Authors: Elissa Wall
As I sat on the stand, the first pieces of evidence were presented. They played tapes of sermons Uncle Warren had utilized in our school curriculum as well as what we listened to at home. The first segment was from a recording made on November 23, 1997, of a home economics class, in which Warren explains the marriage covenant from
In Light and Truth
. His tone placed a soft lull over the entire courtroom, but the words were just as stunning as ever. When he arrived at the part when the bride takes her groom to be her “lawful and wedded” husband, he explained: “Do you give yourself to him completely? That means fully, no halfway, no going back. You are to obey him as you obey the law. Your covenant is to God and the prophet. Loyalty to them is expressed through obeying your husband.” The next words stung even all these years after I’d been forced to marry Allen: “You are literally his property.” And that was how it had truly been.
Reliving the times we had been torn from my father was especially difficult, but I knew this was important, so I went on to describe the afternoon when we’d been pulled from our classes at Alta Academy and sent to the Steed ranch. I also told them that Mom and her youngest kids had been sent to Fred Jessop’s and that Mom had married him that following September, with no warning about what would happen to her next. The details of my shattered childhood were coming alive in front of a roomful of strangers. Everyone was listening, and most of them seemed to care. It felt good to say these things out loud and to hear my voice as I confessed the secrets that had ruled my existence for so many years.
D
ay two of the trial was more intense. As we approached the story of how I came to be married, my memories of all of those bitter, difficult conversations overwhelmed me, stirring up old emotions. I was asked to read from my journal, and I did trying not to let my voice crack. After reading the two entries from the evening of April 15, 2001—the original attempt followed by the one that I would make presentable for future generations to read—I was asked if there was anything more there.
I flipped absently for a moment through the butterfly-edged pages of the journal from my fourteenth year. I thought about what should have been written there. A young teenage girl should be scribbling furiously in the private pages of her journal about crushes, problems with friends, anticipation about high school. My journal was completely blank after those two entries. It was as if having heard my mother say that I needed to keep sweet in those writings, I had nothing more to write. From that week forward, my inner life had been suppressed. How could I keep a private record of my complicated emotions if I had to appear and behave like a good priesthood girl? Even if no one else here on earth was actually reading the words, God was. My prayers had done nothing to alleviate my situation. What good would putting it into a journal do?
A major hearsay issue arose when I brought up the afternoon I’d visited Rulon Jeffs at his home. The debate over whether or not I could repeat what Rulon had said to me wore on so long that the judge was kind enough to ask if I would like to step down from the stand. As a witness, I found the whole hearsay issue very difficult both to understand and to adhere to, but in the end the judge ruled that my recounting of Rulon’s fateful words was not considered hearsay, since it was being used to establish my past mental state and not for the “truth of the matter.”
With the issue resolved, I repeated for the jury: “He patted me on the hand and he said, ‘Follow your heart, sweetie.’” In my mind I traveled back to that afternoon and recalled my all-consuming sense of relief. Of course, it had been cut extremely short. I could feel the silence blanket the courtroom as my voice broke, repeating the words that had shattered everything—when Warren Jeffs had told me that my heart was in the wrong place.
I was asked about my reaction when I went home and heard from Uncle Fred, my new father, that I was in fact to be married. Craig asked, “Did you consider other options?”
“I didn’t have other options.”
“Was there a bus stop in Hildale?”
“No, there wasn’t.”
“Did you have a friend with a car who could have—?”
“No, I did not.”
“Did you have any money of your own?”
“No.”
“Any credit cards?”
“No, I did not.”
These were simple questions—even obvious. But they were necessary to establish that all these everyday options that people on the outside take for granted simply are not a part of life in Short Creek.
“What were your feelings when the dress was being made?”
I pictured myself in the floor-length lace-embellished dress. I was like a little girl playing dress-up—only it was terribly real. I remembered my sister at my ankles with her tiny piercing needle, weaving it in and out of the pristine white heavy fabric. I could see my mother’s careworn face, the gray circles under her eyes. “That’s a big question,” I mustered the words, shaking my head. I tried again. “Despair. Betrayal. I was being betrayed by the people who I trusted the most.”
