Triumph: Life After the Cult--A Survivor's Lessons

  Dan said that by his estimates one thousand children have gone through the catastrophic trauma he has had to grapple with as an adult:

  Imagine the horror and terror that must occur in their tender minds when they wake up one day to the realization that their father is no longer their father; that they will not be hugging him, talking to him, or even interacting with him ever again. And, then imagine what must be going through their young minds as they discover their mother is married within days to another man who is then kissing and making babies with her. Imagine the scarring that will continue in that young mind for a lifetime.

  Dan’s father was an old man when his family was shattered. As he advanced in years, he didn’t drive anywhere without one of his older children accompanying him because he would sometimes fall asleep at the wheel. But after Jeffs decreed that he was no longer their father, his children cut him off and refused to speak to him or see him. Dan remained in touch, even though he had left the FLDS and he and his father were not particularly close.

  One day Dan’s father stopped by the house he had built and lived in for thirty years and asked one of his sons to accompany him in the car. His son refused and made it clear he no longer considered himself his father’s child. That afternoon, on the road between the towns of Hurricane and St. George, Utah, Dan’s father’s car plunged into a deep ravine. There were no skid marks. Dan said he does not know if his father fell asleep at the wheel or if he committed suicide. But he has no doubt that in either case, Warren Jeffs is to blame for the misery of his father’s last three years and the circumstances of his death.

  It was a heartbreaking tale but one the senators needed to hear to fully grasp the evil that consumed the FLDS once Warren Jeffs solidified his power.

  Dan’s riveting testimony was a tough act to follow, but I was determined to bring my best to this once-in-a-lifetime moment. I wasn’t nervous about being the last to testify; what bothered me most, I think, was knowing that what I was about to say would be the launching pad for more FLDS attacks on me personally, on my public credibility, and on my children. The FLDS members sitting in the room were monitoring my every word.

  “My name is Carolyn Jessop,” I said. “It is both a privilege and honor to be here today.” I then spoke for almost nine minutes about my firsthand knowledge of FLDS crimes. I explained how in our FLDS community, the mayor, many city officials, the chief of police, and every police officer were all FLDS members handpicked by church leaders. “If a woman who was beaten by her husband called the police,” I testified, “she was typically told by the police officer that she was married to a good man and if she were obedient, there would not be any problems. The police would not interfere with their religious teaching that gave a man the right to discipline his household.” This meant, of course, that a woman seeking refuge from an abusive situation had nowhere to turn.

  I told the committee members how women drove unlicensed, unregistered, and uninsured cars. This meant that the minute we left the community, we were stopped by police. I was never once stopped for this infraction while I was driving around town.

  I spoke about child labor abuse and how my son Arthur, like so many other FLDS boys, was pulled out of school at twelve and forced to work, for no pay, on construction jobs from dawn to dusk. I testified:

  I did not know of a safe place where I could go to report this child labor abuse … I feared if I went outside the community to Child Protective Services, I would be held accountable because I was his mother. I lived with the fear that my children would be taken from me. This fear was based on reality: I saw women who disobeyed the wishes of the prophet or their husband removed from their homes and their children.

  I underscored Dan Fischer’s testimony about educational abuse in the FLDS with my personal experience with my children. At the time we fled, they had been out of public schools for five years and were being taught in FLDS schools. When I enrolled them in regular public school, they were so far behind, we could not even establish their grade levels.

  In the FLDS-run schools my children attended, listening to tapes of Warren Jeffs was part of the curriculum. Children were indoctrinated with statements like these: “If a man is instructed by the FLDS prophet to take the life of another human being he should do so in humility.” Jeffs also told children that no one with a drop of Jewish blood would ever enter the kingdom of God.

  I also testified about the practice of underage marriages. With Warren Jeffs in charge, the marital age dropped to fourteen. I said:

  While not all men in the FLDS have plural marriages and engage in sex with underage girls, it’s considered socially acceptable and religiously desirable behavior, especially under the leadership of Warren Jeffs.

  After I escaped from the FLDS, Merril married a sixteen-year-old in Canada, brought her to the United States, and introduced her to my children at lunch as their new mom. Around the same time he married another sixteen-year-old in Utah and moved her into his home in Colorado City. Within months he moved them both to Texas. Legally, this is considered trafficking in minors for sexual abuse.

  The dire need for housing for women fleeing polygamy was another issue I was able to tackle head-on. It took two and a half years for me to receive any housing assistance. I had too many children to qualify for low-income housing and spent a month with my family in a homeless shelter. I told the senators that at one point, according to a social worker I spoke to, a woman who was fleeing from a Communist country with her children got more help than I did fleeing from the FLDS.

  In conclusion I said:

  I never knew what it meant to feel safe until I was thirty-five years old and we went into hiding on the third day of freedom after our escape. It took me a year before I could think of myself as a person and not an object.

