Authors: Elissa Wall
I broke into sobs. Mom’s attempts to calm me down were interrupted by a knock at the door.
“Elissa?” I heard Allen’s voice summoning me.
“Go away!” I shouted.
“Lesie!” Mom admonished. She was desperate for me to stop acting so disrespectfully. I knew I was being immature, but I couldn’t help it. What was happening was just too difficult, and I didn’t have the tools to handle it.
I waited in Mom’s room until two or three in the morning before returning to my bedroom. Turning the doorknob, I tried to be as quiet as I could, hoping not to wake Allen. But when I stepped inside, I found him in his underwear sprawled out on top of the bedspread. Reflexively, I backed away as he stood and came toward me. I was trembling as he reached for my buttons and began unfastening my dress.
“Don’t touch me,” I cried. “I don’t want to have anything to do with you.”
Suddenly, he pulled off his underwear and exposed himself to me again. Closing my eyes, I begged him, “Please don’t do this. I don’t want anything to do with this.”
“This is what we’re supposed to be doing,” Allen announced. “This is what married people do.”
“Well, I don’t know what you’re doing, so please don’t.”
Allen hesitated, “Don’t you ever want to have a baby?” he asked.
“Not with you,” I told him in a trembling voice.
“You know, I’m not going to hurt you,” he explained as his hands worked the back of my dress. “This is what the prophet told me to do to you.”
As the word
prophet
escaped his lips, I felt suddenly alarmed that I was not following what the priesthood had intended. Somehow it had never crossed my mind that the church wanted us to do whatever it was that Allen was doing. I tried to trust in what Allen was telling me, but the way he touched me was too unsettling and I hated how it made me feel. Panicked and unwilling to continue, I leaned close and whispered, “Please, just go to bed. Please, just get dressed.” But the words had little effect on him. As he pulled off my dress, I began to cry.
“Stop it,” Allen instructed. “Don’t act like a baby. Do you know what I’m doing?”
“No,” I said, recoiling. I watched as he circled behind me, and I felt his firm hand unfastening my bra. After he had removed my church undergarments, I grabbed the blanket from the bed and held it in front of me as a final layer of protection. He ripped the blanket from my grasp, exposing me completely. I stood trembling, feeling horribly ashamed.
He took a step back and his gaze crawled over my entire body. “I’ve always wanted to see a woman naked,” he proclaimed.
I’d never felt as vulnerable as I did during those moments when he scrutinized every inch of me for the first time. I hadn’t been naked in front of anyone since I was a little girl. Everything about me had been laid bare. Standing in front of Allen, I could feel his eyes taking in my body with a look that I did not trust, but I was too frightened to try and put my clothes back on. I was crying as he brought me over to the bed.
“Now do you know what I’m going to do to you?” he said in a weird way.
“No,” I responded with a whimper. He began to tell me what he was planning to do, and it only made me confused. When he started to describe it, he got excited in a way I had never seen before, and the look on his face was almost animal. A sick feeling rose inside me, a scream bubbled up, and I was on my feet. Grabbing the blanket, I ran for the door, desperate for the protection of my mother’s room. When I saw that Mom wasn’t there, I flopped down on her bed and began to sob into her pillow.
My cries eventually woke my sister Ally, who crawled over and without saying a word put her arms around me.
“I’m sorry for waking you. Go back to sleep. It’s a school night,” I said.
“I’m just helping you cry.”
Her response made me cry all the more, but that night, with my little sister curled up beside me, I slept peacefully in Mom’s bed.
“All better?” Ally asked me when we woke up the next morning.
“Yes,” I said with a smile, and she smiled back. Even though she was young, she knew I was not okay, but my answer was sufficient for her and she started to prepare for school.
I too had to get ready for school. I wanted to finish the ninth grade, because school was very important to me. As much as I disliked Uncle Fred’s school, it was better than being home and having to face Allen. I was glad to be on my way that morning, but I hated how everyone treated me differently because I was married. It was like they refused to let me be a fourteen-year-old girl anymore. Marriage, it seemed, was more important for a girl than anything else—especially learning.
I was deep into my algebra exam that morning when I felt a hand on my shoulder. “There is someone at the door for you.” My teacher’s voice startled me from my math problem.
