One of Utah's best-known dirty little secrets is that polygamy flourishes there, more than a hundred years after it was banned by the state and the Mormon Church.
It is out in the open enough that Elizabeth Joseph, a lawyer in Utah who is one of nine wives, wrote an op-ed piece for the News York Times in 1991 extolling the practice. It's a terrific way of juggling work and family obligations, she wrote.
Now comes a horrific story out of Utah involving a 16-year-old girl whose family belongs to a fundamentalist sect founded by Charles Elden Kingston in 1935.
The girl says she was forced to marry her uncle, but ran away only to be severely beaten by her father, she alleged in court, at a remote "reeducation camp" for rebellious women and children.
Her father says he's innocent of the felony child abuse charge he faces. But the court case has opened a window on this sect.
Rowenna Erickson, 58, was born into the Kingston sect, entered into a polygamous marriage with a son of the founder, had four children, and left in 1994.
Polygamy appears to be the least of the organization's sins.
Incest, inbreeding, child abuse and sexual abuse are rife within some groups, according to critics cited in a Sunday Washington Post report by Tom Kenworthy.
In March, Erickson and a small group of other women who had left polygamous situations founded Tapestry of Polygamy, a support group that is now pressuring the Utah government to become "aware of the atrocities that go on," she said, and to create ways of helping women and children leave the sects safely.
In an interview, she told me she thought there are several thousand members in the Kingston sect. After the founder died in 1949, his brother, John Ortell Kingston, took it over. When he died in 1987, she said, leadership went to his son, Paul Eldon Kingston.
The Salt Lake City-based sect, Erickson said, has a business empire that includes interests in alarm systems, dumpsters, spas, hair salons, a cattle ranch, a coal mine and vending machines. The businesses are run by Kingston heirs, she said, though many others in the sect live off government programs.
Coercion, force and domestic violence are commonplace, Erickson said. So is incest and inbreeding, because "the Kingston men get the pick of the litter," she said.
The father of the girl who escaped is John Daniel Kingston, who has been criminally charged after allegedly beating his daughter with a wide leather belt more than 28 times. His brother, David Ortell Kingston, turned himself in and was charged last week with incest and unlawful sexual conduct with the girl, his 15th wife. He has posted $10,000 bond.
The 16-year-old's father reportedly has 20 wives, including his half sister, by whom he has 10 children. The girl's father and mother, as well as the uncle she says she was forced to marry, were fathered by the same man: John Ortell Kingston, according to Erickson.
Children and wives in the sect are kept in line through corporal punishment, domestic violence, and religious, verbal and emotional browbeating, Erickson said. "There is lots of fear, all of the time. Fear of not being good enough. Many wives have eating disorders and chemical imbalances. The focus is on having children, starting at a very young age, every year." The sect believes that growth comes from within. Husbands encourage their wives to work to stay out of trouble and support the families. "They refuse to take responsibility for the support and care of their children," she said.
Inbreeding has produced vivid family resemblances, she said. There have been instances of a severe form of mental retardation. "One family with intermarrying that was really dysfunctional was the family where this girl came from," Erickson said. "They had visual problems, and legal blindness at an early age."
After a 1953 state raid on polygamists in what is now Colorado City, Ariz., other sects began operating to avoid being discovered, she said: Mothers did not put down the real names of fathers on birth certificates and polygamous marriages were done in religious ceremonies, with no records.
"The church is the controlling factor in this state," Erickson says. "The state has turned its head all of these years because they don't know how to deal with it yet." Tapestry of Polygamy wants to form a task force to educate the state and the public on "what polygamy is, what it is not. We are working on grants to help different programs help women get out. It is hard to make an opening for them to come through because of the fear. They don't even have the awareness that there are places to go."
Her own journey out began in 1986 when she took a hypnotherapy course. "All of a sudden it was like these buttons were being pushed in my head. If this is so wonderful, how come I feel so horrible? I was living in a constant state of fear."
The Tapestry women met Monday with state officials, all of whom were men. "They complimented us on our strength. As I stood up against the Kingstons, it was pretty scary. Something inside me said, I can't not do it.' " Her concern for the children in the sect gave her courage.
"It is really hard to get out. It would be like moving to another country. In my presentation, I talked about the secrecy and the isolation. The only way to help them is through rehabilitation and for them to be aware they need a lot of help. You are taught that the outside world is a big bad place."
But the truth is that the inside world is the big bad place, and authorities have allowed extraordinarily heinous behavior involving women and children to go on under their noses, unchecked. And Utah's dirty little secret is out now, in a very big way.