birth defects common in polygamous community

16 years ago

interesting article.

Severe birth defect common in polygamous community

More than half the worlds cases of a severe birth defect called fumarase deficiency have been found in the twin towns of Hildale, Utah, and ColoÂrado City, Arizona, controlled by the polygamous Fundamentalist Latter-Day Saints Church.

The towns have a total population of under 10,000, yet Dr. Theodore Tarby has seen twenty children with fumarase deficiency in these towns since 1990. By comparison, only thirteen cases have been reported elsewhere in the entire world.

The actual total in the FLDS may be much higher than twenty since babies may have died before they were diagnosed with the condition by a medical doctor.

None of the FLDS children with fumarase defiÂciency has an IQ above 25. Many cannot sit up. Some can barely even move their head and eyes. Frequent and powerful seizures are common. PorÂtions of brain matter are replaced by water. An MRI of the brain of one fumarase-deficient child showed that more than half the brain was missing.

Geneticists agree that the high rate of this birth defect is due to the in-breeding in FLDS with most of the population descended from two patriarchs and with a self-proclaimed prophet arranging all the marriages within the group. It is a simple matter of a 25% likelihood of giving birth to a child with fumarase deficiency when two carriers of the recessive gene for it marry.

Tarby believes the number of FLDS children with fumarase deficiency could rise into the hunÂdreds within a couple of generations.

Birth defects irrelevant in divine mandate

Tarby has explained the science at a meeting of about 150 FLDS members and to many parents individually, but they do not appear to care. "They consider these children to be their responsibility from God and their duty is to produce as many children as possible," he said. "Sister-wives" often help each other care for handicapped children.

Tarby told one father that his child was handiÂcapped because the father and mother were related. The father replied, "Up there, weÂre all related."

Tarby wasnÂt sure whether the man meant "up there in Colorado City" or "up there in heaven."

Prophet canÂt use science to arrange marriages

Another physician doubted the current prophet, Warren Jeffs, could find any outsiders who would want to marry into his church even if he looked for them. Furthermore, a former FLDS member said, Jeffs claims to be carrying out GodÂs orders when he picks marriage partners. If FLDS members found out he was using science to arrange marriÂages, they might doubt his status as GodÂs repreÂsentative on earth.

Arizona gives more than $12 million a year to help indigent residents of Colorado City pay for health-insurance premiums. The Arizona DepartÂments of Health Services and of Economic Security have been providing services for fumarase-deficient victims and their caregivers for fifteen years, but say federal law prohibits them from disclosing the costs.

Taken from The Phoenix New Times, Dec. 29, 2005; Deseret News, Feb. 9, 2006; and Salt Lake City Tribune, Feb. 11, 2006.

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Comments (22)

LorifromUtah
16 years ago
last modified: 9 years ago
This FLDS thing is evil on SOOOOO many levels and the kids are the biggest victims.

The women in Texas want their children back and I don't think they should get them.

Yes.
The women are brainwashed but I believe the maternal instinct is far greater than the 'teachings' of the FLDS so called prophet. The women are the only thing standing between their daughters and religious debauchery and they do nothing. They are just as, if not more, abusive than the men.

Lori
Happy_Go_Lucky_Gayle
16 years ago
last modified: 9 years ago
Guess what else? We pay for the Child with defects too! They get SIS!

Gayle
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sable_ca
16 years ago
last modified: 9 years ago
I wonder if this isn't a main reason that the state of Texas has permanently removed all the children from the FLDS compound, and why they are pursuing DNA testing of everyone.

One of the women who was interviewed on cable news this past week said that she had a five-year-old son who needed hourly attention for feeding and meds and that only she could do it. I wonder if he has this defect.

Other things I've read: Thirty boys have been sent to a boys' ranch elsewhere in Texas, a place that has a fine reputation for rehabilitating and educating children. Texas is also doing its best to place other children with relatives who are not members of this horrible cult, and is searching for normal Mormon families to foster the others. The state is trying to maintain some degree of familiar surroundings rather than shipping the kids off to anyone who will take them. It is also trying to keep siblings together.

