One day they came both, Joseph and Bennett, on horseback to my house ... Bennett smiled and said: ‘Oh, a little job for Joseph; one of his women is in trouble.’ Saying this, he took the thing out of his left sleeve. It was a pretty long instrument of a kind I had never seen before. It seemed to be of steel and was crooked at one end. I heard afterwards that the operation had been performed; that the woman was very sick, and that Joseph was very much afraid that she might die, but she recovered. Bennett was the most intimate friend of Joseph for a time. He boarded with the prophet. He told me once that Joseph had been talking with him about his troubles with Emma, his wife. ‘He asked me,’ said Bennett smilingly, ‘what he should do to get out of the trouble.’ I said, ‘This is very simple. Get a revelation that polygamy is right, and all your troubles will be at an end.’ Sarah Pratt
He appeared first to these women, or at least to one of them – namely, Mary Magdalene. Now it would be natural for a husband in the resurrection to appear first to his own dear wives, and afterwards show himself to his other friends ... We have now clearly shown that God, the Father had a plurality of wives, one or more being in eternity, by whom He begat our spirits as well as the spirit of Jesus His First Born ... We have also proved most clearly that the Son followed the example of his Father, and became the great Bridegroom to whom kings’ daughters and many honorable Wives to be married. Orson Pratt, The Seer p159
Joseph Smith begins seriously to take plural wives ... Ten of them married to other men. Richard Bushman
Polygamy and Mormonism are inseparably entwined. One of the most offensive aspects of Mormon-based polygamy is the rampant practice of taking underage girls as polygamous wives ...
Smith married several underage girls himself. The most notorious example of this is in the case of Helen Mar Kimball. Young Helen married Smith in May, 1843. She was 14 years old; the same age as Elizabeth Smart was at the time of her abduction. Helen’s father, Heber Chase Kimball gave his daughter to Smith as a token of his unquestioning devotion. In return, Smith promised that this union would seal up the salvation of the Kimball family. Smith didn’t use a knife to coerce this young girl, he used the weapon he was most adept at using, psychological manipulation ...
The LDS Church finds itself in a serious dilemma by refusing to repudiate this doctrine, an act that would seriously undermine the alleged divine calling of their founder and expose him for the sexual predator he really was. But by allowing this doctrine to remain in canonized form within their holy scriptures, they are allowing a hideous practice to continue unchallenged. Extremely devout members find themselves very troubled when they study the practice of polygamy according to Joseph Smith, the founder of Mormonism, who was also the man who established the precedent for not only practising polygamy, but taking underage girls as polygamous wives. These devout members find themselves in serious trouble with the LDS Church hierarchy when they start looking into this doctrine. Expressing a belief in this doctrine is a sure-fire way to get oneself excommunicated ...
First, the leaders of the LDS Church need to repudiate this doctrine and permanently strike it from their canonized scripture. This will cast Joseph Smith in an unfavorable light, but this will be the honest thing to do ...
Mormon-based polygamy contains within it the insidious practice of taking underage girls as polygamous wives. If this isn’t child sexual abuse, what is? Troy, board post 3rd May 2003, ‘Daniel Peterson, Apologise This – Child Brides’
I have told you that the prophet Joseph used to frequent houses of ill-fame. Mrs White, a very pretty and attractive woman, once confessed to me that she made a business of it to be hospitable to the captains of the Mississippi steamboats. She told me that Joseph had made her acquaintance very soon after his arrival in Nauvoo, and that he had visited her dozens of times.
My husband (Apostle Orson Pratt) could not be induced to believe such things of his prophet. Seeing his obstinate incredulity, Mrs White proposed to Mr Pratt and myself to put us in a position where we could observe what was going on between herself and Joseph the prophet. We, however, declined this proposition.
Next door to my house was a house of bad reputation. One single woman lived there, not very attractive. She used to be visited by people from Carthage whenever they came to Nauvoo. Joseph used to come on horseback, ride up to the house and tie his horse to a tree, many of which stood before the house. Then he would enter the house of the woman from the back. I have seen him do this repeatedly.
Joseph Smith, the son of the prophet, and president of the re-organized Mormon Church, paid me a visit, and I had a long talk with him. I saw that he was not inclined to believe the truth about his father, so I said to him: ‘You pretend to have revelations from the Lord. Why don’t you ask the Lord to tell you what kind of a man your father really was?’ He answered: ‘If my father had so many connections with women, where is the progeny?’ I said to him: ‘Your father had mostly intercourse with married women, and as to single ones, Dr Bennett was always on hand, when anything happened.’ Jon Krakauer, Under the Banner of Heaven
All these blessings, together with all the blessings appertaining unto the New and Everlasting Covenant, I seal upon you by virtue of the Holy Priesthood, through your faithfulness, in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, Amen. Mormon Temple Endowment Ceremony
Salt Lake City, Utah – home base of the Mormon Church and of a breakaway cult, the FLDS. The FLDS split from the Mormon Church so it could continue to practice polygamy. I Escaped a Cult, 2012
Colorado City was founded so that cult members can practice polygamy unbothered by the outside world. ibid.
