An Attorney General's office manual designed to give insight on working with polygamous groups is being rejected by an anti-polygamy group as "endorsing polygamy and promoting its growth."
"After reading its 30 pages, we were stunned and believe this primer is one more attempt to normalize polygamy," Tapestry Against Polygamy executive director Vicki Prunty wrote Monday in a letter to Utah Attorney General Mark Shurtleff.
"The premise of this manual seems to be based on cultural sensitivity to those who practice polygamy."
The manual has been circulated in draft form recently among groups and individuals working with Shurtleff's office, along with a request for feedback and input, AG spokesman Paul Murphy said. The objective of the book is to provide service providers, like social workers or physicians, with insight into the issues at play when someone from a polygamous community seeks assistance.
"We'd like it to be a resource book. The government has a hard time knowing how to help people who are afraid of them," said Murphy. "Essentially, we put out the information we had collected and let people react. We asked them to offer input on what should be added and what wasn't helpful. It was a rough, rough draft."
Tapestry was among those groups whose opinions were repeatedly solicited as information was gathered, but the group never responded, Murphy said.
Prunty said when she first looked at the manual, she asked the AG's office for a financial contribution to Tapestry because so much work would be required. No contribution was made, she said. After further review, Tapestry members decided the manual would not be helpful to those trying to leave polygamy.
"We realized that it would just be the same thing over and over," said Prunty. "Both sides giving their input and not really being effective."
Tapestry also fears that equipping service providers with too much "cultural sensitivity" to plural communities will allow polygamists to further abuse or defraud state services, Prunty said.
"We didn't feel like we wanted to enable them," she said.
Shurtleff's office is the first state agency to consistently address issues of abuses and crimes within polygamy in the nearly 50 years since the state launched raids on the southern Utah community of Short Creek, which is now known as Hildale, and Colorado City, Ariz. The office has two main areas of focus: law enforcement and the prosecution of crimes against men, women or children living in plural families, and to develop and a provide a "safety net" of government agencies and social services to help victims, Murphy said.
"This manual is aimed at those (providers) so they will know how to talk and react in a way that doesn't scare the victim away," he added. "It's not an endorsement of polygamy. It's something so that people can understand victims from that culture. I thought that was essentially the same goal as Tapestry's . . . to help victims from that culture."
Tapestry once worked closely with the AG's office in providing insight to the polygamist culture, even providing information that eventually led to the arrest of a member of the Davis County-based Kingston clan. But the relationship faltered in November 2003. That's when Tapestry rejected an offer from Shurtleff to participate in a southern Utah polygamy summit after learning that some women who support and live in plural marriage communities were to be included.
"We felt uncomfortable with that," Prunty said. "I guess the main point we're making is that, number one, when you give the pro-polygamists a platform, it again legitimizes them. It gives them power."
A final draft of the manual is slated for September, although the document is designed to be a "living" organism to which changes and additions are made based on experience and practice. Murphy also hopes some training will be available to those persons and agencies most likely to provide assistance to plural families.
"These are difficult issues," Murphy said. "The way to avoid criticism would be to do nothing. Truthfully, I couldn't do that. If Tapestry doesn't want to provide us with information, there are other people who have left polygamy who can provide information . . . but we're standing here with arms open."
E-mail: jdobner@desnews.com