What a revolting mess. Imprison the men.
Lindsey_CA
16 years ago
last modified: 9 years ago
"...twin towns of Hildale, Utah, and Colorado City, Arizona," ... "The towns have a total population of under 10,000, ... "Arizona gives more than $12 million a year to help indigent residents of Colorado City"
noocha
16 years ago
last modified: 9 years ago
Links please?
Toni S
16 years ago
last modified: 9 years ago
In the form of welfare, Lindsey? That is an amazing piece of information. An organized way of life formed to suck the welfare system, while letting the upper "organizers" get their jollies with brainwashed baby makers. I'm assuming that many of the men in these towns have been brainwashed too. A wife for everyday of the week, kids born just to be in the FLDS support system. An evil mind, a psychopath or two are behind this. I do believe most of them believe this is FAITH in their prophets and leaders. They believe its ok to mind the ones who speak to GOD. They have left their minds at the door though. They can not think for themselves. I do feel for the women and at the same time think they have crossed the line when they allow their children to be married and have more children in the name of their faith, while using their/our government to support their huge families.
As much as I want to leave them alone, my conscience tells me the children are in terrible danger. (as they also put it, in their meek childlike voices)
With so many family members intermarrying (word?) I'm not surprised there are higher numbers of birth defects. They stay in the family/ the chances are higher.

My best friend is a Latter Day Saint and this kinda stuff makes her so mad. I hope that my KT friends realize the huge difference in the FLDS from the larger population of Mormons who practice with in the laws of the USA.
Some of their beliefs baffle me so I once asked her if she thought I would be in heaven with her. Her reply was " if your not going, I'm not going" . It may not be a straight answer but I'll take it as a yes. I think her god, is my god. We respect each other. I'm not getting into religion, just a thought about my relationship with my mormon friend.
hale_bopp
16 years ago
last modified: 9 years ago
Wow.

Blessings,
Haley (who believes Christ is the son of God, not just a neat prophet)
teresava
16 years ago
last modified: 9 years ago
I think most people realize that FLDS and LDS are VERY different (at least I hope they do too). They may share some core beliefs in religion, but their daily lives couldn't be more different. FLDS is basically a "cult", that traps you in.

My good friend in high school was a member of RLDS (Reorganized Church of Latter Day Saints). Anyone ever heard of that? They were not nearly as strict as LDS, and nothing like the FLDS. Just a nice group of families. They have a college in Iowa that many of the kids attend.
Lindsey_CA
16 years ago
last modified: 9 years ago
"In the form of welfare, Lindsey?"

Oh, that's not all they're getting, apparently.

"Arizona gives more than $12 million a year to help indigent residents of Colorado City pay for health-insurance premiums."

So, if the taxpayers of Arizona are putting out $12 million per year just for health care premiums, I hate to think of how much more is being paid for their support.
Lee
16 years ago
last modified: 9 years ago
More of us are still learning about the FLDS; it's just something few of us had even heard about.

It appears that FLDS members make up the majority of the Colorado City Town Council, the Police Department, and the teachers in the school district.

" Surrounded by outside authorities too timid to act and local police unwilling to protect them, victims here have risked home and livelihood by fighting back.

Pennie Petersen was born and raised in Colorado City. Independent-minded even as a child, she read voraciously, even books banned by the FLDS like the works of Zane Grey and Louis L'Amour.

Yet all the time, she said, she was fending off sexual abuse from every direction.

"My best friend got married at 14. Her husband ... started getting on me. I went to my parents; big mistake.... The prophet Leroy Johnson decided I should marry [the abuser]," Petersen recalled. "I'd be his fifth wife and he was 48."

Petersen said if molesters were caught with a girl, the abusers were often told to marry the victims.

Unwilling to marry at 14, Petersen ran away to Las Vegas but never really escaped. She learned that her 12-year-old sister had married 39-year-old Colorado City polygamist William Orson Black Jr.

Petersen tried to intervene. By the time she persuaded authorities to raid Black's house, he had fled with her sister to Mexico. He remains a fugitive.

Investigators with the Arizona attorney general's office think Colorado City police tipped off Black. The local police also are accused of warning Warren Jeffs when Utah investigators tried, and failed, to serve him with a subpoena.

