A Terrible Reversal
On April 18, 2008, Judge Walther ordered the FLDS mothers and men living on the YFZ Ranch to provide DNA evidence, and the actual testing began three days later. More than one hundred mothers provided DNA samples so they could be matched with their children. By comparison, only a few men voluntarily gave DNA samples. Most refused to comply with the court order.
The first wave of testing indicated that nearly a hundred children did not match up with any of the DNA samples. The assumption was that this was because none of these children had a parent living with them on the ranch. But most of the children’s DNA showed that they were related to each other, with cross matches in several directions. Several of the tests of the unmatched children were sent to a lab that specialized in matching a child’s DNA to the mother. These results also revealed that most of the children on the ranch were closely related to one another. How could more than four hundred children be so closely related? Nearly all the people on the ranch were Merril’s biological children and grandchildren, his stepchildren and their grandchildren, his siblings, their children and grandchildren, his sons-in-law and their families, his daughters-in-law and their siblings. Almost every family was linked into Merril’s family in one way or another. Nearly every man on the ranch who wasn’t a son or a stepson was married to one of Merril’s daughters.
The numbers say it best: CPS removed 468 people from the ranch—439 children and 29 women. But among the 468 there were only eighteen last names.
The DNA began illuminating other disturbing evidence. The children’s parents in several cases had married double first cousins. In other cases, full sisters married the same man, making their children half-siblings as well as first cousins. The extensive intermarrying made it extremely difficult to sort out who the children’s parents were. The situation went far beyond what is typically demanded of DNA testing and called for more specialized testing.
One consequence of all the intermarrying is that FLDS children have a higher incidence of a rare and catastrophic genetic disease, fumarase deficiency, than children anywhere else in the world. Up until 1990, only thirteen cases were known worldwide, but since then twenty have been reported in the FLDS community I fled, although none on the ranch. Fumarase children are subject to severe mental retardation, epileptic seizures, and encephalopathy.
Warren Jeffs couldn’t refuse to come in for DNA testing. The Texas Rangers went to the Arizona jail where he was awaiting trial on charges of arranging two other underage marriages and collected a sample of his DNA. The results established that Jeffs had fathered a baby with a minor on the ranch.
On May 29, 2008, just as the DNA was starting to reveal more and more about the reality of life within the YFZ compound, the Texas Supreme Court issued its ruling: all the children were to be returned to their parents. As upsetting as this news was, I can’t say it was entirely unexpected. My first thought was that now the crimes against the children would increase. I was furious that the state of Texas had started something it couldn’t finish. If it didn’t think it could ultimately protect the children from the ranch, it should have left them there. But once a state has taken on the FLDS, it should not back down. Retreat only feeds the cult’s arrogance and pushes its crimes to higher levels.
This was an exceedingly difficult day for all of us who’d spent months working to protect the children. But the FLDS could not declare a complete victory: CPS could still proceed on a case-by-case basis and argue whether it was safe enough for each child to be returned. The thorniest issue for both the appellate and the Supreme Court was the removal of all the children without adequate evidence that all were in danger. My own feeling, based on conversations I had with CPS staff, is that the agency was so overburdened with providing care for the 439 children in its custody that it lacked the resources to build the abuse case it needed to sway the courts. The children were never given psychological evaluations or sophisticated bone scans that would have established their emotional state or the extent of past broken bones and fractures.
The court said the departures were to begin as soon as possible. Some guidelines were set: parents and children were to be fingerprinted, and parents were to provide addresses for where the children were being taken, along with the names of everyone else who’d be living at that address. Parents and children were not to leave Texas without court approval. Parents were to give seven days’ notice of any change of address. All parents were to take CPS parenting classes. CPS retained the right to visit any parent’s house unannounced between 6:00 a.m. and 8:00 p.m. each day. CPS could also order psychological, medical, or psychiatric tests for parents as well as children.
All the children were returned to their parents or guardians by 2:00 p.m. on June 4, 2008. After the Supreme Court ruling, CPS had worked out an agreement stipulating that anyone who picked up a child had to be photographed with that child and fingerprinted. But some FLDS members refused to comply even with this requirement. It was a total fiasco.
State workers were despondent as they watched the children depart. There was plenty of regret and blame to go around. I got dozens of calls and e-mails from CPS workers begging me to help them do something. One e-mail I’ll never forget came from a woman who had desperately wanted to protect the two young mothers and their children she’d come to know and love:
When I heard these two mothers were leaving, I rushed up to the center and gave each one a box of pre-addressed and stamped envelopes and cards. I wrote down every way in the world to get in touch with me. I told them that my husband and I, as well as my daughter and her husband, would come get them anywhere—any time of the day or night, at any place.
My heart was broken when the children left. The life drained right out of their little eyes when they saw their mothers (except for the very young ones). But 4 and 5 and on up knew this was it. Two children in our care (3 and 5 years old) acted out and displayed sexual abuse, and the 5 year old told me “there are naughty men on the land.”