“Why did you feel betrayed by Warren Jeffs?”
“He overlooked what I wanted, what I knew was important.” This was, in fact, the heart of the issue. My voice had been silenced, my desires ignored. I was owned and always had been—now I was simply being passed to another set of hands.
Tears welled up in my eyes and my voice shook as I beheld the photographs projected on the court’s viewing screen. In the pictures Kassandra and my mother had snapped during that night, my face was red and blotchy from crying. I remember their soft, sad voices, almost pleading with me to smile for the memory books. Now the images glared out over the entire room, filling me with the nausea that had plagued me in the wee hours of that tiring April morning in 2001.
“How did you feel when this photograph was taken?”
“I kept thinking—I felt like I was getting ready for death.” It might have sounded dramatic to those assembled, but it was the most accurate description I could come up with.
“How long did it take to get to Caliente?”
“Forever.” I heard the flutter of stifled giggles in the gallery at this response that might have been given by a child. I then relayed for the jury how I spent that whole trip to Caliente in silent panic, overwhelmed by the simple truth:
I can’t do this
. “I could not believe I was in this situation. I felt like I had no control.”
I could feel angst rising inside me and had to work to keep it together on the stand. Craig Barlow continued his questions, focusing now on the ceremony itself. Envisioning myself in the lace overlay dress with the upswept hairdo and my splotchy, tear-stained face, I explained. “I couldn’t stop crying.”
“What kind of tears?”
“Despair…fear. I could not agree to do this.” I choked on the words, unable to continue. I needed to get out of there, to take a minute to myself. “Can we take a break?” I managed. Luckily, my request was granted.
After the brief break, I was back on the stand for more. I relayed the story of my defiant and barely audible “Okay, I do” and the tiny peck I managed to deliver my husband upon Warren’s demand to kiss him at the close of the wedding ceremony.
“Why did you do it?”
“He was my ticket into heaven. He was my leader. My future was with him.”
“And did you have an understanding of when you would have children?”
“Other people got married, and then pregnant, and nine months later had a baby.” It was crystal clear to me then, just as it is now, that the expectations had been strong. I was to marry and immediately start producing children. Child brides were not shielded from the demanding and mysterious world of sex in the FLDS, no matter what anyone in that courtroom would claim on the witness stand.
A second slide show illuminated the courtroom, and I detailed what the images were. A shot of the young bride with hands covering her face appeared. The next photo revealed Allen and my “honeymoon hideout” in the light of day. “This was the next morning,” I said, mustering a clear voice, “My mother had come to take pictures of the decorations and…us.” I was wearing a pink dress with strawberries in the pattern. Next came another photograph my mother had taken, in which Allen and I were the vision of new marital bliss, sitting together with his arm slung valiantly around me.
“How did you feel here?” Craig asked.
“Numb. That was a posed picture.”
“Had you ever been physically that close to a boy?”
“No.”
“How did that make you feel?”
“Extremely uncomfortable. For a girl who’d never experienced that…I felt wicked in a sense. I knew it was okay for us to touch, but I still didn’t want to.”
The subsequent piece of evidence was the brown paper bag I had held during my honeymoon with Allen and the two other couples. I had marked a time line of the the brief trip, to occupy myself and my hands. To an outsider it might appear that I had been keeping track of our travel as a memento, for the sake of the scrapbooks. But that couldn’t have been farther from the truth.
“Why did you do it?”
“I didn’t want to hold Allen’s hand. It was a way to keep busy and I guess…to document the trip.”