In 2001, Petersen found another of her sisters, Ruth Stubbs, on her doorstep fleeing what she said was an abusive polygamous marriage to Rodney Holm.

Petersen assembled details and persuaded Utah to prosecute Holm for having sex with a minor; Stubbs was 16 when she married him. He was sentenced to a year in jail, serving at night, and was released after six months.

It is rare for polygamists to be prosecuted in Utah. State authorities consider it impractical to prosecute its estimated 20,000 polygamists, though the practice is a felony in Utah.

"Everything we have done we had to push them on," Petersen said of state and local authorities. "They were all chicken because they feel they will lose their whole careers if they go after this.

"They keep saying it's a religious freedom issue," Petersen complained. "I keep saying it is not a religious freedom issue, it's about sleeping with children."

Rodney Holm's conviction provided an opening for other victims, the first crack in FLDS defenses against outsider intrusions. A group of Lost Boys followed up with a lawsuit against the church. Another man sued Warren Jeffs saying the prophet molested him as a child. "

" Control has been exerted in more practical ways as well. Until recently, the FLDS operated under a trust called the United Effort Plan. The trust ran businesses in Colorado City and adjoining Hildale, Utah. It owned all the homes, and members tithed 10% of their incomes, usually in monthly payments.

Shurtleff [Utay's Attorney General, Mark Shurtleff] first went after the trust, working to break up the $150-million United Effort Plan. Through court action, he put it under the supervision of an outside administrator, removing eviction threats as an FLDS tool.

His office also is looking into allegations of welfare fraud. Shurtleff said 66% of Hildale residents and 78% in Colorado City received welfare, usually food stamps. "

The Link provides the entire article; it is very interesting.
dotmom
16 years ago
last modified: 9 years ago
This info doesn't surprise me at all. After years and years of these perverts "marrying" sisters, mothers who are either widowed or were taken away from their 'husbands', and given to marry another pervert along with some of her teen daughters daughters. They have to be horribly inbred. I feel so sorry to the poor children who are born to some of these unions, with handi-caps.
There a lot of books out there, written by some who have lived in these cults and managed to get out. Some I have read and am going to try to get some others at the library. So I don't need links, thankyou Dottie
noocha
16 years ago
last modified: 9 years ago
So I don't need links, thankyou Dottie
I'm glad you don't need links, Dottie. But I've learned through experience that people say all kinds of things & take them for gospel truth when there's nothing to back it up. It's just their opinion. And that's fine, if it's their opinion. Just so we all know it's only their opinion.
The links that were given are from 2006 not recent. Anyone got links to something more recent? And not this rash of yellow journalism that's taking place with the ongoing stuff in Texas. Are there actual cases that have taken place where there were convictions of child abuse in this religion?
magic_arizona
16 years ago
last modified: 9 years ago
And he hasn't even been tried in Arizona yet.

I personaly Hope they hang him. He is nothing but a pedophile hiding behind religion IMO.
Lee
16 years ago
last modified: 9 years ago
For those interested in further reading about the FLDS and other polygamist groups the link provided below may be of interest to you.

The Rick A. Ross Institute appears to be a clearing house of information/articles on the subject. There are dozens and dozens of articles.

For more about the Institute, just click on 'home' at the bottom of the linked screen.
noocha
16 years ago
last modified: 9 years ago
All the articles (or nearly all) were written by Rick Ross! Who is this guy?
sable_ca
16 years ago
last modified: 9 years ago
Noocha - If you google "polygamous mormon groups", you will get 705,000 hits, and can search and read to your heart's content. If you google "Rick Ross" you will discover that there are three Rick Rosses, and will quickly find the one who is the cult-tracker.

It is not yellow journalism that is occurring now. As a matter of fact, what is being reported is not even half of what will eventually be discovered about the FLDS compound and its brainwashed, Guyana-type members.
noocha
16 years ago
last modified: 9 years ago
Yes, but don't you find it interesting that - especially in the first few days - all the "talking heads" mentioned SEX so many times? They did that to get people hooked into watching or listening to them. And it worked! :)
Have any of the 'heads' been reporting on these birth defects?

