Blogging the FLDS

Sara Robinson at Orcinus is starting a series about the FLDS that includes reporting from Jon Krakauer's Under the Banner of Heaven and the new book The Secret Lives of Saints by Daphne Bramham. Here's Sara's series so far; check back at Orcinus periodically for more.

• Are FLDS women brainwashed?
• The Secret Lives of Saints
• What We're Not Talking About, Part I: Other Issues With the FLDS

One of the things we need to understand is just how the FLDS managed to stay so far under the radar for so long — and what twisted consequences were allowed to follow from that lack of oversight. Bramham shows that they did a stunningly effective job of building their own self-sufficient infrastructure of community institutions — hospitals, police forces, courts, financial trusts, schools, and employers — that allowed the church to function without interacting with the outside world any more than necessary. Most of the group's institutions were designed to mimic and supplant outside authority well enough to keep the group (and especially its treatment of women and children) hidden from the prying eyes of outsiders. And, for 60 years, those who were responsible for providing higher-level oversight for all these institutions have almost always been somehow induced to look the other way. [...]

Like African-Americans in the slavery era, women who tried to run were captured by these police and returned to their husbands for punishment — or taken to the hospital for the dreaded mental health evaluation. The police force's main job is to be the muscle that enforces the Prophet's control of the entire community. When the Prophet decides that a man no longer deserves his home, these are the cops who enforce the eviction. Appealing to the FLDS judges has been useless: due process as we understand it doesn't even enter into the conversation.

There is progress on this front. The state of Utah began to move against the Hildale police force in 2005, revoking the certification of its polygamous chief. Sam Roundy admitted that he'd investigated over 25 sexual abuse cases in the past decade — including one that involved the rape of an eight-year-old — and never reported it to child protection authorities. (He pleaded ignorance of all mandated reporter laws.) However, Roundy was replaced with another polygamous officer who immediately sent Warren Jeffs a letter pledging his loyalty, and I found no word that he's left office since. Later that year, the Utah Supreme Court also disbarred the local polygamous judge, which paved the way for reform of the local courts.

But the Saints are now in many places besides Utah; and officials in these other states shouldn't be surprised if they try to hijack cops and courts and replicate this system wherever they go. In Utah, decades of failure to attend to this effectively deprived tens of thousands of people of their civil rights. It can't be allowed to happen again.