Girl flees Colorado City home

Deseret News (Salt Lake City), Jan 18, 2004 by Nancy Perkins Deseret Morning News

COLORADO CITY, Ariz. -- A third teenage girl who fled her home in this polygamous community is under state protection today.

Parents of the girls and local law enforcement officials are angry that Utah and Arizona authorities took control of the situation without contacting them first.

"All we're trying to do is be loving parents. We're concerned for our daughter's safety," said Dan Wayman, whose 17-year-old daughter left home Saturday with the help of a boyfriend who has been issued a protective order to stay away from the girl. The boyfriend was also recently arrested by Washington County deputies on charges of drunken driving and on an outstanding warrant.

"I was just trying to keep her from running off with this guy, and they're acting like I'm the criminal here," said Wayman, whose daughter now is staying at a St. George shelter for women and children.

Judge James L. Shumate issued an emergency protective order against Wayman after the Utah Attorney General's Office requested the girl be held in a safe location until court could be convened next week.

"You can't hold a child unless you can establish there's been abuse or neglect," said Paul Murphy, Attorney General's Office spokesman. "If a girl is afraid of being married to a man who is too old for her, then that's abuse."

But Wayman and Matthew Broadbent, who also lost his 16-year-old daughter to the Arizona Office of Child Protective Services last week, said nobody is talking about marriage and their daughters have a long history of running away and curfew violations.

"She's a teenager who's looking to do her own thing, and she's doing things that are not in her best interest," said Broadbent, who traveled to Phoenix in order to retrieve his daughter and returned without her on Saturday.

"She has not been abused," he said. "These accusations are fabricated. They won't even tell us where our daughter is or let us talk to her."

Both of the 16-year-old girls are now officially temporary wards of the state, said Flora Jessop, who drove from Phoenix to pick up the girls last weekend.

Jessop, 33, said she grew up in Colorado City and fled at the age of 14 only to be placed in a juvenile group home.

"I don't want the system to betray these kids like it did me," she said Saturday evening. Jessop, who said she didn't know the girls or their families before being asked to pick up the runaways, brought along a Phoenix television reporter to record the girl's "escape."

"Everything we have done has been with the girls' knowledge," he said. "These children are very comfortable and happy they left. Kids don't just leave because they had a spat with their family. They run when things get really bad," said Jessop, an outspoken anti- polygamist. "We've got some people who are already applying to be their guardians."

Jessop's actions may very well be criminal, Broadbent said.

"Flora Mae has violated our parental jurisdiction over our children," he said. "The whole thing of it to me is that they are trampling on our constitutional rights and our parental rights. This is a family matter."

Utah and Arizona authorities are working together to make certain they do protect every individual's rights in the polygamous towns, Murphy said.

"We are trying to work together with Arizona to make sure everyone in the community is protected," he said.

Colorado City Marshal Sam Roundy said the parents of the three runaways don't feel protected; they feel abused by their respective state leaders.

"Where are the parental rights here," Roundy said, adding one of the girls was listed on a national database as a runaway a day before she was picked up and taken to Phoenix by Jessop. "Utah parents ought to be quaking in their shoes to have an attorney general with such disregard for parental rights that he would condone taking children away from parents on hearsay.

E-MAIL: nperkins@infowest.com