I, my daughter, and my sister want to help. We have homes with room to house someone. My sister is a retired school teacher/principal now working in real estate. We can help these families make the transition into the real world. I have written detailed reports on what was said to me by the children about working in the “garden” or fields in severe heat and cold, the harsh schedule they kept, the lack of education, the sexual abuse, etc…. I don’t know if it will get to the right place and make a difference.
I simply cannot let this drop. I have grieved, lost my voice (I think from stress and tiredness), and pray continuously for these families. Please let us know how we can help. Can we help raise money … write certain people? Something has got to be done.
Some of the children did not seem particularly happy to see their mothers, and I understood why: FLDS children rarely get attached to their mothers. Once my children reached toddlerhood, my parenting was constantly sabotaged. Any wife in the family could discipline them. (Interference with babies was less because babies take a lot of work, and family members were glad to have anyone else do it.) I’d give my children permission to do something, and then another wife would come along and punish them for doing the very thing I had said was okay. Moreover, most of Merril’s children were taught to despise and hate their mothers, so as to enforce their father’s power, and many came to believe their mothers deserved any physical or verbal abuse he unleashed. Year after year of this kind of disruption will alter a relationship. My children quickly learned to submit to the person in power, and they soon figured out it wasn’t me.
When I was ordered to work full time as a teacher (and turn my salary over to Merril), I had to leave my nursing babies at home. In theory, my sister wives or Merril’s daughters would care for them. Invariably I’d race home at lunchtime to nurse, only to find my baby in a diaper drenched with urine. When I’d ask if he’d been fed, one of Merril’s daughters would say, “No, we wanted him to be hungry when you got home.” It was infuriating. I knew my ba
bies weren’t being well cared for when I was at school. But if I complained, I was accused of rebelling against Merril.
Many Americans were taken aback when they saw video clips of the FLDS mothers greeting the children from whom they’d been separated for weeks with handshakes instead of hugs. But such lack of affection is standard for the FLDS. In Merril’s family, we were not allowed to kiss and hug our children. When I tried to show affection to mine, they were so ridiculed that I quit. If I hugged them in private, they’d say, “Father doesn’t want you to do that” or “That’s bad, Mom.”
Nor could I have a birthday party for any of my children. Why? Because doing so would mean I was assigning value to my child—a privilege held only by their father. For anyone else, such an action was considered taking glory unto oneself. So daring to hold a birthday party would have been seen as one more act of rebellion against Merril, one more subversion of his power.
While the FLDS drama in Texas was playing out in the media, commentators often remarked on the healthy diets the compound children appeared to have—in marked contrast to the average American child. In my opinion, that was another distortion. True, the kids at the YFZ Ranch weren’t eating Happy Meals or junk food. When I was married to Merril, we didn’t eat that stuff either. But we were still hungry most of the time. The reasons were not financial; Merril had, and still has, plenty of money. Food was simply another way he exerted control, a way to make us feel powerless and submissive. We ate a high-starch diet that was mostly rice, beans, potatoes, and bread. We had vegetables from the garden in the summer, but not in the winter, and rarely much protein. I was often famished, and I know the children were, too. I once saw a child slapped so hard when he tried to get a slice of bread that he flew into a cupboard.
That kind of violence was not unusual in our home, yet I had no power to stop it. Not all of Merril’s other wives were violent, but several were. When I complained, Merril would call me into his office and say, “You are the abuser because you are indulging your children in allowing them unhealthy behavior!” Any behavior he didn’t approve of was considered abusive.
In my experience, most kids in the FLDS behave like orphans. They usually bond with a sibling of their own age for mutual protection. My eight children were all terrified of Merril and were trained to treat and fear him like a god. But they have shown me how incredibly resilient kids can be. After a lot of work and therapy, we have become a family for the first time. We hug and kiss one another and say “I love you” all the time.
My children had escaped a terrible fate, and naturally I hoped and prayed that somehow the FLDS children in Texas might also be spared. But the Supreme Court decision changed everything. Before the ruling, several of the FLDS mothers had told their children’s court-appointed guardians that they would leave the FLDS in order to get their children back. These women said they would get jobs, find apartments, and even divorce their husbands if that’s what it took. I know some were sincere because they had already taken steps in that direction. But now it didn’t matter. They no longer had options: if they didn’t return to the compound with their kids, they could risk being separated from them altogether.
Not surprisingly, hostility arose between many FLDS mothers and those who had worked so tirelessly to help them. Women who until then had been cooperating with the state turned on their attorneys and the state workers assisting them. I learned this from an attorney who was working with one of Warren Jeffs’s daughters. The attorney absolutely adored this young woman and wanted to take her and her several children into her own home. But when the ruling came down, the young woman decided that since God had delivered them, she no longer needed the help of anyone in this world.
