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Prisoner of the Prophet (2023) Season 1 Episode 1 - The 65th Wife
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00:00a polygamous sect of 8,000 people are still living a secret life church members in their
00:16signature clothing rarely engage with outsiders this cult that I was raised in there's mental
00:22illness domestic violence isolation they call themselves fundamentalist Mormons and they live
00:29in the largest polygamous community in the United States I would put the FLDS at the extreme end of
00:36the continuum of cults fortress like walls surrounding homes and businesses Colorado City
00:41is not welcoming I felt like there's a gun to my head it's not a choice you do it or else we
00:52believed we were doing something good but it just did not turn out that way the difference
00:59between a mainstream church and a cult is the all-powerful leader good morning everyone
01:07Warren Jeffs is their leader everything he does and everything he says is a direct line from God
01:14he's the prophet and then there's his spiritual wives or plural wives he was singling me out from a
01:22young age I was 18 years old I'm in the room with this man who's 50 years old and he said
01:30do you want to come sit on my lap I was Warren Jeff's 65th wife
01:37you have to be converted to think of God and your husband in every thought desire work action the
01:49church became a church run by and controlled by a madman close to Heavenly Father while you're young
01:57the charges started with the abuse of young children Jeff's is wanted on charges of sexual
02:06conduct with a minor he goes on the run he is the fugitive leader of a polygamist church but he
02:12keeps running the FLDS I started to realize I'm not safe because I knew too much he knew these women
02:21and girls could tell law enforcement what was going on that Warren had set up the compounds to hide people
02:30from the law I'm locked up in a compound in South Dakota because Warren Jeff feared that if I escaped I would tell
02:39people what I know he's still the prophet he has all these loyal followers we couldn't get a willing victim to
02:46come forward now a 25 year old woman has apparently escaped Arizona authorities say she was one of Warren Jeff's 87 wives
02:57I knew the rabbit hole went really deep I just didn't realize how much darker it can keep going it all just
03:05went off the rails Warren Jeff's is still in control to this day and he is still dangerous
03:15you
03:24you
03:36I didn't want to tell my story, especially when I first escaped.
04:06I've never told my full story. I had so much trauma. I was stripped of everything inside the FLDS.
04:32Long hair was supposed to be a sacred symbol for girls in the FLDS.
04:36When I was younger, I had hair clear down past my knees.
04:40And so I can braid French braids and stuff really easy.
04:45I don't do it like I used to because I don't have long hair like I used to.
04:49And I also don't like looking like my past. It's hard.
05:02The church calls you an apostate if you leave them.
05:05Because you should know better than to leave the God that you were raised with,
05:09because you were taught your whole life about Him.
05:12And to leave Him is like saying that you know better.
05:18I was born into the FLDS religion. I'm proud to be an apostate of FLDS.
05:38So the FLDS stands for Fundamentalist Latter Day Saints.
05:45Latter Day Saints is mainstream Mormon.
05:49So they're very different than FLDS.
05:53FLDS believe in polygamy. That's the main difference between them.
05:57In the church, you had to have three wives to make it into the highest kingdom of heaven where God is.
06:12So if you don't make it into that kingdom, then you'll never see God again.
06:16So you have to have at least three wives.
06:18Joseph Smith founded the Mormon church pretty much from the beginning.
06:30The Mormons practiced polygamy until the point at which Utah,
06:36where huge numbers of them had settled, wanted to become a state.
06:40And in order to become a state, they were told by the government
06:43that they had to give up the practice of polygamy.
06:47So they're just split right there.
06:49The Latter Day Saints went to one leader,
06:51and the ones that wanted to live polygamy went to another location.
07:08The church had believed in new revelations,
07:10and the prophet was the only one who could update the revelation.
07:14They believed they could hear God.
07:17In all of Mormonism, going back, clear back to its first roots with Joseph Smith,
07:34the leader of the church is believed to be a prophet of God.
07:38The prophet would update his new revelations every once in a while,
07:42and one of them was, you can't watch movies, you know.
07:44And then later it was, you can't wear red, you couldn't wear any jewelry.
07:47Your dresses had to be a certain length, and they changed that a few times.
07:50It got longer and longer.
07:52We had to follow all the rules, follow all the commandments.
07:57They can only be a prophet if the old one dies.
08:01There will be a new prophet, those prophets write new rules.
08:04Leroy Johnson was the prophet when I was born, but he died within like a year.
08:09Rulon Jeffs was the next prophet that my parents followed.
08:14And Warren was Rulon Jeffs' son.
08:19The mythology around Warren is that, you know, he was a sick child,
08:23that the family had to take great care for him,
08:26and that kind of through the family and God's grace, he survived and thrived.
