Religion Roundup
Bishop's Records Offer Look Inside Polygamist Families
Associated Press
May 9, 2008
SAN ANTONIO - Handwritten bishop's records taken from a polygamist sect are helping untangle the network of family relationships at a Texas compound where some husbands had more than a dozen wives.
The records offer a peek into a church where men related to its leader, Warren Jeffs, enjoyed favored-husband status in the distribution of wives, and all young women were married by 24.
Jeffs is imprisoned on an accomplice-to-rape charge in Utah.
The records, which authorities seized last month, show that by the time a girl reached 16, she was more likely to be married than to live in her father's household. The same was not true for boys.
Two-thirds of listed households were polygamous, with the brothers of Jeffs and a senior elder claiming the most wives, up to 21 in one case.
Copyright 2008 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.
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