Teenage Girl - Polygamy - "Plural Wife"
FLDS case: The
testimony led to charges against the sect's leader
By Brooke Adams
©2006, The Salt Lake Tribune
Salt Lake City, Utah
Editor's note: The Salt Lake Tribune is using the pseudonym "Mary" in this story because the newspaper generally does not identify alleged sexual assault victims.
As
Mary tells the story of how she became a plural wife at age 16, the shock of it
all is still fresh.
On
"I was scared. I
thought, 'Whatever,' I mean, I just kind of didn't understand because my father
didn't even know who he was," Mary said.
She said her mother
later supplied the man's full name: Randolph Barlow, then 28 - a man she had
never talked to or even met.
The next morning, Mary and her
father, accompanied by his six wives, made the 2 1/2 hour drive from
The man she says conducted the ceremony? Warren
Steed Jeffs, president of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter
Day Saints, a religious sect located at the Utah/Arizona border that practices
polygamy. Jeffs is wanted by
Mary told her
story to a grand jury last summer, a transcript of which was found in public
court files of several men from
The woman's testimony sheds rare light on the furtive
underage marriages that are said to be commonplace in the FLDS church. It also
highlights the key role Jeffs has played in pairing men with child brides -
among them, one of his own teenage daughters.
Raised for marriage: Mary, now 20, left her husband after
18 months and is no longer a member of the FLDS community. She may be the only
woman who testified before the grand jury - and she did not come forward
voluntarily, appearing only after she was subpoenaed.
She
said she has 56 siblings, though at the time of her marriage 30 family members
shared a home with 20 bedrooms and 16 bathrooms.
Growing up, she
said, "We're taught that we're supposed to be good mothers, grow up and get
married. . . . We were taught that we're here to bring children onto the earth
and raise them as sweet as possible."
In late 2001, about
four months before her "marriage," Mary accompanied an older sister and their
father to see Jeffs and his father, Rulon Jeffs, then the FLDS prophet. Rulon
Jeffs was "very ill. He couldn't stand without help," she said.
One of the men asked her sister's name, age and about her
belief in plural marriage. Warren Jeffs jotted the information down in "his
little black book." They then asked Mary her full name and age.
That was it until March 27, when her father delivered the
stunning news she was to be married the next day.
"When I
married him . . . I actually thought it was the right thing to do because of how
I was raised," Mary said.
According to Mary, Jeffs conducted
eight to 10 marriage ceremonies that day. Among the brides was one of his own
16-year-old daughters, she said.
Each session likely ended the
same way Mary's did, with a pronouncement from Jeffs that the couple "go and be
fruitful and replenish the earth."
Mary testified her union was
consummated two days later, after she returned to the two-bedroom trailer home
that Barlow shared with his first wife and their four children - despite her
protests that she was not ready to have children. About six months later, she
again tried but failed to fight him off, she alleged.
A year
later, after turning 18, Mary had an affair with another man in order to sever
her relationship with Barlow. "I did it to break the curse," Mary told grand
jurors.
Fear of hell: The
reluctance of Mary and the other women to speak out about these arranged
pairings mystified some jury members.
"Why is it here in
court in the first place if there's not a complaint by one of the people?" one
juror asked.
Mary tried to help the jury understand the
women's silence. "We were taught that we would go to hell" for speaking out, she
said.
So ingrained is that belief that Mary wavered after
her grand jury appearance. She failed to show up at Barlow's original trial,
which was set for March 13.
She now has been ordered to attend a June 5
trial for Barlow, who faces two felony counts of sexual assault.
Seven other men from the FLDS community are charged with sexual
conduct with a minor and conspiracy to commit sexual conduct with a minor. They,
as well as Barlow, have entered not guilty pleas (see graphic).
The
The women who were assigned to the men by Jeffs
ranged in age from 15 to 17; their "spiritual marriages" took place between
December 1998 and March 2002, the charges allege.
Outside pressure: At an FLDS priesthood meeting taped in
April 2002, Jeffs told followers the two states were "trying to stop the work of
God" by interfering with the church's practice of plural marriage. Former town marshal Sam Barlow also spoke,
sharing what he had learned in meetings with authorities in
"They have taken this on under a pretense that they are going to
protect young women from being coerced or levered or pressured into a marriage
union with men that are older than them," Barlow said.
Barlow said the states would call women before a grand
jury and "ask them to betray themselves, their sister wives, their husbands and
their religious leaders and from there expand the fight." He called on the women
to "take that kind of pressure" and gave examples of forbears who withstood
similar scrutiny during anti-polygamy raids in 1944 and 1953.
"We should stand faithful and should have women that are as
converted as we are," Barlow said.
Ironically, Mary's
marriage took place days before this church meeting.
During a court hearing in March for six of the
men, Mohave County Superior Court Judge Steven F. Conn summed up the issue this
way: "It is whether underage girls are going to be protected by society from
engaging in sexual relationships outside of the marital relationship."
The current cases signal the most concerted effort in decades to
crack down on polygamous marriages involving older men and young girls in the
FLDS community.
"What it took was being there," said Gary
Engels, a
In most of the cases,
"It's all there in black and white," Engels said.
brooke@sltrib.com