From the day she was born in 1969 Flora [Jessop] was destined for a life of total servitude ... at the bottom of an oppressive hierarchy. Escaping Evil II: My Life in a Cult CI 2013
This often pitted the wives against each other. ibid.
The Church community blamed her, and her father continued to abuse her. ibid.
Smith was a perfect libertine. Women got to running after him because they believed him to be a prophet. The whole church is a rotten concern.
A Professor of the Eclectic college of Cincinnati got to running around with Smith. His name was John C Bennet. They ran with other men’s wives so much that much trouble arose over it. Then Bennet got up this revelation on polygamy, which was a fraud, to cover their perfidy. He got out of Nauvoo before Smith’s assassination, but he and Smith had a ‘big time’ before that. Testimony of Benjamin Winchester 1900
The same God that has thus far dictated me and directed me and strengthened me in this work, gave me this revelation and commandment on celestial and plural marriage, and the same God commanded me to obey it. He said to me that unless I accepted it, and introduced it, and practiced it, I, together with my people would be damned and cut off from this time henceforth. We have got to observe it. It is an eternal principle and was given by way of commandment and not by way of instruction. Joseph Smith, Contributor vol 5 p259
[I]t is my will, that in time, ye should take unto you wives of the Lamanites and Nephites, that their posterity may become white, delightsome, and Just, for even now their females are more virtuous than the gentiles. W W Phelps, thirty-year-old recollection of Joseph’s revelation
[At age 12 in 1831] [Smith] told me about his great vision concerning me. He said I was the first woman God commanded him to take as a plural wife ... In 1834 he was commanded to take me for a Wife ... [In 1842 age 23] I went forward and was sealed to him. Brigham Young performed the sealing ... for time, and all Eternity. I did just as Joseph told me to do. Mary Elizabeth Rollins Lightner
Joseph Smith preached polygamy and he not only preached it, but he practiced it. I am a living witness to it. It was given to him before he gave it to the Church. An angel came to him and the last time he came with a drawn sword in his hand and told Joseph if he did not go into that principle, he would slay him. Mary Elizabeth Rollins Lightner, address Brigham Young University 14th April 1905
Just previous to my father’s starting up his last mission but one to the Eastern States, he taught me the principle of Celestial marriage, and having a great desire to be connected with the Prophet Joseph, he offered me to him; this I afterwards learned from the Prophet’s own mouth. My father had but one lamb, but willingly laid her upon the alter: how cruel this seemed to the mother whose heartstrings were already stretched until they were ready to snap asunder for he had taken Sarah Noon to wife and she thought she had made sufficient sacrifice but the Lord required more. I will pass over the temptations which I had during the twenty four hours after my father introduced to me the principle and asked me if I would be sealed to Joseph who came next morning and with my parents I heard him teach and explain the principle of Celestial marriage – after which he said to me, ‘If you will take this step, it will ensure your eternal salvation and exaltation and that … of your fathers household and all of your kindred.’ I willingly gave myself to purchase so glorious a reward. None but God and angels could see my mother’s bleeding heart, when Joseph asked her if she was willing, she replied, ‘If Helen is willing, I have nothing more to say.’ Helen Mar Kimball Whitney autobiography, viz Newell & Avery ‘Mormon Enigma – Emma Hale Smith’ p146
I would never have been sealed to Joseph had I known it was anything more than ceremony. I was young, and they deceived me, by saying the salvation of our whole family depended on it. Helen Mar Kimball Whitney, to friend, viz Wagoner ‘Mormon Polygamy: A History’ p53
Joseph was very free in his talk about his women. He told me one day of a certain girl and remarked, that she had given him more pleasure than any girl he had ever enjoyed. I told him it was horrible to talk like this. William Law, interview Salt Lake Tribune 31st July 1887
In May 1843, Joseph Smith took his tw bride, a fourteen-year-old girl named Helen Mar Kimball. At the time, Smith was thirty-seven and had been married for sixteen years to Emma (since January 1827). Unbeknownst to Emma, Smith had been busily wedding and bedding twenty-four other women, illegally, since 1833. Apparently, Heber and Vilate Kimball, Helen’s parents, were fully aware that Emma had no idea that he had begun this practice of polygamy. mrwright, board post 14th February 2006, ‘The Role of Women in Mormonism’