Stolen Innocence (51 page)

Kassandra said that no one suspected there was an ulterior motive behind his desire to hold me until my sister Michelle walked in on him and he dropped me to the floor. As she ran to pick me up, she discovered that I was without my panties and asked me where they were. Even though I was only two, I could speak well enough to answer her question, and told her that the young man had them. The horrible reality hit my sister when she found the panties in the driveway where the man’s car had been parked.

My parents were incensed and Dad immediately telephoned the prophet’s home to alert him to the man’s behavior and that he was intending to press formal charges. He was told that the priesthood would take care of it and was not to go to the authorities because it would cast a bad light on the people. Of course, we heard that the young man’s parents had been informed of the incident, but from all accounts nothing else was ever done.

Rage filled me as Kassandra described how Mom and Dad had assembled those who knew and instructed them never to speak of the incident unless I raised it first. Kassandra recalled that Mom felt that it was better to leave it unmentioned and hope that I was too young to remember it later. I telephoned my father, and I was outraged when he confirmed Kassandra’s story. I couldn’t believe that my family had kept the truth from me, but that was a typical response of FLDS families when unpleasant things occur. I grew even more furious when I learned that there had been other allegations of child sexual abuse and domestic violence lodged against this man later on in his life. Had someone done something to stop him back then, perhaps those other victims would have been spared.

Difficult as this new information was, it shed a new light on so much of my emotional past. Suddenly things that had never made sense to me began to gel in my mind, like why my attacker’s name was always spoken as if it were a curse word and why I’d always had a creepy uncomfortable feeling when I saw him around. I wasn’t sure how this knowledge would have changed my life, but I speculated about whether my severe reaction to Allen’s touch was the subconscious result of this early victimization. I couldn’t help but wonder what might have been different if Mom had only told me about this when I first asked her about man/woman relations in the early days of my marriage.

While this secret was psychologically burdensome, in the end it served to cement my dedication to eliminating the silence that surrounded the sexual practices of the FLDS. It was no mystery to members of the closed community that child abuse was rampant and often went unpunished. The way these crimes were being buried had to stop. I wanted to ensure that the children still living in that community would be safe. From the start, Sherrie and Ally were a major part of this larger purpose behind my agreeing to testify, and now they became even more crucial.

Every night I would pin up an old photograph of my little sisters next to whichever new bed I found myself in to remind myself that I was doing this for a good reason. In the photo, their dresses are bland and floral-patterned, their hair coiffed expertly as good little priesthood girls, but their smiles are radiant—one thing each of them could own. Waking up each morning, I looked at that picture and saw what I was fighting for. People, girls, were still being put in my position, and I needed to stand up and make it right. To fight for those who still hadn’t found their voice. I brought that photograph with me everywhere, knowing that a little piece of Ally and Sherrie would be right in my hands whenever I needed to remember. Those girls were my purpose. I knew I had the strength; I just had to remember it as I moved forward.

T
he sight of reporters and satellite trucks lining the street in front of St. George’s Fifth Judicial District Courthouse on the morning of the preliminary hearing unnerved me, and I was glad that Brock Belnap and Jerry Jaeger had arranged for us to enter the building through a rear door. The case against Warren was creating quite a buzz in Utah, and the story was all over the news. Television reports were calling this the biggest criminal case in Utah’s legal history, and somehow I was caught in the center of it. I was terrified of having my picture taken and plastered across the newspapers, but prosecutors assured me that as a victim of sexual abuse I would have my public identity protected.

It was such a relief to have the support of Teressa and Kassandra, who were also testifying for the prosecution that day. In the summer weeks before Warren was captured, I’d asked my sisters for their permission to allow investigators from the Washington County Attorneys Office to contact them. I was grateful when they’d both agreed to speak out.

