In the time leading up to my testimony, my children suddenly began getting more phone calls from their half-siblings in the FLDS. Texas, which had been holding grand jury hearings in late July, was on the verge of handing down its first indictments based on evidence seized during the raid. As head of the compound, Merril, my ex-husband, was going to be the focus of intense scrutiny.
I was working on my Senate testimony when the calls to my kids accelerated. They always started out innocuously but quickly moved into questions about me. One of LuAnne’s half-brothers called from Texas. “We know your mom has been working with the state, and we know she has been in Texas during the time the children were in state custody,” he said.
“The only reason Mom has been in Texas,” LuAnne replied, “was because some of the state workers wanted to understand the FLDS culture.”
“I hope for your mom’s sake that you are telling the truth,” he said.
LuAnne was sick of being interrogated and threatened. She challenged her half-brother about his little sister being married to Warren Jeffs when she was twelve.
“What’s wrong with that?” he said.
“What’s wrong with our little sister being married to some old guy when she’s only twelve?” LuAnne asked incredulously.
The conversation abruptly ended.
As these phone calls continued, my children became more assertive in confronting their half-siblings. “If you’re calling to bitch about my mom,” they’d say, “then I have nothing to say to you.”
What really struck all of us was that the kids’ half-siblings actually thought my children would turn on me. (In truth, in the immediate aftermath of our escape, they would have.) One of my stepchildren asked LuAnne point-blank why she and her siblings were not doing what Father expected them to do. “Because Father abandoned us, never made any effort to visit us for years, and didn’t even give us his telephone number,” LuAnne replied.
Merril’s son Johnson, who was the same age as LuAnne, said it was not their father’s responsibility to maintain a relationship with them, but their responsibility to keep in contact with Merril.
I thought about putting a stop to the calls, but then I realized it was good for my children to practice standing up for themselves. They laughed whenever someone said, “Tell your mother to keep sweet.” That FLDS mantra of “proper” behavior seemed silly to them now.
The Senate Judiciary Committee hearing was held on July 24, which seemed surreal since that’s one of the most sacred days in the Mormon calendar. Pioneer Day commemorates that date in 1847 when Brigham Young first looked out over the Great Salt Lake Valley and told his followers that they could stop traveling—he’d found his version of the Promised Land. I’d just journeyed in the exact opposite direction, from Salt Lake City to Washington, D.C., where our nation’s laws are crafted and enforced. It was also LuAnne’s seventeenth birthday, which I was sorry to miss. But she shared my pride in what this moment meant for me.
Dan Fischer was also invited to testify. We discovered that we’d been on the same flight when we bumped into each other in the Washington airport. If Dan hadn’t been there to help my eight children and me after we fled, if he and his wife, Leenie, had not been so steadfast in their support, I could never have made a safe transition from the tyranny of the FLDS to another life.
Right after the breakfast I was too nervous to eat, Dan and I shared a cab up to Capitol Hill. It was comforting to have him guide me to Room 226 in the Dirksen Senate Office Building. Several FLDS members were hovering outside the hearing room. One was Dan’s little sister, who hadn’t spoken to him in years. She was with her husband and looked vulnerable and extremely out of place. Dan reached out and gave her a hug. She told him he should know better than to participate in a hearing like the one that was about to begin.
The FLDS had tried and failed to be included in the hearings. As Senator Reid said, “If you are working on sexual exploitation of children, you don’t bring in the people who are exploiting the children to testify.” I think the FLDS showed up anyway to harass witnesses and try to hoard the media spotlight.
The hearing, “Crimes Associated with Polygamy: The Need for a Coordinated State and Federal Response,” began with a statement by chairman Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.), who said, “As recent events in Texas make clear, this is an issue of particular concern in the West and Southwest and deserves this Committee’s attention. Indeed, the Federal government has a great interest in addressing child abuse, sexual abuse fraud, and other federal and state crimes that have originated in polygamous communities.”
