It’s time to make something clear about polygamy and human trafficking. According to the Protocol on Human Trafficking adopted by the U.S., human trafficking can exist within an isolated community, or even a family for that matter.  It does not require crossing borders between Canada and the U.S., or any other country.  The definition does not require movement at all.  What is does require is the abuse of power and the exploitation of a human being, particularly a vulnerable human being.

Think about the circumstance where a prophet, an ecclesiastical leader with power far beyond the average minister or priest, arranges a “marriage” – aka sexual activity  - with one of  the believing females in his flock.  Is this not clearly a case of abuse of power over a vulnerable believer? In many states there are fiduciary laws which put clergy in the same “special trust” category as lawyers and psychologists. Utah is one of them.  In fact, Utah feels so strongly about this that it considers sexual relationships with an ecclesiastical leader as inherently “without consent.”

Utah law  76-5-406.   Sexual offenses against the victim without consent of victim — Circumstances. 1 An act of sexual intercourse or simple sexual abuse is considered “without consent of the victim” under any of the following circumstances:

(1) the victim expresses lack of consent through words or conduct;

(2) the actor overcomes the victim through the actual application of physical force or violence;

(7) the actor knows that the victim submits or participates because the victim erroneously believes that the actor is the victim’s spouse;*

and the list goes on with more definitions of sexual offenses circumstances that are considered to be “without consent,” the last of which is -

(12) the actor is a health professional or religious counselor. 1

* It appears that section 7 of this law could be applicable to the case of Vicky Prunty, co-founder of Tapestry Against Polygamy, whose former polygamist husband, Christopher Nemelka, publicly boasts how he brought her into a polygamist relationship with him under deceptive motives. He claims he never believed in the religious principle of polygamy in the first place, and never considered himself spiritually married to them. “He sat all of his wives down one day and told us he had ‘married’ us for the sex. He kept his first wife and told the rest of us to leave. I felt so dirty. I wanted to run into the shower and scrub and scrub,” Vicky stated. (Source, Also see CNN Transcripts.) Vicky’s response of feeling dirty, used, and wanting to shower is also a common response for a rape victim. ( See Rape Trauma System.  Really click it, it’s worth a read.)

It’s commendable that Utah law  76-5-406, item 7, or sex with a religious counselor, to be considered a sexual offense without consent.

Texas law is similar. 2

Sec. 22.011.  SEXUAL ASSAULT. (a) A person commits an offense if the person: (1)  intentionally or knowingly: (A) causes the penetration of the anus or sexual organ of another person by any means, without that person’s consent;   … (b)  A sexual assault under Subsection (a)(1) is without the consent of the other person if:   …(10)  the actor is a clergyman who causes the other person to submit or participate by exploiting the other person’s emotional dependency on the clergyman in the clergyman’s professional character as spiritual adviser;  2

Obviously a man who represents himself as receiving direct communication, or revelations, from God or advanced beings, is a spiritual adviser or clergy, even if not formally licensed by a recognized religious group. Those who believe in anointed messengers like this are vulnerable to their manipulation and abuse of power, making them prime targets for exploitation, if not enslavement.

Human trafficking is now being redefined in exactly those terms – exploitation and enslavement; physical force and movement across borders is not required. By this more accurate definition of human trafficking, not only the underage girls, but even women over 18 who are sexually exploited or manipulated by their prophet to provide labor for substandard or no pay, could be considered victims of trafficking – without even leaving their own community.

The state of New York recognized this in their own policies and definitions of human trafficking.

Consistent with New York State and federal anti-trafficking statutes, this definition does not require movement of the victim — “recruiting” or “harbouring” a victim for the purpose of exploitation is sufficient to constitute trafficking.  This acknowledges that the dynamics of trafficking remain consistent whether the victim is moved across state lines, moved within a nation’s borders, or not moved at all.