08:34So Warren grew up in Salt Lake City and the surrounding area.
08:39He was smart. He helped with computers.
08:43He helped run some of the FLDS businesses.
08:47And, of course, he was also in his father's good graces,
08:51and so he wound up teaching at Ulta Academy,
08:54the kind of family school operated by Rulon Jeffs in Salt Lake City.
08:59And pretty soon, Rulon makes Warren the principal there.
09:03Good morning, everyone.
09:10Good morning.
09:12They taught us in our schools that nobody ever made it on the moon,
09:16and that dinosaurs, they never really existed on our planet.
09:20They lived on other worlds, and when they made our world,
09:24they came from pieces of other planets and put them together,
09:27and that's why you find bones, but they never lived on our planet.
09:30It wasn't really about our grades so much as, like, our behaviors.
09:37We listened to a sermon every morning about the Book of Mormon,
09:43and then when we listened to history, it was all church history,
09:47but one was ancient church history or, you know, about prophets.
09:52It was never about the world.
09:55So we would just listen to church.
09:58It was so much indoctrination.
10:01The situation with the FLDS was that you had this one absolute authoritarian leader.
10:12I think it's important to understand that Rulon Jeffs, he was very harsh.
10:16He was very authoritarian.
10:18And in my opinion, he was occupying a position not unlike other cult leaders,
10:25but he knew how to stay within the bounds of propriety to the extent that the authorities never came in.
10:34Previously in what was then the FLDS, men became the prophet only after having served on a council,
10:42and then there was kind of a seniority process as to who became the next president or prophet.
10:48Warren just kind of usurped all that.
10:51Warren Jeffs said, God chose me, and if you don't accept it, then you need to leave the church.
11:02And he taught us from childhood that God would not allow the leader to lead the people astray.
11:08Once Warren Jeffs took over, he just created this entire change in the church.
11:17It all just went off the rails.
11:20You must get close to Heavenly Father while you're young.
11:29What happens to people that enter into this great love, celestial and plural marriage,
11:35and then turn away from it?
11:38The revelation says they will be destroyed,
11:42and then delivered over to the buffetings of Satan to suffer a misery where they can't be happy.
11:49They can't be happy until they've suffered for every wrong.
11:56The difference between a mainstream church and a cult is the all-powerful leader who becomes the defining element and driving force of the group.
12:08The leader becomes an object of worship.
12:11And when Warren Jeffs took over, he became the worst nightmare of the FLDS.
12:17Typically, when we think about cults, we think of people getting recruited, you know, in the early days, recruited off the streets and at bus stations or through bulletin boards,
12:26and now being recruited over the internet or through workshops you get sent to, whatever it might be.
12:31But in the case of the FLDS, I mean, Warren Jeffs didn't have to do that.
12:35He didn't really have to recruit.
12:37He had a built-in cult because these people were born into the group.
12:41I grew up in Salt Lake.
12:55I did grow up in a polygamous community, and I had two mothers.
12:59I had 13 brothers and sisters, so I'm one of 14.
13:04We were very much normal kids.
13:06Like, we had board games.
13:08We had family nights.
13:09We went camping a lot.
13:11We were fishing a lot.
13:13We had plays and music when I was younger in school.
13:18We had a bunch of things that we liked to do until Warren Jeffs came.
13:23When Warren Jeffs came, he outlawed all the toys and all the things.
13:27He didn't want anybody doing anything but working.
13:33Warren Jeffs, I remember him commanding people from Salt Lake.
13:38They were all moving down to the creek.
13:40I think it was to get everybody in the same location.
13:43This whole area is considered Short Creek.
13:54Everyone around here calls it the creek.
13:58Of course, they used the border between Utah and Arizona.
14:02That's why they built Hilldale, Colorado City.
14:04If one authority is coming after them, they scoot over to the other side.
14:08The early settlers in Short Creek understood that the law might come after them
14:15because what they were doing was illegal in both Arizona and in Utah.
14:22The main line and the middle of town divides the Utah from Arizona.
14:27There is no perceptible difference between the two sides of the border.
14:31For that matter, the municipal governments in Short Creek,
14:39Hilldale, Utah, and Colorado City, Arizona are run by FLDS members
14:44and installed basically by Warren or the FLDS leadership.
14:50Warren Jeffs was an incredibly powerful man.
14:54He controlled the police forces in Hilldale, in Colorado City,
15:00and he had a great deal of money and power and property.
15:05People who are in Short Creek now, some of them still believe in Warren Jeffs
15:12and still follow him.
15:13He is still in control to this day.
