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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
03:15so
03:24so
03:27I didn't want to tell my story, especially when I first escaped.
03:57I've never told my full story.
04:15I had so much trauma.
04:20I was stripped of everything inside the FLDS.
04:22Long hair was supposed to be a sacred symbol for girls in the FLDS.
04:37When I was younger, I had hair cut down past my knees, and so I can braid French braids
04:45and stuff really easy.
04:46I don't do it like I used to because I don't have long hair like I used to, and I also don't
04:52like looking like my past, it's hard.
05:02The church calls you an apostate if you leave them, because you should know better than to
05:07leave the God that you were raised with, because you were taught your whole life about him,
05:13and to leave him is like saying that you know better.
05:19I was born into the FLDS religion.
05:31I'm proud to be an apostate of FLDS.
05:39So the FLDS stands for Fundamentalist Latter-day Saints.
05:46Latter-day Saints is mainstream Mormon.
05:50So they're very different than FLDS.
05:54FLDS believe in polygamy, that's the main difference between them.
05:58In the church, you had to have three wives to make it into the highest kingdom of heaven
06:12where God is.
06:13So if you don't make it into that kingdom, then you'll never see God again.
06:17So you have to have at least three wives.
06:25Joseph Smith founded the Mormon church pretty much from the beginning, the Mormons practiced
06:31polygamy, until the point at which Utah, where huge numbers of them had settled, wanted to
06:39become a state.
06:40And in order to become a state, they were told by the government that they had to give up
06:44the practice of polygamy.
06:46So there's a split right there.
06:50The Latter-day Saints went to one leader, and the ones that wanted to live polygamy went
06:54to another location.
07:09The church had believed in new revelations, and the prophet was the only one who could
07:13update the revelation.
07:15They believed they could hear God.
07:20In all of Mormonism, going back clear back to its first roots with Joseph Smith, the leader
07:36of the church is believed to be a prophet of God.
07:39The prophet would update his new revelations every once in a while, and one of them was
07:43you can't watch movies, you know.
07:44And then later it was you can't wear red, you couldn't wear any jewelry, your dresses had
07:49to be a certain length, and they changed that a few times, it got longer and longer.
07:54We had to follow all the rules, follow all the commandments.
07:59They can only be a prophet if the old one dies.
08:02There will be a new prophet, those prophets write new rules.
08:05Leroy Johnson was the prophet when I was born, but he died within like a year.
08:12Rulon Jeffs was the next prophet that my parents followed.
08:16And Warren was Rulon Jeffs' son.
08:20The mythology around Warren is that he was a sick child, that the family had to take great
08:26care for him, and that kind of through the family and God's grace, he survived and thrived.
08:36So Warren grew up in Salt Lake City and the surrounding area.
08:39He was smart.
08:41He helped with computers.
08:44He helped run some of the FLDS businesses.
08:48And, of course, he was also in his father's good graces, and so he wound up teaching at
08:54Ulta Academy, the kind of family school operated by Rulon Jeffs in Salt Lake City.
09:00And pretty soon, Rulon makes Warren the principal there.
09:05Good morning, everyone.
09:13They taught us in our schools that nobody ever made it on the moon, and that dinosaurs, they
09:19never really existed on our planet.
09:21They lived on other worlds, and when they made our world, they came from pieces of other
09:26planets and put them together.
09:28And that's why you find bones, but they never lived on our planet.
09:33It wasn't really about our grades so much as like our behaviors.
09:38We listened to a sermon every morning about the Book of Mormon.
09:44And then when we listened to history, it was all church history, but one was ancient church
09:49history or, you know, about prophets.
09:53It was never about the world.
09:56So we would just listen to church.
09:59It was so much indoctrination.
10:05The 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.
10:17He was very authoritarian.
10:19And in my opinion, he was occupying a position not unlike other cult leaders, but he knew how
10:27to stay within the bounds of propriety to the extent that the authorities never came in.
10:35Previously in what was then the FLDS, men became the prophet only after having served on a council.
10:43And then there was kind of a seniority process as to who became the next president or prophet.
10:49Warren just kind of usurped all that.
10:56Warren Jeffs said, God chose me.
