podcast about Short Creek and the FLDS

[Fifi de la Vergne]

https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/stitch ... e/77164740

I'd heard about the FLDS from the time I joined the church, but always accepted the breezy assurances I was given that they were a group of fanatics who really had little in common with "real" Mormons.

It was either on an episode of Mormon Expression or Year of Polygamy where I learned the real history of how the division between the two branches of mormonism occurred and just how much they had in common. It was eye-opening, to say the least. There's a current podcast on Stitcher (link at top) that explores the history of this community/faith. I'm finding it very poignant to listen as these not-so-distant spiritual kin recount their own faith journeys. I recommend it.

And (after listening to the most recent episode, and after reflecting on some of the things that came out of conference) I have to say that if there is a hell and a god, there must be a special place there reserved for men who lie and manipulate for their own gratification.

[Fifi de la Vergne]

New episodes of this podcast drop every Monday - six of the ten total have been released. This week's episode was particularly moving, and I'm putting in another plug for it. I also came across a blurb about it from The New Yorker:

PODCASTS
Unfinished: Short Creek

Illustration by Mike Reddy

Ash Sanders and Sarah Ventre, the hosts of the series “Unfinished: Short Creek,” from Witness Docs and Critical Frequency, spent four and a half years reporting the story of Short Creek, an isolated community of current and former fundamentalist, and polygamist, Mormons on the Utah-Arizona border. With sensitivity, care, and a focus on locals speaking for themselves, Sanders, “a proud Utahan,” and Ventre, “an even prouder Arizonan,” explore how a group originally centered on sharing food, labor, houses, and land became a cult of personality dominated by the church leader Warren Jeffs, who’s now serving a life sentence for sex crimes. John DeLore’s masterly sound design—subtle piano, children singing the credo “Keep Sweet”—helps ground a story of dramatic extremes, as do the voices of women who have left the community. As one says, “God knows where I am, and if she needs me she can find me.”

[SaidNobody]

And (after listening to the most recent episode, and after reflecting on some of the things that came out of conference) I have to say that if there is a hell and a god, there must be a special place there reserved for men who lie and manipulate for their own gratification.

Yeah, these people are some real losers. Stay clear of them.

[alas]

And (after listening to the most recent episode, and after reflecting on some of the things that came out of conference) I have to say that if there is a hell and a god, there must be a special place there reserved for men who lie and manipulate for their own gratification.

Yeah, these people are some real losers. Stay clear of them.

Hey, she is talking about men like Warren Jeffs and Joseph Smith who marry 13 and 14 year olds. And don’t give the girls any choice who they marry, and I understand your family isn’t like that. She isn’t talking about you, unless you married a 13 year old since I talked to you last. I know “these people” include your family, but you have admitted that Warren Jeffs is pretty screwed up, so don’t take what she said to mean people you love.

Personally, I dont stay clear of them, I just don’t marry them. I don’t live too far from Short Creek, and we see the pligs in the grocery store all the time and I am often impressed how kind many of them are. When we were looking for houses to buy down here, we looked at two houses where it was pretty obvious they were pligs and they were some of the nicest people and I was surprised at how normal Mormon they are. Their houses looked like they shop at Deseret Books for home decor. “Families are forever” hung on the wall. Big picture of the first vision. My sister in law is building a home in La Verkin and lives next door to pligs and she really likes them.

They are not the monsters that the Brighamites claim they are and they are not much different that our own TBM families. And some of them (our families) are sexually abusive of children too

[SaidNobody]

And (after listening to the most recent episode, and after reflecting on some of the things that came out of conference) I have to say that if there is a hell and a god, there must be a special place there reserved for men who lie and manipulate for their own gratification.

Yeah, these people are some real losers. Stay clear of them.

Hey, she is talking about men like Warren Jeffs and Joseph Smith who marry 13 and 14 year olds. And don’t give the girls any choice who they marry, and I understand your family isn’t like that. She isn’t talking about you, unless you married a 13 year old since I talked to you last. I know “these people” include your family, but you have admitted that Warren Jeffs is pretty screwed up, so don’t take what she said to mean people you love.