Looking up, I saw Allen standing in the hallway, peeking into the classroom.
“Can you tell him that I’m in the middle of a test?” I asked my teacher.
“I’m not gonna tell him anything,” Mr. Richter informed me. He was one of the stricter teachers, and I knew he wouldn’t help me.
Rising to my feet, I hesitantly made my way to the door. When I reached it, I saw that the school principal had accompanied Allen.
“I’m going to just take you for the day,” Allen told me. “The principal said it’s okay.”
“But I have a test,” I said, hoping the principal would insist that I stay to complete it. But since this was a priesthood school, neither Allen nor the principal saw the importance of my finishing the exam.
Following Allen to the parking lot, I got into the passenger seat. I was livid but held my tongue as we drove around Utah and Arizona. Allen was angry at how I’d acted the previous night, and with a raised voice, he related his frustration. I’d never seen him lose his cool, and his ill temper took me by surprise. In the FLDS, becoming angry was frowned upon.
“I just hate you,” I told him. “And I hope you go to hell.”
At first, he seemed as if he was about to melt into tears, but after a few minutes, he got so upset that he smashed his sunglasses on the steering wheel so hard that a piece of the wheel broke off and fell to the floor. “You didn’t go and tell your mom, did you?” he demanded.
“Tell my mom what?”
“You didn’t go and tell her about anything, did you?” I knew he was referring to what had happened in our bedroom the previous night.
“No.”
“Well, you’d better not,” he reprimanded. “She needs to stay out of our business completely. If it was up to me, we wouldn’t even live by her.”
That night, I refused to go to my room and stayed with my mother, but I didn’t confide in her, despite her offer of support. The following morning I was summoned to Uncle Fred’s office, where I found Allen with Fred. My stomach churned as Fred motioned for me to sit down.
“Allen tells me that you have been rebellious toward him,” he began. “What’s going on?”
I wanted to tell Uncle Fred the truth and how I was certain that Allen didn’t deserve to be a priesthood man and have all the privileges that came along with it. Instead, I tried to save myself. “I’m doing the best I can,” I told him.
I was furious that Allen had gone to him to complain that I wasn’t being a submissive wife. And I hated the smug look he wore as Uncle Fred reprimanded me for disobedience.
“Lesie, you’re not standing up to your vows,” Fred said in a soft voice. I could tell by his tone that Uncle Fred was displeased with me and I shrank in the face of his reprimand. At the end of the meeting, Allen grabbed my hand and led me from the room. I waited until we were out of Uncle Fred’s line of sight before I pulled my hand away from him and ran to find my mother.
A
few days had passed when I decided I needed to speak with my mother about what Allen was doing in our bedroom. I was certain that he was telling me a tall tale when he said that it was his right. I couldn’t imagine that it was okay, and I wanted to hear it from Mom.
“Mom, how do people have a baby?” I asked her straight out.
“Well,” she stammered, “that is for Allen to tell you.”
Her refusal to answer my question bothered me. If I had only known what was going on, I would have at least understood what Allen was trying to do. As it was, his actions only made me feel dirty. All she would have had to do was explain what had to happen for a woman to have children, but she didn’t. She’d been admonished by Uncle Fred to stay out of our affairs, and she couldn’t even tell me the one thing that I needed to know.
Days later, I was talking with one of the girls who’d gotten married with me. She could see I was very upset and needed a friend. Taking pity on me, she told me a little about “man/wife relations,” but her explanation was terribly vague and a little scary and I walked away even more confused.
That night, I returned to my room to find Allen waiting up for me.
“It’s time for you to be a wife and do your duty,” he told me as I walked through the door.
“No,” I said, breaking down in tears. “Please don’t make me do anything. I don’t want to have that kind of thing with you.”
“Why?” Allen asked me.
“Because I don’t like you,” I said, unable to hold my feelings back. I could see that my words hurt him, and he looked upset. “It’s just that the last thing I want to do is spend the rest of my life with you.”
Allen’s face grew red with anger. He grabbed me and, without saying another word, undressed both of us. I was frozen with fear and again asked him to please let me be. He pulled me over to the bed and pushed me down. With tears pouring out of my eyes, I tried to block it all out. My entire body was shaking and I was crying as he got on top of me.