The relevant element is not movement, but abuse of power. Using their ecclesiastical power to take advantage of their followers is what victims allege that men like Warren Jeffs, Paul Kingston, James Harmston, Chris Nemelka, Winston Blackmore and other prophets or cult leaders have done. And that is precisely why prophets and cult leaders should have had their dubious “religious” activities that result in personal benefits at the expense and anguish of others – examined under a legal microscope long ago.  Their claims of protection under the first amendment is not applicable, as demonstrated by Judge Walther’s sterling refusal to listen to such nonsense by Warren Jeffs. Granted, the Jeff’s trial was about the horrific sexual abuse of innocent children.

But abusing adults is a crime too, especially when these victims are exploited by their ecclesiastical fiduciaries. “Although clergy of any denomination can sexually exploit children, teens, men, or women, many experts estimate that over 95% of victims of sexual exploitation by clergy are adult women.” SOURCE.

Experts estimate that over 95% of victims of sexual exploitation by clergy are adult women!

In fact, the numbers of adult women abused by clergy are so alarming that in 2009, the National Organization of Women passed a resolution with a call “to Criminalize Sexual Exploitation of Adult Women by  Clergy” in every state.

Furthermore, Baylor University received a $200,000 grant from the Ford Foundation to conduct the first national research on clergy sexual abuse of adults. According to Dean Diana Garland of Baylor’s School of Social Work the goals of this research project included, among other things -

• teaching religious leaders, congregants and the general public that sexual activity between a religious leader and a congregant cannot be considered consensual - the power differential is too great.
• educating victims that sexual activity with their religious leader was not a consensual affair.
• communicating to the church to respond to “ethical violations with compassionate care for the vulnerable as its major focus” instead of institutional self protection.

Traffickers tend to use similar tactics of control and to exploit similar vulnerabilities. Equally important, and distinguishing it from federal and state criminal law, is the definition’s recognition that trafficking can take place even when traffickers do not resort to force or overt coercion but instead subject a victim to exploitation by “the abuse of power or of a position of vulnerability.”

Rachel Strong

According to an article in the Georgetown Law Journal, “refusing to recognize secular duties for clergy whose conduct reaches beyond interpreting religious doctrine would leave tort victims without legal recourse for harms they have suffered based on the irrelevant status of the person who contributed to the harm.”  Yet, when it comes to the adult female victims of polygamy, law makers look the other way. After all, the polygamist wives of Kody Brown are smiling in the reality television series Sister Wives. Surely this means that polygamy can work out beautifully for some people and therefore should be legal, right?

But there’s always another side to the story, as this Sister Wives blog points out, not to mention the wealth of research and expert affadavits and exhibits on the harms of polygamy (READ IT!!) found on activist Nancy Mereska’s blog Stop Polygamy in Canada, or on http://polygamyisabuse.com.

Had there been no sexual abuse of children in the case of Warren Jeffs, chances are that throngs of women would have continued to be psychologically, spiritually, financially and physically raped by this “prophet” with little or no recourse – particularly since they were adults who “agreed.”  Yet the word “agreed” is inappropriate in this circumstance because it implies the freedom to decline or choose alternatives without fear of consequence.

According to Carolyn Jessop, a former member of the FLDS polygamist community, Utah law enforcement does not know how to deal with the problem of religious coercion. ”They do not understand generations of mind control,” she said. “They do not understand the kind of control that these people live their lives under every single day and really truly have no options.”  Source  -KSL news 

Read more about the misunderstood issue of consent in polygamy here, and why religiously-mandated polygamy should not be decriminalized.

Many courts have held the secular aspects of the clergy–congregant relationship as legally accountable, or a special relationship.