Personally, I dont stay clear of them, I just don’t marry them. I don’t live too far from Short Creek, and we see the pligs in the grocery store all the time and I am often impressed how kind many of them are. When we were looking for houses to buy down here, we looked at two houses where it was pretty obvious they were pligs and they were some of the nicest people and I was surprised at how normal Mormon they are. Their houses looked like they shop at Deseret Books for home decor. “Families are forever” hung on the wall. Big picture of the first vision. My sister in law is building a home in La Verkin and lives next door to pligs and she really likes them.

They are not the monsters that the Brighamites claim they are and they are not much different that our own TBM families. And some of them (our families) are sexually abusive of children too

They're alright I guess. The majority of the men devote themselves to the concept of father. Some watch football too.

But the post, not that I'm really hurt, doesn't really draw lines between the main body of people and the pyschos like Warren.

Warren was a psychopath long before the public knew him. He raped his younger bothers long before he started collecting girls. One killed himself.

Now, it could have been the religion, or maybe like most psychopathes, he was born that way. But what could have been avoided was him taking over the group. But the people were so afraid of the government that they easily fell into the trap of mind control. It wasn't hard to isolate them through their fear.

Why did they fear the government? Because the government had literally attacked at least twice, took the kids and threatened to adopt them out. My dad was only in jail for a short time, but had to spread his family out to avoid being caught. He had to travel 2000 miles loop to see them all. My mom was taken in the 50s after the police found them hiding in the mountains.

It took years for all the kids to get back where they belonged. And the government left them alone. But what happens when people are cut off from the national authority? Not good things. We were mostly self governed and did pretty good but if there was domestic abuse, women and children had no one to turn to. Telling a judge of abuse would have destroyed the family, as the adults would have gone to jail. So, yup, there was abuse. Men had no fear of legal consequences so their morals were completely reliant their,.... Morals. I am actually impressed that we did as well as we did.

But when Warren stepped in, it wasn't hard to convince his people that the government and outside were evil. Using the fear of government he twisted their minds into unrecognizable forms.

And so enters my bitterness. People still point at Warren as an example of Fundamental Mormonism. Warren is a natural born psychopath that got into one of the most unique circumstances on Earth. But that unique circumstance was created by the US government because they couldn't figure out how to act righteous and give a people their freedom of religion.

And even now, many people are still eager to imply that they are evil. Especially the men. We love pointing out how sight m sexual abuse does exist out there. Yup, it does. But the statistic that 1 in 4 women are sexually assaulted isn't something the pligs created. But if it's always implied. Everyone wants to go save all those women from those hateful abusers. And for years, because they didn't want to be saved, the women hid from the world.

So yeah, it still bugs me when someone implies our men, even our psychopaths are somehow more nasty than others. American culture is just as bad, perhaps much worst. I watch my daughter like a hawk, and at 13 she is actually getting a little long in the tooth compared her already sexually active friends. Her best friend from a few years ago had started at 9. And her mom didn't seem that concerned.

One of the most interesting features of the 2008 YFZ Ranch was that of the 500 kids (under 18) taken, examined, and interviewed was that 6 of them had done something sexual.

But anyway, when I see American women going through surgery, straving themselves, allowing themselves to be disrespected, being pressured into lifestyles they that don't want to be accepted, but hear "special hell for those guys" I have to shake my head. I've heard some of these podcast and articles and wonder why they think they know what they are talking about.

[alas]

I see the fear in the women out shopping. If you say something to them, they react like deer in the head lights. It takes a smile and second statement to get them to reply. They have been taught all their lives to fear outsiders.

And as far as reporting family abuse, it is bad enough for everyone. I still have mixed feelings about reporting sexual abuse when the perpetrator is a family member. For good reasons. Not just that my father explained to me what would happen to my family if I reported and terrified me into silence, but because over and over, I have seen that the victims who keep quiet are actually better off in the long run.

