A power struggle between members of a fundamentalist Mormon sect has exposed deep fissures in the largest polygamous community in North America, a town in which most men have several wives and sometimes dozens of children. A handful of congregants normally subservient to the dictates of Warren Jeffs, the self-proclaimed prophet and leader of the sect, the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, have begun to rebel against his rule. The rebellion was put in motion this month when Mr Jeffs expelled more than 20 men from the church, separating them from their wives and children and forcing them from their houses, over which the church claims ownership through a land trust that Mr Jeffs controls. Invariably, in such purges, an excommunicated man’s wives and children are placed under the control of another man, who may then marry whomever he chooses, including the female children, church members say.
Last week Ross Chatwin, whom Mr Jeffs had earlier expelled, publicly denounced the leader and compared his authoritarian style to that of Adolf Hitler. In expelling the men, Mr Jeffs cited a revelation from God. However, his detractors say he did so to thwart potential rivals to his authority. Mr Jeffs, 47, a former high school principal, controls virtually everything in town; his followers say he even decides the fates of his flock in the afterlife. He routinely forces girls, some of them barely teenagers, into plural marriages, to men who are often in their 50s and 60s, according to people who are no longer his followers. Co-operation is rewarded: men who comply with Mr Jeffs’s demands are given more wives. "I knew at 13 that I didn’t want to live like that," said Fawn Louise Broadbent, 16, one of the teenagers who fled recently. "I want to go to a real school, not a church school. And I want to be a clothing designer, not somebody’s 15th wife." Lorie Wyler, who was one of four wives of a local man before she left him and the church several years ago, said more young people were rebelling. "Kids are leaving - it’s not uncommon," Ms Wyler said. "This is getting ready to explode." |