The Man with 80 Wives

[Ally]

Warren Jeffs is the leader of a polygamous sect who is rumoured to have 80 wives, more than 200 children and some 10,000 followers. He's also on the FBI's most wanted list. David Rosenberg explores the issues behind the man and his sect.

The American government justifies its wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and its hostility to Iran?s leaders, by saying that it is trying to rid the world of fundamentalism and establish democracy. If so, then perhaps it needs to focus on fundamentalists much closer to home.

In Channel 4's The Man with 80 Wives, journalist Sanjiv Battacharya unveils a self-defined fundamentalist sect whose leader speaks in apocalyptic terms, rules through fear, and tramples on the human rights of adults and children ? deep in America?s heartlands.

Separated from society
This sect lives in segregated communities, isolated from a society whose values it rejects. Its members eschew radios and televisions. The children dress with extreme modesty and are forbidden to dance or to play basketball or computer games. Young girls are coerced into early marriage and men are encouraged to have several wives.

These are not Taliban enclaves but tightly knit communities scattered across North America ? in Arizona, Texas, South Dakota, Idaho and over the Canadian border in British Columbia ? practising a fringe variety of Christianity. And in contrast to most other religious leaders, Warren Jeffs, the leader of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ Latter Day Saints (FLDS), is on the FBI?s 10 most wanted list.

Where is he now?
In the film, Sanjiv Bhattacharya searches for the elusive Warren Jeffs who assumed control of the sect in 2002 after the death of his father, Rulon Jeffs. Warren Jeffs is believed to have accumulated assets of $110 million from a community that regards him as a saviour but fears his wrath if they step out of line or question his edicts.

He has not been seen in public for more than a year. The FBI considers him 'armed and dangerous' and believes he may be travelling with armed bodyguards. He faces charges from former sect members of sexual abuse and of arranging marriages of under-age girls. Increasingly, young men are being expelled and ex-communicated from his sect for minor transgressions in an attempt, observers believe, to reduce sexual competition. This means more young women are available for older male polygamists, or more accurately 'polygynists', since, in these communities, a man may have more than one wife but a woman can only have one husband.

Yet until his actions became really extreme, this community, with its unusual practices, was tolerated and largely left to its own devices. For 75 years the FDLS has been based in the towns of Hildale and Colorado City, which straddle the Arizona-Utah border and are together known as Shortcreek, where its members are entrenched in the local institutions such as the police, schools and hospitals.

Extreme ideas
The FLDS broke away from the mainstream Church of Latter Day Saints ? the Mormons ? in 1890, when the Mormons outlawed their longstanding practice of polygamy. The Mormons have, nevertheless, been criticised by other Christians for certain attitudes they retained. It was not until 1978 that the Mormon Church allowed black members into its priesthood, and as a result of this decision the FDLS distanced itself even further from them. Warren Jeffs has stated that, 'The black race is the people through which the devil has always been able to bring evil unto the earth.'

Such racist ideas sit comfortably with the FDLS?s attitudes to gays and women. Jeffs describes homosexuality as 'the worst evil act you can do, next to murder', and reminds males that, 'you can?t go to heaven and be a god unless you have more than one wife'. Women are told to say this prayer each morning: 'I want to do your will, Father, through obeying my husband or my father or our prophet.'

In Jeffs? communities women are commodities, taken away from transgressors and redistributed to males whom Jeffs considers righteous.

Jeffs has stated, apocalyptically, that God 'is about to stretch forth his hand and sweep the wicked off this land'. Coupled with his increasing desire to build temples in secluded compounds, experts in religious extremism such as Brian Levin from California State University fear that Jeffs? community might emulate suicide cults like David Koresh?s Branch Davidians in Waco.

Fearful followers
Sanjiv Bhattacharya?s journey raises disturbing issues about the way in which narcissistic and charismatic individuals can utilise religion and ordinary people?s genuine faith to control whole communities and their economic resources. But the deeper question it evokes concerns the followers more than the leader. Why do his followers give consent to such oppressive, abusive and exploitative practices? Bhattacharya can find interviewees who criticise Jeffs for taking his father?s ideas to extremes, but they are unwilling to challenge the basic ideas, principles and values that underpin his mini-theocracy.

Lori Chatwin stood by her husband when he was excommunicated from the sect and is openly critical of women being treated as commodities. She states that 10 wives for one man are 'too many'. Yet she still believes that four wives 'is the optimum number for a family'.

The FDLS, under Warren Jeffs, employs the same techniques that cults, or 'new religious movements' as they are often called, have used in different countries to maintain obedience: a strict regime of punishment and rewards; isolation from the outside world and its cultural products and influences such as books, radio and TV; an emphasis on the wickedness of those beyond the bounds of the community; and the removal of freedoms, so lack of freedom, and even fear of freedom, becomes the norm.

The more reclusive Jeffs has become, the more his status as a mystical prophet, located between the community and God, has grown. God talks directly to Jeffs, his followers believe, and he passes on his revelation through tapes played at community gatherings and in members? houses.

The bottom line
The film also reveals the more practical economic basis of the community Jeffs presides over. Businesses in Shortcreek and the land on which community members live are owned by a trust called the United Effort Plan (UEP). Members tithe 10% of their income to the UEP in monthly payments and feel under moral pressure to commit more funds if possible. Punishment by Warren Jeffs for questioning his arbitrary demands can lead to eviction and financial ruin for a family. Growing up within such a system hardly prepares people for the social and economic rough and tumble outside their closed community.

In a land where wealth and free market ideology are the most powerful secular gods, it may be that the earthly laws of economics are as important as supposedly heavenly laws in enforcing obedience and subservience among Warren Jeffs? isolated, vulnerable and fearful community.