Back when I was a social work student, I had one professor who was willing to say that the system was failing kids BIG time. He went over study after study that showed the abused kids who got into “the system” ended up far more damaged that the kids who “the authorities” never found out about. Especially incest! The girls who reported were jerked out of their families, put into foster care, where they were likely to be abused again, and drug through the courts, years of trauma on top of the trauma of the abuse. And in studies where they found women like me who never reported but found a way to make the abuser stop, or just put up with it until they were old enough to escape, were better off emotionally, and had much more stable lives. He showed us that the kids who did crime and got caught went on to a life of crime, but the kids who got away with teen aged crime usually went on to live upright honest lives. In all cases of “government intervention” the kids grew up more traumatized and damaged than the kids who just survived.

As a social worker, I worked with child sexual abuse, rape, and domestic violence. My child abuse clients who had reported ended up with more screwed up lives than those who had kept the abuse secret. Government intervention just makes things worse, because the police are not social workers and the politicians who decide how such things get handled in the courts don’t have a clue about what they are doing.

And in working with domestic violence, there are also serious problems with law enforcement. I won’t get into it all here, but reporting is just as likely to end badly for the victim as it is to help. Her children can be taken from her for them witnessing the abuse, or someone can end up dead before the police are finished.

So, add one more layer of government abuse, and I can see how it would be much worse. And in a closed community like the pligs, it would be shared trauma and really emphasize a culture of silence. Abuse thrives in that culture of silence. So, in many ways, law enforcements attempts to outlaw polygamy have caused the amount of abuse in the polygamous groups today.

And I agree with you that Warren Jeffs is a psychopath. Joseph Smith was most likely a narcissist, which has some of the same personality problems of the psychopath. My dad had some of the same personality traits.

But I am not a bit sorry that I never reported my abuse until the statute of limitations had run out and I was safely out of that home. I don’t know what the answer is, either for abused kids or for the abuse that goes on in the polygamous groups.

I have to add here in fairness that things are getting better, but really slowly because there isn’t funding for helping the victims.

[SaidNobody]

I have to add here in fairness that things are getting better, but really slowly because there isn’t funding for helping the victims.

Thanks, alas, that was some good insight.

I know that the Lion's share of people who get into CPS have good intentions and want to help. But if there is ever a group of people that I hate it is them. They destroy far more than they ever help.

I disagree about funding for the victims.

The very system of abuse especially in a community like that is the dependency of one person upon another. Obviously, child cannot walk away from your family. And they also would not dare to give their abuser the bird.

But the spiritual energy of abuse is hinged around power and the dominance that one has upon another. The answer is never about yanking the child out of there unless they're very life is in danger. It is about empowering the child or other victim.

The secondary group out there that is not part of Warren jeffs group and doesn't have the same problems with abuse. there are some problems for sure and probably any community on Earth. But when a wife felt abused she had several sources within the community that she went to and her husband was directed to get anger management and emotional counseling. Of course that only has real bite if there is a genuine Court behind some of the threats if the husband doesn't get help.

Kids need to know that there is someone that they can go to that won't destroy everything in their life. They need to know that someone will defend them without ruining their world. Usually that might be a mom. But the mom had nobody to go to either in Warren's group.

All of this stuff is about identity. These kids receive the message that they're worthless or not important. They received the message that they are bad. And their consciousness wraps around those ideas and wreaks havoc in their life. I was considered one of the bad kids to some degree when I was in high school. May not have committed bad crimes but a little vandalism here and there was definitely in my repertoire. When I went on my mission my job was to build and repair the community and that defined who I was to be. I was one of four of a small gang. Two died from alcohol related accidents. I went on to love my community and my people. So I agree that locking kids up for 5 to 10 years for stupid mistakes is simply another way to ruin a life and to make a problem worse.

Someone drew a Nazi symbol with their foot in the flower bed of a school in my town. Though that was not a popular symbol when I was young I could definitely see myself doing this sort of thing. I was 1 of 100 that thought we should just simply take a deep breath and consider that some pubescent young man didn't have anything better to do. Everyone wanted to get the cameras out, find him, and re-educate this young man. So for about the 12x that day I was labeled racist for not wanting to hunt this person (kid) down and punish them.

