Authors: Elissa Wall
Dad tried to address the family’s dissension during our regular Sunday-school lessons in the living room. As our priesthood head, he was in charge of educating his children on our religion and its principles. Everyone, even the mothers, was expected to attend Sunday lessons. Typically, the kids fought for a seat on one of the two couches. Whoever didn’t get a seat on the couch got relegated to the floor.
Dad was a stickler for punctuality, and the lesson began promptly at 10
A.M.
, usually with a reading from the Book of Mormon or the Bible. The lesson usually lasted about an hour, during which Dad would select one or two of us to stand and bear witness, while he sat on the couch in front of the big windows. I could always tell when he was about to raise the family issues because he’d begin talking about the “United Order,” a teaching that stressed the importance of oneness and reinforced the other teachings we’d been hearing our entire lives. He said we couldn’t attain it in our home without complete harmony in the family. Ideal FLDS children were expected to be “humble, faithful servants” of their priesthood head and the prophet. That meant the daughters needed to “quit arguing,” the mothers needed to “stop fighting,” and we all needed to “keep sweet and keep the spirit of God.” Unfortunately for him, his words seemed to be falling on deaf ears, and they did little to quell the growing unrest. While I believe my father tried not to point fingers, by my perception it appeared that Dad was singling Craig out as the cause of our family’s problems.
I was just a couple of months into school’s fall session when Dad made a fateful pronouncement: Craig was to be out of the house by November 1, 1996. Since he was over eighteen, it was considered too late to send him away to reform, as was customarily done in cases such as this. Instead, Dad just wanted him to leave.
I will never forget the day that Craig asked Mom if she could drive him to the highway, where he would hitchhike out of the area. Some of us younger kids piled into Mom’s little brown Buick sedan to join her for the ride and say good-bye to our older brother. The hour-long drive was mostly quiet, and our silence said everything about the sadness and fear we all felt. My sister Teressa was taking it the hardest. She had become very close to Craig, and now he was one more person leaving our lives. With little money in his pocket and raw emotional wounds, Craig set off to find his own answers to his many questions.
I could barely watch him get out of our car and walk away. The final image I had of my brother Craig is with a backpack strapped to him and a sign reading
DENVER
in his hand. Years later, my mother would tell me that leaving Craig by the side of the road that day was one of the most painful things she ever had to do. At the time, though, she was as silent as any perfect FLDS wife should be. Casting out her son was her duty. She could not object, and even if she did, her opinion would not matter. She had to follow the orders of her husband; that was the command of the church, and she obeyed it no matter how much pain it caused her.
Even so, it took her several minutes to find the strength to shift the car into drive. As we wound down the gray asphalt of the highway heading home, I watched tears trace the soft skin of my mother’s face. She was still beautiful, but in that moment she became a shadow of her former self. She had lost her eldest son, her protector. It was a wound that would never completely heal. I saw Teressa beside her, hands folded stiffly in her lap and her pained eyes staring into space. She had just watched her dear friend and brother walk away and did not know if she would ever see him again. I wanted so badly to reach up from the backseat and hug both of them, to offer the only form of consolation that I as a ten year old child could provide, but I knew better. The best and only option was to keep my mouth closed.
It was not until many years later that any of us heard from Craig. He purposely avoided reaching out to our family for fear of further affecting his younger brothers and sisters. Over time I came to understand his choice to put distance between himself and our family, but back then I thought of him frequently, which would always make me feel a bit sad and discouraged. I didn’t really understand the concept of questioning, but I felt sympathy for the way things had turned out between Craig and my dad. I was not alone in my concern for him, but I kept my pain to myself; it was not something to be spoken of. At home, I noticed a marked change in my mother. She seldom sang or hummed around the house anymore, and she began to look drained, somehow older. A general sadness permeated the household and made me miss Michelle all the more. I wished so dearly that I could hold on to my mother as I had once done with Michelle. Without my nurturing older sister around, I had no one to make me feel safe in the unrest that had taken over our home and irrevocably changed our lives.
