u/lingeringneutrophil

TW: child rape, forced marriage, rape

This documentary is about the Fundamentalist Church of the Letterday Saints which is a branch of the Mormon church that refused to renounce polygamy.

Essentially, a highly secluded sect where women have one job: serve their husband, raise their kids and keep quiet and cute. That’s it. A pregnancy vessel and a sexual slave.

They never use the term slave in the documentary, but my interpretation of the role of the women is that they are literally sexual slaves to the man they are forced to marry.

The documentary maps the history of the sect where an 86-year-old man gets to marry a 19-year-old as his 78th wife or whatever, and the legacy then continues.

It is stressed these women are brainwashed without proper education into serving their man without any thought for their own needs, aspirations or values. All they have to do is keep sweet a.k.a. serve the man.

If there are too many boys in the cult, they get pushed out and called the lost boys, so they don’t compete for the brides with other men.

Girls are forced to get married at 14 and have six children by the time they are 22 which is just inconceivable to me.

The more wives of men has, the better the social status. Girls are essentially exchanged between the men as cattle.

I am certain that there are plenty of men in the society who consider this the ideal scenario. Unlimited access to sex, no responsibility to parenthood as there is no evidence of the man actually raising any of the children they sire. They just keep marrying younger and younger women than themselves.

The women have absolutely no say in who they get to marry, and under what circumstances.

Those are not arranged marriages. Those are literally forced marriages in every sense of the word.

The men are entirely in control of everything, and they are absolutely in control of the lives of the women. The women have no say in anything at all, including whether - yet another - wife gets added to the family or not.

It is all about the usual: sex, power, control.

It doesn’t matter what kind of moniker we give to that arrangement, what kind of sect, what kind of church or what kind of religion, it ultimately comes down to the same thing every single time.

Only when the men start impregnating teenage brides which amounts to statutory rape, is there any kind of action taken by law enforcement. I would argue this is way too late, and the tolerance of the law enforcement and the wider society towards these people living like this for generations is problematic and questionable.

Surely the people in the area I knew what the hell is going on in this community.

The documentary is nowhere near as salacious or scandalous as I imagine they could have made it, but while they interview a few of the escapees and survivors of this, I am not sure they did a sufficient job stressing how abusive the environment was towards the women because the women themselves often did not even realize that.

I would also say that it is overly long and could have been half of the length. A lot of the stuff was a bit repetitive and you just see the women in little uniforms, each one with a bunch of kids doing pretty much the same thing with no one questioning this world order that serves only one group: The men in power.

Any Western European government would be very quick to outlaw such sect in my opinion. No way they would have tolerated this in Sweden or Italy. The tolerance of the US system towards this in the respective states is honestly what bothers me. I feel like all these young girls were ultimately failed by the system that enabled this to happen for generations. “It’s their world, leave them alone”.

Well, no if vulnerable and helpless children are getting raped.

The polygamists are nothing but opportunist taking advantage of a system that lets them do whatever the heck they want.

I refuse to believe that nobody could do anything about it, I just believe nobody cared enough about these girls to do anything.

Full disclosure: I like cycling and true crime, so I am the perfect target group for this.

Moriah Wilson is a beautiful, extremely talented cyclist who is up and coming in the cycling world.

Colin Strickland is also a cyclist in Texas who is neither one of those things (beautiful nor extremely talented) but he is reasonably successful in his own merit.

He is living with Kaitlin Armstrong, an on and off long term girlfriend he is not treating right, not quite committed to her but she’s in his house and running their business.

They break up and he gets involved with Moriah who also ended a long term relationship.

Then he gets back together with Kaitlin. Kaitlin blocks women in his phone, and calls Moriah that they are back together and she needs to step out of the picture.

You get where this is going.

It’s going exactly where you think it is.

The real heroes in the documentary are Moriah’s parents who lost a daughter any parent would be proud of, someone they clearly loved and cared for deeply. I just felt for them. Also, her brother was clearly devastated by losing his sister.

Colin did not care for anyone but himself; he did not care for Moriah nor Kaitlin. He did not murder Moriah but he had an obsessively jealous girlfriend he couldn’t get a clean break with and put other women he involved himself with into grave danger. I would argue - knowingly. She sent him videos threatening she will hurt women he involves himself with.

He is absolutely accountable for Moriah’s death. Not equally as pulling the trigger but his behavior and choices very much contributed to the outcome. Where is his integrity and honesty in all of this to EVERYONE involved!?

Kaitlin is a sociopathic narcissist or whatever, and her actions- leaving the country after she murdered another woman over a guy - are just pathetic.

Hearing that her screams as Moriah was being murdered were actually recorded was extremely difficult. Her last moments on this planet were absolutely horrific 😭😭

Her mother’s words to the murderer were crushing - “if you only just talked to her, she would have understood, instead you just murdered her”.

I actually absolutely believe that. If she had an honest conversation with her, I am sure the outcome could have been different.

The documentary is really well done, it’s beautifully made, and I highly recommend it.

But in the end, I feel deep grief for the loss of their daughter for Mariah‘s parents and deep disdain for Colin for creating this whole situation to begin with, and just disgust at Kaitlin for ruining so many lives over a guy who never really cared for her.

Girls, please; no guy is worth this! Like seriously, 😒 if you ever consider hurting a “rival woman”, you are with the wrong man!!!! Like this needs to stop being a thing culturally and socially or whatever this is rooted in.

Rest in peace, Moriah.

And her family has my deepest sympathy and respect.