But back to the victims. You cannot heal victims by making them dependent on you. Christ said that healing comes from within. The heal victims you must give them the power to stand up for themselves in whatever aspect they were victimized in. Simply taking victims and casting a soft blanket over their shoulders and feeding them soup doesn't fix it. When they know that they could handle such a situation again they will heal. Sometimes this is putting a gun into the hands of a rape victim. Or giving a designated guardian to a kid that will oversee his/ safety and ensure that his world doesn't come apart, such as a therapist or family member that cares.

I tell my daughter that she should never feel afraid to tell her mom or therapist if she thinks that something I did was inappropriate, or tell me if something happens that she didn't like.

The other day she confessed that she got a lot of inappropriate comments on her Tictok account. She showed them to us and showed us the replies that she gave. I was holding my side for almost half an hour. Like someone would ask her "what is your number baby?" She replied "911". Most of the them were hilarious. She was afraid to tell us the first because she thought we would yell at her. The silent culture is the danger part.

Once when she was four there were two other boys about her age harassing her on the slide at the park. She came to me for help and of course being a small parent I wasn't about to confront two young boys in the park. So I told her to use her voice and take care of it herself. Again I was holding my sides for a while. Watching her lay the law down to these two other kids and their harassment of her was satisfying on so many levels.

The point is, you make victims eternal victims when you pull them away without giving them the power to rectify the situation that they were in. They don't want someone to save them they want to know how to fix it themselves.

[Fifi de la Vergne]

And (after listening to the most recent episode, and after reflecting on some of the things that came out of conference) I have to say that if there is a hell and a god, there must be a special place there reserved for men who lie and manipulate for their own gratification.

Yeah, these people are some real losers. Stay clear of them.

I apologize for being unclear and coming across as indicting this entire group of people to a special place in hell. My point was intended to be exactly the opposite: that this podcast really made me see just how much the Brighamite church members have in common with both the FLDS who fled or were driven out by Warren Jeffs and the ones who remained loyal to him. The podcast did a fantastic job of humanizing ALL of them and I was able to identify with them because of the way their faith journeys was so compassionately presented.

It was the men in power, the leaders, who used their power and position to manipulate and gratify their own desires who I was angry at and who I was referring to.

]if there is a hell and a god, there must be a special place there reserved for men who lie and manipulate for their own gratification.

Alas, I appreciate your perspective and thoughts. I always learn from your posts.

[SaidNobody]

I apologize for being unclear and coming across as indicting this entire group of people to a special place in hell. My point was intended to be exactly the opposite: that this podcast really made me see just how much the Brighamite church members have in common with both the FLDS who fled or were driven out by Warren Jeffs and the ones who remained loyal to him. The podcast did a fantastic job of humanizing ALL of them and I was able to identify with them because of the way their faith journeys was so compassionately presented.

It was the men in power, the leaders, who used their power and position to manipulate and gratify their own desires who I was angry at and who I was referring to.

No worries, I'm just a bitter ole fart these days. Taking offense where none was intended is a popular art.

But some of these issues are like leaving your filet mignon on the coffee table and coming back and being angry at your dog for eating it. Family is meant to be a system of checks and balances and higher authorities. Sometimes that gets corrupted but by and large it's quite successful.

I perceive that there is an effort in the modern world to replace masculinity with femininity. Or rather I should say make feminism the dominant philosophy. Perhaps not in my lifetime, but this will fail. But I think there is a belief that making men more feminine will somehow make them less likely to abuse.

But some spiritual forces are both important and dangerous.

Look at the life. Survival (the spirit) is the most important element of life. Without it, we are quickly dead.

Fear is the primary element of survival. Without fear you don't avoid what can kill you. Yet fear is toxic in most forms. It twists the mind and makes enemies where there are none. Learning to tolerate fear and hone it's influence is critical aspect of maturity.

Masculinity is sort of like that. There are important natural aspects of it that create live, but if not honed and trained it is very dangerous. So, in groups where the men feel unaccountable, expect bad things.