15:27He can't stop being the prophet until he dies.
15:30And then there will be another one.
15:32Some people have been able to break free and escape and find a path outside of those walls,
15:40but there are hundreds of people that are still trapped in there.
15:44They're trapped in there, women and children.
15:58They're just right over there.
16:00Inside of those walls is my family and friends, like people that are FLDS,
16:07people that I grew up with, people I went to school with.
16:19They're people, they're humans, that are literally trapped physically and mentally,
16:24and they don't know how to break free all the time.
16:27I work with former FLDS families, women and children.
16:29I work with former FLDS families, women and children.
16:54Hi, John.
16:58The women that I work one-on-one with, some of them have left the FLDS, similar to what I did.
17:03This kind of work, it's really powerful.
17:08It means everything to me because I definitely know what it feels like to not be safe.
17:13Some of that stuff is going to take a while to heal from all those ripple effects.
17:20There's really not a lot of communities like ours.
17:27What I could say was my experience, you could have gotten something totally different,
17:33even though we went through the exact same thing.
17:35I feel like that I've made a lot of strides, but I also feel like I have to, like, keep making strides.
17:45I never gave up on God, which is really rare for somebody around here that come from something that was abusive,
17:54that was in the name of God.
17:56Warren Jeffs really made a lot of changes to the community.
18:03I think he's most well-known for the fact that he took a lot of young wives.
18:20My older sister married Rulon.
18:23My sister was barely 18.
18:26She was, like, 18 in a week or something when she married Rulon.
18:30He was 80 or so.
18:32For my sister to go into Rulon's family was, like, this great honor that she even made it
18:36because that's really rare for somebody to make it into his family without a lot of generations of people in the church.
18:42So that was, like, the ultimate blessing, the highest that a girl could go.
18:48To rise in Rulon's family, you would have more opportunities to make it into heaven.
18:53My mother thought it was an honor.
18:56And we did go to her wedding and everything, and Warren Jeffs would sit at the table with his father.
19:03Several of his wives said, when you went up to shake Warren's hand and his father's hand,
19:08to tell him, thank you for the meal, then they followed you out with their eyes.
19:18After that, he would single me out, like, a lot.
19:22I was 14 when that happened.
19:26In my opinion, Warren Jeffs is a psychopath, deeply disturbed person,
19:31with a predilection for preying upon children.
19:36The ones I really like are the submissive ones that never voice anything,
19:41because then they can do whatever they want.
19:44He wanted me.
19:54There's a lot of men that were born and raised in the FLDS that have become apostate.
19:59An apostate is somebody who has left or has been kicked out of the church.
20:04I had gotten to know Brielle early on, and I had seen how much she had improved from when I first met her.
20:13She was pretty depressed.
20:15Her life had been changed quite a bit, and the stuff that happened to her, I could tell.
20:20And a lot of the women that come out of it have had a tough experience like that.
20:24I really appreciate what she's doing to bring our community back to a normal.
20:33This is the part that woke me up, was this bastard right here.
20:3894 years old with 65 wives.
20:41That's the part that woke me up, was when these young girls that were age 16, 17, 18 years old marrying this guy.
20:47Yeah.
20:48And that's the part where I got pretty ticked off when I was 10, 12 years old, seeing this kind of crap.
20:53And going and shaking their hands at the meeting on Sunday and seeing all these women sitting down there.
20:58And the people that I grew up with.
21:02And it got pretty twisted.
21:04And I had to tell some of the guys that, hey, you guys went from polygamy clear over to polyamory or polyander,
21:10or whatever you want to call it.
21:12Marrying other men's wives and daughters, that's a goddamn mess.
21:16The majority of men that are out now, I do feel like that, that they're tired of it.
21:22You know, like people are just to start waking up like that was a big mess.
21:25That was just a big, really big mess.
21:28This is my sister.
21:31That's your sister?
21:32Yeah.
21:33I was married to Rulon first and then married Warren before me.
21:37Well, the older Rulon Jeff's got, the sicker and sicker he got, the more dependent he was on Warren,
21:43or at least the more Warren inserted himself into his father's affairs.
21:47Of course, he was marrying his father off to much younger women and Rulon just kind of kept accumulating wives.
21:55My understanding of the history is that previous prophets had been sort of the grandfather image.
22:02They had authority through their religion and through their supposed direct connection with the Almighty.
22:08But they didn't abuse it.
22:10From what I understood, after Rulon died, then most of these women ended up marrying Warren Jeff.
22:19I remember Warren getting up and getting all pissed off and saying,
22:22you leave, everybody leave their hands off father's wives in meeting.
22:26And then he marries them off.
22:28Growing up here, it had its plus and minuses.