Teressa had left the FLDS just a few months earlier and was living with her children at Kassandra and Ryan’s house in northern Idaho. Like so many women, she’d grown weary of Warren’s ongoing involvement in her marriage. Her troubles began when she’d returned to Canada after a visit with Kassandra to find that Warren was upset because she’d missed three church services in a row. He told her she’d “lost her testimony” and was not “worthy enough to be a wife.” He even banned her from engaging in sexual relations with her husband until she agreed to write a letter pledging her allegiance to him. When she refused, members of the community shunned her. The impact of their scorn played out one afternoon when Teressa’s daughter cut herself severely and my sister didn’t have a phone to call for help. Grabbing her bleeding child, she raced to a neighbor, and the family refused to let her in.

Her husband begged her to just write the letter so they could go back to living as husband and wife, and Teressa finally relented. But the letter wasn’t satisfactory to Warren—he wanted another in which she pledged her undying allegiance to him. This seemed to be Warren’s way of getting back at her for her past disobedience, and showing her the amount of control he had. Her seemed to take pleasure in making her life harder. But Teressa couldn’t bring herself to pledge her allegiance to Warren and chose to take her children and leave her husband and the religion instead. She’d been living with Kassandra in Idaho ever since.

Holding my breath, I marched through the back door of the courthouse and followed prosecutors to the courtroom where the hearing would soon begin. My husband, sisters, and I were directed to take seats in the jury box. Court officials were expecting a full house, and with only three rows of seats for spectators, admission was going to be on a first-come, first-served basis. It was a simple-enough setup, with rows of folding chairs for all the onlookers and fluorescent lights flickering overheard. It didn’t look at all like TV courtrooms with shiny mahogany and large windows that let in the sun. As the room began to fill up, the sight of all the reporters scribbling on notepads in the two front rows unnerved me, but I tried to take comfort in having Lamont and my sisters by my side.

Everyone rose as the Honorable Judge James L. Shumate entered and took his place at the elevated wood desk in the front of the courtroom. Peering out at me through rimless eyeglasses, he acknowledged my presence with a nod. His kind, round face was partially covered with a light, mostly gray beard. I’d been told that he had a reputation for being fair and reasonable.

Two court officers suddenly entered the room through a side door, and my heart nearly jumped into my throat. The keys on their belts clanged a metallic rhythm as they led Warren into the courtroom. He looked gaunt. His funeral-black suit hung loosely on his frame, emphasizing his pale complexion.

I watched the man I’d once regarded as God’s mouthpiece on earth walk to the defense table, where three lawyers, two male and one female, sat waiting for him. Everything came crashing in on me at once, and I started to panic. I felt dizzy and wobbly, but I couldn’t look away. Warren was staring directly at us, and I was resolved to return his gaze. “I have to do this,” I told myself, settling back into the cushioned seat.

I was glad that Kassandra and Teressa would testify before me. I had no idea what to expect and I hoped that watching my older sisters handle the lawyers’ questions would empower me. They had been instructed to leave the courtroom before and after their testimonies as the court enforced the exclusionary rule, and aside from Kassandra’s husband, Ryan, I had no family inside from whom to draw strength.

Kassandra was the first witness called, and she remained poised as she walked to the witness box, wearing a tailored black pants suit with a red camisole peeking out from beneath her jacket. Remembering Rulon and Warren’s ban on the color red, she’d chosen a red garment as an act of defiance. While he remained stone-faced as she settled into the wood armchair, I was certain her rebellious gesture was not lost on Warren.

Brock Belnap smiled at me from the prosecutor’s table. He’d come to court that day with assistant district attorney Ryan Shaum, who, Brock had explained, was more experienced in this criminal courtroom setting.

“What type of relationships did Mr. Jeffs teach the girls they could have with a young man as they were growing up and going into their teenage years?” the diminutive Shaum asked my sister.

Kassandra paused, a delicious grin parting her thin red lips. “He would use a phrase,” she explained. “For the boys to treat the girls like snakes and the girls likewise…. You got in a lot of trouble if the boys started to talk to a girl in high school or in any of the grades, because they felt like that, you know, that was improper in their society.”

“Did Warren teach or discuss with the girls whether or not they could date at any point in time?”