[alas]

First of all, let me state that the 1950s raid on Short Creek should never have happened. The state did learn from that not to prosecute polygamy, so hopefully the damage CPS did to the polygamous communities will never happen again.my social work professors were clear on that point. But then Warren Jeff’s group was raided when they were looking for a specific victim of sexual abuse, that they never found, so they still screw it up. So, leave the polygamists alone, except if a real crime is committed, and you know who your victim is.

What I meant by something that would actually help victims, is not related to the polygamists at all, but is impossible because such programs can’t get funding is something that keeps the victim of abuse in their home, but puts the abuser into mandatory treatment, not jerking the kid out into foster care, while the law gets involved and sends the offender off to prison, leaving the family without financial support. It would take a LOT of monitoring the family to make sure no more abuse happens while the abuser is put into some pretty intense therapy. I have only ever seen one model for domestic violence and it was a model by the navy where the abuser went into a mandatory program of anger management. The navy has some pretty tight control over its members, and their spouses, so they have the ability to make treatment mandatory, with a pretty big stick to keep the abuser in the treatment program. They can have a daily check in with victims to monitor for more abuse, and funding a program in the military isn’t too hard. I have a book that goes through the treatment model and it is good.

CPS does more damage because they are working with stupid rules made by stupid politicians, things like one social worker being expected to monitor 300 families for any abuse. It is impossible. And what happens when there is a second instance of abuse? Well, it is things like put the kid in foster care as the only way they can punish the parent for continuing abuse. It really only punishes the kid. And they need to put the abuser into foster care instead of the kid. OK, obviously I had a BAD experience at CPS in the short time I was there as I watched the state do more damage to the kids than their abusive parents had done.

I did have a friend, who worked CPS and he got into an expensive new experimental program that he swore to me actually helped. They worked very closely with a small number of families and taught parenting skills. Don’t know what became of it. Most likely cut because it was too expensive and you can’t count children who are never abused. And I lost track of that friend 20 years ago. But they still need non punitive help for the abuser because most of them just don’t know how to parent. And the abused kids do not want the abuser punished. They only want the abuse to stop.

[SaidNobody]

This country was built on the conservative idea of Separation of Church and State.

The mistake is when state tries to take over the functions of the church. My former church does exactly what you said. They actually put forth a task force, that the apostles over see. If a woman comes with a complaint the husband is called in for counseling. From what I've heard this might mean mandatory AA or anger management or family counseling. The apostles over see the progress but don't provide the services themselves as that involved too much liability. Trying to provide professional counseling when you are not a professional counselor opens you up to lawsuits.

I've heard from different people that this has been very successful. But this is why it should stay in the church. When the government gets involved then they have to pay expensive professionals. When the church does it they get volunteers or make the people pay for the professionals themselves. This way the people get their help without any expense to the government. But I am not upset at the idea of the churches being accountable to the government. There are some guidelines and requirements to qualify as a church. It would not be upset if the government required that churches provide these types of services. And then if the government should find a case where a person did not belong to a church they would be given the option of joining a church or perhaps visiting a more stringent program like rehab for 10 years.

But this way the entire community stays engaged and focused on keeping everyone safe. It also brings the topic out into the open so it is no longer buried in the silence. Unfortunately, many churches try to appear righteous and therefore keep this kind of thing as quietly as possible. But a simple humble attitude and the admission that no one is perfect can open this up to see this sunlight.

The case with the 2008 YFZ Ranch is much worse than you implied. The specific victim of sexual abuse that they were looking for was in Colorado and the raid was in Texas. The girl who made the phone call had a history of these type of calls. But they did not validate the call and they had to have known within moments of getting there that she wasn't there. But the truth is they wanted an excuse to read this place.

