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Mr Shurtleff, meanwhile, was struggling to infiltrate polygamist communities to find out the extent of abuse there. “You could probably infiltrate the Taleban movement easier,” he says wryly. Then someone mentioned Anne Wilde.

“Anne has family and friends throughout the community, she knows everyone,” he said. “And they were adamantly opposed to the abuse that was going on. We couldn’t go after it without their help.”

Mr Shurtleff’s decision to co-opt polygamist representatives like Ms Wilde caused uproar in some quarters. Tapestry Against Polygamy, a pressure group formed by woman and child “refugees” who had escaped closed polygamist communities, refused to join a task force formed by the attorney general if Ms Wilde and her associates joined. It would be like “trying to create a rape crisis centre and inviting both the rapists and their victims to attend,” Rowenna Erickson, the group’s co-founder said. “Trying to come to a solution with the perpetrator or their wives is unrealistic.”

Many polygamist women argue that their plural marriage was a choice that has brought them fulfilment. Christine, a third wife, argues that her lifestyle gives her far more freedom than a conventional marriage. “Have a husband around all the time?” she jokes. “I like men but not that much! When he’s sick I can send him to someone else, when he needs his ironing done I can send him to someone else.”

Others talk of the benefits of female companionship. “My sisterwife is my best friend, she colours my hair,” says Mary, a second wife. Vicky admits the life is not always easy. “It’s impossible to see your husband love another woman without some jealousy,” she says. “But that deeply held spiritual belief gets you through.”

Their duty if they want society’s respect, they say, is to help to police their own communities to root out abuse. The religious community that Mary belongs to is one of four polygamist groups that has agreed to clamp down on the marriages of minors and has excommunicated members for child abuse. “We are as appalled as anyone by abuse,” Mary says.

PR help came from an unexpected quarter with the HBO series Big Love, a sympathetic look at a “progressive” polygamist family featuring an exhausted, Viagra-popping husband struggling to keep up with his wives’ financial, emotional and sexual needs. The stories that Ms Wilde collected formed the basis for many of the storylines. But polygamy, as the series shows, is far from problem-free. An extraordinarily high number of the polygamists I spoke to had experienced divorce in their families, even if they defended that by noting that marriage break-ups happen in monogamous families too.

Many of the divorces, though, were caused by polygamy itself. Mary married her second husband when her first ran off with his third wife. Vicky’s sister, Valerie, married her sister’s husband after her own left her. Even with the new declaration against child marriages by some groups, polygamist brides often marry young – 18, 19 or 20 – a result, critics say, of the lessons drummed into young girls that marriage equals salvation.

“I really want to get married,” Milly, a 13-year-old pupil at a fundamentalist school, says shyly. “I spent my whole time reading polygamist love stories.” Monica, 16, who has a boyfriend, is not sure that polygamy is for her. “We’ve talked about it. He’s set on it but I don’t know if I could do that,” she says.

“If he had another girlfriend, I’d shoot her. I don’t really get along with girls.”

Mr Shurtleff now counts many polygamists among his friends, to the horror of his critics. He remains unconvinced by the case for polygamy. “Some men want to sow their wild oats and this is a way for them to do so while calling it a religious duty,” he says. He tells of a family friend who suddenly announced one day that he had received a revelation from God that he should take a second wife. “Of course it was his very cute secretary,” he says wryly.

The fact remains, as he says, that “polygamists aren’t going away”. And reassuring them that they are safe from prosecution for their lifestyle will only make it easier for witnesses to the more serious crimes to come forward.

Decriminalisation, Mr Shurtleff believes, like Ms Wilde’s group, will make it easier to shine a light into the dark corners of the most secret societies. He attempted legislation a couple of years ago to reduce polygamy to a misdemeanour but dropped the clause under political pressure.

There is a fine line between working with and against the polygamists. Mr Jeffs’s group, the FLDS, refused to work with Mr Shurtleff – “they think I’m the Antichrist”. Others are also under his prosecutorial gaze. Seven brothers and members of the Kingstons, a wealthy family-based group, are being investigated.

The women, meanwhile, have vowed to keep up the fight until the felony law is struck from the books. Vicky, whose mother was taken into custody and her grandfather sent to jail after the 1953 raid, says the threat of persecution hung over her childhood and fuelled society’s prejudice. “It’s a very real fear,” she says. “We don’t just take for granted that it’s gone away.” Mary adds: “We have nothing to hide.”

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The prophets and the law

Source: Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, news archives

Wedding Mass

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