Lena Jones 02 - Desert Wives

Estimates of the Kingston sect’s wealth range from $150 million to—by one of their business competitors—$11 billion. According to Kilzer’s article, the 1,000-member sect is currently headed by Paul Kingston, a Salt Lake City attorney with 32 wives and more than 200 children.
    THE TAXPAYER FOOTS THE BILL FOR POLYGAMY : A
Los Angeles Times
article written by Julie Cart, dated Sept. 9, 2001, assessed polygamy’s cost to the U.S. taxpayer. She cited U.S. Census Bureau estimates which found that every school-age child in Colorado City, Utah, was living below the poverty level. This level of poverty is unlikely to change, since many polygamists—who are unwilling to have their children influenced by “outsiders”—have pulled their children from public school. Cart’s article also cited wide-ranging tax fraud, since polygamists rarely declare the full extent of their income.
    This income-hiding behavior was highlighted in the 2001-2002 bigamy and child-rape trial of Tom Green. Court documents revealed that Green’s five wives had been supporting him by selling magazine subscriptions, and yet the family was collecting large welfare payments. The child rape charges emerged from findings that Green impregnated one wife when she was only thirteen—with the permission of her mother, who was
also
married to Green. To date, the child’s mother has not been prosecuted for aiding in child rape. Green is now in prison; his wives and 29 children are living on government assistance.
    In Cart’s article on incest and polygamy, Cart stated that the combination of birth defects, poverty, and the lack of education have overtaxed the already strained public service agencies of both Arizona and Utah. In fact, Cart found that Medicaid pays for more than one-third of the babies born in Utah, and plural wives account for a disproportionate share of those births. According to an article by Tom Zoellner in the
Salt Lake Tribune
, June 28, 1998, fully 33 percent of the residents in the Hildale and Colorado City area are using U.S. Dept. of Agriculture food stamps to feed their families (the average in Arizona is 6.7 percent, and in Utah 4.7 percent). The town of Hildale was also awarded $405,006 in federal housing grants to refurbish 19 homes on polygamy sect-owned land. Colorado City and Hildale rank among the top 10 in the Intermountain West in reliance on Medicaid and government-issued food.
    WHY POLYGAMY ISN’T PROSECUTED : Proving a polygamy case continues to be difficult, since most polygamists’ wives refuse to testify against men they consider their husbands. Proving child rape is difficult, because as seen in the Green case, the parents agree to the illegal “marriages” of their children. Until recently Utah law permitted girls to be married at age 14. The children themselves have been taught from birth to obey blindly the dictates of their parents and sect leaders. More crucially, the girls are moved back and forth between compounds, or back and forth over the Utah/Arizona border when necessary, thus making establishing the location of statutory (or actual) rape, almost impossible. In addition, many of these child marriages are consummated in Mexico, where many of Arizona’s and Utah’s polygamy sects have set up satellite compounds beyond the reach of U.S. jurisdiction.
    Complicating the polygamy issue is solid suspicion that the polygamy compounds have stockpiled large caches of guns and explosives in the caves near the compounds. Few politicians want another Waco.
    However, in some cases, Utah and Arizona county prosecutors simply decline to prosecute. In a front page article in the
Salt Lake Tribune
, published May 20, 2001, Mohave County (Arizona) Attorney William J. Ekstrom Jr., said, “We don’t view polygamy as a prosecutable crime. There is no driving desire to prosecute people for these types of things. We see it as consensual relations between adults.”
    PROSPECTS FOR CHANGE : Most women and girls in today’s polygamy compounds are, like their predecessors, the victims of learned helplessness. Many are undereducated and have no job skills, no bank accounts, no property, and no income other than their welfare checks. In the unlikely event they ever leave the compounds, they are poorly equipped to find jobs and support their children. The few women who have managed to leave the compounds usually leave their children behind, an agonizing choice.
    WHAT YOU CAN DO : The polygamists depend on public and