These courts have primarily imposed duties on clergy based on the theory that the counseling relationship between cleric and congregant becomes a fiduciary relationship when the congregant is vulnerable and the cleric occupies a position of trust and confidence.  From: The Liability of Clergy for the Acts of Their Congregants p. 168

Here is an example of how a Utah Attorney General ignored the case of a teen polygamist victim manipulated into marriage and exploited by the self-proclaimed prophet James Harmston.  The primary reason for not prosecuting the sexual offenses and severe psychological abuse of this barely 19-year old victim by her ecclesiastical leader?  She was over 18. Although there are laws in the Utah books to protect young women from predators like this, the Attorney General’s office has made their position clear:  if a woman is over 18 in Utah and has been enslaved by, or her life has been ravaged by, her ecclesiastical predator, no matter how good the evidence, it is not worth the AG’s time. No wonder Utah is such a fertile ground for the production of prophets.

The fiduciary relationship between a prophet and believer exists with a vast imbalance of power, and the ability for prophets to control, exploit and even enslave spiritual wives is not only easy, in Utah it’s consequence free.

…The definition acknowledges that human traffickers often exploit political, social, and economic conditions of dire inequality … to recruit and maintain power and control over trafficking victims. By identifying the exploitation of vulnerabilities in order to extract labor or sex as the true essence of human trafficking, the Trafficking Protocol moves beyond outmoded conceptions that fixate on movement across state lines and the use of explicit force. (New York manual on Human Trafficking)

Labor could include physical labor, childbirth, working for little or no pay, or giving all or most of one’s earnings from outside employment to the prophet or even the polygamist husband.

The Trafficking Protocol thus covers and prohibits sexual exploitation in the context of intimate partner relationships, including marriage, as long as the other elements of the definition of trafficking in persons are met. Internet brides and other victims of marriage trafficking, arguably left unprotected by federal and state anti-trafficking law, are far more likely to be recognized as trafficking victims under the Trafficking Protocol. The Protocol’s definition of “trafficking in persons” includes a provision that specifies that “the consent of a victim of trafficking in persons is irrelevant where any of these means are used.”

“These means” include not only force, but fraud, deception, coercion, psychological/religious manipulation, threats, intimidation, mind games, abuse of power over a person that has been exploited, or a lack of consent – which, as stated earlier, is legally assumed when it comes to sexual relationships with one’s spiritual advisor.

The Trafficking Protocol thus acknowledges that it is logically impossible for a person to give meaningful consent to be exploited in situations of abuse.

It is time for the public to understand once and for all that no woman who believes her eternal life is at stake can possibly give meaningful consent to her own exploitation – even if it is disguised as plural or celestial marriage, and particularly it if is arranged by a clergy. It is a gross mistake to compare the inherently coercive circumstances of a polygamist marriage arranged by the prophet to gay marriage, or to think of patriarchal polygamy as “consenting adults” who simply want privacy in the bedroom. It’s not even close.

Furthermore, lawmakers and members of the public often fail to understand the role of psychological manipulation in human trafficking, and mistakenly believe that violent “force,” such as being kidnapped and chained, must be evident in order for a person to qualify as a victim of modern day slavery. Not true, according to the Protocol.

“While the penal provisions of the federal Victims of Trafficking and Violence Protection Act of 2000 (“Trafficking Victims Protection Act” or TVPA) require force, fraud, or coercion for actionable trafficking, the Trafficking Protocol does not provide a ‘bright line,’ forced-based test.

Some victims of human trafficking do not even identify themselves as victims due to psychological tactics of their abusers.

The TVPA takes into consideration not only violent criminal acts but also the power dynamic employed by the perpetrator. Its definition of trafficking in persons is not unlike the definition of domestic violence developed by victim advocates…that identifies perpetrators’ on-going tactics of power and control, many nonphysical and not overtly violent. Like … Amnesty International’s criteria for psychological torture, the Trafficking Protocol reflects the understanding that subtle, largely psychological tactics that emerge from and intensify inequality can be just as, if not more, effective in securing an abuser’s domination and a victim’s submission than overt acts of force.

In fact, promises of marriage and romance are included in descriptions of techniques that traffickers use to maintain control over their slaves.