22:41It was all about culture and community to me.
22:44This is a typical polygamist home right here.
22:47It'd be about a 14, 16 bedroom home.
22:51They're quite large, the homes.
22:52There's a lot of strange engineering on them from what I see growing up and being raised in one of these large homes.
23:00I've got 37 brothers and sisters and five moms.
23:04It was actually pretty fun growing up that way.
23:07I personally feel partially responsible for what happened here because when I finally stood up and said no, then it quit happening.
23:22And so I realized that I was a co-creator in it.
23:27And so I decided that I was going to do whatever I could to help clean up the mess that we had made.
23:36First off, I had a wonderful experience in polygamy, being in big families.
23:43We thought we believed we were doing something good, but it just didn't turn out that way.
23:52It just did not turn out that way.
23:55We were our own worst enemies.
23:59In Mormon polygamy, at least, it's very patriarchal.
24:04And by Mormon polygamy, I don't mean the mainstream Mormon church.
24:08I mean the offshoots that still practice polygamy.
24:11But at its root, it's always a patriarchal arrangement that keeps men in charge.
24:20And the idea that a woman would fall in love with someone and marry someone because that's what she wanted to do,
24:29that just is not part of their culture, part of their community.
24:34Marriages were arranged, they were decided upon by the hierarchy, and you dare not refuse.
24:42There was some jealousy issues with some of the women at times, that's the honest truth of it.
24:46There really was some jealousy issues that did go on.
24:50But it was actually pretty neat when the unity's there, but if there ain't unity there, it don't work.
24:55It can crumble.
24:56The apostate is just a fear word that they put in our heads to keep you in control and keep you doing what they want you to do.
25:06I grew up with polygamy doctrine being the most important thing that we should do and live and be and be faithful and endure to the end.
25:18Joseph Smith had said polygamy would need to be lived and that if women did not live plural marriage, they would be destroyed.
25:27We were to do this or we would not get to heaven.
25:30And we wouldn't have our children in heaven, so that was my main reason for thinking I had to live plural marriage.
25:38The FLDS were starting to assign marriages.
25:42Eternity was within your reach.
25:44You will just live faithful so the prophet can place you properly in marriage.
25:50God will tell our leaders and they will know and we'll marry the right person.
25:55It was so heartbreaking to all of us young women, but we had to go along with it.
26:04And I had practiced what my mom told me, suffer and endure the end, but with a smile, keep sweet.
26:09So keep sweet was a very strict doctrine in all my childhood.
26:17I remember doodling on all the classroom papers like keep sweet was just like commonly used phrase.
26:23It meant you could have no other emotions except for sweetness.
26:28Sweetness was the only one God would accept.
26:30And like anything else was of the devil.
26:33And that's the only way polygamy really works is if all the wives are sweet.
26:38And the husband makes all the decisions.
26:41By keeping sweet, loving one another.
26:44By obeying the prophet.
26:47Those good people will receive the greatest of blessings.
26:51It didn't matter how miserable we were.
26:54You know, you just have to hold it all in.
26:56And if you don't, you're considered evil.
26:59I did it really well in public.
27:01In fact, everybody thought I was one of the happiest sister wives in the whole world.
27:06And so does, so does, I thought that about all the others.
27:10Because we were really good at putting on that persona.
27:14Well, they didn't just say keep sweet.
27:15They would say keep sweet no matter what.
27:17It's a matter of life and death.
27:18You would be punished, like lose your family if you allowed other emotions into your family.
27:24I felt like there's a gun to my head.
27:34It's not a choice.
27:36You do it or else.
27:38So Warren Jeffs was God's prophet.
27:53And he was God's mouthpiece.
27:55And so if he told a man that he needed to marry a young wife, they didn't question that decision.
28:02And if a girl was told to marry this older man, she didn't question it.
28:09And her parents didn't question it.
28:11That was God's will.
28:12Warren Jeffs had so much control.
28:29He made fathers choose him over their families.
28:33A lot of flashbacks.
28:36Everything was pain.
28:56This place is where I was married to Warren Jeffs.
29:01It reminds me of pain.
29:04So I was 18, two months and one day.
29:14I was in the kitchen.
29:17And I remember turning around really quickly to see my father standing in the doorway with his face all red.
29:25I remember him turning to me and saying, let's go on a drive.
29:30It was late.
29:31I remember it was dark outside.
29:33When I get in the car with my father and I notice that he is crying, like sobbing.
29:43And he tells me I'm sorry.
29:46I remember thinking, like, what's next?
29:53My mother didn't follow us.
29:54She wasn't invited.
