Tag: Lost Boys

It’s estimated that more than a thousand young men and women — mostly men — have escaped or been thrown out of the community known as “The Crick,” the towns of Hildale, Utah, and Colorado City, Ariz., dominated by the polygamous Fundamentalist Latter-Day Saints sect.

Getting those young adults to talk about their lives in and out of “The Crick” was difficult, say the filmmakers who have profiled some of those exiled teens for the documentary “Sons of Perdition.”

The FLDS has traditionally kept the number of boys in their polygamist communities low. That way the male leaders can have their pick of young “plural wives,” without the worry of younger competition, said Brenda Jensen, a former “polygamy kid” who now works as a volunteer for The Hope Organization.

State lawmakers have passed a bill that appears to crack down on child abandonment in the fundamentalist communities of Hildale, Utah and Colorado City, Arizona.

This home will be a new shelter for the so-called “Lost Boys,” teenagers kicked out of the Fundamentalist LDS Church. That is, if they can navigate their way through government bureaucracy to get the home licensed and approved in time for its scheduled Oct. 4 opening.

It’s simple arithmetic in polygamous, fundamentalist Mormon societies like Bountiful, B.C. Some men get many wives, others get none. It’s usually older men who get second, third and sometimes more wives, brides who are usually teenagers. Left behind are angry, frustrated young men. Not only can they not choose their own mates, they’ve been told it’s against the church’s rules to date or even socialize with girls their age. They are the so-called Lost Boys.

Jennifer Broadbent is like most teens: She wants a cell phone, to study dance and theater, to make her own way in the world – even if she has to do it all without her parents’ help. That got easier for Jennifer and other teens on Tuesday. As she and three other so-called Lost Boys looked on, Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr. signed a new law that allows teens 16 or 17 to seek emancipation from their parents. With that status, the teens would be able to get housing, schooling and other services independently. The Lost Boys, boys and girls

CAST OUT: As many as 1,000 teens have been cut off from their families and communities in Utah to ensure plenty of young brides for older, polygamous men. Up to 1,000 teenage boys have been separated from their parents and thrown out of their communities by a polygamous sect to make more young women available for older men, Utah officials claim. Many of these “Lost Boys,” some as young as 13, have simply been dumped on the side of the road in Arizona and Utah, by the leaders of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (FLDS), and