The first witness was Senator Harry Reid. He said that in his earlier career as head of the Nevada Gaming Commission, he took on mob bosses in his fight to get organized crime out of the Las Vegas casinos. “The mob bosses I was up against practiced extortion, embezzlement, fraud, public corruption, obstruction of justice, and witness tampering. I faced death threats and constantly worried for the safety of my family. I am here to tell you that polygamous communities in the United States are a form of organized crime.”
I could not believe I had heard those words from a practicing Mormon who was also the Senate majority leader. Mainstream Mormons are outraged by much of what happens in polygamous communities, I know, but their silence is deafening. Many are ashamed of groups like the FLDS because of their own polygamous ancestors. Or they refuse to see the problem. Senator Reid’s Mormon colleague, Senator Orrin Hatch (R-Utah), once played the organ while visiting an FLDS church in Hildale, Utah, the sister town to Colorado City, where I used to live. According to The Los Angeles Times, local reporters asked Hatch about alleged FLDS abuse. “All I can say is I know people in Hildale who are polygamists who are very fine people,” Hatch was quoted as saying. “You come and show me the evidence of children being abused there and I’ll get involved … Bring the evidence to me.”
At the hearing Senator Reid was all about the evidence. While he acknowledged that polygamous communities were not exactly the “same thing” as the organized crime syndicate that used to run Las Vegas, he said, “They engage in an ongoing pattern of serious crimes that we must not ignore.” Reid talked about child abuse when underage teen and preteen girls are forced to marry older men and have children. Then he said:
But the criminal activity that goes on in these places is far broader. Witnesses at this hearing will describe a web of criminal conduct that includes welfare fraud, tax evasion, massive corruption, and strong-arm tactics to maintain the status quo. These crimes are systematic, sophisticated, and are frequently carried out across state lines.
This was more than I’d ever dreamed I’d hear from someone with Reid’s stature and prestige. He talked about introducing legislation, the Victims of Polygamy Assistance Act of 2008, that would create a task force to coordinate efforts among various agencies to deal with the “broad pattern” of criminal polygamous behavior. “These organizations routinely threaten, harass, and tamper with victims planning on testifying against them,” he said, so “it is necessary to provide targeted funds so that law enforcement can protect them and, if necessary, shield their identity. These lawless organizations must be stopped.”
These lawless organizations must be stopped. It was stunning. I had rarely heard the crimes of the FLDS confronted so directly—and never before by a ranking member of the Senate. The fact that Reid was himself a devout Mormon only made his remarks more astounding to me.
“In the West, we have a live-and-let-live attitude,” Reid continued. “We try not to bother our neighbors, and we expect the same from them. But polygamists have taken advantage of this attitude to form a sophisticated, wealthy, and vast criminal organization that has gone largely unchecked by government agencies.”
When Reid concluded, Willie Jessop made his way up the side aisle to sit closer to the front of the room. Plenty of seats were available elsewhere, but Willie made a point of walking to the front of the room, staring at me, and then intentionally going out of his way
to brush past me and positioning himself in a seat directly behind me.
I didn’t think the FLDS could do much more to surprise me, but I was wrong. Willie sat directly behind me so he’d be in the background of any footage. In reaction to statements he disagreed with, he sighed and groaned obnoxiously, clearly trying to intimidate me. But Willie Jessop didn’t intimidate me—he made me mad. Did the FLDS see me as one of its escaped slaves? Did the FLDS think I could be undone by the loud guffaws of someone linked to my former captors?
The Senate security men were watching Willie with the laserlike intensity of Secret Service agents. One of them told me later they considered evicting him. I’m glad they didn’t because he’d have played it like a martyr.
Willie hardened my resolve to fight even harder. I was no longer a bird confined to a cage to be tortured. I had found my wings and was determined to soar.
