By Rebecca Kimbel Mscd CEO DTM
Child abuse and rape occur world wide, but in cultures where the abused have no rights, the proportions of abuse escalate. Abuse and sexual crimes during the days of slavery in the south, before the civil war and against women in polygamy clothed in the name of religion,( at home and abroad,) are examples.
I am a product of FLDS polygamy. I was born a slave, sold as a slave (child bride) and for years, remained a loyal and fearful to those who held me in bondage under the watchful eye of a blood thirsty and terrifying “God”. I am only one of thousands of women, whose minds, bodies and lives, were not our own.
The claim that sexual crimes against women in FLDS polygamy are rare is not true. What is rare, are witnesses who dare to tell the truth in their “holy Gestapo”, while their children are held in the compound (concentration camp). The price of being a witness can be horrific. Goggle up Warren Jiffs and others from Yearning for Zion Ranch in Texas, and see how many witness, backed out and refused to testify after talking to authorities. Without witnesses, crime is challenging to prosecute.
Sexual crimes of the FLDS are seldom discovered by complaints. They were discovered by the law after; Tom Green flaunted his polygamy on TV, after the raid on the Yearning for Zion polygamist compound, after Mary Ann Kingston escaped from her father, etc.
As in all organized crime, those who go to prison are considered heroes. In polygamy they are also acclaimed as religious martyrs. Polygamy itself is rarely prosecuted. What is prosecuted is sex with under age girls, commonly referred to as “unlawful cohabitation”.
My siblings and I grew up believing our father was a martyr for God, imprisoned for polygamy, but he and others like him , went to prison for unlawful cohabitation after a polygamist raid.
Dad’s fellow polygamist inmates, jailed in the Utah State Penitentiary in 1945 for “unlawful cohabitation” were;
Joseph W. Musser Lewis A Kelsh John Y. Barlow
Alma A. Timpson Heber K. Cleveland ( my father in law)
E F Barlow Davis Brigham Darger Albert C. Barlow
Rulon Clark Allred ( my uncle and leader of the AUB) JW Barlow
Arnold Boss and Morris Q. Kunz (my father)
(Documented in Utah State Prison records 1945)
Dad took fifteen year old Rachael Jessup to be his fifth wife. While he was in prison, she fled to Escalante Utah with her five children. Rachael and her brother, Seth were killed in an airplane crash on April 14, 1947. ( Documented in the Tribune Special and other Utah newspapers). The state of Utah granted my father “early termination” and custody of the five children Rachael had escaped with. Dad promised the judge he would not live polygamy. ( He took two more wives after that.)
When I was a kid Dad would gather the family and tell us, “the finger of God struck down that airplane and killed Rachael ( for breaking her covenants ), so he wouldn’t have to.”
Prison made heroes of men who bred women like cattle, in the name of Godhood. “Stomp the mustard seed and it will only spread”, was the polygamist victory cry. Today polygamist communities have grown by the thousands and the descendants of these men are plentiful in their ranks.
This is not Iraq, Iran or India. This is the United States of America, land of the free and home of the brave. This is where I was born a slave, sold as a slave and held in bondage under the threat of eternal damnation and blood atonement.
Polygamy has nothing to do with God and everything to do with power. As long as the rewards of violation of human rights and criminal behavior are greater than the risk and the responsibility, polygamy will continue to grow.
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