“He discussed it. And it was absolutely not,” Kassandra said.

“What did he say about it?”

“That the reason they did not date was because God would talk to the prophet and tell the prophet who that girl belonged to…. He said, if any girl did get involved with a boy, that they were clouding that revelation to the prophet, that God would not, because they had sinned by that, that God would not reveal to the prophet who they belonged to.”

“Did you ever have an opportunity to talk to Mr. Jeffs about what Allen was doing and the way he was treating Elissa sexually?” Ryan Shaum asked Kassandra. I leaned in to hear her response. I’d never heard the details of this conversation that my sister had with Warren.

“One time, he had called me into his office—”

“Can we have foundation?” the lawyer Wally Bugden called out from the defense table. Warren sat beside him, unfazed and looking directly at my sister.

“When was this meeting?” Shaum asked to establish a time frame for the court. Kassandra told the court the conversation with Warren had occurred during the summer of 2002.

“Okay, and what caused you to go to Warren at that time, do you recall?”

“I had got in a lot of trouble because we, Rulon’s wives, had been told to cut off all ties and communications with anyone outside his family, to cut off all ties with our parents, our mother. And I spent a lot of time with Mom and my sisters. And I was told, he particularly called me into his office to tell me that I was being rebellious and I was not being submissive to my husband.

“And he reprimanded me quite sharply. And then he told me that I was being a bad example for my sister and I needed to straighten up so that she would see what a good wife does and is submissive. And he said you cannot blame a man for finding out about himself, his life. And they need to work things out between themselves. She doesn’t need to be talking to you about intimate matters, and to keep sacred things sacred. And that was between her and her husband. And if she was even to mention something to me, to say, no, you need to go to talk to Allen about this.”

There it was, plain as day. As far as I was concerned, Warren knew full well what was happening in the bedroom with Allen and me. When the questioning was turned over to the defense, I was amazed at how well my big sister was able to hold her own. She went toe to toe with the defense attorney, who at one point grew visibly annoyed at his inability to corner her and accused her of being a “hostile witness.”

“First of all, I am not a hostile witness,” Kassandra snapped back.

He went after her a second time, portraying her as negligent for failing to go to authorities when I was first placed for marriage to Allen.

“Now, you didn’t contact the Washington County Sheriff’s Office when Elissa was getting into a marriage that you believed that she didn’t want to get into?”

“No, I didn’t.”

“But you did contact the police in the summer of 2005; is that right?”

“That is correct,” my sister replied.

“And you told police at that time that you believed that there might be a sexual-abuse case involving your sister Elissa; is that right?”

“May I define the difference? When my sister was married, I was married to Rulon.”

Her retort could not have been better scripted, and Bugden snarled in futility. When it was Teressa’s turn, she smiled back at me as she strode to the witness stand, her long blond curls falling just past her shoulders. I remained alert, studying how she responded to the questions. After establishing my sister’s particulars, Shaum asked what Warren taught about our role as women of the FLDS.

“What did he say was your role as a woman, particularly related to your husband or your future husband?”

Teressa hesitated. “That he was basically God to us and your husband is your way to heaven. You were to do what he tells you. He’s your priesthood head.”

When the prosecutor asked her about my state of mind during my marriage to Allen, she told the truth. “There was never a time she was ever happy about the marriage, ever.”

Like Kassandra, Teressa stayed composed during the defense attorney’s cross-examination. But Wally Bugden only asked her six questions.

“State calls Elissa Wall, Your Honor.” Brock Belnap’s soft voice summoning me to the front of the courtroom elicited an intense fear in me that only grew worse as I stumbled down the steps of the jury box. Not only was I extremely nervous, I was also unsteady on my feet as a result of the extra weight I was carrying with my pregnancy. Over the months, I’d grown to trust Brock, and in the days before the hearing, I confided that I would prefer that he conduct my questioning. While I’d come to know Ryan as a thoughtful, polished lawyer, I felt more comfortable with Brock.