  I told the committee specifically what could be done to improve life in the FLDS. There needed to be federal oversight in closed FLDS communities so that if anyone wanted to leave, she would know how to find a safe haven. Educational abuse had to be immediately addressed. In my final remarks I told the senators:

  I stand here today to ask the U.S. government, my government, to show up for children the same as it does with respect to all other citizens, in the form of registrars, census takers, AFDC administrators, social workers, police who enforce law not religion, education administrators, tax collectors and auditors, OSHA and labor regulators, and others whose role is to enforce the law and protect American citizens.

  This would not be religious persecution, just equal protection and equal enforcement of the law.

  The room was quiet. I exhaled, mentally and emotionally. I felt relieved.

  After I finished, Senator Whitehouse (D-R.I.) thanked all three of us who made up the second panel of witnesses. He praised Stephen Singular for his persistence in investigating the crimes of the FLDS, and he thanked Dan for surviving those crimes and then going on to be a force for good in trying to help hundreds of “lost boys.”

  Senator Whitehouse said I was “most astonishing” because “at such a young age with so many children dependent on you and so little support behind you with a completely unknown future in front of you, nevertheless, you took the courageous step of stepping into an unknown and away from everything that you knew in pursuit of the freedom you knew you and they deserved. It’s a very impressive story.”

  Senator Ben Cardin (D-Md.), who co-chairs a government commission on human rights, said he was shocked by my testimony. “What is happening here is as bad as anything I’ve seen in the world: children and families who have been denied basic human rights because of the activities of those involved in these polygamous colonies. It is difficult to understand how this can occur in the United States.”

  When the hearing ended, the FLDS made a mad dash for reporters in the hallway. They reiterated their claim of religious persecution and that they should have been represented at the hearing. In their view, any abuse that might have occurred within the FLDS was an isolated event.

/>   A staffer for Senator Reid offered to take us through another door so we did not have to engage with the FLDS. Dan and I followed him to Senator Reid’s office, where we had been invited to a private meeting along with the other members of our panel. Senator Reid was waiting there to greet us.

  When it was my turn, I handed him a copy of Escape. He thanked me but said he’d read it already. I smiled and said, “But now you have a signed copy.”

  Senator Reid asked me a few questions and then talked about my handicapped son, Harrison. He said it takes a special person to care for a handicapped child and maybe that was why I carried such beauty in my eyes.

  Senator Reid told us that nothing could really happen until after the presidential election in November. But once Congress resumed after the inauguration, the federal government would act. He again drew a comparison between the FLDS and organized crime. He felt that it was scandalous that it had been allowed to flourish for far too long.

  At that point Senator Reid led us into his inner office and gave us all signed copies of his autobiography. We looked at the breathtaking view of the city from his veranda.

  Dan and I headed to the airport together. He shared my optimism about the future. But we were both realists and knew how easily our hopes could be dashed. We also knew that the FLDS would strike back with a vengeance. We did not know how or when, but we didn’t doubt that it would happen.

  Indictments and Backlash

  Our testimony in Washington was only one aspect of an extraordinary week of FLDS-related news. On July 22, 2008, the first indictments were handed down in Texas. Among those indicted was Warren Jeffs, who’d already been convicted in Utah for being an accomplice to rape and for arranging the marriage of a fourteen-year-old girl to her first cousin.

  This news helped temper my ongoing distress about what had happened to the children as a result of the Supreme Court ruling. Perhaps the raid had not been in vain after all. Afterward Texas pursued the FLDS on two fronts, civil and criminal. The custody issue involving the children was a civil matter, and it ended tragically. But the criminal investigation resulted in serious charges of child sexual abuse. Based on evidence obtained in the raid, Jeffs and four other men were charged with first-degree felony child sexual assault—the charge in Texas for engaging in sex with a minor. Another man was also charged with bigamy; the last man was charged with three counts of failing to report child abuse, which is a misdemeanor. (That case ended up being transferred from state court to county court.)

  My ex-husband, Merril Jessop, was charged with performing an unlawful marriage of a minor (the marriage of his own twelve-year-old daughter to Warren Jeffs). Merril will be the last of the men to stand trial late in 2010. Also named in the arrest warrants were my stepsons Raymond Merril Jessop and Leroy Jessop. The first of the men to go to trial, Raymond, was convicted in November 2009 on charges of sexually assaulting a sixteen-year-old girl in 2004. On November 10, 2009, he was sentenced to ten years in prison and fined $8,000.

  The news that Warren Jeffs would stand trial again came as an enormous relief for me and others who’ve fled the FLDS. Our hope is that if he’s out of power for several years, the FLDS will be unable to continue hurting people. In fact, these trials may well weaken the FLDS to the point where the women and children who have suffered so long may finally get a chance at normal lives.

  One of the most shocking indictments to me was that of Dr. Lloyd Barlow. We had been in school together. He was a few years younger, and I remember him as smart, well mannered, and kind. He became a family practitioner. Everybody in the community loved Dr. Barlow. The indictment charged him with three misdemeanor counts of failure to report child abuse. His case will be prosecuted at the county, rather than the state level.

