In 2002 while I was assisting New York University's international law professor, Donna Sullivan, she and I identified the following human rights violations related to polygamy: the right to an education, the right to mobility, the right to not be molested, the right to equal protection and the right to choose a spouse.

The perpetrators of these violations are the adult male FLDS members and leadership, not Texas officials protecting children! Polygamy is illegal, a federal offense. The FLDS members are not being persecuted. Instead, they are being prosecuted, at last, for crimes against children.

Statutory rape has been the bedrock of the FLDS long before the dictatorship of Warren Jeffs. One day, I hope the government will be culpable for its role in ignoring this for decades, creating a massive multigenerational disaster complete with inbreeding, young males abandoned by parents and women so broken that they're incapable of protecting their multitudes of children.

Survivors should be offered a settlement for damages. In the meantime, certain reporters spin the realities with soft, warm words such as: families, religion, marriage of underage girls, a unique lifestyle and the ranch. In truth, these are rape of a child, a sex ring operation, organized crime, white supremacy separatists and a compound.

Fathers indoctrinate their small children that their abuse or abusing is spiritual, while mothers prepare their female children for rape in a wedding dress. The reason children can't tell officials who their parents are is that they are confused about their own identity and that of their parents.

My father was Clyde Mackert, my mother Myra Kunz, yet my birth certificate states that I'm Laura Chapman and my father is Clyde Chapman. One birth certificate claims my mother has three deceased children with Roy Mackert, yet none of her children are deceased.

I was enrolled in elementary school as Laura Mackert. I called my birth mother "Mom" and was instructed to call my father's other wives Aunt Midge, Aunt Donna, Aunt Maureen. A few years later my father, directed by FLDS leadership, changed the titles and I was to call his wives Mother Midge, Mother Donna, Mother Myra and Mother Maureen.

Warren Jeffs then made a complex situation even worse by reassigning women and children to new husbands and fathers. Many of these children simply do not know how to answer what most people would think is the simplest of questions.

---

* LAURA CHAPMAN is an advisory board member of Tapestry Against Polygamy.