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.
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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 wa stold 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.
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Debbie's story is not uncommon. The only thing unusual about it is her eventual escape. Most daughters of Mormon fundamentalists are forced into marriage in their early teens, usually to men at least twice their age. And yet the law does little.
Let's take a look at 54-year-old Tom Green, married to five wives, with thirty-two children. The oldest of his wives is 22 years younger than him, and the youngest is 29 years younger. Unlike most Mormon polygamists, Green has a thirst for publicity. In 1999, attorney David Leavitt saw Green bragging on national television that he had married all of his wives when they were teens. The youngest of them was only thirteen when she married him, a 37-year-old. Five months after the show aired, Leavitt filed charges against Green, for having sex with five teenaged girls, and for criminal nonsupport of his family, despite receiving over 647,000$ in state and federal assistance .
His youngest wife, Linda Kunz, maintains that she enjoys being his wife. When she was twelve years old, her mother married Tom Green (and has since left him). Linda developed a childlike crush on the older man, talking about him constantly, and eventually asking her mother if she could marry her stepfather. Her mother agreed. Before she was fourteen years old, Linda was pregnant. All because of a childish crush - one not uncommon among young girls today who often have innocent crushes on their older male teachers.
In August 2001, Tom Green was convicted of four counts of bigamy and one charge of criminal nonsupport. He was sentenced to five years in prison. A year later, he was sentenced to a mere five years for having sex with Linda when she was barely a teenager. Basically, he commited statutory rape with five young girls, and was hardly punished for it.
This is not uncommon. The law pays little attention to polygamy and statutory rape among fundamentalists.
Young girls are brainwashed into believing they must marry much older men. The case of Elizabeth Smart is a classic example of this.
On June 5th, 2002, 14-year-old Elizabeth Smart was abducted at knifepoint from her bedroom. Her kidnapper, fundamentalist Brian Mitchell, had been stalking her for months previously. Immediately after kidnapping her, he conducted a self-styled wedding, and then raped her.
For at least two months afterwards, Elizabeth was held at a series of campsites, often chained to trees, and close enough to hear her would-be rescuers calling her name. Nine months after her abduction, she was discovered by a motorcyclist, who called 911. She was wearing a veil, wig, and sunglasses. She initially denied being Elizabeth Smart, conceding her true identity after 45 minutes. On the way to the police station, she cried and repeatingly asked the officers what would happen to Mitchell and his other wife, Wanda Barzee.
Brainwashing Elizabeth had been relatively easy for Mitchell, as she had been raised Mormon. He merely needed to twist this to his advantage and convince her that God intented her to be his wife. Once he'd gained control over her, he often took her to public places, and she did not attempt to escape.
A classic example of the law's failure to protect the young girls is Ruby Jessop. She was 14 years old when observed innocently kissing a boy she liked in Colorado city. In punishment for this 'sin', she was immediately forced to marry a much older man. Like Elizabeth Smart, she was raped immediately after the wedding ceremony - so brutally that she spent her wedding night hemorrhaging copious amounts of blood. Unlike Elizabeth, however, she attempted to flee her marriage and made it to her brother's house. In May 2001, however, she was abducted by members of the fundamentalist church.
Her sister Flora had also fled a marriage, and called the county sheriff to report the abduction. When a deputy came to COlorado city to investigate, he was told that Ruby was 'on vacation.' He accepted this unskeptical and departed. Furious, Flora redoubled her efforts, and eventually Ruby was interviewed by a social worker. However, the interview took place in the precense of one of her abducters, and told the social worker everything was fine. Two years later, at the age of sixteen, she gave birth to a child. Nobody outside of Colorado city has hear
Or take Ruth Stubbs, for example. When she was sixteen years old, she was ordered to marry Rodney Holm, a man twice her age. She wanted to marry someone else, a boy much closer to her own age, but was pressured into the marriage with Holm. When she was nineteen and pregnant with her third child, she left Holm and appeared on television, complaining she had been beaten by her husband.
To date, the Colorado City police department has done nothing to discipline Holm, who is acting like the injured party despite having committed statutory rape by having sex with a 16-year-old, and is trying to obtain legal custody over Ruth's children.
Eventually, Ruth Stubbs vanished, after leaving a handwritten note saying that she did not want Holm to go to jail and refusing to testify against him. This is unsurprising. In April 2002, for instance, Dan Barolow, a fundamentalist Mormon, was charged with molesting five of his daughters over a period of ten years. He claimed he viewed them as his wives. Eventually, four of the daughters, under intense pressure from the community, refused to testify.
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The few attempts to stamp out fundamentalist polygamy have failed. For example, the raid on Short Creek - a polygamous town, now known as Colorado City.
On July 26th, 1953, 122 polygamous men and women were arrested, and their 263 children placed in foster care. However, by 1956, all of the arrested were free and reunited with their family. The public did not take well to the raid. Photographs of crying children being wrested from their mothers generated public sympathy.
But why were the polygamous women arrested? From the time they were born, they were taught that it is their sole duty to serve their often abusive husbands. If the wives had been allowed to keep their children - but the men who'd committed statutory rape, or abused their wives, had been arrested, the raid might've been a success.
Aside from that long-ago failed raid, little has been done. As noted above, abuse and rape is mostly ignored. Polygamous fundamentalist Mormon communities continue to recieve vast amounts of money from the government. Colorado City, for example, the residents receive eight dollars in government services for every tax dollar paid. By comparison, residents of the rest of the Mohave County receive just over a dollar for every dollar paid in taxes.
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How long is the public, and in particular the law, going to ignore this? There are more than thirty thousand fundamentalist polygamists living in Canada, Mexico, and the American West. There may be as many as a hundred thousand. Every year, thousands of young girls in their early teens, brainwashed since birth, are forced into marriage to much older men, often suffering sexual, physical, and emotional abuse. Will it ever cease? Religion is no excuse for committing child abuse.
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*source - Under the Banner of Heaven, by Jon Krakauer.
I mean no offense to any Mormons. This article is about Mormon fundamentalists, who've been renounced by the Mormon community.
I have nothing against polygamy - when it is done by <i>fully consenting adults</i> and there is no abuse of ANY kind involved.
More information about Mormon fundamentalists and their polygamous marriages with child can be found at childpro.org, helpthechildbrides.com, and childbrides.org, three websites dedicated to helping the child brides of polygamous marriages find freedom.
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