From wikipedia:
Yellow journalism is a pejorative reference to journalism that features scandal-mongering, sensationalism, or other unethical or unprofessional practices by news media organizations or journalists. It has been loosely defined as "not quite libel".
sable_ca
16 years ago
last modified: 9 years ago
They mentioned sex because that's what this case is about - sexual abuse, sexual crimes, and a way of life that is based upon male sexual desires. This all concerns rape, incest, and other forms of child abuse that has resulted in psychologically destroyed children and women. The birth defects reported result from sexual activity that is illegal and taboo. What did you expect them to report on - strange hair styles, inarticulate women and how to build a barn?

I don't need a wiki definition of yellow journalism - I know what it is. This story is in and of itself extremely lurid - reporting it does not constitute Y.J.
ronm80
Original Author
16 years ago
last modified: 9 years ago
Here is the website sorry I can't make a link.
http://www.childrenshealthcare.org/polygamous.htm
Lee
16 years ago
last modified: 9 years ago
Noocha, you wrote:

'All the articles (or nearly all) were written by Rick Ross! Who is this guy?'
..........

No, 'all the articles' about the FLDS were NOT written by Rick Ross. It clearly states at the top of the linked section:

'This page contains information The Rick A. Ross Institute has GATHERED about Polygamist Groups.'

When looking at the list of collected articles regarding the FLDS, the source document and its author are clearly provided in large print from the oldest:

'Deliverance Day for One Group of Polygamists, Salt Lake Tribune/November 29, 1998, By Tom Zoellner and Greg Burton'

to the most recent:

'Sect Children Will Undergo Genetic Tests Next Week Houston Chronicle/April 20, 2008, By Lindsay Wise'

A quick check of the section on FLDS by anyone not having a reading comprehension problem will reveal that each document provides the source whether it be The Gazette newspaper, Canada; CBS 8 TV in Las Vegas; the Associated Press; the New York Times; the Deseret Morning News and the Salt Lake Tribune in Utah, etc., etc., etc.

Noocha, you asked 'Who is this guy?'

Well, if you had bothered to click on the 'home' page as I suggested you would have read the following:

'Welcome to the Rick A. Ross Institute of New Jersey

An Internet archive of information about cults, destructive cults, controversial groups and movements. The Rick A. Ross Institute of New Jersey (RI) is a nonprofit public resource with a vast archive that contains thousands of individual documents. RI on-line files include news stories, research papers, reports, court documents, book excerpts, personal testimonies and hundreds of links to additional relevant resources. This Internet archive is well-organized for easy access and reference.'

As I earlier stated some of us have no little or no prior knowledge of the FLDS prior to the current happenings in El Dorado, Texas. In wanting to read more about the FLDS I came across the referenced Institute via Google and decided to share it as a source of information with other interested persons reading here.

So, Noocha, if you want to dismiss over 400 articles about the FLDS spanning almost 10 years as all being 'yellow journalism' feel free to do so.
............

Children Health Issues / Severe Birth Defect in FLDS:

As for the referenced document by RONM80, here is a partial quote from Part II of the lengthy article...

"More than half the worlds cases of a severe birth defect called fumarase deficiency have been found in the twin towns of Hildale, Utah, and Colorado City, Arizona, controlled by the polygamous Fundamentalist Latter-Day Saints Church.

The towns have a total population of under 10,000, yet Dr. Theodore Tarby has seen twenty children with fumarase deficiency in these towns since 1990. By comparison, only thirteen cases have been reported elsewhere in the entire world.

The actual total in the FLDS may be much higher than twenty since babies may have died before they were diagnosed with the condition by a medical doctor.

None of the FLDS children with fumarase deficiency has an IQ above 25. Many cannot sit up. Some can barely even move their head and eyes. Frequent and powerful seizures are common. Portions of brain matter are replaced by water. An MRI of the brain of one fumarase-deficient child showed that more than half the brain was missing."
dotmom
16 years ago
last modified: 9 years ago
My goodness, noocha, do you live in one of these compounds? Or are you one of their lawyers? Just wondering. Dottie
noocha
16 years ago
last modified: 9 years ago
yes, bless your hearts!

birth defects common in polygamous community

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