Arizona's constitution prohibits polygamy: Why it still happens

Polygamy is outlawed in the state constitution, but there are still likely hundreds of Arizonans who engage in plural marriages.

Why it matters: Some religions — namely, the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (FLDS) — view plural marriage as a tenet of their faith, but several polygamist leaders have used the practice to force underage girls into marriage and commit other abuses.

Driving the news: Samuel Bateman, the leader of an Arizona polygamous offshoot of the FLDS, was sentenced to 50 years in prison last week for arranging sexual encounters with girls as young as 9 years old and for scheming to kidnap them from protective custody.

• Bateman claimed to have 20 spiritual "wives."

The intrigue: Bateman and other polygamists who ended up in prison were convicted of child abuse, sexual assault or financial crimes — not polygamy.

The big picture: The state constitution says: "Polygamous or plural marriages, or polygamous cohabitation, are forever prohibited within this state."

Yes, but: The Legislature never passed a statute specifying the penalties for violating the constitution's ban, so it's unenforceable, former Arizona Attorney General Terry Goddard told Axios.

Between the lines: Arizona has a bigamy statute prohibiting someone from entering into a legal marriage with more than one person at once. However, many polygamous marriages are only "spiritual" and not recorded with the government.

• In 2004, Goddard secured a child bigamy law that makes it a felony for someone 18 or older who has a spouse to enter into any kind of marriage — legal, spiritual or otherwise — with a minor.
• The 2004 law also enacted penalties against people who arrange for a child to marry someone who already has a spouse.

Flashback: Until the early 2000s, Colorado City — a small town on the Utah border with a long history of polygamy — was mostly ignored by the state following a failed raid of the community in 1953.

• Many, including Goddard, believe the isolation allowed child and sexual abuse to run rampant in the early 2000s under Warren Jeffs, the now-imprisoned FLDS prophet.

Zoom in: Goddard, who was AG from 2003 to 2011, worked with his counterpart in Utah to try to build trust with FLDS people and crack down on child marriages.

• Goddard told Axios he didn't ask the state Legislature to enact the full polygamy ban from the constitution because he wasn't sure it would hold up under the First Amendment's religious protections.
• Instead, his team focused on what he saw as "the most egregious" crimes in Colorado City.
• Several Colorado City police officers were decertified for violating the state bigamy law. The state placed the town's school district in receivership after an audit found inappropriate spending. And eventually, Jeffs was sentenced to life in prison for sexually assaulting girls and several of his followers faced welfare fraud and money laundering charges.

The bottom line: Goddard said that to build victim cooperation, the government had to communicate: "We're not here to persecute you for your beliefs or even actions as adults, we're here to stop abuse of women and children."

What we're watching: Child marriages and sexual abuse did not stop after Jeffs' prosecution. People like Bateman have continued the practice in Arizona and across the U.S.