COLORADO CITY (AZ)
Los Angeles Times
By David Kelly and Gary Cohn, Times Staff Writers
May 12, 2006
COLORADO CITY, Ariz. — In a place where outside authorities ignored sexual abuse and local police acted as church enforcers, a girl couldn't even count on her parents for help.
Sara Hammon said she made that discovery early.
Her father, the late J.M. Hammon, was a respected church figure in a community dominated by his religious sect. He was a contender for prophet, the highest post in the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. He was also a child molester.
Hammon said her father began abusing her when she was about 5. This was the same father who would deliver stern Sunday sermons on purity, propriety and, above all, unquestioning obedience of wives to husbands, children to parents and everyone to the prophet.