The Author
The public wonders how women could ever, in their right minds, join a polygamist cult.
Janja Lalich says, “These people are no different than you and I, if you mean people who join these groups. According to all the studies, people who join these groups are above average intelligence, from stable backgrounds, they do not have any pre-existing psychological difficulties, or problems. But they were at a transition point in their lives, when perhaps they were not completely connected or totally fulfilled with what was going on at the time, and if there is any common thread or traits, it is idealism, curiosity, and urge to create a better world, and wanting a sense of meaning and purpose.”
Janja Lalich is an expert who decribes the prevalence of the sexual exploitation of women in cults. This may take the form of daily controls of sexuality and sex lives or more overt abuses such as arranged marriages, forced sexual activity with the leader, and rape. Sexual control is seen as the final step in objectification of the cult member by the authoritarian leader who is able to satisfy his needs through psychological manipulation leading to sexual exploitation. Key to recovering from cultic sexual abuse is psychoeducation—that is, aiding the former cult member to understand the nature of the overall system of deception and manipulation that was used to exploit her. If a woman’s alternative to complying with her own sexual exploitation is death by fire for time and all eternity pronounced by a man she believes speaks for God – is that really a choice?
I wonder what happened to the children taken in raids during the period when thousands suffered sexual and physical trauma in mass mind control experiments. Foster care parents were more likely to grant permission for medical and psychological experimentation than natural parents and I found something odd recently that made me wonder whether the Paper clippers were involved in at least the winter 1952 raid, a few months after I was born.
I came across this material while wondering how to connect with Radiation survivors whose adult teeth had fallen out leaving their baby teeth
in tact as isotopic calcium reached an
approximate 50 year half life.
The low status of polygamous families could have made their children easy targets and created public support for removals which may have had an entirely different purpose.
I am concerned, as well, about the focus specifically on the FLDS and a few other cultic polygamous groups whose severe misogyny does not represent independent Mormon polygamy or main stream LDS.(I use Mormon as a cultural term only).
I wonder whether the murder rate and rate of oppression of women in Utah is higher than elsewhere where women are oppressed. There is a concentrated versus a speckled demographic pattern because of the FLDS desire for food security and economic independence.
Help for women and children who are battered or abused in Utah, support for underaged girls who are married or pregnant has been neglected since World War II.
By focusing the beam only on these very conservative and often frankly
misogynous groups, a great deal of
history has been neglected. The who is who in family abuse is a truncated list focusing on controversial and aberrant or long ago irrelevant beliefs.
I believe these traumatised women and children should be treated in shelters so the children can be treated as well. This treatment should not be narrowly focused on digging out religious belief, but on living skills, communication, education and self empowerment.
This shelter based treatment, including the needed therapy does not come cheap.
This, the lack of public transportation to rural areas and standards and supplemental social and educational opportunities for rural
students and residents, affords a situation where women and young people are more dependent on fathers. I believe the roots of the problem, a broader lack of rural infrastructure exacerbates existing issues facing women and young people.
If an expanded police presence continues to have a criminalising effect on communities, restraining orders will not be available and the police will seldom if ever be called when they are needed in domestic altercations.
Beneath a rigid and strict appearing social structure, there is an underlying chaos. Which has been brought to the attention of the World by propagandists exploited standard means employed in their somewhat unholy craft.
In most religions where adherents refer to written and historical sources,
more than one interpretation exists. There is the Green Koran of peace and the Jihadist’s Koran of war. There is the Golden rule and Sermon on the Mount, a book which makes light reference to Gehenna (a place for burning dead bodies, a fire which under the Romans never ceased to burn, not an actual hell, as Joseph Smith pointed out, and refers to Sheol. This simply means the World of Spirits. Then you have the FLDS who, to various degrees threaten to consign very young girls to outer darkness if they do not yield to an extremity of Priesthood Authority which was designed to make men feel like they had a place in the Church when they were able to come out of prisons and the secret canyons they hid in during the times of their persecutions.
I believe this is mentioned in The Story of the Latter Day Saints, which was prepared for publication by the LDS President Kimball and nearly burned by Ezra Taft Benson, an avid John Bircher and proponent of the Far Right on the American Political Spectrum.
It saddens me to see the bile that has built up over 3 generations of neglect of women’s needs in Utah, particularly the most isolated and powerless ones, poured out on the world stage.
