Hello,

            Welcome to what I already affectionately call, "The Triple AP". I am both humbled and honored to be here today, as the new executive director of Americans Against Abuses of Polygamy. I'm here to tell you why the issue of polygamy is so important to our nation and the future of women's rights in America.
            Polygamy has been around for thousands of years, and practiced at one time or another by members of almost every major world religion. There are ample countries available for sociologists to study modern polygamy across the world, and the results are alarming.
            The United Nations can find no country in the world where polygamy is legal and regularly practiced, which allows its female citizens' equal rights with males. It could find no country in the world where the practice of polygamy has benefited the women or children of any culture. Indeed, the U.N. has repeatedly renounced all forms of polygamy worldwide as unhealthy for children, as well as for the inevitable consequence of the female's reduction of value, influence, and opportunity within society, making her unequal.
            American polygamy, like polygamy in Africa or the Middle East, limits a female's choice of marriage, education, and economic independence. Co-concubines compete for the affection, attention, and money of one master. This naturally complicates matters in a divorce situation, because the concubine usually has no legal marriage to claim property rights. Often, especially in Arizona and Utah, judges will award custody of children to the father, who can show he has the means to care for them. The fleeing concubine, however, usually has a poor education, no property except the clothes she left with, and no job skills. The polygamous father is awarded custody, and he turns the children over to the care of his remaining concubines. This leaves the woman who has escaped with nothing and teaches the other women in the cult to stay put, or else.
            Many American polygamous women are admitted to mental institutions, for failure to be obedient. Some of the hospitals admitting women like this are state funded facilities, with staff, which refuse to assist women to escape from the cults. Their "husbands" have denied many women in American polygamy appropriate health care, especially during pregnancy. This has contributed to extremely high infant mortality rates in some communities, such as Colorado City, in Mohave County, Arizona. This city is home to the Fundamentalist Latter Day Saints, led by the convicted child sex offender, Warren Jeffs.
            Americans Against Abuses of Polygamy will expose any politician, law enforcement officer, judge, government agency employee, elected official, physician or other medical services provider, media representative, educator or private citizen known to have collaborated in the infringement of any American woman's Constitutional or Human rights as she has lived, fled, or attempts in the future to flee, polygamy.
            Americans are never silent when they know of an injustice, and AAAP will ensure that all Americans can know the truth about polygamy, and how it works against women, right here in America.
            When I arrived in Mohave County, four years ago, it was for a job. When I left Mohave County behind, five months ago, it was with a passionate desire to protect Texas women and children from sharing the fate of their sisters in Utah and Arizona. Texas women deserve better than this. All women do.
 
 
Sincerely,
 
 
k.Dee Ignatin
Executive Director
Americans Against Abuses of Polygamy