10:58And 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.
11:09Once Warren Jeffs took over, he just created this entire change in the church.
11:18It all just went off the rails.
11:22You must get close to Heavenly Father while you're young.
11:29What happens to people that enter into this great law of celestial and plural marriage,
11:35and then turn away from it, the revelation says they will be destroyed.
11:42And then delivered over to the buffetings of Satan to suffer a misery
11:48where they can't be happy until they've suffered for every wrong.
11:52The difference between a mainstream church and a cult is the all-powerful leader,
12:02who becomes the defining element and driving force of the group.
12:08That leader becomes an object of worship.
12:11And when Warren Jeffs took over, he became the worst nightmare of the FLDS.
12:18Typically, when we think about cults, we think of people getting recruited, you know,
12:22in 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.
12:32But in the case of the FLDS, I mean, Warren Jeffs didn't have to do that.
12:36He didn't really have to recruit, but he had a built-in cult,
12:39because these people were born into the group.
12:54I grew up in Salt Lake.
12:56I did grow up in a polygamous community, and I had two mothers.
13:00I had 13 brothers and sisters, so I'm one of 14.
13:03We were very much normal kids. Like, we had board games, we had family nights,
13:10we went camping a lot, we were fishing a lot, and we had plays and music.
13:16When I was younger in school, we 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.
13:28He didn't want anybody doing anything but working.
13:33Warren Jeffs, I remember him commanding people from Salt Lake.
13:39They were all moving down to the creek.
13:41I think it was to get everybody in the same location.
13:51This whole area is considered Short Creek.
13:55Everyone 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.
14:09The early settlers in Short Creek understood that the law might come after them
14:16because what they were doing was illegal in both Arizona and in Utah.
14:20The main line and the middle of town divides the Utah from Arizona.
14:28There is no perceptible difference between the two sides of the border.
14:31For that matter, the municipal governments in Short Creek, Hilldale, Utah and Colorado City, Arizona,
14:42are run by FLDS members and 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, property.
15:04People who are in Short Creek now, some of them still believe in Warren Jeffs and still follow him.
15:13He is still in control to this day.
15:29He can't stop being the prophet until he dies.
15:32And then there will be another one.
15:33Some people have been able to break free and escape and find a path outside of those walls.
15:41But there are hundreds of people that are still trapped in there.
15:56They're trapped in there, women and children.
15:59They're just right over there.
16:03Inside of those walls is my family and friends.
16:06Like people that are FLDS, people that I grew up with.
16:10People I went to school with.
16:20They're people.
16:21They're humans that are literally trapped physically and mentally.
16:25And they don't know how to break free all the time.
16:33I work with former FLDS families, women and children.
16:54They're just like a person.
16:57Hi, John.
16:57Hi, John.
16:59The women that I work one-on-one with, some of them have left the FLDS, similar to what I did.
17:07This kind of work, it's really powerful.
17:09It 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.
17:25There's really not a lot of communities like ours.
17:27What I could say was, in my experience, you could have gotten something totally different,
17:34even though we went through the exact same thing.
17:37I feel like that I've made a lot of strides, but I also feel like I have to keep making strides.
17:48I never gave up on God, which is really rare for somebody around here
17:53that come from something that was abusive, that was in the name of God.
17:57Warren Jeffs really made a lot of changes to the community.
18:05I think he's most well known for the fact that he took a lot of young wives.
18:21My older sister married Rulon.
18:23My sister was barely 18. She was like 18 in a week or something when she married Rulon.
18:31He was 80 or so.
18:33For my sister to go into Rulon's family was like this great honor that she even made it,
18:37because that's really rare for somebody to make it into his family without a lot of generations of
18:41people 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.
18:55And we did go to her wedding and everything, and Warren Jeffs would sit at the table with his father.
19:04Several of his wives said, when you went up to shake Warren's hand and his father's hand,
19:09to tell him, thank you for the meal.
19:10Then they followed you out with their eyes.
19:19After that, he would single me out like a lot. I was 14 when that happened.
19:26In my opinion, Warren Jeffs is a psychopath, deeply disturbed person,
19:32with a predilection for preying upon children.
