After fleeing polygamist sect, boys face a new world

[n2doc]

BY JOHN M. GLIONNA


Zach Bowers' cultural education included a battle of wills over a simple task: how to mop the kitchen floor.

Just when the teenager thought he was done with the weekly chore, Debbie Hofhines would loom like a drill sergeant, demanding to know whether he'd used enough cleaner. In response, Zach grumbled, slammed drawers and disappeared with friends.

"At first, she was so aggressive she scared me," he said. "She'd say, 'I want this done and I want it done now.' I'd never seen anything like it. I was like, 'Whoa.'"

This was no typical parent-teen faceoff. Zach, who grew up in a polygamist compound, had always been taught that women served men. Debbie, 51, a veteran foster parent, was determined to show him housework was not just women's work.

"This is my house," he says Debbie told him. "And nobody tells me what to do here."

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http://www.latimes.com/news/columnone/la-na-utah-lost-boys-20130508-dto,0,4177150.htmlstory

[Throckmorton]

1. As a foster parent I can tell you,

It is not just the children growing up in polygamists sects that have this world-view. One of our foster children would routinely tell my wife, "when your old man gets home he is gonna beat your lazy ass", because she hadn't done some chore or other. Like I really cared, but it was just how she viewed the world.

She was all of 10, and her mother's boyfriend was an absolute abusive tyrant. The girl had been removed because mom had let the boyfriend move back into their apartment after he had broken her 12 year old sons arm a year earlier. Got out of jail, moved right in, violated his parole and her agreement with DFYS.

This poor child had zero self-worth, and feared me like no child I have ever cared for.