Polygamous Sect Pulls Children From Schools

Sept. 14, 2000 -- Hundreds of members of a polygamous Mormon splinter group on the Utah-Arizona border are pulling their children out of the local public school system and severing contact with the outside world.

In Colorado City, Ariz., and neighboring Hildale, Utah, Rulon Jeffs, the aging leader of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, told followers in July to home-school their children and to cut ties completely with non-members and former members.

“There’s a mass exodus,” Mike File, the county school superintendent overseeing Colorado City, told ABCNEWS.com. When classes began on Aug. 22, roughly 350 students enrolled in the school system, compared to 1,400 last year. Over half the teachers at Colorado City schools belong to the sect and did not return for work, File says. Turnout was so low at the town’s junior high school, it had to be closed because of a lack of students. The remaining children were sent to another school.

‘A Very Educated Society’

Colorado City mayor and church member Dan Barlow refused to be interviewed today by ABCNEWS.com. In an interview this summer with Associated Press, he said the decree issued in July was merely “a suggestion that people take that responsibility for themselves.”

He says he started home-schooling his children a year ago.

“I just felt like I could do much better teaching them the things I know and give them some spiritual teaching as well,” he said.

Arizona’s regulations on home-schooling are among the most lax in the country, and File says he has no authority to monitor the students once their parents sign them out of the public school system. But Fine, who is not a church member, says he believes the group’s children will continue to receive a good education while being home-schooled. Fine says the sect’s children are strong students, excelling at statewide standardized tests and routinely winning local spelling bees. “They’re a very educated society,” he says.

‘Asserting Control’

But several ex-members say they believe home-schooling will harm the children by keeping them cut off from the world. “They are being taught what Rulan Jeffs wants them to be taught,” says Rena Mackert who left the group in 1976. She and other former sect members describe the group as autocratic and coercive. Jeffery Fox, a political science professor who studies religious sects at Catawba College, in Salisbury, N.C., says the move to home-schooling is an attempt by church leaders to consolidate their authority. “Now they have even more control over education,” he says. In a taped sermon obtained by the Associated Press, Warren Jeffs, the son of the group’s leader, suggests that religion provides all the knowledge his followers need. “Once learning the truth, you don’t need to waste your time with the ways of the world,” he says on the tape.

Apocalypse Soon?

Though church members say they are simply taking charge of their children’s education, other people, particularly former members, said Jeffs’ followers are preparing for the apocalypse their leaders say is at hand. Several ex-members and experts familiar with the group say Jeffs has forecast the Second Coming of Jesus Christ would occur imminently. “They claim not to be setting any exact dates, but they seem to be giving these indirect hints that it will come soon,” says Fox. DeLoy Bateman, a former church member and a science teacher at the Colorado City high school, says church leaders are preaching that the towns will be lifted into heaven with the Second Coming. Jeffs has made similar predictions several times in the past, Bateman says, including instructing his followers in 1993 not to attend college, because the End of Days would occur before they finished their degrees.

In a statement issued through their Salt Lake City attorney Scott Berry, the Jeffses said: “The Fundamentalist Church and its officers have not made any predictions in regard to the exact date of the Second Coming. It has long been the teaching of the church that no man knows the hour or the date of that event.” Berry told the Associated Press that ex-members, known as apostates, distort the facts, but he would not comment directly on particular allegations. Berry’s office said he was unavailable for comment this week. Mike King, a Utah state prosecutor who has investigated polygamist groups, says he has no evidence that the sect is violent or dangerous, but he worries about the “bunker mentality” of a group increasingly cut off from the outside world. “It’s very difficult to get these people to talk to you,” he admits.

A Long and Controversial History

King estimates the sect has between 8,000 and 12,000 members, with some 6,000 living in Colorado City and Hildale, and the rest scattered around the western United States and Canada. He believes there are roughly 25,000 polygamists in Utah alone. Rulon Jeffs, the group’s prophet and leader, and his son Warren live in large gated homes in Hildale and are said to have dozens of wives.

Ranchers adhering to the Mormon practice of polygamy settled in Colorado City and Hildale in the late 1800s.

Property in the two adjacent desert towns is owned by a trust established by the church in 1942, and former members claim they have been evicted from their homes when they broke with the sect.

The mainstream church disavowed the doctrine in 1890 under pressure from the federal government, which threatened to refuse Utah statehood if it didn’t. Several sects continued the practice, however, including the fundamentalist sect, which was founded in 1929. Polygamy remains illegal, though prosecutors admit it is difficult to prove allegations and convince sect members to come forward and press charges.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.