  Since the FLDS had its own doctor, a great deal of abuse could have been hidden on the compound. If an FLDS doctor delivered babies of underage girls, set broken bones, and treated other injuries, no suspicions would be raised or questions asked. The fact that the children were rarely seen outside the compound also made it easier for the FLDS to get away with these abuses. Indeed, an aspect of the raid that was mind-boggling to local residents was the revelation that there were hundreds of children on the ranch at all. They had never been seen in town. Why? It’s hard, even for me, to imagine the reason they were kept so isolated.

  Dan and I were prepared for the FLDS to lash out against us after our Senate testimony, but we didn’t know how fast or furious it would be. Within days of returning home, Dan was slammed in The Salt Lake Tribune, accused of beating his wives and abusing his children. The ugly smear tactics were submitted as affidavits to the Senate Judiciary Committee and posted online at an FLDS website and blog sites. The FLDS may have been prevented from testifying in the Senate, but it tried to discredit the hearing’s star witness nonetheless.

  Most of the national media did not pick up the story, but it got big play in Salt Lake City on August 1. Dan was hosting a meeting at Ultradent with about one hundred dentists attending. The timing hardly seemed coincidental. The charges against him were made by family, or former family members, all of whom were still in the FLDS. The sworn statements were made by an ex-wife, three siblings, and three of his children. Others who said they knew Fischer’s family filed affidavits as well.

  Most people only read about the charges in the affidavits. But a close reading of them raises even more questions—about the FLDS. For example, Alvin Fischer, Dan’s brother, described a situation he witnessed:

  On one such instance, I watched [Dan’s] young son about three years old go behind a bush and use the bathroom. Dan immediately came storming out of his house and began kicking him. He would kick him so hard the child would go up in the air four or five feet. This he repeatedly did up to eight times.

  If the beating was as brutal as Alvin claims, why didn’t he intervene or call the police? The child could have been killed.

  Alvin also accused Dan’s wife Leenie of giving Alvin’s one-year-old daughter alcohol at a party to make her drunk and then laughing while she made a mess of a chocolate cake. Really? Where were her parents? Why didn’t Alvin call the police? Again, the claims Alvin made to discredit Dan’s credibility discredited his, too.

  The worst accusation was that Dan and Jean, one of his wives, had tortured their seventeen-year-old daughter. Dan’s niece, Carla Black Jessop, said in her affidavit:

  I remember the incident of Melinda being whipped for talking on the phone with a boy. The whipping went on for at least three or four hours late into the night. I was in the room across from Dan’s bedroom with a couple of his other daughters. Dan and Jean were calling Melinda a whore and a slut and screaming at her. Dan also said that if she wanted [to get] F’d he could get a couple of men in there.

  Dan responded to the charges in a measured way. He was quoted in the article as saying:

  We did have spankings on the bottom, we did believe in that, as did most of the FLDS and as many non-FLDS did twenty years ago. I will tell you that I would not punish the same way today. I am not a perfect person nor have I been in the past. I hope I am a better person now [but there is] nothing of the magnitude they are claiming.

  I could relate to how Dan felt having his daughter accuse him of vicious abuse. My daughter Betty has attacked me since she returned to the FLDS, and it’s painful. Even when you know you’ve done what you believe is best for them, a piece of you always wonders if you might have tried something else to prevent the estrangement.

  For those of us familiar with the viciousness of the FLDS, this attack was entirely predictable. But it was still upsetting. Dan’s wife, Leenie, called me, and we talked about it for more than an hour. She said that one of the worst things about the FLDS is that they not only injure people but also make sure they’re never allowed to heal.

  One reason the anti-Dan affidavits came from faithful FLDS members was that when non-FLDS were approached and asked to lie about Dan, they refused. Dan’s first wife, Jean, was approached
by one of her brothers, who insisted that she file an affidavit against Dan. Even though her marriage with Dan was rocky and eventually ended, she was furious that she was asked to lie and refused.

  In a way, it was easier for the FLDS to attack Dan than me. It’s one thing to take on a millionaire businessman. It’s another to attack a single mom with eight kids, one of whom is severely handicapped. Since many in my family had left the FLDS, in order to attack me, the FLDS needed my non-FLDS family members to lie about me. If I was attacked the same way Dan was, with just FLDS faithful, the public might become suspicious of that pattern.

  From the time Escape was published in October 2007, the FLDS smeared my character. It sent out a religious edict that no faithful member should read my book because it was all lies. It characterized me as a vindictive woman who wanted to spread evil accusations. For the most part, however, the attacks seemed aimed at discrediting me within the cult. It was rare for an FLDS woman to escape with all her children, and I was the first ever to win full custody. But the fact that I was married to Merril Jessop, one of the most powerful men in the FLDS, was enormous. No wife had ever fled from such a prominent FLDS leader.

  After the raid on the YFZ Ranch, Escape shot back onto The New York Times best-seller list for ten weeks and was widely circulated in Texas. Then a smear campaign against me flourished online, whose main line of attack was that I was only interested in making money.