Authors: Elissa Wall
When Rulon Jeffs became the prophet, he expanded the prophet’s role regarding marriage beyond simply revealing who was allowed to marry. Before Uncle Rulon, if a couple was having marital problems, they would be encouraged to handle them on their own, save for serious matters such as adultery and apostasy. Rulon began performing a sort of marriage counseling supposedly aimed at resolving marital conflict, but it was less about solving problems and more about control over husbands and wives.
With his new practice, the prophet became privy to members’ most intimate secrets, and Rulon was not afraid to put this information to use. Under the guise of counseling, the prophet—and later Warren—began making life-altering decisions such as controlling the sexual relations of spouses and at times going so far as to divide families by banishing men, and remarrying their wives.
As Uncle Rulon’s stroke placed Warren more firmly in the seat of power, these irrational directives started becoming even harsher and more far-reaching in their implications. Now FLDS men had to worry about any misstep in their household—even those that did not impact the marriage. Warren effectively began to encourage some women to spy on their husbands in the name of the Lord, wanting them to come forward with any infraction, no matter how small. He probed everything from the possession of worldly music to more serious infractions such as religious doubt or disloyalty.
No violation was too small, as far as Uncle Warren was concerned, and this was bad news for our family. It was no secret in our house that Warren had long had it in for many of the Walls. Now, with our problems, it was only a matter of time before he used this information to serve his purpose.
W
hen Justin and Jacob returned from Canada, they had a hard time adjusting to family life. It had been rough for them in the closed FLDS community, a far cry from our routine in Salt Lake. There were fewer outside forces to entice them, no big stores or shopping malls or video arcades packed with children. If they had made any progress in their faith while in Canada, it evaporated shortly after their return.
The fact that Travis was again around only made the twins more restless. Travis had developed an interest in techno music and went to parties known as raves. The music had a strong beat and vocals like nothing he had heard before, and he would tell the twins about it whenever he came by our house. Even to me, just a child, I could see his effect on them was apparent, as both the twins wanted to do what their older brother was doing. At the time, I didn’t have a full grasp on the situation, but I did understand that Travis wanted to share his new world with my brothers.
Then in July of 1999 came the day that changed our family forever. Travis had excited Justin and Jacob about the raves to the point where they badly wanted to go to one. Since Travis wasn’t living with us, he was planning to go separately, and the twins had no ride. Desperate to get to the party, they begged my mom to drop them off there. Dad warned her not to do it. He was fed up with what had been going on at home, and if the twins went to that party, he would be upset.
Membership in the FLDS didn’t stop Dad from facing the kinds of concerns that plague all parents of teenagers at one time or another. His twin sons were not yet eighteen, and as far as he was concerned, it was still his duty to protect them when he felt that they were placing themselves in harm’s way. We’d all heard about the worldly music and dancing that went on at these rave parties, and it didn’t seem out of the ordinary for Dad to be worried. Besides, if Uncle Warren were to find out that Justin and Jacob had gone to a party even though they didn’t have Dad’s consent, he might use that as an excuse to further damage my father’s standing in the priesthood, and Dad might risk losing his family again.
The Saturday of the party came around and, in keeping with family tradition, that day my mother wanted us to wash the family’s Suburban so it would be clean and shiny for church the following afternoon. Most times, we would scrub the truck right in our driveway with sponges and buckets we had around the house. Mom tried to make this chore fun for us, and on this occasion she decided to take us to the car wash up the hill from our house.
The beginnings of summer dusk were spreading across the sky as we pulled up to the car wash and began to feed quarters into the machine. We had finished spraying the soapy lather over the truck and were applying the final rinse when we noticed a figure running up the road toward us. I felt a chill rush through my body as, all at once, I saw his scuffed-up face and the way he was limping—and recognized that it was Brad, my fifteen-year-old brother.
Brad approached my mother and clung to her like a small child, his arms draped around her body and his shoulders heaving. It was startling to see my older brother, who I had always found so strong, dissolve into tears. Mom asked us to give her and Brad some privacy and instructed us to move to the other side of the vehicle. Worried, we peeked around the truck to see what was happening. As Brad shared the story, I watched a look somewhere between fury and pain sweep across Mom’s face. Though it would not be until years later that I learned the details of what had happened, it was clear from her expression that something bad had taken place.
Dad had returned home to find the family gone. While we were at the car wash, the twins had secretly gone to meet up with some friends. With no one there to inform Dad where we were, he grew worried that perhaps Mom had given in and agreed to drive Justin and Jacob to the party. As the minutes crept by with no word from Mom, Dad’s imagination began to take hold of him. It was at that point that Brad came home from whatever he’d been doing. Right away, Dad asked Brad where his brothers were.
Since Brad had no idea, he issued a typical teenage response: “Why do you care?” Angry at his son’s lack of respect, Dad left the room for a moment to take a breath.
This was when Mother Laura got involved and everything spun out of control. Furious at how my brother had spoken to Dad, she took it upon herself to give Brad a scolding. While I wasn’t there to witness what happened next, years later, I was told that the conversation grew heated, with Laura becoming so angry that she raised a hand to Brad, who reflexively grabbed her arm to protect himself. As Dad walked in the room, he saw this and thought that Brad was attacking Laura. What followed was probably one of the most dramatic moments in the Wall family history, as the confrontation between Brad and my father turned dangerously physical and ended with Brad escaping up the hill to the car wash.
After hearing Brad’s awful story, Mom moved quickly. She instructed us all to get back into the Suburban and buckle up. I wondered where we were going and what Mom planned to do, but I knew I shouldn’t ask any questions or offer an opinion. I didn’t know what Brad had told her, but Mom seemed very upset.
