid allegations of brutality and abuse of people, and fraud and misuse of public money.

Deep suspicions of the outside world made it hard for law enforcement to build cases against the power brokers of a cult called the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.

But now things are happening.

Gary Engels, a special investigator for the Mohave County Attorney's Office, has been operating out of an office in Colorado City and collecting evidence. As a result, a group of polygamous men appeared Monday in a Mohave County Court on charges of sexual conduct with a minor and conspiracy to commit sexual conduct with a minor.

In other words, they were forcing little girls to become child brides.

One of those men, Rodney Holm, is a former police officer from Colorado City's polygamous twin city, Hildale, Utah. He was previously convicted in Utah for taking his 16-year-old sister-in-law as his third wife.

Now Holm is asking the Utah Supreme Court to decriminalize polygamy, as though this were about a lifestyle choice made by consenting adults.

It's not. It's not about religion, either.

The upcoming Arizona prosecutions of Holm and the others are about saying that religion cannot be used as a cover for child abuse.

That message needs to be heard by law-abiding people who are sickened by the stories of the excesses of a cult where women and children are regarded as property, and boys are driven away from the community to decrease the competition for brides.

It is also a message that needs to be heard inside the cult community that festers under the rule of a fugitive prophet who is also wanted for sex crimes. Decades of isolation and indoctrination have made cult followers fearful of law enforcement and reluctant to become witnesses.

Arizona Attorney General Terry Goddard, Utah Attorney General Mark Shurtleff and Mohave County Attorney Matt Smith refused to walk away from the challenge of bringing justice to this remote area on the Arizonan-Utah border.

Thanks to them, the FBI has joined efforts to find cult "prophet" Warren Jeffs, who is also wanted for sex crimes involving underage marriages. Bringing him to justice may not immediately convince his followers of the hollowness of his words.

But it is a necessary part of letting the light shine in on towheaded children who deserve better than a false prophet.
 
azcentral.com
Originally published July 13, 2005
 
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