It was the beginning of a journey of physical, spiritual and mental abuse that took Ruth Stubbs to the brink of suicide.
At the time, the outlook was far brighter for Holm. He was on his way toward becoming a god in fundamentalist Mormon heaven, having acquired the crucial third wife.
Polygamous wedding: Rodney Holm is joined
by (from left) his first wife Suzie Stubbs, new bride Ruth Stubbs and second wife Wendy Holm. In the foreground (from left) is FLDS Bishop Fred Jessop, the late Prophet Rulon Jeffs and the current Prophet Warren Jeffs.
John Dougherty
Colorado City historian Benjamin Bistline says the FLDS uses extortion to obtain child brides.
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He had had sexual intercourse with a girl half his age who was not his legal wife – a felony in Arizona and Utah – but that fact made no difference to the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (FLDS).
State Inaction
Ruth Stubbs is among scores of teenage girls, many of whom are underage, who have been married by fundamentalist Mormon prophets into polygamy in recent years. The tally reaches hundreds of girls over the last seven decades.
The Arizona Attorney General's Office has compiled a list of more than 40 teenage girls it suspects have been coerced into polygamy by the FLDS in the last decade, state records obtained by New Times through the Arizona Public Records Law show.
A few decades ago, the FLDS routinely married girls as young as 13 into polygamy. The practice still occurs from time to time, but the girls tend to be at least 15 these days.
The state has been conducting a broad grand jury investigation into polygamy in Colorado City since at least December 2000, but no arrests have been made. One reason is that state investigators have been unable to persuade polygamous wives to testify against their husbands.
Such wives, even if they wanted to cooperate with authorities, know that assisting the government would bring retaliation from their community.
In Colorado City, women, and men, risk losing their children, their homes, their livelihoods and – most terrifying to fundamentalist Mormons – their salvation for uttering a single negative statement about their religion.
Underage, polygamous marriages are merely a symptom of a greater problem.
The Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Colorado City is a virtual medieval fiefdom overseen by an omnipotent Prophet who is accountable to no one but presumably God.
The FLDS is subverting a wide range of civil liberties with taxpayer assistance.
Cloaked in the legitimacy of town government and public schools, FLDS polygamists receive more than $6 million a year in public funds to support these institutions.
Through his proxies, the FLDS Prophet controls all levels of local government and the Colorado City public school board. He controls ownership of virtually all the land in town – and most of the businesses. He controls local law enforcement.
But, most important, the Prophet controls the minds of the faithful, convincing them that, if necessary, they must forgo happiness in this life for eternal bliss after death.
"We don't have minds of our own," former FLDS member and Colorado City High School science teacher DeLoy Bateman told New Times. "We are taught to follow."
Nowhere else in the United States is there a state-sanctioned town that is overwhelmingly controlled by a religion whose current leader performs polygamous marriages and who himself has anywhere from a dozen to 70 wives.
The unchecked power of the leaders of this dictatorial society over the past 70 years has led to a number of illegal or unconstitutional abuses that have allowed an often cruel and demeaning culture to flourish.
A five-month New Times investigation has revealed:
• Women and children are considered property of the religious leadership, called the Priesthood, which, in turn, is controlled by the Prophet.
• More than 50 families have been ripped apart and "reassigned" to new husbands on the Prophet's command. New husbands sometimes marry the daughters of their reassigned wives.
• Many young men deemed unworthy of the Priesthood are driven out of town with police assistance so that they cannot compete with men in polygamous marriages.
• Many followers of the Prophet would kill to defend him from arrest, leading Arizona authorities to fear another Waco.
• The Colorado City town government has never had a contested election, or even a political campaign.
• The Colorado City marshal, the chief law enforcement officer in town, is a polygamist, and police routinely ignore cases where teenagers are having sex with much older men who purport to be their husbands.
• Child molestation by fathers and older brothers is common.
• The religion has created an economic collective called the United Effort Plan that controls land ownership and ruthlessly evicts women and men (and their families) accused of violating FLDS tenets.
Polygamy violates the Arizona Constitution and has been held illegal by the U.S. Supreme Court for 124 years, but that hasn't stopped the fundamentalist Mormon culture from thriving on the Arizona-Utah border.
Although Congress required Arizona to include an anti-polygamy clause in its Constitution as a condition for gaining statehood, the Legislature has never enacted a corresponding law making polygamy a crime. The glaring loophole has frustrated efforts to prosecute sexual-abuse crimes against teenage women in polygamous unions.
That there is no state statute banning polygamy may result from the Legislature's dominance by mainstream Mormons, whose founder, Joseph Smith, introduced polygamy to the Salt Lake City-based church in the 1840s. The mainstream Mormon Church officially eased away from polygamy in 1890, and now excommunicates polygamists.
