Las Vegas Review-Journal (Sunday)
Decriminalizing polygamy creating culture change
2020 Utah law brings lifestyle out into light
HILDALE, Utah — Marion Timpson’s own marriages reflect Utah’s recent legal battles over polygamy.
“I married Holly in 2005 and Katie in 2013, and I married Lisa in 2014,” the polygamist told Fox 13 News, referring to his wives.
One of his marriages took place shortly after a federal judge struck down Utah’s anti-polygamy laws. Reality TV polygamist Kody Brown and his wives sued the state and won, effectively decriminalizing plural marriage as a religious belief. Then a federal appeals court reinstated the bigamy law and the Utah Legislature passed a law that re-criminalized bigamy.
For Timpson and his family, the shift again was too much.
“Eighteen months later, when the politics changed again, on that ruling, she (Holly) said, ‘Let’s get out. We’re leaving Utah,’ ” he recalled in an interview with Fox 13 News.
The Timpsons moved from the Salt Lake City area down to Colorado City, Arizona.
In 2020, the Utah Legislature passed a law to decriminalize polygamy, reducing bigamy among consenting adults from a third-degree felony, punishable by prison time, to an infraction on par with a speeding ticket.
“That’s for consenting adults,” said Lt. Governor Deidre Henderson, who sponsored the bill when she served in the Utah Senate. “Anyone who still commits bigamy, the traditional sense of bigamy where they’re married to someone and they go fraudulently marry someone else, that’s a third-degree felony. Or if they try to coerce someone into purporting to marry them? That’s also a third-degree felony. We also kept a second-degree felony for anyone who engages in bigamy and also commits other crime like fraud or sexual abuse, things like that.”
Henderson argued that it was time the state try something different to reach people within closed, polygamous societies to get them to report any crimes.
“Bigamy had been a felony in Utah since 1935 and it clearly didn’t do what the law, I think, or the people who put that law in intended it for it do. It didn’t stop people from engaging in polygamy. It ended up driving people underground, created a wall of secrecy surrounding some communities,” she said.
The change in approach was significant, given Utah’s long history with polygamy. Plural marriage has been woven into the fabric of Utah. Mormon pioneers settled here after being driven out of other states in part because of their beliefs in plural marriage. In order to get statehood, Utah had to prohibit polygamy.
Polygamists imprisoned
In 1953, authorities raided “Short Creek” — the name for the border towns of Hildale, Utah, and Colorado City, Arizona — and split apart families, putting polygamists in jail. In the early 2000s, the state of Utah launched a number of prosecutions of people for abuses within polygamy. In some cases, prosecutors tacked on a bigamy charge.
But in those prosecutions, cooperation was always difficult — even if the state was trying to combat horrific abuses. Sister-wives refused to testify against their husbands and others in the community refused to help. Henderson said her goal was to open up the closed societies to report abuses by bringing polygamy out into the open, without fear of criminal charges for everyone just for living a religious belief.
“We had a serious human rights crisis that needed to be addressed,” she said. “So that’s what my legislation in 2020 was meant to do.”
The legislation personally benefited Alina Darger, a plural wife who is the executive director of Cherish Families, a nonprofit based in Hildale and Colorado City. She advocated in support of the bill.
“People can come forward and say, ‘I’m part of the state of Utah. I’m part of this society. I have a proud heritage, too. I belong,’ ” she said.
Cherish Families runs a food pantry, offers parenting and healthy relationship classes, mental health support and other services for people in plural families.
“We have no opinion about their religion or their families, that we were here to serve them and help them make their own decisions,” said Shirlee Draper, Cherish Families’ operations director. “That was really based on experiences we all had, experiences I had trying to leave the FLDS.”
Abuse reports rise
The Fundamentalist LDS Church, one of Utah’s largest polygamous groups, was based in Hildale and Colorado City. Its leader, Warren Jeffs, is serving a life sentence in a Texas prison for child sexual assault related to underage marriages. Since Jeffs’ imprisonment, and as a result of a number of other cultural and political shifts, the communities have dramatically changed. People who live in the communities say it is more open now than ever before.
Darger said part of that is because of the change in Utah’s anti-polygamy laws, which has led to many in plural families to open up about their lives. She said people are stepping forward to report abuses.
“We’re absolutely seeing it and we’re absolutely seeing it come top down in different groups,” Darger said.
Tonia Tewell, the executive director of Holding Out Help, said she has also seen an increase in abuse reports. But Tewell said she does not believe it is because of the law change.
“We’ve had a 25 percent increase, our abuse rate is up to 95 percent and not a single of those clients have said we’ve landed here because the law has changed,” she told Fox 13 News. “I hope I am wrong and this is really going to do what everybody is saying it’s going to be doing. But I don’t think it has. I don’t think it’s accomplished what the state hoped.”
Tewell, who testified against the decriminalization bill, said she fears abusers within polygamous communities have become emboldened because there is no longer the threat of felony charges against them. She argued the state has yet to address the “root problems” within polygamous communities.
“Pedophiles are still pedophiles. Abusers are still abusers. And traffickers are still trafficking clients, and until that systemic issue has been dealt with, we’re still perpetuating the problem,” she said.