Polygamy summit no peak

COLORADO CITY, Ariz. — Utah Attorney General Mark Shurtleff called it an "oversight" when he failed to invite members of Utah's largest polygamist communities to his recent "Polygamy Summit" in St. George.

That oversight turned out to be a calculated decision.

"It was our summit, and it was our right to open or close it," Paul Murphy, spokesman for the Utah Attorney General's Office, told the Deseret Morning News. "We did invite some polygamists. At first they declined to come."

Those invitations were extended to two northern Utah women who support plural marriage. Neither woman is from the plural communities of Colorado City or its closest neighbors, Centennial Park, Ariz., and Hildale, Utah.

Because the summit didn't include anyone from the polygamist communities, Salt Lake City attorney Rod Parker, who represents the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, which teaches plural marriage as a central tenet, said he thinks the summit was flawed from its conception.

In a three-page letter hand delivered to Shurtleff one day before the Aug. 22 summit, Parker pointed out the polygamists' lack of representation.

"A true summit would include members of the plural culture and would be an effort to build bridges and mutual respect between government and that culture," Parker wrote. "A summit that includes only law enforcement, Tapestry (an anti-polygamy group), and similar parties simply reinforces the mistrust and fear that has been the hallmark of the state's relationship with the polygamists for the past 100 years."

Most members of the FLDS church live in Hildale, Colorado City, and Bountiful, British Columbia. Centennial Park residents do not belong to the FLDS church and wear less restrictive clothing and hairstyles, a distinctive mark of the plural culture in Colorado City and Hildale.

The summit's agenda included identifying ways for law enforcement, educators, social service workers and others to help women and

children flee abusive polygamous homes. Allegations of child and domestic abuse, welfare fraud, underage marriages, bigamy and other crimes were discussed at the summit.

A closed-door law enforcement meeting was held at the Abbey Inn, while an overflow crowd was at a public meeting in the Dixie Center.