MANTI — A book by a former Salt Lake County sheriff's deputy, published this spring, accuses the Utah Attorney General's Office and Sanpete County Attorney of turning a blind eye to the activities of James Harmston, leader of the polygamous True and Living Church of Jesus Christ of Saints of the Last Days.
At a press conference held recently in a park next to the Manti LDS Temple, John R. Llewellyn, author of "Polygamy's Rape of Rachel Strong: Protected Environment for Predators," charged that several years ago, Harmston married a 16-year-old and had two children by her. The age of consent for marriage in Utah is 16.
Later, Llewellyn said, Harmston convinced his step-daughter, Rachel Strong, who was 20 at the time, to become his 17th wife. Llewellyn accused Harmston, who was 64 at the time, of using brainwashing and intimidation to coerce Strong to have a sexual relationship with him.
When Llewellyn presented evidence about Harmston and his relationship with Strong to the Utah attorney general, the office decided not to prosecute. Llewellyn said he and Strong went together to the Sanpete County Attorney, Ross Blackham, and got the same response.
Llewellyn investigated polygamist Ervil LeBaron in the 1970s. LeBaron ordered the 1977 shooting of Rulon C. Allred, head of the Apostolic United Brethren, another polygamous sect. Llewellyn converted to the AUB and became a polygamist. He eventually left the church.
Kirk Torgensen, chief deputy attorney general, said that Llewellyn had come to the Attorney General's Office with the premise that Rachel Strong had been raped. "But the facts as presented to us were that she went into the marriage with the prophet willingly and had sex with him because she felt it was her spiritual duty," Torgensen said. "In criminal law, that amounts to consent."
If concrete evidence were brought to the office that Harmston was having a relationship with an underage girl, engaging in financial fraud or tax evasion, "I would prosecute him as vigorously as I would any citizen of the state of Utah" who was charged with the some offenses, Torgensen said.
Sanpete County Attorney Ross Blackham said he and most county attorneys stick closely to the attorney general's protocol in such cases, "so we have some kind of consistency statewide."
Llewellyn said he disagrees with Attorney General Mark Shurtleff's position that his office will prosecute men who take minors as plural wives but won't enforce bigamy laws against adults. Once a young woman turns 18, Llewellyn said, the only recourse to protect her from being coerced into an unwanted sexual relationship is the law against bigamy.
Polygamists "who use duress, who engage in domestic violence — they should be prosecuted," Llewellyn said, "Girls like Rachel are collateral damage. They are expendable for the sake of a policy to appease the polygamists."
Rachel Strong is now 22 and a Snow College student. She did not attend the news conference because she was taking a final exam. But in an interview, she backed up Llewellyn's charges. So did her mother, Pauline Strong, who belonged to the True and Living Church, known locally as the TLC, for nine years.
Pauline Strong said she was living in Enterprise, Washington County, in the early 1990s when a friend invited her to Manti, where Harmston was starting up the TLC. She went to one of his lectures and was impressed. In 1994, she moved to Manti, and in 1995, she said, she became his third wife.
Between 1994, when she joined, and 2002, she estimates the church grew to about 800 members. But when Harmston "started taking wives from his closest apostles," she said, key leaders started to leave and membership declined. She estimated current membership is less than 200.
Pauline Strong said Rachel came to Manti at age 11. Harmston became a father figure to Rachel, her mother said. When Rachel was 16, she became the second wife of a TLC member who was a few years older than she, but the marriage fell apart.
Within three months after Rachel left her first husband, she married Harmston, Pauline Strong said. "It was a horrible experience for Rachel."
Harmston could not be reached for comment. Standing on the sidelines for part of the press conference was Elaine Harmston, his first wife, who said she is legally married to him. In an interview, she rejected the claim that Rachel Strong was coerced into marrying Harmston.
"She asked him to seal her to him," Elaine Harmston said. "She got up in front of a hundred people and asked him. Now she wants to make it sound like he is a dirty old man."
Rachel Strong recently said that Harmston had told her that if she didn't marry him, he would send her back to her first husband.
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