I
n the weeks after Craig’s departure, a pall set over the house, and even Mother Laura’s pregnancy and impending delivery didn’t lift the mood. Having Craig leave was even hard for Dad, but he hoped it would bring our family’s turbulence to an end. Dad had been optimistic that without their older brother’s brooding influence, the younger children would fall back into line. Instead, some of them began to exhibit their anger at having lost so many older siblings.
The summer before Craig left, my brother Travis, four years Craig’s junior, had begun to question his faith in much the same way that Craig had. The church leaders decided to send Travis to Short Creek to reform so that he would become more faithful. Sending children to reform was the church’s way of dealing with those who got out of line. Because Travis was younger than Craig there was still “hope” for him in the eyes of the priesthood, and this retreat was supposed to bring him back into compliance. On a reform retreat, the boys do manual labor for the priesthood, while immersed in the teachings of the church and isolated from their families. At the end of their time, they are supposed to return to their homes behaving and thinking properly.
Travis was placed with a family in southern Utah known for its good priesthood children. The hope was that being in their household would remind him of his role as an obedient and active member of the church, but the reality was that reform was a harsh environment. Shut off from communication with his family, Travis was mistreated by those in charge of his attitude adjustment.
Even without Travis in the house, his doubts began to trickle down to the twins, Justin and Jacob, and Brad, all of whom adored their older brothers and used them as examples. The younger boys now displayed their own doubts about the church’s role in our family, and Mom was powerless as she watched the same fights that Craig and Travis had with our father and mothers happen all over again. The departure of Travis and Craig had done little to change Dad’s manner or the feeling in the house. Desperate not to lose yet another son, I later learned that Mom had begun confiding her fears to my sister Rachel. She was worried that my father had lost his ability to control and unite our family, and she believed we needed outside help.
Though we knew things were bad, none of us were aware that Mom was losing faith in our father. All we knew was that every day the problems seemed to get worse and the options seemed to grow fewer.
The prophet can do no wrong.
—
WARREN JEFFS
A
fter all the struggles in our home, I longed for my mother’s pain to subside and for peace to be restored. That previous August I’d returned to Alta Academy a fifth-grader. While I wasn’t in an upper classroom yet, I was now in my second year with the big kids in the meeting hall for Devotional.
In addition to being our principal, Warren also taught a number of our classes. One of them was a class in priesthood history, which occurred every day and was considered the most important lesson in school. Uncle Warren would teach us everything about our religion’s history, starting from biblical lessons to the Book of Mormon and going through the life of Joseph Smith as well as the more recent developments in the FLDS. Uncle Warren would always use priesthood-approved scriptures to teach the lesson, and then he would explain them using his own words.
Part of the curriculum for older girls was to study
In Light and Truth,
an FLDS publication. The book was a collection of condensed sermons and teachings by Joseph Smith, Brigham Young, Uncle Rulon, and many others. Warren would read the various lessons to the girls, applying his own spin. He would even read the words of his own sermons in such a way as to make us believe that the words were coming directly from God.
We were encouraged to listen to tapes of Uncle Warren’s important sermons as frequently as we could. Often in school we would hear these tapes wafting out of the loudspeakers as we went about our day. We also listened to them at home the way other families would listen to music, and as I grew older, I took to listening to them on my own. I was dedicated to being a good student, even if I didn’t entirely understand every aspect of my religion. I searched for answers in the tapes and in my school lessons, rarely asking for help when I felt confused. If I didn’t understand something, it was better not to say it aloud than appear to be questioning priesthood principles.