29:56And we pulled up to a certain building and somebody came out, told us that we need to get back in the car.
30:03And he will escort us to the right house that Warren Jeffs is at.
30:09And that's when I realized that I was marrying Warren.
30:14I was really scared.
30:16Dear wives,
30:23Realizing happiness is only being a part and a strength to your husband, get close to him.
30:31Confide in him.
30:33Don't let your former family be your total confidence.
30:41It should be your new husband.
30:44Turn to him with a full heart and give him the opportunity to lead you right.
30:58He drove me up to Ruland's house where they told him to go.
31:08My father went in, knocked on the door, went into their big family room.
31:14And it was lit darkly.
31:16That's what I remember.
31:17It was a darkly lit room.
31:18And Warren was sitting on a chair.
31:20And then he sends my father out of the room.
31:24And father had to do what the prophet wanted.
31:27That's all in the doctrine.
31:29If he questioned Warren Jeffs, he could lose his family over that.
31:34So he just like held it all in.
31:40I'm in the room with this man who's 50 years old.
31:44Then he turned to me and he said,
31:47Do you want to come sit on my lap?
31:51Immediately I knew I wasn't safe.
31:53So I was just like really nervous.
32:06He's like, come over here and sit on my lap.
32:08And I like hesitated.
32:12And I saw like his face turn to anger.
32:15I could have said no.
32:17But I knew that if I said no, I would be punished.
32:22So like I would have a severe repercussion.
32:27I sat on his lap and he touched me.
32:30And he asked me, are you close to your mother?
32:31Because obviously if I was close to my mother, I'd have the education I needed to be able to touch him.
32:43I've never had sex education.
32:45My mother never taught me anything.
32:47My older sister told me as a teenager, she said, has mother ever come to you and given you your education that you need?
32:56And I said no.
32:57I was kind of confused by that because I was old enough.
33:00I don't know what he actually expected.
33:02But I know when I went over and sat on his lap, he started touching me all over.
33:07It was really horrible, the whole situation.
33:14I remember zoning out at that time.
33:18And then he turned to me and he said, who has God told you that you were supposed to marry?
33:26He put it on to me.
33:29I remember looking away and telling him, like, I wondered if I was supposed to go in the family with my sister.
33:38And he said, you're right.
33:41God has given you a strong testimony.
33:44He's telling me that God revealed I was supposed to marry him.
33:51I didn't realize what I was walking into.
33:54We did kiss at the end. There was no ring.
34:06I was Warren Jess's 65th wife.
34:14Being married at an extremely young age to the leader of the group, right?
34:19So that's supposed to be a big honor.
34:21It was a holy thing.
34:24The parents believe that by surrendering their child to him, in their minds, this was the prophet.
34:31This was God speaking.
34:33And if God wanted to use their child, it wasn't a curse.
34:39It was a blessing.
34:40It was an honor that their child had been chosen.
34:44Brielle may have been of legal age when she got into this spiritual marriage.
34:53I would question whether this was a consensual marriage at this point.
34:56Because she grew up in this religion, so there would have been a lot of pressure on her to do what Warren said or what her parents said and go along with this marriage.
35:06And again, even though she's 18, she doesn't really have anywhere to go.
35:11I mean, she's never really been outside the faith.
35:15She doesn't have her own income.
35:18She doesn't have a credit history.
35:19So there was a lot of pressure on Brielle to just go ahead and marry Warren.
35:24Once I married Warren Jeffs, things immediately changed.
35:41After I married Warren, I was moved to Texas to live with Warren and his wives.
35:53Everyone in town wondering why the nation's largest polygamy practicing sect chose this part of Texas to build a sprawling religious compound.
36:02A guard tower, a cement plant, acre upon acre of farmed fields.
36:08It's a little city.
36:12Now I'm going to take all the people that are worthy to these elite compounds.
36:16That's how he first started splitting at families.
36:19I became one of the elite and was moved into an elite compound without, like, my family.
36:25He would, in this way, fracture families.
36:28He would break them apart.
36:30He would isolate people so that he could work on them psychologically and emotionally.
36:36I really believed when I married him that I would meet God, you know, through him, because that was what I was raised like.
36:45But when I figured out how he was and stuff, then it changed my perspective.
36:49One time, he pulled me aside, and he said, you don't talk very clear, and you need to talk clearer.
36:57And I was like, okay.
36:58And that had always been a trigger for me, because I didn't talk very clear, and I took it personally.
37:04When people would call me out on it.
37:06He would torture people based on what they needed, what they knew, what they had, just to experiment.
37:23Every day we were told, you will be a mother in Zion.
37:28Like, it wasn't, what do you want to be?