19:37The ones I really like are the submissive ones that never voice anything,
19:41because then they can do whatever they want.
19:45He wanted me.
19:55There'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.
20:05I had got to know Brielle early on, and I had seen how much she had improved from when I first
20:12met her.
20:13She was pretty depressed. Her life had been changed quite a bit, and the stuff that happened to her,
20:19I could tell. And a lot of the women that come out of it have had a tough experience like that.
20:25I really appreciate what she's doing to bring our community back to a normal.
20:34This is the part that woke me up, was this kind of, this bastard right here, 94 years old with 65
20:41wives. That's the part what woke me up was when these young girls that were age 16, 17, 18 years
20:46old marrying this guy. And that's the part where I got pretty ticked off when I was 10,
20:5112 years old seeing this kind of crap and going and shaking their hands at the meeting on Sunday
20:57and seeing all these women sitting down there and people that I grew up with.
21:03And it got pretty twisted. And I had to tell some of the guys that, hey, you guys went from
21:08polygamy clear over to polyamory or polyander or whatever you want to call it, marrying other
21:13men'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. You know,
21:22like people are just to start waking up like that was a big mess. That was just a big,
21:27really big mess. This is my sister. That's your sister?
21:32Yeah. I was married to Rulon first and then married Warren before me.
21:38The 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. Of course, he was marrying
21:48his father off to much younger women and Rulon just kind of kept accumulating wives.
21:56My 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
22:06direct connection with the almighty, but 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,
22:23you leave, everybody leave their hands off father's wives in meeting.
22:26And then he marries them all.
22:36Growing up here, it had its plus and minuses. It was all about culture and community to me.
22:45This is a typical polygamist home right here. It'd be about a 14, 16 bedroom home. They're quite large,
22:53the homes. There's a lot of strange engineering on them from what I see growing up and being raised in
22:59one of these large homes. I've got 37 brothers and sisters and five moms. It was actually pretty fun
23:07growing up that way.
23:08I personally feel partially responsible for what happened here. Because when I finally stood up and
23:20said no, then it quit happening. And so I realized that I was a co-creator in it. And so I decided that
23:29I was going to do whatever I could to help clean up the mess that we had made.
23:34First off, I had a wonderful experience in polygamy, being in, you know, in big families.
23:46We thought we believed we were doing something good. But it just didn't turn out that way.
23:52Just did not turn out that way. We were our own worst enemies.
23:57In Mormon polygamy, at least, it's very patriarchal. And by Mormon polygamy, I don't mean the mainstream
24:07Mormon church. I mean the offshoots that still practice polygamy. But at its root, it's always
24:15a patriarchal arrangement that keeps men in charge.
24:19And the idea that a woman would fall in love with someone and marry someone because that's what she
24:27wanted to do, that just is not part of their culture, part of their community. Marriages were
24:35arranged. They were decided upon by the hierarchy. And you dare not refuse.
24:41There was some jealousy issues with some of the women at times. That's the honest truth of it.
24:47There really was some jealousy issues that did go on. But it was actually pretty neat when the unity's
24:53there. But if there ain't unity there, it don't work. It can crumble.
24:59The apostate is just a fear word that they put in our heads to keep you in control and keep you doing
25:05what they want you to do. I grew up with polygamy doctrine being the most important thing
25:14that we should do and live and be and be faithful and endure to the end.
25:20Joseph Smith had said polygamy would need to be lived and that if women did not live plural marriage,
25:25they would be destroyed. We were to do this or we would not get to heaven. And we wouldn't have our
25:31children 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. You will just live faithful so the prophet can place you properly in
25:49marriage. God will tell our leaders and they will know and we'll marry the right person. It was so
25:56heartbreaking to all of us young women, but we had to go along with it. And I had practiced what my
26:06mom told me, suffer and endure to the end, but with a smile, keep sweet.
26:14So keep sweet was a very strict doctrine in all my childhood. I remember doodling on all the
26:20classroom papers like keep sweet was just like commonly used phrase. It meant you could have no other
26:25emotions except for sweetness. Sweetness was the only one God would accept. And like anything else
26:32was of the devil. And that's the only way polygamy really works is if all the wives are sweet
26:39and the husband makes all the decisions. By keeping sweet and loving one another,
26:45by obeying the prophet, those good people will receive the greatest of blessings.
