State urged to scrap its law against polygamy
"We hoped not to be in your face about it, but we wanted to make a statement," said Joyce Steed, a member of the polygamous community of Centennial Park, Ariz.
The Utah attorney general's Safety Net Committee hosted the panel discussion to get public comment about how to end isolation and help victims of abuse in the state's many polygamous communities.
"I turned a blind eye to it," Utah Attorney General Mark Shurtleff said. "In Utah and Arizona for decades, we turned a blind eye."
Many of those in attendance suggested the best way to end the isolation and abuse is to decriminalize polygamy in Utah.
"Polygamy is as old as the world. It is here to stay," said Marlyne Hammon of Centennial Park, Ariz. One of the wives of polygamist John Daniel Kingston stood up to speak in agreement.
"The state of Utah won't let me get married," said Heidi Mattingly-Foster. "What makes them decide who I can and cannot love?"
"This sort of thing is coddling criminals," one person wrote in comments read before the audience.
Carolyn Jessop fled an abusive marriage as the fourth of seven wives to a man in the Fundamentalist LDS Church in Colorado City. She said because of the isolation, it is hard to leave domestic violence.
"It was like jumping off a cliff," she said. "There's an enormous gap between the FLDS community and the real world."
Much of the anger surrounding problems within polygamy were directed at the FLDS Church, whose leader, Warren Jeffs, is a wanted fugitive. But the Utah attorney general defended his decision not to prosecute bigamy among consenting adults in plural marriage.
"Are you willing to pay for 10,000 new inmates?" Shurtleff said, directing some of his comments to members of Utah's leading anti-polygamy group, sitting in the audience. "We don't have the resources, so we go after the most heinous crimes against children and women."
Earlier in the day, the group Tapestry Against Polygamy held a news conference to criticize Shurtleff and the pro-polygamy group Principle Voices for their stance.
Kelli Cox said her husband left her after she refused to allow him to take a plural wife. He left her to care for their seven children while she said he moved in with a woman he is married to in a "spiritual" sense.
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