37:31It was more of, you will be a mother.
37:34He kept trying to talk to me.
37:36He kept, like, trying to make conversation.
37:39I kept trying to avoid him.
37:43It was every time I saw him, I would just, like, freeze.
37:48And he noticed that behavior.
37:50At first, it was kind of like a game, because he thought that I was playing hard to get.
37:56It actually made him, like, zone in on me, which was actually bad for me.
38:01But I couldn't turn it off.
38:03I couldn't turn it off.
38:04Like, I was terrified of him.
38:06There was times, like, we had these huge dining rooms, and he would look clear across the room, and just, like, keep his eyes on me.
38:18Because of the attention that I was getting from Warren Jeffs, the other wives were quite competitive, and a little jealous.
38:25So then they start reporting more.
38:28It gives them brownie points to tell on me.
38:30Because of the wives and the tension, there was a negative energy there.
38:35Later, it got really, really ugly, because he figured out that I really wasn't attracted to him.
38:40And it made him mad, because, like, he thinks people should worship him.
38:45Like, I'm his wife.
38:46Like, I'm acting that way.
38:48As a wife, I'm expected to be, like, following God, and, like, I'm supposed to be really attracted to him.
38:53I was in the highest position a lady could be in, in the church, and it felt like I was literally falling every single day.
39:01You have to be converted to think of God and your husband, that's me, in every thought, desire, work, action.
39:14And I'm here to do the will of my Father, and thus Heavenly Father.
39:21I'm asking the Lord to put a shield of protection around you.
39:26Now reach that gift of protection called sweetness.
39:33We had big rooms, and they had, like, bunk beds, and they had, like, several wives in the same room.
39:42He came into the room and closed the door, and he's like, where is everyone in this room?
39:46I need everybody gathered together.
39:47He had them all sit down in a circle.
39:49And then he singled me out, and he said, I need you to come give me a hug.
39:54What he's wanting me to do is to show him some type of sexual affection in front of everyone, so that I can show obedience to him.
40:10And because I don't, he shows all of them that he's mad at me.
40:15And that's not a good sign for him to be mad at me.
40:19I start to realize how much control and how much power and how, like, deep in this I am.
40:28I don't know if I can survive this.
40:32Like, I'm trapped.
40:34Warren Jeffs used a variety of means of control, not just sexual, not just influencing the way they lived in their everyday lives and their behavior.
40:56But he also used legal means and property means.
40:59The UEP was created in 1942, called the United Effort Plan Trust.
41:06It was all owned by the community for the benefit of the people.
41:11In the beginning of the UEP, they were trying to live what they called the United Order.
41:24And it's something that Joseph Smith taught in his teachings, and it's the correct principle if people can live it correctly.
41:32In the UEP, if you decide to be a part of it, you put in your lands and your home, and you try to help make sure that nobody was going in the community without a roof over their heads, without food on their table, without clothes on their back.
41:47They would give out lots to us kids as we've got old enough to start building our own house and doing our own thing.
41:55And that's the way you got to build a house here or live here and be part of the community.
42:00The part that went wrong so bad is the Jeffs.
42:05When Warren Jeffs became the leader, he got up in church, and he told everybody,
42:09if you want to stay a member of the church, you have to donate your titles to your houses to the United Effort Plan Trust.
42:15So the Jeffs started requiring everybody swear their allegiance to the church, and everything they owned, their cars, their businesses, their families, all belonged to the church.
42:30In 1998, Warren Jeffs changed the trust from a business trust over to a charitable trust.
42:37And so that way, there was only one person, which is Warren Jeffs, owned everything.
42:42People didn't own their own homes. He did. So that became a leverage point for power.
42:48Warren Jeffs absolutely controlled over $100 million of assets, and he owned the houses that his congregation lived in.
42:57So he had the power to tell somebody, you're out of the church, you're out of your house, you're out of your job, and you're out of your family,
43:05because I'm taking your wife and children away from you.
43:09Warren Jeffs would get up and just say, these men are now cut off the church, they need to leave immediately,
43:14they're not welcome on UEP property, and they need to go repent from a distance, and they are now cut off.
43:21And sometimes he would send people away and not even tell them a reason.
43:25Like, he would just send them away. It was really hard on everyone, because the people in the church believed Warren Jeffs.
43:32And so some of your own families would be like, oh yeah, they all lost the Spirit of God, they just went and did terrible things,
43:38and that's why they got kicked out.
43:40He could say, you displease me, you've been critical, or you've done something I don't like.
43:47If you didn't believe in their doctrines or their beliefs, then they could take your family away, they could take your house away,
43:53and they use that as control over the people.
