SALT LAKE CITY (AP) — Ron Barton, Utah’s first “polygamy czar,” is after polygamists who take adolescent brides or cheat the welfare system, and he has spent the past 2 1/2 years cultivating sources in their insular world.

It hasn’t been easy. He is the state’s only polygamy investigator, and there are about 30,000 Utah residents living in polygamous families.

In two years, he’s prosecuted two polygamists. “It might not look like a lot,” said Barton, who has worked out of the Utah Attorney General’s Office since October 2000. “We’ve had a slow start, but we’re moving in the right direction at an increasingly faster pace.”

Last year, high-profile polygamist Tom Green was sentenced to 5 years to life for bigamy and child rape of his then-13-year-old bride. Another polygamist, Rodney Holm, faces an August trial on charges of unlawful sex with a 16-year-old girl he married when he was 32. Charges against one of Holm’s wives were dropped when the complainant refused to cooperate with prosecutors.

Prosecutors also are focusing on tax fraud and abuses of the state’s welfare system. Barton said some polygamists avoid income taxes by paying each other wages under the table. And some sister-wives drain state coffers by applying for welfare or food stamps as single mothers, he said.

Prosecuting cases in polygamous communities such as Hildale, on the Utah-Arizona border, is challenging because residents shun authorities. But Barton’s sources — some of them former polygamists — are starting to pay dividends.

Barton credits the Elizabeth Smart kidnapping with opening some people’s eyes to the issue.

“Elizabeth Smart was taken as a wife against her will at age 15 and probably sexually assaulted. And the same thing happens every week to Utah girls in polygamist communities,” he said. “They are just as much victims as Elizabeth Smart is.”

The Attorney General’s Office has neither the resources nor the desire to investigate bigamous relationships between consenting adults. Instead, its top polygamy priority has been prosecuting crimes against children.

Deputy Attorney General Kirk Torgensen said, “We’ve told these polygamist leaders over and over that if you don’t want trouble with the state of Utah, leave the young girls alone.”

This story appeared in The Daily Herald on page A2.

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