A brother-in-law of mine 2x (2 sisters) had married a girl at 15 years old. I know that seems young the most people but these people are much like they were 200 years ago. At 15 and 16 the girls are demanding to be married so that they can begin raising their family. They really don't have many other ambitions. The young men strive only to be worthy of some girl's attention, meaning that she finds him capable. Anyway, this girl asked to marry him and he agreed. When the raid happened in 2008 she was 28, but her children revealed that she must have been 16 or 17 when the oldest was born. She had 4 children I think. They imprisoned her husband for 10 years, even though she hadn't been married in Texas, and even though the age of consent was 14 in Texas at the time. They passed a law that made the age of consent 16 and made it retro active.

Anyway, he was one of the 8 sent to prison. One of my sister's passed in that time and the other is struggling with cancer. They didn't catch Warren here, he was caught in Las Vegas. They took the 500 kids and housed them in stadium (I think) for month than a month.

They never found anything worth destroying those people for. Don't get me wrong, I was excited to Warren go down, but those people were mostly innocent.

Churches need to be employed in the effort to stop abuse not cut out of the picture. They could even get a grade, but Government shouldn't be thing to solve this. They are not allowed to use the necessary tools (the desire for salvation) to do it. Sending an unwilling father to Anger management for a couple of months will not give him the staying power necessary to see it through.

[alas]

I like your former church’s program, and like that Navy program I mentioned, it would have the community clout to enforce compliance. I think it would be good for more church to do something about spouse and child abuse. I mean they do it for adoption, why can’t they do it for domestic violence, child sexual abuse, and so on?

Well, because unlike your former branch of Mormonism, my former branch of Mormonism honored men’s position in the household as king, more than it honored the safety of women and children and more than it honored the sexual sanctity of children. So, quite frankly, the Brighamite branch didn’t give a crap about women’s right to safety. My mother ran into that when she was beaten black and blue, but had not properly honored him by talking back to him when he neglected making sure there was a roof over his family’s head. So she was told to go home and apologize to him and zero help was given in keeping a roof over our heads.

So, many churches fail at that role and just like with those who belong to no church the government needs to step in, and then the government botches it because they want to punish because punishment is cheaper than helping.

I have a unique perspective on churches and how well they help because I got to work for Catholic Family Services. Yup, the Catholics provide professional counseling for domestic violence, licensed professional help. It isn’t enough because the church doesn’t have enough clout with “Christmas and Easter Catholics” and it isn’t a close enough community that it’s members care. So, we had to throw the power of the state of Texas at our clients and then Texas would screw it up. (All my clients assumed I was Catholic, and that was kind of fun) so, church run programs need more.

In-family abuse is really a hard nut to crack, so that is part of why it is just not handled well.

And yes, I know I kept the fiasco with the YFZ ranch short by calling it a screw up. I just figured you know how BIG of a screw up, so I didn’t go into detail.

[SaidNobody]

Yeah, it's hard to put into words how big the screw in Texas was and that they still justified should scare people. However, it did warm my heart some to see that millions of people cry foul on that.

Personally, I'm not sure what to do. This concept of Separation of Church and State I believe is the key to our problems. In 1776 the Church and State both had honored positions in our culture, but the state has gotten many times stronger and Chruch is a by-thought.

The Church is the management of things imaginary. Like family is imaginary based. Rolls like father and mother are ideas we practice but might vary from group to group. The State is the law, that ALL MUST FOLLOW, as well as security and safety, property management, etc. The State is obligated to provide safety for everyone. Yet, the state isn't allowed to come into your home and say, "You cannot spank your kid, or not allowed to give them 30 minutes with their nose in the corner, or lock your daughters in her bedroom when says she is meeting a boy." But somehow, churches should have a massage on these sorts of things. These are things that are not necessarily fact-driven but faith-driven. Churches should be addressing these things. The Church isn't just about finding God, it's about giving guidance on things imaginary, and the right way to raise a kid is an imaginary path.

This is why I like Mormons so much. They are weird, but the product is awesome. They believe in magic underwear, that a kid found a golden book, that God came down and talk to this kid and says, "hey, they all suck." Yup, love those people. The churches will ALWAYS be necessary because the imaginary part of life are the most important. If the state takes over the imaginary stuff, we got back to the dark ages.