When Katie's first child reached school age, the family moved to the polygamous community here, but they have since split with the fundamentalist church, which they feel restricts their lives too greatly.

In 2005, the state attorneys-general of Utah and Arizona issued a primer on helping victims of domestic violence and child abuse in polygamous communities.

The Church has long been concerned about the continued illegal practice of polygamy, and, in particular, about reports of child and wife abuse emanating from polygamous communities today.

Most are Mormon fundamentalists, and most are outlaws: it is the largest polygamous community in the United States.

It was the nation's largest polygamous community, run by an offshoot of the Mormon Church that she described as a "dangerous and destructive cult" that oppressed its women and children.

These polygamous communities are against the law, but usually tolerated by officials who see a little bit of great-grandpa's pioneering ways in the modern sects.

As a result of their limited education and lifelong insulation from the world apart from their polygamous community, these "Lost Boys" were ill-equipped to manage life on the outside of the church .

Although the author's heavy-handed prose flattens it out as a work of fiction, this unsettling story of life inside a polygamous community on the Utah-Arizona border is still a shocker.

In polygamous communities there may be separate dwellings for different wives, and more again for sons who are too old to share space with the women of the family.

He directed the TV movie In God's Country, a 2007 fiction film detailing the escape of a woman from a Mormon polygamous community and her adaptation to life in mainstream Canadian society.