26:52It didn't matter how miserable we were, you know, you just have to hold it all in. And if you don't,
26:57you're considered evil. I did it really well in public. And in fact, everybody thought I was one
27:05of the happiest sister wives in the whole world. And so does, so does I thought that about all the
27:10others because we were really good at putting on that persona. Well, they didn't just say keep sweet.
27:16They would say keep sweet no matter what. It's a matter of life and death. You would be punished,
27:21like lose your family if you allowed other emotions into your family.
27:26I felt like there's a gun to my head.
27:34It's not a choice. You do it or else.
27:46So Warren Jeffs was God's prophet and he was God's mouthpiece. And so if you told a man that he needed
27:58to marry a young wife, they didn't question that decision. And if a girl was told to marry this older
28:07man, she didn't question it and her parents didn't question it. That was God's will.
28:16So Warren Jeffs had so much control. He made fathers choose him over their families.
28:36A lot of flashbacks.
28:47Everything was pain.
28:56This place is where I was married to Warren Jeffs. It reminds me of pain.
29:04So I was 18, two months in one day.
29:14I was in the kitchen and I remember turning around really quickly to see my father standing in the
29:24doorway with his face all red. I remember him turning to me and saying, let's go on a drive.
29:30It was late. I remember it was dark outside. When I get in the car with my father and I notice that he is
29:42crying like sobbing and he tells me I'm sorry. I remember thinking like, what's next?
29:50My mother didn't follow us. She wasn't invited. And we pulled up to a certain building and somebody
29:59came out, told us that we need to get back in the car. And he will escort us to the right house that
30:06Warren Jeffs is at. That's when I realized that I was marrying Warren. I was really scared.
30:16Dear wives, realizing happiness is only in being a part and a strength to your husband,
30:30get close to him. Confide in him. Don't let your former family be your total confidence.
30:42It should be your new husband. Turn to him with a full heart and give him the opportunity to lead you right.
30:52He drove me up to Rulon's house where they told him to go.
31:09My father went in, knocked on the door, went into their big family room and it was lit darkly.
31:16That's what I remember. It was a darkly lit room and Warren was sitting on a chair
31:21and then he sends my father out of the room. And father had to do what the prophet wanted.
31:28That's all in the doctrine. If he questions Warren Jeffs, he could lose his family over that.
31:35So he just like held it all in.
31:40I'm in the room with this man who's 50 years old. Then he turned to me and he said,
31:46Do you want to come sit on my lap? Immediately I knew I wasn't safe.
31:53So I was just like really nervous. He's like, come over here and sit on my lap.
32:08And I like hesitated. And I saw like his face turn to anger.
32:19I could have said no, but I knew that if I said no, I would be punished.
32:25So like I would have a severe repercussion.
32:34I sat on his lap and he touched me.
32:36And he asked me, are you close to your mother?
32:39Because obviously if I was close to my mother, I'd have the education I needed to be able to touch him.
32:45I've never had sex education. My mother never taught me anything.
32:49My older sister told me as a teenager, she said, has mother ever come to you and given you your
32:55education that you need? And I said, no. I was kind of confused by that because I was old enough.
33:00I don't know what he actually expected, but I know when I went over and sat on his lap,
33:06he started touching me all over. It was really horrible, the whole situation.
33:14I remember zoning out at that time.
33:19And then he turned to me and he said,
33:22Who has God told you that you were supposed to marry?
33:25He put it on to me. I remember looking away and telling him like,
33:33I wondered if I was supposed to go in the family with my sister.
33:39He said, you're right. God has given you a strong testimony.
33:45He's telling me that God revealed I was supposed to marry him.
33:52I didn't realize what I was walking into.
33:55We did kiss at the end. There was no ring.
34:06I was Warren just 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. The parents believe that by surrendering their child to him in their minds,
34:31this was the prophet. This was God speaking. And if God wanted to use their child, it wasn't a curse.
34:40It was a blessing. It was an honor that 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, because she grew up in this religion.
