Some people believe that religious discrimination is a thing of the past, but for two women and their children in Hildale, Utah, and Colorado City, Ariz., discrimination still exists.
Former polygamist wives Lenore Holm of Colorado City and Pamela Black of Hildale are speaking out against discrimination and harassment the women say started after they severed ties with the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
Now, these women claim their children are being harassed at school, on the bus and in town.
Colorado City and Hildale became home to the FLDS Church and polygamy in the early 1900s. The polygamists sought refuge in the twin cities after polygamy was outlawed by the federal government and banned by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
The FLDS Church was one organization until 1980, when there was a dispute over church leadership. It was at this time that the FLDS Church divided into the First Ward and the Second Ward, Holm said.
Several years ago, Rulon Jeffs, former prophet of the First Ward of the FLDS Church until his death earlier this year, asked church members to pull their children out of Phelps Elementary, a public school in Hildale. Church leaders created a parochial school for children in the First Ward.
Enrollment at the Utah public school dramatically declined after Jeffs' announcement, and children from Arizona were bused to the Utah school in order to keep the school open through the school year. Shortly after the school year ended, Phelps Elementary School closed because it did not have enough students, Black said.
The next year, Washington County paid the tuition for the remaining Utah children to be bused to Colorado City Elementary School in Arizona, including Black's and Holm's children.
Today, only those not belonging to the FLDS First Ward attend Colorado City Elementary School; however, most of the teachers, administrators and bus drivers at the Arizona school belong to the First Ward.
Kolene Granger, superintendent for the Washington County school district, said parents in Hildale are given the choice to have their children bused to Colorado City or to Hurricane.
Granger said most parents chose to have their students bused to Colorado City.
"It's a convenience for the parents that we have this arrangement with the Colorado City public school system that we will pay the tuition if the students choose to go there," Granger said.
Holm said the move by FLDS Church leaders to pull their followers out of the public school created problems, leaving the Arizona school with staff, mainly First Warders, who didn't want to be working with the children because they chose not to follow Rulon Jeffs.
Black said it was evident that the staff at the Arizona school didn't approve of the children whose parents left the FLDS Church.
"They hated working with these children that they called the apostate children," Black said. "They treated them coldly."
Black said her children have always been looked down on by the community.
"My children were always picked on, very quiet and shy," Black said. "They didn't speak up a lot in class. The teachers loved them, but they were kind of considered wimps and lower class."
Black said several of her older children have moved to northern Utah and are still bitter because of how they were treated at school.
Holm said her children have also been harassed at school.
"I've had children come home and say they've been spit on in the hallways," she said. "They get called names. They get told that their parents are bad."
Holm also claims her children have been harassed on the bus.
"The bus drivers belong to First Ward, and they're quite mean to the children when they get on the bus," Holm said. "They even go so far as to sexually harass them, calling them 'legs' and things like that. I think that goes too far."
Black said sometimes the bus driver doesn't wait for the students to get on the bus before leaving. She said some days she sees children running after the bus.
Colorado City Mayor Dan Barlow, also a polygamist and member of the First Ward, said the women haven't brought any concerns to him.
"I don't know how founded that is," Barlow said. "I suppose in every school there is some difficultly from people, but to blame it onto religion or the religious people here is the height of folly. I just don't think there's anything to it. I think it's unfounded. They might have some problems with the schools, and every community has those. It has nothing to do with the religion or the fundamentalist people themselves."
Richard Cooke, a bus driver for the Colorado City schools, said the claims these women are making are false.
"I don't think they are (harassed), at least on the bus," Cooke said. "I have contact with about three or four of them on two runs.
Cooke said if Holm's children are being harassed on the bus, it is by Holm's own friends.
Granger said the women came to a school board meeting and voiced their concerns, but her office has not received any complaints in writing. She said because the children attend school in Arizona, even though Black lives in Utah, any complaints must be filed with the school district in Arizona.
"If they have specific issues about a teacher or a bus or whatever, they need to deal with the school system that the children are attending," Granger said. "We can go out and talk about it, but we don't have any authority. We're not the line of authority for the Colorado City school system."
Holm said her children aren't just harassed at school.
"When my boy goes over to the store, he gets surrounded by a whole herd of boys, because I let him wear short sleeves sometimes," Holm said.
Members of the FLDS Church wear long sleeved shirts with high necks and long pants for the men, and long dresses, with long sleeves and high necks for the women.
"I mean, I have purposely not dressed my children like the cult since they took my 16-year-old daughter three years ago," Holm said.
She said leaders of the FLDS Church wanted her 16-year-old daughter to marry a 39-year-old man. Holm and her husband, Milton Holm, objected to the marriage and as a result they were forced to leave the FLDS Church, she said.
Holm said church leaders took her daughter and wouldn't let her have contact with her. Church leaders claim that Holm's daughter was not taken from her, but rather ran away.
FLDS Church leaders told Milton that he let his wife rule over him because he wouldn't turn his will over to the prophet when she objected so strenuously to the marriage, Holm said.
Church members are required to give their assets, including property and homes, to the FLDS Church, Black said.
When Holm and Black were ex-communicated from the FLDS Church, they were required to give all they had acquired back to the church.
"He (Milton) was to give up the home he'd been building his whole life, and we were supposed to just move," Holm said.
Holm said she doesn't want to move out of Colorado City.
"For one thing, I grew up in this area, and for me, it's home," she said. "So now, I just enjoy trying to pull down the corruption. I don't have any desire to move anywhere else really. There are a lot of good people here."
Holm said the main problem in Colorado City is there are only a few people who hold all the power.
"The term absolute obedience is used a lot," she said. "It has a lot of absolute power, which corrupts."
Holm said it wasn't until church leaders tried to take her daughter that she noticed the corruption.
"Before that I had warning signs, but I couldn't see it because I'd grown up in it my whole life," she said. "I think that because I have experienced quite a bit of abuse -religious abuse - that's why I was finally able to see it."
Holm was forced into a polygamist marriage when she was 17. That marriage later ended in divorce. Holm said her ex-husband lives in Idaho with her two older daughters.
"My two older girls went up there to live because they couldn't deal with how awful they were treated here," she said.
Holm said the leaders of the community have used every opportunity possible to get government grants to bring in extra money for the city. However, Holm said the money is never equally distributed because of the religious politics in the town.
"There has been religious politics going on in this town for years and years," Holm said. "The mayor has been the mayor for 17 years. Him and his brothers have controlled a lot of the money that comes into the town, either through the schools, or the firehouse, or the police officers, or the cities of Hildale or Colorado City themselves."
Black moved from Colorado City to Hildale after the FLDS Church demanded she give her property back to the church.
"I was going to be evicted out of the community because I was a woman that stands up for her rights, and I speak out and they don't want that from the women," Black said. "I fought for my children and I let them know that they can take my house, but they can't take my soul though, and they won't take my children. I will fight to the death on that."
Black lives with several of her children in a borrowed trailer, on a piece of land she and her husband purchased a few years ago.
"They say that everyone has choice here, but there's not much choice," Black said. "The choice is that you do what you're told or you go to hell. I think most people would rather do what they're told when they have this horrible fear of God."
Black said she and the other women who have left the FLDS Church are not victims anymore.
"Now we're just trying to hold our torch of truth up here, our light, for people to see that there is another choice," she said. "Through all of this though, they (our children) have become stronger, and they know they have choice now. They don't have to have guilt and shame piled on them for their choices."