Because the court’s decision gave CPS the right to monitor all the children after they returned and to make unannounced visits, Merril didn’t allow all of the families to return to the YFZ Ranch. In the end, only a select few brought their children back. The rest of the mothers were required to live in outside apartments or other homes so the FLDS could keep the ranch off-limits to any child-protection authorities.
Another appalling consequence of the Supreme Court ruling was that my stepson Danny Jessop—the man who had sexually abused my daughter—was back as a media favorite. During one of his many televised interviews, my daughter started shrieking, “I hate him! He is such a liar! He’s sitting there with a great big smile on his face and lying.”
I’m not the only former FLDS member who feels that Texas dropped the ball with this case because it never fully understood what it was up against. We all knew the FLDS would push back with everything it had—and that that was a lot more than the state of Texas realized. With assets of over $100 million, the FLDS has, and has always had, deep enough pockets to hire the most talented lawyers it can find.
I was deeply distraught because I knew that more than four hundred children had lost their rights. It was unfathomable to me that the largest custody case in U.S. history had simply gone up in smoke. Children who had been promised safety and protection were turned back to their perpetrators. I saw it as nothing less than a tragedy.
But through my despair I saw the shining faces of the true heroes I met during those long weeks. These were the men and women who had the courage to stand tall through a crisis: the law enforcement officers who worked extremely long hours to investigate heartbreaking crimes, and the CPS staffers who marched unflinchingly into a chaotic and extremely stressful situation day after day. I was amazed at the way the community of Eldorado rallied to collect supplies and offer support for the children. More than a hundred attorneys streamed in from across the state to volunteer their time and talents to help ensure that every child received legal protection. Professionals rallied to put systems and strategies in place so the children would not be further traumatized. CASA tackled a staggering caseload and recruited emergency volunteers to provide additional services for all the FLDS children. Various nonprofits leaped into the fray to offer whatever they could, especially in the area of temporary and long-term care. Dozens of families throughout the western United States generously volunteered to take in women and children from the FLDS.
If the only way to overcome evil is through love, these were the people who really tried, by opening their hearts, committing their talents, and refusing to back down. If only the legal system had underscored their efforts instead of undermining them.
Ms. Jessop Goes to Washington
It’s not often that an attorney general tells a U.S. senator that he’s full of it—especially when he’s the Senate majority leader. But a few weeks after the Texas raid, Senator Harry Reid (D-Nev.), a Mormon convert, told the University of Utah’s KUER radio station, “I am a cheerleader for what Texas is doing. Texas is doing what Utah and Arizona should have done years ago.”
Mark Shurtleff, the Utah attorney general, who was very supportive of me when I first escaped, lashed back. “Harry Reid is full of crap” was how he put it to Salt Lake City’s Deseret News on May 4, 2008. He continued in The Salt Lake Tribune: “To have him come in, without any knowledge whatsoever, and to accuse Utah of doing nothing is unacceptable. He ought to get educated before he opens his trap, frankly.”
Shurtleff did concede an important point to the Deseret News. “It’s never been that I choose to ignore a felony crime in the state,” he said. “It’s always been a matter of resources.” Shurtleff went on to point out that the more than four hundred children Texas had in state custody were a drop in the bucket compared to the thousands of children who would flood the foster care system in Utah if he took a similar hard-line approach. “If we start prosecuting polygamy just for polygamy, where do we stop?” he told the reporter. “The state of Utah, let alone my office, does not have the resources.”
I don’t doubt that Utah and Arizona lack the resources to tackle the enormous problems posed by the FLDS in their states. That is why the federal government has to get involved. Both Shurtleff and Terry Goddard, the attorney general for Arizona
, sent Harry Reid a four-page letter and a stack of documents defending the actions that Utah and Arizona have taken against the FLDS over recent years. The hatchet was soon buried.
Reid promised both men he would lobby for a federal task force to probe crimes linked to polygamy. Said Goddard, “All is forgiven if he will help us get active federal involvement in cases that they can investigate.”
An enormous step was taken in that direction on July 24, 2008, when I raised my right hand and swore that the testimony I was about to give was the truth. Senator Harry Reid, true to his word to bring federal pressure to the crimes of polygamy, convened hearings before the Senate Judiciary Committee. I was the only woman invited to testify.
It was an enormous milestone in my life. I was speaking to senators and to history. I had never had a voice before. The only free speech in the FLDS was the freedom to parrot the words of the prophet. I didn’t dare say what I really felt about my husband or the prophet because of my fear of retribution and retaliation. Not until a year after my escape did I realize I had rights as an American citizen that were guaranteed and protected by the U.S. Constitution.
Senator Reid’s office first approached me about testifying shortly after the FLDS children were sent back to the YFZ Ranch. I was told I’d need to testify only about my knowledge of federal crimes, because the government could not get involved with issues that fell under the state jurisdiction. Reid was planning to sponsor legislation that would create federal programs to assist victims trying to leave closed polygamous communities. He also wanted a special federal task force to investigate crimes related to polygamy.