43:56To make you do things against your will.
43:59They took our homes to force us to turn over a young daughter.
44:04Obviously, the biggest way that he could require parents to show loyalty to him would be to allow their children and give consent to marry Warren Jeffs or other leaders.
44:18And what he was able to do was totally control and manipulate families and target what would be his prey.
44:33What tends to happen often in polygamous communities is that the wives are a lot younger than the men.
44:41And it was not uncommon for Warren to tell the men that it was time to take a wife, and this teenage girl was going to be their wife.
44:54Underage Brides was publicly talked about in his family.
44:59He had a sermon about how Joseph Smith had an underage bride.
45:03And he talked about, like, how God has made the younger girls prepared faster.
45:12Some of his wives that I met at that time were 12.
45:16And one of them was my cousin.
45:19And I didn't think that he was having relationships with them.
45:23That was another thing I questioned really strongly, because he would say, I'm just protecting them.
45:28So instead of getting a boyfriend, you know, as a teenager, they'll just already have a boyfriend.
45:34They'll know who their person is they're supposed to confide in and learn to trust.
45:39And that was really common even in New Orleans' day.
45:42If the girl was in trouble or, you know, like, struggling, that was underage was more something that happened.
45:49So you might be thinking, how does a community let a pedophile run their community and assault their children?
45:58Well, they don't think of him as a pedophile.
46:01They think of him as an agent of God.
46:04They believe that everything he does and everything he says is a direct line from God.
46:09When you get to make a decision, like, I have to give my daughter to Warren Jeffs, and she's only 14 years old.
46:17You know exactly the decision you need to make to stay in the good graces of that group.
46:23I call that bounded choice.
46:26Your choices are limited and constrained by the confines of the group and by the will of the leader.
46:33You are not really making that decision of your own free will.
46:36You will now pass the next test, for the test is upon you.
46:46Only those who choose to work their faith, pick up the good books, and obey will be called to be used in the redemption of Zion.
46:59Dear young people, how I yearn for you.
47:04I yearn for myself also.
47:10This part of telling my story was really awkward and hard.
47:17One day in Texas, I was in the kitchen washing dishes.
47:21Somebody walked in behind me and said, you need to go into, like, Warren Jeffs' room.
47:26He has something that he wants to talk to you about.
47:29But you need to keep it quiet from everyone else, because he is a select few.
47:33Went straight into his room.
47:35I didn't like these kind of things, but I knew if I didn't do it, then it would be worse for me.
47:42So I went in there with five other ladies.
47:45And he said, I don't want you to look behind you.
47:50And then he told us, I want you to stay in eye contact with me.
47:54Like, I don't want you to turn in your head or anything.
47:57And I did hear the door behind me opening and closing.
48:01But I wasn't going to turn around.
48:03I wasn't going to try anything.
48:05So I just sat there.
48:07When he stared, it was uncomfortable for me.
48:11But, like, I noticed that he was really intently watching us.
48:15Like, really.
48:16Like, I can tell when he's, like, just kind of watching.
48:19And then sometimes when he's like, you better do this.
48:22And he's serious about it.
48:24He talked a little bit about Adam and Eve.
48:34And he went into more detail.
48:37He said he had a new revelation.
48:39God revealed that the forbidden fruit was another man.
48:43And then he said, if you really agree, I want you to show me.
48:47And you need to take off your clothes.
48:51Warren Jeffs is telling us to take off our clothes to prove our loyalty to him.
48:56Because we are all his wives and we're all married to him.
48:59So I did.
49:13I'm in the room with Warren Jeffs.
49:15And he said, I need to take off your clothes.
49:18Everybody starts obeying him.
49:20So I took off my clothes.
49:24And then he said, I want you to turn around.
49:29So I turned around and the entire room was filled with his other wives that were naked also.
49:37That he had already done this to.
49:40You know, it was overwhelming.
49:43And I noticed that he was staring at somebody.
49:47And he was smiling.
49:49And I thought, I wonder who he's looking at.
49:51So I kind of turned my head over there and it was an underage bride.
49:54She was a cousin.
50:03So my cousin, who was 13 years old, on the other side of the room, naked.
50:07I was like, stunned.
50:08Like, I was disgusted.
50:10He's having relationships with these girls.
50:13I didn't think he was having marital relationships with them until then.
50:19And then he had us, he said, I want you to give a hug to everybody in the room.
50:25And don't be shy.
50:26Don't be scared.
50:27Like, just act normal.
50:29And he said we could never talk about it, not even to him.
50:32He said we could get dressed.
50:35He wasn't going to take off his clothes at that time.
50:38He wanted to test us and see after.
50:40That was like the beginning training.