34:59So 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.
35:07And again, even though she's 18, she doesn't really have anywhere to go.
35:12I mean, she's never really been outside the faith.
35:16She doesn't have her own income. She doesn't have a credit history.
35:20So there was a lot of pressure on Brielle to just go ahead and marry Warren.
35:26Once I married Warren Jeffs, things immediately changed.
35:29After 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
35:58to build a sprawling religious compound.
36:02A guard tower, a cement plant, acre upon acre of farmed fields.
36:09It's a little city.
36:13Now I'm going to take all the people that are worthy to these elite compounds.
36:17That'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.
36:29He would break them apart.
36:31He would isolate people so that he could work on them psychologically and emotionally.
36:38I really believed when I married him that I would meet God, you know, through him,
36:43because that was what I was raised like.
36:45But when I figured out how he was and stuff, then it changed my perspective.
36:48One 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.
36:59And 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.
37:13Just 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?
37:30It was more of, you will be a mother.
37:34He kept trying to talk to me.
37:36He kept, like, trying to make conversation.
37:40I kept trying to avoid him.
37:44It was every time I saw him, I would just, like, freeze.
37:48And he noticed that behavior.
37:51At first, it was kind of like a game because he thought that I was playing hard to get.
37:55It 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.
38:07There was times, like, we had these huge dining rooms and he would look clear across the room and
38:12just, like, keep his eyes on me.
38:19Because of the attention that I was getting from Warren Jeffs, the other wives were quite competitive
38:24and a little jealous.
38:27So then they start reporting more.
38:28It gives them brownie points to tell on me.
38:31Because of the wives and the tension, there was a negative energy there.
38:36Later, it got really, really ugly because he figured out that I really wasn't attracted to him.
38:41And it made him mad because, like, he thinks people should worship him.
38:46Like, I'm his wife.
38:47Like, I'm acting that way.
38:49As a wife, I'm expected to be, like, following God and, like, I'm supposed to be really attracted to him.
38:54I was in the highest position a lady could be in, in the church.
38:58And it felt like I was literally falling every single day.
39:03You have to be converted to think of God and your husband.
39:08And that's me in every thought, desire, work, action.
39:17And I'm here to do the will of my Father and thus Heavenly Father.
39:20I'm asking the Lord to put a shield of protection around you.
39:27Now reach that gift of protection called sweetness.
39:34We had big rooms and they had, like, bunk beds and they had, like, several wives in the same room.
39:43He came into the room and closed the door and he's like, where is everyone in this room?
39:46I need everybody gathered together.
39:48He had them all sit down in a circle.
39:50And 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
40:08so that I can show obedience to him.
40:10And because I don't, he shows all of them that he's mad at me.
40:16That's not a good sign for him to be mad at me.
40:22I start to realize how much control and how much power and how, like, deep in this I am.
40:29I don't know if I can survive this.
40:33Like, I'm trapped.
40:38Warren Jeffs used a variety of means of control, not just sexual,
40:51not just influencing the way they lived in their everyday lives and their behavior,
40:56but he also used legal means and property means.
41:02The UEP was created in 1942 called the United Effort Plan Trust.
41:08It was all owned by the community for the benefit of the people.
41:19In the beginning of the UEP, they were trying to live what they called the United Order.
41:25And it's something that Joseph Smith taught in his teachings.
41:28And it's the correct principle if people can live it correctly.
41:31In the UEP, if you decide to be a part of it, you put in your lands and your home,
41:39and you try to help make sure that nobody was going in the community without a roof over their heads,
41:44without 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
41:55and doing our own thing. And that's the way you got to build a house here,
41:58or live here, be part of the community.
42:01The part that went wrong so bad is the Jeffs.
42:06When Warren Jeffs became the leader, he got up in church and he told everybody,
42:10if you want to stay a member of the church,
42:12you have to donate your titles to your houses to the United Effort Plan Trust.
42:18So the Jeffs started requiring everybody swear their allegiance to the church,
42:24and 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.
42:49Warren Jeffs absolutely controlled over $100 million of assets.
42:53And he owned the houses that his congregation lived in.
42:58So he had the power to tell somebody, you're out of the church,
43:02you'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.