It would spell trouble for the FLDS if the federal government became actively involved in prosecuting its crimes and exposing its abusive behavior. As Attorney General Goddard made clear in his testimony, Arizona welcomed additional federal support and resources in dealing with the FLDS. He emphasized that this was not about religious persecution:
The work being done by my office in Colorado City is not about religion, culture, or lifestyle. Rather, it is about protecting women and children from domestic abuse and sexual violence; combating fraud and public corruption; enforcing civil rights laws; upholding peace officer standards; and ensuring that the rule of law is applied equally and comprehensively throughout our land.
Goddard was blunt with the senators about one of the most outrageous FLDS abuses: education. A child without an education is a child without a future. Why do the Taliban destroy schools and forbid education for girls in Afghanistan? Like the Taliban, the FLDS knows that ignorance and submission depend on each other. I knew Attorney General Goddard’s words were true because I was living in Colorado City in 2000 at the time of the events he described next:
The majority of children in Colorado City–Hildale have not attended school in the Colorado City Unified School District since 2000, when approximately 1,000 children were withdrawn from the District by then FLDS leader Rulon Jeffs. Those children were subsequently enrolled in private schools run by the FLDS in Colorado City or homeschooled, but the FLDS-run private schools have remained closed since September 2006, and it appears that hundreds of children are not receiving an education.
As his testimony continued, Goddard identified the fear that keeps women trapped in the FLDS:
Under Arizona laws, child abuse complaints cannot be prosecuted unless there is an actual victim who is willing to testify. Most women and children in Colorado City were, and in large part still are, afraid to testify against their abuser. Child abuse in the FLDS community has included physical and sexual abuse cases and unique situations that involve underage girls forced into plural marriages with much older men. In addition, the FLDS regularly expelled teenage boys from the community to reduce competition for plural wives.
It was enormously gratifying to hear both Senator Reid and Attorney General Goddard condemn such FLDS behavior as crimes. For former FLDS members like Dan Fischer and me, their words provided enormous validation. FLDS supporters often accuse us of making false charges because, they ask, if the FLDS is so terrible, why don’t more flee? I know from firsthand experience it’s because the women are too traumatized and can’t count on any protection if they do escape.
At the hearing I learned more details about the YFZ compound in Texas. Stephen Singular, a best-selling author and journalist who spent two years investigating the FLDS, said the Texas ranch was purchased in 2003 for $700,000 but as of 2008 had an assessed value of $20.5 million. “Where did all the funds come from for these improvements, and for other purchases of land in South Dakota and more recently in Colorado?” he asked the senators. “Has money been laundered or taxes evaded?”
Attorney General Goddard mentioned in his testimony that Texas authorities seized eighty-three computers and four hundred boxes of documents in the raid on the ranch. He added that his office was also still seeking access to four laptops, sixteen cell phones, and the records from the Cadillac Escalade that Warren Jeffs was riding in when he was arrested in Las Vegas on August 29, 2006. Goddard’s point to the Judiciary Committee was that criminal information not only has to be shared between states, but that in a situation like the raid in Texas, states need additional resources to process and analyze the material they find.
Dan Fischer’s testimony was spellbinding. A Utah dentist and now the CEO of Ultradent, which manufactures dental products, Dan has hard-earned moral authority when it comes to the FLDS. He was born into the cult and raised on its doctrines. As he testified, the FLDS chose his profession and his three wives. He left in 1996 and is in a monogamous marriage with his second wife.
Dan made it clear that there are good, decent, and hardworking people in the FLDS and that he appreciates the need to protect religious freedom. At the same time, he asserted, “The all-encompassing control over mind, person, family, economics and more, exercised under the guise of religion, has moved the FLDS to disturbing cult proportions. Without question, FLDS members will sacrifice self, family, and children if directed to by their leader. Their ‘salvation’ as taught by their prophet is dependent on them obeying totally what their prophet requests no matter what!”
Dan explained what he knew from his personal experience about tax fraud practices within the FLDS. He said Warren Jeffs (whom Dan knew well) routinely had objectionable schoolbooks destroyed. (I know this is true because my collection of three hundred children’s books was seized and destroyed.) Dan said Jeffs encouraged children to spy and report on their parents, siblings, and friends. Dan talked about Jeffs’s fascination with Hitler.
