'Safety net' spread out for polygamists

Utah's attorney general will hold a town hall meeting in Salt Lake City next month to discuss how to reach out to people inside and outside of polygamy.

The meeting is the latest in a series of forums that have evolved over the past two years, giving government insight into Utah's polygamous communities and soliciting public comment on how to solve some of the unique issues surrounding plural marriage.

The March 1 town hall meeting at the University of Utah is being organized in part by a special Safety Net Committee made up of polygamists, government officials and social service workers that has quietly worked to bring everyone to the same table to talk.

"I was there at the first summit in St. George, where (Attorney General) Mark Shurtleff met to talk about the polygamy problem," said Marlyne Hammon, who lives in the polygamous community of Centennial Park, Ariz. "I thought, 'For crying out loud, they've got all these people coming in and they don't have any polygamists invited.' "

Originally organized just for law enforcement and bureaucratic agencies in Utah and Arizona, Hammon and dozens of plural wives and children stormed the August 2003 meeting, demanding to be heard. So many showed up that the meeting had to be moved from a hotel ballroom to the Dixie Convention Center.

Paul Murphy, the attorney general's Safety Net Committee coordinator, said the plural wives' protest turned out to be a good thing.

"They said, 'Don't make decisions about us, without us,' " he said.

Two years later, representatives from nearly all of the polygamous groups across the state are sitting at the table. Representatives from Centennial Park, the Davis County Cooperative Society, the Apostolic United Brethren and even the Fundamentalist LDS Church have attended the monthly meetings.

Despite Safety Net's good intentions, not everyone feels invited. The leading anti-polygamy group in Utah, Tapestry Against Polygamy, claims its members have felt unwelcome at the committee meetings and their suggestions have been rebuffed by the Utah Attorney General's Office.

"There's a lot of people that attend those meetings who are from the same organizations that our people have left," said Vicky Prunty, the director of Tapestry Against Polygamy. "When they're in the same room as their former relatives and church members, they're concerned that things they say could go back to their family or their leaders."