Who are Lost Boys?
Lost boys are boys and young men who are exiled from communities which practice polygamy. These are forced out of their communities due to concerns about a shortage of brides; in a community where people regularly take multiple wives, clearly a large number of women is needed to satisfy the need for brides. One way to ensure that there are enough women in the community to go around is to exile young men, typically using relatively mild infractions of community rules as an excuse for exile. The plight of lost boys was brought to the attention of the general public in 2005, when numerous boys exiled from the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (FLDS) were profiled in the media. Some of these boys had been exiled as young as 13, and many were simply told to leave, or dumped by the side of the road. Older men who had left the Mormon Church began to reach out to the lost boys, attempting to help them make their way in the world, and this attracted media attention. For