This is being done in ways that create a new class of criminals, new police to find them, new courts to convict them, jails to hold them. At the same time it is hard to believe that anything, beyond the current political rhetoric, will be done to help women coming out of many types of oppressive and coercive environments at all.
Where would that money come from in this catastrophic economic environment?
The Mormon women who would like to live the principle but do not, because of the legal environment, are being poorly represented by communities who they may understand, but with which they have little in common and whose men they would be unlikely to accept.
What advantages this marital custom may afford is least common among the FLDS and I think that is why apostates from that group have become the representatives of LDS Women internationally. Floated out by a media who often cares very little about the truth, far more about the interests they serve at any given time.
Sex sells and distracts, and this campaign is a large part of why the war has targeted Sunni’s and how it has been maintained for so long.
The real needs of Utah Women, and our desire to be known and understood has been replaced by an international dog and pony show.
Polygamy has little to do with womens’ rights or needs per se. The focus on this marital custom diverts funds away from the real needs of women and their lack of advantage in society. If it is not struck from the UN resolution whose passage and implementation it may make nearly impossible, the real needs included in this resolution will be slowed.
As genocide is the main “civilizing” method used historically against indigenous people, beginning with slavery and Cortez, and a substantial
number of these societies have endangered cultures and ways of life,
I do not believe that anti-polygamy measures ought to be discussed in the context now under discussion in the UN at all.
There are countries where most crimes are capitol offences and these
executions are preceded by torture. China and Iran are the most notable.
To create a new class of criminals where more moderate and practical
measures would do more for women, will be detrimental and possibly catastrophic.
The FLDS women who have advanced this cause are poorly educated compared to other polygamous groups and vastly so compared to the public at large and to
the international community as represented by the UN.
In this context I might add that I can speak for the women of the areas originally settled by the LDS, but much less so for LDS women who are converts or live in other countries.
Canada’s Mormon colonies were settled beginning in 1890 or so and are not a recent addition to Canada as some documents seem to imply.
Many no longer practice polygamy and should not be associated with it.
Yes, I wrote this, and with a few glitched sentences it fairly represents my point of view.
The FLDS form of polygamy varies from the late 19th Century form in the cases that have rightly come to light. It is rightly discussed and the FLDS women who are trying to form a safe house and shelter system deserve substantive support.
I don’t think the should be up in Ottawa advising the Canadians on how many French speaking and other North African refugees they should be letting in. It is a complicated issue, and migration to Canada by large families who have the money and the skills to acquire airfare are trying to escape bigotry in Europe and a hostile school system.
Unless they are discriminated against there should be no reason for them to need very much assistance from the state.
That they should be excluded due to what they might do in the future as portrayed by exploited FLDS women seems absurd.
I don’t speak for anyone but myself in truth, but I would like to honour my ancestors who practised the principle under terrible strain and persecution. That some in the FLDS were and are exploited is unfortunate, but all women in Utah are vulnerable to victimisation and abuse and need shelters and other standard care.
Far too few can work with child sexual assault, and though the Social Workers are excellent, they receive too little support and too small a piece of the budgetary pie. Given only this it is hard to help target populations in the state.
A social worker once told me of a client of his who was raped with three of her friends by a custodial father. This was 15 years ago and he said he had not been able to do anything to this man or for these girls. I expect that things have improved, but probably not that much.
This has nothing to do with polygamy and probably little to do with the LDS.
It has traditionally had much to do with the early marriage age–girls (16-18) marrying their boyfriends of 18-23 or so because it seems their only choice. Judicial discretion was eliminated as a factor far too abruptly, someone should have talked to the girls at school at least 9 months before the situation radically changed and there are few services for the girls who formerly used this out. Some are young FLDS who wrongly or rightly believed that their situation could get no worse.
I am a woman born in Southern Utah and who has summered, gone to college and worked there. I am too weak to work full time or I would be glad to take a job in this area. A little typing is an exertion at this point for me now.
There are high schools in Indian areas who welcome all children because of the Genocide of the previous century which killed about 600,000 native Californians. They have a combined parent education center and child care center and special classes for young parents. I this better than what little is being done for women in Utah now.
The determination, before 1979, was still made by judges using their discretion.
The needs of women in all of Utah need to be addressed and until we can do this we should not be advising foreign governments particularly without any education at all other than in the very basic three R’s and Mormon history. You can learn a lot about US history from Mormon history but it is hardly the sum of all knowledge.