Ever since the age of eight or nine, I had been taking a home-economics course along with the rest of the girls in which we learned the basics of running a household. Taking these courses brought us closer to our ultimate goal—becoming perfect priesthood wives. Kitchen abilities were an extremely important element of our lessons. Our individual teachers would separate us from the boys and lead us to the huge industrial kitchen just off the meeting hall. There, we learned basic cooking and cleaning skills that would ready us for the large families that would someday be ours. There were also classes in sewing. We all needed to be able to stitch our special church undergarments and the ankle-length prairie dresses that were a staple in our wardrobes, and some day our own wedding dresses. Most of my dresses were hand-me-downs from my older sisters. On special occasions, like my birthday, Mom would sew one just for me, and I looked forward to doing such things for my own daughters someday.
One afternoon in early December, it became clear that God was continuing to test my family. I was at school and had just finished enjoying my lunch of a tuna sandwich and an apple when Uncle Warren’s assistant, Elizabeth, poked her head into my classroom and summoned me to the principal’s office.
My legs shook as I followed Elizabeth down the hallway. I’d made this journey several times, and it had usually been for a “correction.” Turning the corner, I found myself holding my breath as I approached Uncle Warren’s office. I pushed open the door and nervously exhaled when I saw five of my siblings along with my mother sitting in Warren’s office. Uncle Warren was seated at his desk, as always. Mom’s brown eyes looked as if she’d been crying, and I knew something serious was going on. I quickly sat down in a chair facing Warren’s desk. No one was speaking, which made me even more scared. I could see the confusion and fear on everyone’s faces, and my heart began to race. Uncle Warren’s low voice cut the silence.
“I’m delivering a message from the prophet,” Warren began in an icy tone. “The prophet has lost confidence in your father. He is no longer worthy to hold the priesthood or have a family.”
Shocked and confused, one of my brothers asked for an explanation. “How can that be?”
After a momentary pause, Uncle Warren glared down at him, his irritation visible from behind his thick eyeglasses. “Are you questioning the prophet and his will?”
No one—especially not a child—could argue with that. Still, we Wall kids had trouble accepting things when they didn’t seem fair. Just like my brother Craig, we all looked for the truth in any given situation.
My brother Brad spoke next. “Where will we go?” he asked timidly.
“It’s up to the prophet to decide,” Warren told him. “You will no longer be attending school.”
The silence was deafening as he told us to return to our classrooms and gather our things. Looking at my mother, I saw pain and sadness on her face. We would not be returning to our home or to school. Confusion took over my mind. In a daze my brothers and I filed quietly out of the room, leaving my mother and my older sister Teressa behind with Warren.
I felt so ashamed knowing that my classmates were watching me as I collected my belongings. We hadn’t been given a clear explanation as to why Dad had lost the priesthood or what had led to this life-altering declaration. We were just to follow the prophet’s direction. I was still gaining an understanding of the world I was raised in and the workings of the priesthood. Even though we had always lived to please the prophet and do his will, everything still felt so wrong. How could our father just be taken away from us? Why were they breaking up our family? What about Mother Audrey, Mother Laura, and their kids? Would Dad lose them as well? The questions burning in my mind would go unanswered, and I kept my mouth shut out of fear.
Once we gathered our things from our classrooms, we went to the meeting room on the main floor and were unceremoniously escorted across the blacktop driveway and through the gate that led to the prophet’s home. We were told that we would spend the night there and that in the morning we would leave for southern Utah, where my mother had grown up. Staying overnight at the home of the prophet made me feel safe and comforted, if only for the moment. I had always dearly loved my visits there. Many of Uncle Rulon’s wives had been kind to me, and I loved and looked up to my elder sisters.
The drive down to southern Utah the next morning was a blur, and I remember it now more as a collection of images and feelings than actual events. The crunch of the tires on freshly fallen snow as we left. The thought that my brothers and I should have been making snowmen in our backyard instead of being packed into the back of a van. Wiping the fog off the inside of the van’s window and watching our school disappear around the corner. Even if we had been scrambling to get to school on time in our traditional morning rush, I would have felt infinitely happier. None of us knew if we were ever coming back or going to see my dad again. I was a child faced with unspeakable loss, completely confused, with no one giving any answers.