Indeed, many traffickers around the world have embraced this lesson and some — like the pimps of Tenancingo, Mexico — recruit and maintain control over their victims not through traditional tactics of threats of force and violence but through seduction, romance, and promises of marriage and building a family and home together.

No doubt, promises of eternal marriage and other rewards in heaven would fall under this definition as well.

Even prostituted women who seem to be choosing their profession can be considered victims of human trafficking.

Squarely included within the Trafficking Protocol’s definition, however, are individuals who, after having been trafficked into prostitution, remain in conditions of exploitation…Such victims may seem to be voluntary prostitutes or “sex workers” but are, in reality, trapped in dehumanizing conditions because they are deeply traumatized and see no way to exit a system of sexual exploitation. Trafficked people who remain in the sex industry may appear to embrace prostitution as an identity and vocation because they see no alternative and lack the support they need to break free. Under the Trafficking Protocol’s definition, such individuals are trafficking victims and those who abuse their situations of vulnerability are traffickers.  FROM: http://www.nycourts.gov/ip/womeninthecourts/LMHT.pdf

Paul Kingston – DNA Evidence of Incest Ignored in Utah

Now substitute “in polygamy” for “prostitution/sex workers,” and “polygamy” for “sex industry” in the paragraph above and see how it flows.

Nothing could fit the definition of “exploitation of vulnerabilities” more precisely than a prophet selecting a wife from his flock of believers, and making her submission a requirement to merit eternal reward or avoid eternal damnation.  It’s possible that even Rebecca Musser could qualify a victim of human trafficking for having been married off to the prophet Rulon Jeffs when she was 19.  After all, in Utah sexual activity with a religious advisor is considered a sexual offense “without consent,” remember? Another term for sex without consent is rape.  Being over 18 does not change that.  Did she also perform free labor, provide free child care, act as a servant for the other wives, or work outside the home and turn all her earnings over to her prophet husband?

WHEN IT COMES TO HUMAN TRAFFICKING, CONSENT IS NO DEFENSE

If you think human trafficking can not exist in a situation that has the trappings of marriage like polygamy does, think again. (Italicized words were added.)

Studies have found that the majority of women in prostitution or polygamy at some point are under the control of a pimp or prophet. If the prostituted person or spiritual wife is or has been under the control of a pimp or prophet or someone functioning as a pimp or prophet, she or he is a trafficking victim under the definition in the Trafficking Protocol and is highly likely to have been subjected to the force, fraud, or coercion required by New York State and federal law. Pimps or prophets are usually simultaneously sex traffickers or exploiters and intimate partner batterers, or intimidators, and almost invariably enter into sexual relationships with their victims through acts of sexual and physical abuse, promises of protection, devotion, and love, and often through a combination of violence, threats and romance.  After they establish their dominance, they “turn out” their victims into prostitution or reassign them to other men, exploiting them in order to reap large sums of money or other benefits.

One of the most frustrating challenges for those engaged in the fight against human trafficking is when the public or the media buy into the myth that a woman “consented” to prostitution, or polygamy, and therefore can not be a victim of human trafficking. The Polaris Project dispels many of the myths and misconceptions concerning human trafficking on their web site here.  Click it. Think of this myth also in terms of the labor or sexual exploitation of  spiritual wives.

Myth 9: If the trafficked person consented to be in their initial situation or was informed about what type of labor they would be doing or that commercial sex would be involved, then it cannot be human trafficking or against their will because they “knew better.”

Reality: A victim cannot consent to be in a situation of human trafficking. Initial consent to commercial sex or a labor setting prior to acts of force, fraud, or coercion is not relevant to the crime, nor is payment.

http://www.polarisproject.org/human-trafficking/overview/myths-and-misconceptions

Without question, human trafficking through the abuse of power can readily be applied to the controlling and exploitive dynamics of patriarchal, religious polygamy.

‎”Whether the currency is God or greed, the trafficking of women and children for sex is a form of slavery.” –Rebecca Musser