“Please stop, I don’t know what you’re doing. I can’t do this,” I begged.
“It’s okay,” Allen told me as he touched me all over my body. “You’re going to learn that this is what’s supposed to happen…”
And then it finally did happen. I just lay there in shock. It hurt so bad, and I thought, “God, please, let me die.” As he put himself inside me, I wanted to scream for help, but there was no one to help me. I had nowhere to hide. My mother’s room, my little sister’s embrace, Uncle Fred, Uncle Warren, nothing and no one would save me, and so I lay there silently, staring at the cracks in the ceiling, watching a part of me die.
When it was all over, I curled into a ball and continued to cry. Allen rolled over and fell asleep, and I lay there feeling like I’d been left for dead. Rising from the bed, I went into the bathroom to clean up. I didn’t want to go to my mom. I felt dirty and used, and I was worried that she would think I was a disgusting, evil person. Nothing could cleanse the soiled feeling I had inside. I felt sick and my thoughts turned to death. Rummaging through the medicine cabinet, I found a half-bottle of Tylenol. I poured the tablets into my palm and swallowed them. Convinced that they wouldn’t be enough to kill me, I then grabbed a bottle of ibuprofen and swallowed what was left of those too. I collapsed in a heap next to the tub. I just wanted to die and not deal with Allen, Uncle Warren, or Uncle Fred again. I felt so hurt and betrayed by them all, including my mother.
M
om found me early the next morning on the floor of the bathroom, my head in the toilet, vomiting. Alarmed, she gathered me up and held me in her arms.
“What’s wrong? Lesie,” she cried as she brought me to her room. I couldn’t bring myself to tell her what had happened with Allen or that I’d taken two bottles of pills in an attempt to escape from my life, only to have a sudden change of heart. I made myself throw up minutes after I’d taken the pills and had spent the last several hours desperately trying to purge them. As bad as my life had become, I had pulled myself back from the brink of self-destruction.
I had no idea how I was going to get out of this marriage or out of my life, but that night, I had realized that killing myself was not the answer. From then on, my goal was simple: to survive. I needed to survive in this marriage until I could figure out my next step. That morning, with my stomach weak from heaving all night and my body exhausted from sleep deprivation, I made a resolution. Somehow I would get through this; somehow I would survive.
Give yourself mind, body, and soul.
—
WARREN JEFFS
T
he second week in May, I traveled with Allen to the community in Canada to visit my sisters Teressa and Sabrina. We caught a ride to Bountiful, British Columbia, with one of Allen’s brothers, who lived in Idaho just across the border. Teressa and her husband, Roy Blackmore, lived with Roy’s father, Dwayne, and his family. Sabrina was married to Dwayne, which made her one of Teressa’s mothers-in-law and also made it convenient for us to visit both of them.
Ever since Allen approved the trip, I had been anticipating it with some pleasure, but from the moment we arrived it was obvious that Allen and I were not a happy couple. My sisters tried hard to make the best of the visit by offering to take some nice photos of us, but I attempted to get out of any pictures that forced me to pose with Allen. My resistance to being near him was met with a bit of scolding, and my sisters reminded me to keep sweet.
Despite my hesitation, I put on my wedding dress and allowed Teressa to do my hair in a fancy updo. Both Teressa and Sabrina had a natural talent for photography, and they chose the perfect outdoor backdrop for our wedding poses. I knew I should be grateful for their kindness, but a voice in my head kept telling me that one day these pictures might mean something to me. But no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t fight the feeling of revulsion that came up every time I was close to Allen. I tried hard to fake it, but my body language screamed my reluctance.
Since that first night when Allen had violated me, he had forced himself on me several more times. I didn’t know what to do or how to stop him. I hadn’t told anyone anything about it. I’d been begging him to not to do it, but all he did was assure me that it was okay. Night after night, he insisted that this was supposed to happen and it was what we needed to do. My only option was to lie there in distress, even though it hurt me so much in every way. It had gotten to the point where each night I knew it was coming. My repeated refusals made no difference. I’d close my eyes and try to imagine myself someplace else or see how high I could count. I just wanted it to be over, and I knew if I fought him, it would just end up stretching out the agony.