Child Brides - Part I
 
Submitted by Kiota
Progressive U blog - San Mateo, CA
 
The founder of the Mormon sect, Joseph Smith, had no less than 33 wives, possibly as many as 48. The youngest of his wives was fourteen years old when he told her she must marry him, or face eternal damnation. He taught that every man needs at least three wives in order to attain the 'fullness of exaltation' in the afterlife.

The Mormons keep the nastier sides of Joseph Smith undercover. They've since renounced polygamy. Mormon fundamentalists, however, are still going strong.

Debbie Oler is a fairly typical example. Her father, Dalmon Oler, moved his family to Creston Valley in order to join a fundamentalist Mormon group. He eventually married six women and fathered forty-five children, of whom Debbie was the oldest. When Debbie was six, her birthmother died, and her father's second wife, Memory Blackmore, became increasingly violent towards her.

From the age of two Debbie was raised as a Mormon fundamentalists, raised in the mentality of total obedience, learning that her chief responsility as a woman was to serve her husband and to produce as many children as possible. When she was fourteen, she felt 'impressed by the Lord' to marry Ray Blackmore, the community leader. At the age of fifteen, she was married to the fifty-seven year old Blackmore, becoming his sixth wife and stepmother to his thirty-one kids, most of whom were older than herself. He was the father of her own stepmother, Memory - and thus she became her own stepmother's stepmother. One of her other stepchildren, Alaire Blackmore (seven years older than Debbie), was Ray Blackmore's adoptive daughter - AND his wife. When she was eighteen, she was married to her own father. Thus she was Debbie's cowife as well as her stepdaughter. After Ray Blackmore died, Alaire was married to Debbie's father (thus becoming Debbie's stepmother and complicating things even more), and when Winston Blackmore, Ray Blackmore's 29-year-old son, assumed power over the community, she was taken from Dalmon Oler and married to Winston - her brother by adoption.

Debbie recalls being sexually abused from an early age. When she was four years old, Ray Blackmore's 14-year-old son jammed a stick up her vagina. When she was just six, she was sexually assaulted by another of Blackmore's sons. Abuse was common. Older boys would take girls as young as four to play 'cows and bulls' in an empty farmhouse behind the school.

Debbie miscarried her first baby, who was born when she was just fifteen. Ray Blackmore blamed her for the miscarriage, saying it was her fault because she'd had sex with him during her pregnancy. Her first marriage was emotionally abusive. The only time when Ray paid attention to her was when they were having sex - leading her to feel like having sex was the only way she could be loved.

Ray Blackmore died when Debbie was nineteen. Soon thereafter Debbie was forced to marry Sam Ralston - a violent 54-year-old man who already had four wives. After enduring years of cruelty and bearing two of his children, she ran away to the only place she could think of - her father's home. However, she was soon forced to return to Sam Ralston. Begging permission to stay with her father, she was told that the leaders of the community wanted her to marry Ralston because they hoped that a young wife would encourage him in the priesthood. That was the first time she realized that her marriages were things the men had wanted her to do, not God.

She became increasingly depressed and self-destructive, taking sleeping pills, painkillers, and tranquilizers. Alarmed by her detoriating condition, her father received permission to take her back into her home. But when she sought solace from her father, he quoted scripture, telling her 'You must have a broken heart and a contrite spirit to know God.' In 1980, as she was weeping and semi-comatose from her medication, her father raped her. Later, she wondered guiltily if she had somehow encouraged the rape.

In the months that followed the rape, she tried to commit suicide twice, and was committed to a mental hospital. While she was there, she was visited by a man named Michael Palmer. She recalls he touched her and kissed her and made her feel love through sexual attention. Soon after, she became Michael's third wife.

At first, life with Michael was good, but it became worse as the other wives became increasingly jealous of Debbie. Things became even worse when Michael was voted out of priesthood because he worked outside the community. He molested one of Debbie's sons and one of her daughters, Sharon. Sharon was terrified she would have to marry her stepfather, because many of her friends had had to marry their stepfathers after being molested by them.

In December 1987, Winston tried to force Sharon, his half-sister, to become his wife. When Debbie angrily confronted him, he threatened to have six boys 'rearrange her face'. When she still stood her ground, he repeatingly tried to evict her from her house - until one day she burned the house down and fled with her five children.
 
ProgressiveU.org
Originally published February 28, 2007
 
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