50:42I hope all of you can see that you're drawing closer together through me, through Priesthood.
50:49And the confidence is creating a heaven between us.
50:54He doesn't have time to have marital relationships with all of us.
50:58This is the only way to do it.
51:01If the Lord doesn't name you to be with me in the heavenly session, then you will fall
51:10under a greater condemnation and not be used.
51:13He gave us specific rules about like, you can't undress without me in the room.
51:20In connection with me and each other, I want all of you to learn the heavenly gentle touch.
51:27Make sure your connections with each other there and all day long is through me.
51:36He didn't call them orgies, but like, they are really orgies.
51:40And then he said, you guys need to go off and think about it.
51:45Think about like, if we're going to continue to go to more orgies.
51:50When a cult leader involves his followers in a criminal enterprise, they may not be physically
52:00being held prisoner, but psychologically and emotionally they are.
52:04Warren Jeffs would explain to these children that sex was, and the moment of orgasm for him was a celestial experience.
52:19And you get to help the prophet of God have his celestial moment.
52:25And he would have girls brought in more than one at a time.
52:30And of course, to them, it was their celestial experience.
52:34He described it as, which was orgasm to just be blunt, but told them that would be their celestial moment with him.
52:43It's like, we'll make you participate in this.
52:45So you're a witness.
52:46And if you ever talk about it, you're going to be in trouble for it.
52:49That is the absolute power Warren Jeffs had over their lives.
52:58So, because of how Warren Jeffs set it up, he tricked us into being accomplices for underage relationships.
53:07It was basically to force us to accept.
53:11After that, he could really target people and make their prison, their mental prison, like, unbearable.
53:16It always became a tool for him, for every one of his ladies.
53:22Yeah, like, you're an accomplice now.
53:27Hypothetically, if Warren Jeffs did, in fact, use a control technique over some of the adult wives
53:33to require them to watch or participate in sexual relations while he's with a minor,
53:39that they could be held as an accomplice.
53:41No, in truth.
53:44But how would she know that?
53:45How would someone that didn't know about the outside world, the criminal justice system?
53:49And they're hearing all the time that you cannot trust police, law enforcement.
53:55They're all against us.
53:57And the only place you can be safe is here.
54:00And so that is the mind and spiritual control I think they had over people's lives.
54:05To think, being a 12-year-old, that nobody was going to stand up for you is very damaging.
54:15I still feel guilty for it.
54:18I feel like, why did I do more?
54:21We're talking like 30 people that are telling a little child this is the way it should be.
54:27Because they are not fighting for her.
54:31We aren't going to fight for you. We're going to help the abuser.
54:36It's not...
54:38Ugh, that's so bad.
54:39The FLDS group existed on the border between Arizona and Utah for almost a century when I came in as Attorney General.
54:53But it was largely out of sight, out of mind.
54:57I came into office in 2002.
54:58Ironically, that's the same year that Warren Jeffs became the leader of the SEC.
55:02And I was very concerned about the lawlessness, about the abuse of women and children in that area.
55:08And ended up becoming connected with the then Attorney General of Utah, Mark Shurtleff.
55:15And together we resolved that we could try to do something about it.
55:19When I realized from my investigator that children were being forced to marry older men, that had to stop.
55:26We'd heard that there was this problem.
55:29Finding complaining witnesses was very difficult because nobody would leave the community.
55:35What we learned and what really bothered me, in addition clearly to the child-bride marriages and abusing children,
55:41but just the denial of basic civil rights to his entire community.
55:46The power that was exercised over women and children was absolute.
55:51It was simply too much.
55:52We could not turn a blind eye to these people who were all victimized, I believe, by Warren Jeffs.
55:59My job is to bring you to redemption.
56:03We were trapped.
56:05But I did everything I knew how to do.
56:08And I'm still alive to talk about it.
56:10Because I fought to escape.
56:12I fought to get out of there.
56:13Get out of there.
56:14Get out of there.
56:15Get out of there.
56:16Get out of there.
56:17Get out of there.
56:18Get out of there.
56:19Get out of there.
56:20Get out of there.
56:21Get out of there.
56:22Get out of there.
56:23Get out of there.
56:24Get out of there.
56:25Get out of there.
56:26Get out of there.
56:27Get out of there.
56:28Get out of there.
56:29Get out of there.
56:30Get out of there.
56:31Get out of there.
56:32Get out of there.
56:33Get out of there.
56:34Get out of there.
56:35Get out of there.
56:36Get out of there.
56:37Get out of there.
56:38Get out of there.
56:39Get out of there.
56:40Get out of there.
56:41Get out of there.
56:42You
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