Imagine living in a polygamist Mormon community run by a would-be messiah.
This so-called "spiritual" leader marries young girls off to older men, sometimes three-times the brides' age. He separates children from their parents at a whim. He also preaches to his followers: Do what you're told or you'll burn in hell.
It's an appalling scenario, the kind that no reasonable mind can imagine in modern-day North America.
Yet this is the setting from which three teenaged boys escape. Their journey for freedom is the heart of the new documentary, "Sons of Perdition."
This powerful drama from directors Tyler Measom and Jennilynn Merten kicked off 2010's new season of monthly screenings as part of Toronto's acclaimed Doc Soup series.
"Sons of Perdition" is so compelling, in fact, that it was purchased by Oprah Winfrey's production company. It will be screened in 2011 on her OWN network.
"This was a story we had to tell," Measom told CTV.ca, on a visit to Toronto this week.
"Jenny and I both quit the Mormon Church," he says.
Measom was 23 when he left his faith. Merten was 21.
Neither of them had belonged to the extreme kind of fundamentalists sects portrayed in the film. "But we saw a lot of ourselves in these boys and in their struggles in the outside world," he says. "That's why they trusted us. They knew that we understood where they were coming from."
This absorbing chronicle opens with nail-biting flurry.
Two young men arrive at a middle-class home. They make certain no one is around, enter the building and begin a terse conversation with a girl inside.
Suddenly a frenzy of items is hurled across the screen and into the boys' car. The panic-struck girl implores them to, "Go, go, go!"
As the film unfolds we learn that these young men are exiles from the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (FLDS), the polygamist sect and break-away Mormon splinter group led by convicted rape accomplice Warren Jeffs. (The mainstream LDS, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, officialy abandoned the practice of polygamy in 1890).
We also discover that the girl they were trying to help escape is the 14-year-old sister of one of the boys.
From that moment on Measom and Merten follow Joe, 17, Sam, 17, and Sam's cousin Bruce, who is 15.
Each of these "lost boys" has broken with the FLDS. For that sin they are cast out of "the Crick," their hometown of Colorado City, Arizona. They are also forbidden any access to their families or any support of any kind.
Tossed out into the real world, the boys struggle to build new lives 30 miles away in St. George, Utah.
"Finding these boys was very difficult," says Merten.
With the help of a social worker, the directors found these young American citizens who knew nothing about non-Mormon history, as is the case with FLDS members.
Remarkably, we see these boys struggle to remember who Bill Clinton and Adolf Hitler are as they commence their education in the outside world. They have no clue about world news, global economic meltdowns or fashion styles. They also have no viable skills.
To dull the pain, the boys begin to drink.
"I went through the drugs and drinking phase. But nothing like these boys do. It's anesthetizing. These kids miss their families. They're vulnerable. But there is more to it," says Measom.
"From the time these kids are born they're told they're going to fail in life if they don't do as the Church commands. They are told their souls will burn in hell if they go into the outside world," he explains.
"I'm a father," says Measom. "I don't understand how any ‘religion' could encourage members to do this to children."
FLDS supporters will find nothing to applaud here. But for everyone else "Sons of Perdition" shows the unpardonable damage any religion can do if it is run by fanatics.
"At the end of the day this film is about family," says Merten. "Blood should always be thicker than religious ties."
