This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2016, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
A federal judge has found that a southern Utah company violated a court order by requiring children from a nearby polygamous community to harvest pecans, unpaid, for long hours in cold weather.
Children from the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints described being forced by the church to work for Paragon Contractors, often without being given lunches, during the December 2012 harvest at the Southern Utah Pecan Ranch near Hurricane, U.S. District Judge Tena Campbell wrote in findings released Wednesday.
One girl described helping younger children who were forced to wet their pants while working outdoors in weather that at times was so cold that the workers were "clogging up the restrooms just trying to get warm," another girl had testified.
Paragon Contractors had been ordered in 2007 to stop using underage workers. But Campbell wrote that children as young as 10 operated trucks and other machinery on the 125-acre farm.
School lessons in the FLDS community were suspended during harvest as teachers ordered children to work at the farm, Campbell wrote.
"We really didn't have a choice," a 6-year-old testified, according to court documents.
A person who home-schooled 33 children said the church forced her to send the children to the farm and work there. If she didn't, she said, she risked losing her family and "getting kicked out of the community."
Campbell ordered the Labor Department and Paragon to submit arguments by June 15, discussing appropriate sanctions for Paragon. The Labor Department has already fined the company, its executives, the FLDS Church and the man running its day-to-day operations, Lyle Jeffs, nearly $2 million.
Twitter: @erinalberty