Kirk Torgensen, chief deputy in the Utah Attorney General’s Office, spoke Tuesday at the National Organization For Victim Assistance conference, being held in Salt Lake City.

His topic? “Polygamy Victimization.”

Former plural wife Carolyn Jessop also spoke. More on her in the next post. But here is a recap of what Torgensen had to say.

He credited Carolyn for opening his eyes — even changing his life — to what was going in in the twin towns of Hildale, Utah, and Colorado City, Ariz.

Think about a world in which young girls are raised with very little freedom and, when they reach 13 or 14 or 15, are told by a prophet to marry a much older man because “it’s just the way it is,” Torgensen said.

In the twin towns, young people don’t have the freedom, the constitutional right, to live the way they want to, he said.

He read an excerpt from Elissa Wall’s book “Stolen Innocence”— a “marvelous book” — in which she describes crying in the bathroom after being married in 2001 to Allen G. Steed.

As he read out loud, heads shook in disbelief throughout the audience, which I would estimate included several thousand victim advocates from throughout the country.

“I don’t know if any of us can imagine what that’s like — to be in a country where we have freedom but these folks don’t,” he said, as photos taken on Wall’s wedding day were displayed on screens on either side of the stage.

“This should not happen to any 14-year-old,” Torgensen said.

He said the state’s interest in stopping the child bride marriages had nothing to do with religion. No matter what religion they are, someone who engages in such behavior “is a child rapist,” he said.

He cited the biblical phrase “by their fruits you will know them” and then said: “The religion I belong to doesn’t believe in doing this to young kids.”

Torgensen said polygamist Tom Green did the state a favor when he publicized his beliefs and lifestyle on national television, which led to his prosecution and conviction in 2001 on charges of bigamy and failure to pay child support.

Green “peeled off the layers nobody had seen,” Torgensen said.

Torgensen said every time he visits the twin towns he is followed. “It’s like some bizarre place that’s been picked up and moved to the border here,” he said of the polygamous community.

With a photograph of Rodney Holm, two wives and his children as a backdrop, Torgensen said: “See, the state of Utah allowed him to be a police officer.”

He said that after learning about Holm, he said to himself: “What in the world, how could this guy be a police officer?”

But prosecuting Holm proved difficult because the witness, the younger sister of one of his wives, kept reneging on her willingness to testify about her own marriage to Holm.

“Has this problem gone away for us? No,” Torgensen said.

Despite decertifying numerous officers in the community, “we still have this issue going on today” and there is a lack of the kind of law enforcement that is needed in the towns, he said.

Torgensen then projected a photo series that showed FLDS church leader Warren Jeffs standing with and kissing a 12-year-old girl he allegedly married in Texas.

Said Torgensen: “I am so thankful this photo was shown to the world.”

He said Texas is actively prosecuting the case and “my prediction is Mr. Jeffs is going to find justice in Texas.”

Torgensen projected excerpts from Jeffs’ written journal as he described how the state had warned the FLDS around 2002 to stop endorsing underage marriage.

“We told them, ‘You’ve got to leave these kids alone.’ They said, ‘yeah, we understand.’”

He then displayed excerpts from Jeffs’ written journal — dated Jan. 10, 2003, Jan. 16, 2003 and Aug. 19, 2004.

In one, Jeffs described being asked by other polygamous groups to knock off underage marriages. In other he spoke of the state pressure and said: “It is so easy to get around it.”

Torgensen said the amount of money the FLDS were paying lawyers to “get around it” was “astounding.”

As for the people themselves, he said he wasn’t sure they were “capable of making decisions on their own” after so many years of “indoctrination.”

“There is absolutely nothing we’ve ever told them that has soaked in,” he said. “I don’t know what it takes for these people. . . their own lawyers can say, ‘Are you stupid?’”

That comment was made with this text, taken from a 2002 speech given by FLDS member Sam Barlow, displayed on the screen:

One of the attorneys said to me, “If you don’t make some concession on whether or not you will continue to marry young ladies to old men, then you’ll be caught in the same net and trap and under the same pressure that John Taylor was in in his time.”

I said, “I’m aware of that but we are born to this conflict and we will have to endure equal pressure to what the saints were under then if we are going to annul the convenant with death and hell that was entered into.”

Torgensen said that people want to know why the state doesn’t “prosecute a whole slew of these people.”

He blamed an “incredible secrecy” and the lack of young women coming forward with complaints. Without that, “I haven’t got a case,” he said.

“You can go after organized crime easier than you can these people,” he added.

But in Texas, law officers were able to get a “treasure trove” of information that “I am so grateful for.”

The FLDS have never listened to state officials, he said. “They’ve played us.”

Torgensen then described meeting with “another guy” from the FLDS community, adding that “I don’t know what to call him — Willie Jessop.”

Torgensen said Jessop told him that underage marriages had stopped which Torgensen called “yet another attempt to blow smoke at me.”

“This was before all the stuff in Texas went down,” he added.

(Asked later about that comment, Jessop said he had never met Torgensen until some months after the April 2008 raid on the sect’s Yearning For Zion Ranch in Eldorado, Texas. Jessop said he flew to Utah from Texas in June or July of that year, which is about when the sect issued a public statement saying underage marriages would no longer be allowed. “I never talked to anybody on any such thing before Texas,” Jessop said.)

Torgensen said the FLDS are “still trying to tell us what they think we want to hear and I don’t believe it for a second.”

In an aside, he told the audience  that he had no tolerance for religious beliefs that harmed children. “Why should a young person die because their parent has some goofed up religious view?” he asked.

Clarification: This comment from Kirk Torgensen (Why should a child die?) was not necessarily directed at the FLDS but at parents whose beliefs potentially put their children’s lives in jeopardy, such as Jehovah’s Witnesses and Christian Science.

Torgensen said that law enforcement efforts were “starting to come to fruition” and he was “very grateful” for that.

He described how “simple mathematics” was driving young boys out of the community, with help of harassment from the local FLDS cops.

Guess who the justice of the peace enforcing those citations used to be? he asked his audience. A polygamist whose ultimate oath was to the prophet, Torgensen said.

He described how Elissa Wall’s older brother was kicked out of his family’s home, driven to the city limits and dropped off. “Unbelievable,” he said.

(The incident happened in the Salt Lake Valley, not the twin towns, and the brother was 21-years-old. He asked to be driven to a highway, where he could hitch a ride to Denver, according to Wall’s book.)

“They find reasons to get rid of these young men,” he said, and many then turn to substance abuse.

“It makes me incredibly sad to believe this is going on,” Torgensen said.

As for the men standing trial in Texas, Torgensen said he hopes they are convicted and that “they stay in a prison cell for a long time.” The comment drew thunderous applause from the audience.

“Something is wrong with a group of men who can’t wait until someone is 18″ to marry, he said, adding that the proper term for such abusers is “pedophiles.”

“We don’t owe them an apology for anything,” he said. “For that, I hope they get everything they’ve got coming to them.”