I was shocked to learn from Dan’s testimony that in 2005 the FLDS police chief in Colorado City received a $600,000 grant for sophisticated surveillance equipment from the Department of Homeland Security. This is mind-boggling. I shudder to think what that equipment was used for, and I am outraged that tax dollars might have gone to help the FLDS improve its ability to spy on its members.
Dan also talked about the Diversity Foundation, which he created to support teenage boys who have been kicked out of the FLDS. But the emotional centerpiece of his testimony was about a problem that cut very close to home: the decimation of families by Warren Jeffs. Fischer characterized this as one of Jeffs’s greatest atrocities:
Since around 1998, about 250 married men of all ages and some with multiple wives, children, and grandchildren (even great-grandchildren) have been expelled. They are instructed to “repent from afar.” The men are virtually erased from the history and existence to their families. Wives are remarried, taking their children with them. For the children, their “old father” is no longer their father. This can happen literally overnight with no warning.
“Wives will not object,” Dan explained. “They have been taught by their own husband for years that obedience to the prophet must supersede even their love or devotion to him.” This is related to the belief that the prophet has the power to determine if a husband is worthy enough to decide where his wife should go in the afterlife.
Dan’s own family was destroyed by Warren Jeffs in 1999 when his elderly father was told that he could no longer be a parent to his thirty-six children or a husband to his three wives. The call came at 4:30 a.m. to Dan’s brother, Shem, who has since left the FLDS, too. Dan read an emotional account that his brother wrote about the ordeal. In the predawn call from their mother, she said that she had been “released” from their father and that all three wives and dozens of their children were to meet at the hilltop home of the then-prophet, Rulon Jeffs. It was a total shock to everyone.
When the family assembled (minus their father), Rulon, who was in failing health, was slumped in an overstuffed armchair, drooling. An oxygen tank helped him breathe. Rulon’s son Warren presided over the gathering, announ
cing that his father, the prophet, had prayed deeply and that God had told him that Dan and Shem’s father was “not worthy” of his three wives and that time was too short to repent. Jeffs said the three wives had to be lifted up before destruction covered the North and South American continents. It was “God’s will,” he claimed.
Dan, who incredibly had an eight-year-old sister, Lily Ann Fischer, said she interrupted Warren Jeffs with her sobbing, imploring him to show mercy. “Is there no hope at all for my father’s salvation?” she begged. “Can’t he repent and get his family back?”
Dan continued to choke up as he read Shem’s letter. Jeffs, the letter said, replied to Lily Ann in a calm, cold voice, “No, the time is too short—there is no hope for your father to gain the highest degree of salvation.” Within five days, all three wives were assigned to three different men, breaking apart a family that had been so close that some children grew up never knowing which mother was actually their biological mother. Even when they did find out, it was a nonissue—until the family was split apart and, in the eyes of the FLDS, these kids were no longer even siblings. Shem’s mother (Dan’s stepmother) became the fifty-seventh wife of Prophet Rulon Jeffs, sharing him as a husband with two of her own daughters. (Such marriages are not uncommon in the FLDS: I knew a man in Colorado City who married a mother and daughter who were both pregnant with his babies at the same time. And I’ve heard that currently there’s a man in the FLDS who is married to a mother, daughter, and grandmother simultaneously. Cult members don’t blink an eye at this sort of thing because the prophet has sanctioned it.)
Dan’s father, a devout and dedicated member of the FLDS for decades, was broken, and there was no putting him back together. Even though Dan had already quit the FLDS, he was deeply distressed by the fact that one man, Warren Jeffs, had the power to annihilate families on a whim. “Even I, at age fifty when my family was destroyed,” Dan said, “would wake up with nightmares for over a year. I literally felt as if I’d just become an orphan.” Dan lost his composure several times as he shared his story. The hearing room fell silent. Dan’s anguish and the creepiness and despair of the saga he was relating were hard to hear. The senators, who were about the same age as Dan, seemed aghast.