Editorial: Polygamists’ abuse must end

Monday, May 15, 2006 | 7:19 a.m.

A century-old polygamous community about a two hour's drive east of Las Vegas is suddenly making national news. Its leader, Warren Jeffs, was placed this month on the FBI's 10 Most Wanted Fugitives list.

For more than a week now CNN's "Anderson Cooper 360" news show has featured nightly reports about the community that straddles the Arizona and Utah borders. Other media, including the Los Angeles Times, have run in-depth stories on the sect and its beliefs and practices.

Jeffs has been indicted on charges of sexually assaulting a minor and of conspiring to sexually assault a minor. The news reports paint the towns that Jeffs presides over - Colorado City, Ariz., and Hildale, Utah - as places where young girls are routinely married off to older men, where men have several wives and dozens of children, and where women are virtual slaves in the patriarchal society.

Known as the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, or FLDS, the community's male leaders reportedly arrange marriages in which the children or women involved have no say. News reports and personal testimonials from people who have either escaped from the community or have been thrown out teem with allegations of sexual abuse, usually involving minor children.

Utah Attorney General Mark Shurtleff is one of the sect's strongest critics. "The fact that this has been going on all these years, and the fact that justice has not been there to protect women and children ... from amazing civil rights violations - it is an embarrassment," he told the Los Angeles Times.

Raiding the community, which is what many people suggest, is not the easy solution that it sounds to be. This was tried in 1953, but images of children being torn from their mothers' arms provoked public outrage. And there is the more recent precedent of Waco, Texas, in which many innocent people lost their lives because of a raid on a religious sect.

Yet society cannot stand by and do nothing while children are abused and women enslaved. We trust the recent publicity will help federal and state authorities arrive at a humane solution.

Utah and Arizona should establish an identity in the community - a greater police presence and a well-guarded social service agency for starters. Ending this community's isolation would be a good start toward ending its abuses.