43:13They need to leave immediately. They're not welcome on UEP property,
43:16and they need to go repent from a distance. And they are now cut off.
43:20And 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,
43:29because the people in the church believed Warren Jeffs. And so some of your own families would be
43:34like, 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. He could say, you displease me. You've been critical,
43:44or you've done something I don't like. If you didn't believe in their doctrines or their beliefs,
43:51then they could take your family away, they could take your house away,
43:54and they use that as control over the people. To make you do things against your will.
44:00They took our homes to force us to turn over a young daughter.
44:05Obviously, the biggest way that he could require parents to show loyalty to him would be to
44:12allow their children and give consent to marry Warren Jeffs or other leaders.
44:19And 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,
44:50and this teenage girl was going to be their wife.
44:54Underage Brides was publicly talked about in his family. He had a sermon about how Joseph Smith had
45:02an underage bride. And he talked about how God has made the younger girls
45:08prepared faster. Some of his wives that I met at that time were 12. And one of them was my cousin.
45:20And I didn't think that he was having relationships with them.
45:24That was another thing I questioned really strongly, because he would say,
45:27I'm just protecting them. So instead of getting a boyfriend, you know, as a teenager,
45:33they'll just already have a boyfriend. They'll know who their person is they're supposed to confide in
45:38and learn to trust. And that was really common even in New Orleans' day. If the child, if the girl
45:43was 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
45:57children? Well, they don't think of him as a pedophile. They 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,
46:18you know exactly the decision you need to make to stay in the good graces of that group.
46:24I call that bounded choice. Your choices are limited and constrained by the confines of the group
46:31and by the will of the leader. You are not really making that decision of your own free will.
46:39You will now pass the next test, for the test is upon you. Only those who choose
46:49to work their faith, pick up the good books and obey, will be called to be used in the redemption of Zion.
47:00Dear young people, how I yearn for you. I yearn for myself also.
47:09This part of telling my story was really awkward and hard.
47:18One day in Texas, I was in the kitchen washing dishes. Somebody walked in behind me and said,
47:23you need to go into, like, Warren Jeffs' room. He 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.
47:33I went straight into his room. I didn't like these kind of things, but I knew if I didn't do it, then
47:40it would be worse for me. So I went in there with five other ladies.
47:48And he said, I don't want you to look behind you. And then he told us, I want you to stay
47:54in eye contact with me. Like, I don't want you to turn in your head or anything. And I did hear the
48:00door behind me opening and closing. But I wasn't going to turn around. I wasn't going to try anything.
48:06So I just sat there. When he stared, it was, it was uncomfortable for me. But like, I noticed that
48:13he was really intently watching us. Like, really, like, I can tell when he's like, just kind of
48:19watching. And then sometimes when he's like, you better do this. And he's serious about it.
48:31He talked a little bit about Adam and Eve.
48:36And he went into more detail. He said he had new revelation. God revealed that the forbidden fruit
48:41was another man. And then he said, if you really agree, I want you to show me.
48:47And you need to take off your clothes.
48:52Warren 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. So I did.
49:02I'm in the room with Warren Jeffs. And he said, and you need to take off your clothes.
49:18Everybody starts obeying him.
49:20So I took off my clothes.
49:28And then he said, I want you to turn around.
49:32So I turned around, and the entire room was filled with his other wives that were naked also,
49:39that he had already done this to.
49:40You know, it was overwhelming.
49:45And I noticed that he was staring at somebody.
49:48And he was smiling.
49:50And I thought, I wonder who he's looking at.
49:52So I kind of turned my head over there, and it was an underage bride.
49:54She was a cousin.
50:02So my cousin, who was 13 years old, on the other side of the room, naked.
50:07I was, like, stunned. Like, I was disgusted.
50:12He's having relationships with these girls.
50:15I didn't think he was having marital relationships with them until then.
50:17And then he had us, he said, I want you to give a hug to everybody in the room.
50:26And don't be shy. Don't be scared. Like, just act normal.
50:29And he said we could never talk about it, not even to him.
50:33He said we could get dressed. He wasn't going to take off his clothes at that time.