As I looked at the crumpled paper bag with dates and notes scribbled across it, something grew instantly clear to me. Just hours earlier, I had been asked to read my journal aloud to the jury. Despite the panic and uncertainty of the night I had written those two entries, I had been a mostly stable adolescent up to that point. The loopy cursive writing that had stretched across those butterfly-bordered pages was typical of a teenage girl—whimsical to a point, but still controlled and neat. The handwriting on this paper bag barely resembled my own. It was unruly, distracted, panicked. I could see the progression of my emotional breakdown evidenced in this simple contrast of the letters.
I described how when we got back to the hotel each night Allen kept touching me in a sexual way and refused to stop. I went on to detail the first time he exposed his genitals to me, that terrifying night in the park. “He told me that this is what we were supposed to do. ‘Don’t you want to have babies?’ he asked, and I replied, ‘Not with you.’”
Noon recess was a much-needed relief and a chance to gather my thoughts. I picked at my food idly as my mind catapulted back to those awful first days of my marriage to Allen.
The cross-examination began right after lunch and proved even more upsetting for me. At least the prosecution was on my side; Tara Isaacson was trying to paint me as a liar and a drama queen. She walked directly toward me, her face stony. The other witnesses would be questioned by only a male defense attorney, Wally Bugden, but Tara Isaacson would question me. They didn’t want to make it seem like a male was badgering me for answers, so they used her to make it appear gentler on me. But I knew better. Her fierce, cutting demeanor and icy tone made her more intimidating than any male lawyer could ever be. Somehow the fact that we were both women and she was defending the man who had facilitated my rape made it difficult for her to look into my eyes. She was a classic bully, through and through, and it took everything in me to keep my anger in check.
I knew that her tactic would be to establish a rhythm with her questioning so she could trick me into responding in a way I would later regret. As we proceeded, I went over in my head the preparation I had done with the legal team. I had to remember to think carefully before responding to any question, so that I wouldn’t fall into any traps. Furthermore, I had to make sure I truly understood each question before giving an answer. As she dug into every aspect of my story, I kept my responses as short and to the point as possible. I wanted to move through my testimony with clarity and efficiency.
“Did you ever specifically tell Warren Jeffs about your sexual relationship with Allen Steed?” Isaacson posed.
There was a heavy silence in the room as I contemplated how to answer. In this woman’s understanding, of course, I hadn’t specifically said anything, because I hadn’t ever used the words “I’m being raped.” But I knew in my heart that I had made the sexual abuse Allen inflicted upon me explicitly clear to Warren using the best language I could access. “Yes,” I said.
“Did Warren Jeffs ever tell you directly that you had to submit to Allen Steed sexually?”
I tried to explain but got cut off.
“Yes or no, Miss Wall.”
“No.”
“Did you meet with Mr. Jeffs after returning from Canada?”
I knew she thought that with her tidy outfit and commandeering speech she could intimidate me into mixing up my story. But I was smarter than that, and I wasn’t going to be rendered a fool on the stand. “I only spoke of one meeting with Warren Jeffs to the jury.”
“Memory fades over time, right, Miss Wall?” she badgered. “You would agree that you can’t remember every word in every meeting you’ve had with Warren Jeffs?”
“Ms. Isaacson,” I replied, being sure to keep my voice clear, even, and composed, “that was a very difficult time for me. I was a scared fourteen-year-old little girl.”
“I’d like to get back to what Warren said to you that day, that your heart was in the wrong place.”
“Yes.”
“On Friday you said that Warren Jeffs said that to you.”
“That is correct.”
She whipped out a document and placed it in front of me. “Read lines six through eight of what you said to the cops.”
Cautiously, I did what I was told. A part of me wanted to leap out of that chair and shake this woman, to explain to her that these were difficult pieces of my heart and my memory to access. It was like opening a Pandora’s box for me, with everything flooding out. Not only was I forced to face these painful details, I was also being asked to give lengthy accounts of my lifetime of experiences. No matter how jumbled they might have been when I first presented them, I always tried to tell the truth the best way I could at the time. Any inconsistency was due to nerves alone. I knew inside that I was not nearly the only victim of a sex crime to get confused about details in a preliminary police report.