Put children first
 
Opinion
The Arizona Republic
 
Don't think it's over just because polygamous cult leader Warren Jeffs is back in Arizona to face trial for forcing little girls into plural marriages.

Yes, justice has him in handcuffs. After his conviction in Utah on similar charges, Jeffs faces prison time there, and he may be sentenced to more time behind bars if he's convicted of crimes committed in Arizona.

Jeffs is answering for a repressive regime that he tried to pass off as a religion in Colorado City as well as Hildale, Utah. The reckoning was overdue.

But Jeffs' communities aren't the only places where polygamous sects force underage girls into "celestial" plural marriages, according to Rep. David Lujan, D-Phoenix, who serves as an attorney for the non-profit Defenders of Children, which helps women who flee polygamous groups. Flora Jessop, who ran from a polygamous marriage years ago, told the state House Human Services Committee last month that our state has become a haven for polygamous sects because it lacks adequate protections for victims.

The committee voted overwhelmingly for a bill that Lujan is sponsoring to enhance protections.

House Bill 2009 deals with very real child-custody problems faced by women who leave polygamous "marriages." They know a judge can grant custody of their daughters to fathers who are likely to marry them off while they are still children. Even if the mother wins in the end, stories of long, daunting custody battles discourage other women from trying to leave polygamous relationships that may be abusive to them or their children.

The extraordinary nature of these cults justifies creating specific protections for women who were children themselves when they became "wives" and now desperately want to get out and protect their own children. Those who left communities where plural marriage and child bigamy are practiced tell of being controlled by fear and bullied into submission. Jeffs' power over his followers was so complete that men were willing to allow him to "reassign" their wives to men he deemed more worthy. Women and children were regarded as chattel.

Lujan's bill does not target polygamy itself or the so-called religious justification for it. His bill aims at child bigamy - an illegal practice of taking underage girls in plural marriage. It prohibits a judge from granting physical or legal custody to a parent who has practiced this form of child molestation.

This may seem like a no-brainer. But child bigamy has been a felony in Arizona only since 2004. One can hope judges take the crime into account when determining custody. Luhan and others say they often don't. Rep. Eddie Farnsworth, who calls this a "bad bill," says they will. Farnsworth also told Republic reporter Amanda J. Crawford that the court should focus on whether a person is a fit parent, not on whether he might have committed child bigamy.

Farnsworth has a right to his opinion.

We respectfully disagree.

Men who take underage girls as plural wives and groom their own daughters for similar illegal "marriages" are not acting in their children's best interests. What's more, a father's loss of custody is not automatic. Lujan's proposal would allow a judge to determine there is no significant risk and give custody to a parent who practices child bigamy. The presumption is simply that a child bigamist probably isn't the best person to raise the children of a "wife" who found the situation so intolerable that she left. We think that's reasonable.

Last year, Farnsworth refused to hear a similar measure in his Judiciary Committee, so the bill died. He's expected to deny this bill a hearing, too. But that won't necessarily doom it. Lujan thinks he has the support in the Senate to revive the measure and bypass Farnsworth's committee for a vote by the full House and Senate.

If this measure becomes law, it won't end the crimes of sects that disguise child abuse as religion. But it will give the victims another reason to believe in justice.
 
azcentral.com
Originally published February 29, 2008
 
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