50:38He wanted to test us and see after. That was, like, the beginning training.
50:43I hope all of you can see that you're drawing closer together through me.
50:47Through priesthood. And the confidence is creating a heaven between us.
50:55He 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,
51:09then you will fall under a greater condemnation and not be used.
51:13He said he gave us specific rules about, like, you can't undress without me in the room.
51:20And in 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.
51:38He didn't call them orgies, but, like, they are really orgies.
51:43And then he said, you guys need to go off and think about it.
51:47Think about, like, if we're going to continue to go to more orgies.
51:51When a cult leader involves his followers in a criminal enterprise,
51:59they may not be physically being held prisoner, but psychologically and emotionally they are.
52:08Warren Jeffs would explain to these children that sex was, and the moment of orgasm for him,
52:17was a celestial experience. And you get to help the prophet of God have his celestial moment.
52:26And he would have girls brought in more than one at a time.
52:31And, of course, to them, it was their celestial experience he described it as, which was
52:38orgasm, 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 so you're a witness, and if you ever talk about it,
52:48you're going to be in trouble for it. That is the absolute power Warren Jeffs had over their lives.
52:59So, because of how Warren Jeffs set it up, he tricked us into being accomplices
53:05for underage relationships. It was basically to force us to accept.
53:10After that, he could really target people and make their prison, their mental prison,
53:16like, unbearable. It became a tool for him, for every one of his ladies.
53:23Yeah, like, you're an accomplice now.
53:27Hypothetically, if Warren Jeffs did, in fact, use a control technique over some of the adult wives,
53:34to require them to watch or participate in sexual relations while he's with a minor,
53:40that they could be held as an accomplice. No, in truth. But how would she know that? How would
53:46someone that didn't know about the outside world, the criminal justice system, and they're hearing
53:51all the time that you cannot trust police, law enforcement? They're all against us.
53:58And the only place you can be safe is here. And so that is the mind and spiritual control,
54:04I think, they had over people's lives.
54:06To think, being a 12-year-old, that nobody was going to stand up for you is very damaging.
54:16I still feel guilty for it. I feel like, why did I do more? We're talking like 30 people that are
54:25telling a little child, this is the way it should be, because they are not fighting for her.
54:32We aren't going to fight for you. We're going to help the abuser.
54:37It's not, ugh, that's so bad.
54:39The FLDS group existed on the border between Arizona and Utah for almost a century when I came
54:52in as Attorney General. But it was largely out of sight, out of mind. I came into office in 2002.
54:58Ironically, that's the same year that Warren Jeffs became the leader of the SEC. And I was very
55:04concerned about the lawlessness, about the abuse of women and children in that area. And ended up
55:11becoming connected with the then Attorney General of Utah, Mark Shurtleff. And together, we resolved
55:17that we could try to do something about it. When I realized from my investigator that children were
55:23being forced to marry older men, that had to stop. We'd heard that there was this problem. Finding
55:30complaining witnesses was very difficult because nobody would leave the community.
55:36What we learned and what really bothered me, in addition, clearly to the child bride marriages
55:40and abusing children, but just the denial of basic civil rights to his entire community.
55:46The power that was exercised over women and children was absolute. It was simply too much.
55:52And we could not turn a blind eye to these people who were all victimized,
55:58I believe, by Warren Jeffs. My job is to bring you to redemption.
56:03We were trapped. But I did everything I knew how to do. And I'm still alive to talk about it.
56:10Because I fought to escape. I fought to get out of there.
56:40You can afford to escape.
56:41During this time, it was a good time for a show.
56:41You can all see the Ensignants of the
56:41back home.
56:42If you lose, you can draw.
56:42You can draw.
56:43You can draw a bow and be full if you have any shoes for your life.
56:45You can draw your head on the back.
56:45Yeah, it's a good time.
56:46To see it, I would say it's a good time.
56:48All right.
56:48Please tell me.
56:49I will take off my head.
56:50You can read the next time.
56:50I will take off my head.
56:51I will take off my head.
56:52Yes, sir.
56:53It's a good time.
56:53I will be able to take off my head.
56:54It was a good time.
56:55I will take off my head.
56:56To see it.
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