FLDS not sole focus of probes
 
By Ben Winslow
Deseret Morning News
 
Fugitive polygamist leader Warren Jeffs and the Fundamentalist LDS Church are not the sole focus of Utah's criminal investigations into polygamy.

In an interview with the Deseret Morning News, Utah Attorney General Mark Shurtleff put other polygamous sects in the state on notice that they remain under a cloud of suspicion of abuse, fraud, child-bride marriages and other crimes.

"In case anybody wondered," he said, "we're clearly following up on investigations and leads of every other group that we've had allegations of (perpetuating) these crimes that we're focusing on."

Shurtleff declined to say whom he is investigating or if charges are pending. Sources tell the Deseret Morning News that a number of current and ex-members of different polygamous groups in Utah have been meeting with investigators and providing them with information.

The lawyer for polygamist John Daniel Kingston said he is aware of a criminal investigation into his client and other members of the Kingston group.

"There is an open investigation by the attorney general's office," Daniel Irvin told the Deseret Morning News. "We don't know what it's for."

Irvin said the Utah Attorney General's Office has been investigating matters that go beyond a custody case involving one of Kingston's purported wives, Heidi Mattingly. Discovery requests in the court case have been about more than allegations of abuse and neglect, he said.

"What they're doing, I can't talk about," said Rowenna Erickson, an ex-member of the Kingston polygamous group and a founder of Tapestry Against Polygamy. In an interview Friday with the Deseret Morning News, Erickson acknowledged she has been speaking to investigators and providing them with information being used in criminal investigations.

"I'm pleased at what is being attempted," she said of the cases the investigators for the Utah Attorney General's Office are building.

Tapestry Against Polygamy has been critical of Shurtleff, saying he has not been aggressive enough in prosecuting polygamists.

"We want them to give us some time frame so that we know it's really going to happen," said Tapestry Against Polygamy director Vicky Prunty. She was in Denver Friday, speaking to a conference on cults.

On one hand, Shurtleff has been reaching out to Utah's polygamous communities with the Safety Net Committee. He has brought together representatives from polygamous groups to discuss ways to offer help and support to abused women and children in closed societies. It has garnered him much support and praise from those within Utah's polygamous communities.

But in the other hand, Shurtleff has a pair of handcuffs.

"I've personally made it clear to some of those groups that we will continue to investigate crimes and it may be someone within your sect or religious group that we're pursuing," he said.

The Davis Cooperative Society, of which the Kingstons are members, has representatives on the Safety Net Committee.

"I don't think it's unnerving," Carlene Cannon told the Deseret Morning News. "I think it's a good thing he (Shurtleff) will investigate criminal activity."

Cannon said she was unaware of any criminal investigations under way into her community, but said the Safety Net Committee has dispelled notions that everyone in plural marriage is a criminal.

"Someone that's not doing something right is a character flaw," she said. "It doesn't represent the community."

The possibility of criminal prosecution has been on the table at the Safety Net Committee meetings, said Mary Batchelor of the pro-polygamy group Principle Voices.

"The reality is, when you live polygamy you are breaking the law," she said. "That in and of itself can be prosecuted."

In recent years, polygamists Tom Green and Rodney Holm have both been convicted and sentenced to time behind bars. In both cases, bigamy was used as an enhancement to other crimes charged. As a result of recent criminal convictions, Batchelor said many polygamous churches have been encouraging their faithful to not marry underage children. Cannon said it was true in her group.

"That has played a factor," she said. "We encourage people to wait until they're 18 to marry."

Warren Jeffs remains a fugitive on the FBI's Ten Most Wanted list. He is charged in Utah and Arizona with sex crimes accusing him of forcing teenage girls into polygamous marriages with older men. Federal prosecutors have charged Jeffs with unlawful flight to avoid prosecution.

E-mail: bwinslow@desnews.com
 
deseretnews.com
Originally published Sunday, June 25, 2006
 
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