Mom drove fast, fueled by sadness and despair. She made her way down the road, pulling abruptly into the first place that had a pay phone. She grabbed my hand and pulled me beside her into the phone booth. Crammed next to her in the glass encasement, I knew right away that she was on the phone with Uncle Warren; she had reached her breaking point and didn’t wait to hear Dad’s explanation before calling.
She gave Uncle Warren the details of the day’s events and waited intently as he told her what to do. I didn’t understand what Mom was trying to do, but I realize now that she was just trying to do the best for her kids. There were so many painful events that had happened even before I was born, and it placed Mom in the position where she felt she had nowhere else to go for help and turned to the only thing she had faith in. There was little we kids could do except watch helplessly as the events unfolded. I stood there with my head pressed against my mother, listening as Uncle Warren’s voice floated out of the receiver and into the air that seemed to be closing in on us. Without hesitating, Warren rattled off a list of instructions, including that we were not to go home. I had already been removed from my home once, and I couldn’t bear to go through it again.
When she got off the phone, my brothers and I sat in the truck begging her to let us go home, trying to convince her that everything would be okay. We were afraid of what would happen to us next, and how long we would have to be gone this time. The knot that had taken root in my stomach began to grow large and painful. I was filled with dread from the realization that nothing would ever be the same.
That summer we were removed from my father’s home for the second and final time. Warren and the prophet never even spoke to Dad, giving him the chance to explain or try to find a less severe resolution. While we did return home one last night to sleep, the following morning we piled into the Suburban and Mom took us to the home of a church elder, who was directed to arrange our transportation out of town. This time, Dad would lose not only Mom but also, soon, Mother Laura. For my dad, this was the most painful blow imaginable. He was told that he had not only lost his priesthood and family but also his place in the Celestial Kingdom. To an FLDS member, this was losing everything. As with our first departure, his heart was broken, but now it was clear it would never mend.
For time and all eternity.
—
FLDS WEDDING VOW
I
have no recollection of how we got to Hildale or who drove us there. Instead, what I remember is the painful silence of the long car ride and Brad’s overwhelming guilt. Even though the altercation with my father hadn’t been his fault, he was horribly distraught over it and blamed himself for what was happening to our family. If he hadn’t become so entangled with Dad the previous day, our lives might have remained as they were. While things were far from perfect, they were what we knew. Now, once again, we were uprooted and facing an uncertain future.
The next morning, Mom assembled her kids and prepared to bring us to the home of the church elder in the Salt Lake Valley. We didn’t know anything except that we were leaving. As Mom was trying to herd us into the Suburban, Justin and Jacob refused, informing her they wouldn’t go until they knew where we were being taken. They had urged Mom not to leave, assuring her things would change, but I knew in her heart she was committed to carrying out the will of the prophet. It seemed like all that mattered was what Warren had told her, and blinded by what she thought was the will of the prophet, I suppose she did the only thing she knew and chose to leave her sons in the name of her religion. In a flurry of emotion, we left the twins at the house, with my mother telling us that someone in the church would make sure they joined us later. That never happened.
Without the twins, only five of us, Brad, Caleb, Sherrie, Ally, and me, drove out of town with Mom that day. I was too young to draw any conclusions on my own, and I felt helpless as I watched the busy city streets of Salt Lake give way to the parched, red earth of southern Utah. Even for Brad our departure was bitter. Over the last months, Dad had been trying to work on his relationship with the boys. He’d bought four-wheelers and had been taking them into the mountains to ride on weekends. Growing up, Dad had forbidden such things, even bicycles, because they would take us off the property, but riding in the mountains with the boys had started to bring them closer together.
What none of us realized that day was that we had been taken from Dad not because of his abuse. In the FLDS, physical abuse is not nearly the taboo that it is in the outside world, and kids often suffer harsh punishments at the hands of their parents. What had happened to Brad was tragic but would not ordinarily be grounds for an FLDS man to lose the priesthood. Perhaps the reason that Warren and his father felt such a drastic step was necessary was that my father had lost control over his house, and it seemed clear that he would never get it back. With each group of younger kids falling under the influence of the older ones, my father’s family was growing up doubting and sometimes defiant toward him and to the church. If the priesthood allowed this trend to continue, it might spread to other kids and other families. That was too great a risk for a religion that relied on absolute control over its members. The only solution to this was to remove the rest of the family from that environment in the hope that a new home and a new priesthood father would mold us into ideal church members.
“Let us go back, Mom,” I begged, overcome by a sudden urge to cuddle up to my mother and hold on to her skirt as if I was a toddler. “Please, let us go home.”
Her face was drawn and her eyes had lost their glow, and behind them I sensed the same fear that we were all feeling. Turning toward me, she could muster no other response than “Just pray, Lesie.”
Brilliant hues of orange and red illuminated the late-afternoon sky as we pulled up to the home of Uncle Fred Jessop, the local bishop. It would have been difficult for me to find any source of comfort at the time, but at least we were at the home of Uncle Fred. Because of his important role in the community, he commanded respect, and even though I had never known Uncle Fred myself, I looked up to him. Still, dread gripped my stomach as we approached his doorstep with the small bags that contained the few items we’d had time to gather: a few changes of clothing and a single pair of pajamas.
The stark contrast between Uncle Fred’s house and the house I grew up in was undeniable. His expansive L-shaped residence was one of the largest in the community, with more than forty-five rooms spread over two floors and three large wings connected at the center to the original home. Fifteen of Uncle Fred’s living wives and more than thirty of his children lived there when we arrived in late July. While I’d long seen his sprawling compound from the playground several blocks away, I’d never actually been inside.