Carolyn Jessop; Laura Palmer (32 page)

Now I got it. Tammy knew I wasn’t having sex with Merril. If she knew, all of Merril’s daughters married to Uncle Rulon knew, too.

Guilty as charged. I had now committed a sin unto death, according to the FLDS, by refusing to have sex with Merril. Forgiveness was impossible. What wasn’t clear was why Tammy was telling me this.

A few weeks later I went by the kitchen when Barbara and Tammy were talking. I heard Barbara say my name and then saw her shaking her head. “A woman who thinks she needs a relationship with her husband is a worldly tradition and it’s something she needs to give up.” I think they assumed the reason I stopped having sex with Merril was because we had no other connectedness. He never acted like a husband to me. They thought actually feeling something for the husband you slept with was one of those “worldly traditions” that needed to be banished.

Merril called me from his office a few days later. “Carolee, how are you doing?” I said I was fine. He went on to tell me the school was desperate for teachers and it would be fine with him if I went back. He’d told them I’d go over and meet with them that day. “What do you think of that?”

I said no. No, I did not want to teach.

No
was not a word I had ever said to Merril Jessop before. I had refused to have sex and done things my own way, but I had never uttered that one-syllable word to him. How much rebellion there was in simply one consonant and one vowel?

There was silence on the other end of the phone.

I thought that if Merril wanted me to teach maybe he should have protected my charter school.

“Do you want me to embarrass you by telling Alvin that you are refusing to do what your husband has asked?”

I didn’t respond. Alvin was the principal who had worked so hard with me to make the charter school a reality. I didn’t care what Alvin or anyone else thought. I was finished with Merril and his stupid games of intimidation.

We did not speak of my teaching again. Merril kept coming into my bedroom. I refused to have sex. He took me on a trip with him and made a big point of acting like a lovebird when we were in front of other couples. Merril knew I wouldn’t refuse his advances in public.

But once we got back home, his tactics escalated. He became abusive toward my children. He would send them away from the dinner table and say they were not allowed to eat. There would be a pretext about some minor infraction that had occurred during the day. The rest of his wives began targeting my children. They told my kids that since I was in rebellion to their father they were not to obey anything I asked them to do or they’d be punished.

Now I had to sneak food to my own children. I tried to keep them as close to me as I could, but there were times when I couldn’t protect them. Sometimes they’d play with Barbara’s children and she’d look for any excuse to do something hurtful to them. The cruelty was escalating and I had to find a way to make it stop.

Sex. What else could I try? I decided that the next time Merril came into my bedroom I’d have sex with him and see if that would make the abuse stop. If not, I’d leave.

The next time Merril came to my room I left Harrison in his crib. When he put his clammy hands on me I didn’t resist. I hated feeling his breath on my skin. I offered up my body in sacrifice to my children and it worked.

Merril was almost giddy the next morning. A few minutes after he left my bedroom he called me from his office and invited me to come for coffee with his other wives.

Tammy and Barbara were sitting in chairs next to Merril’s desk. They were cheerfully sipping coffee. Barbara handed me a cup. I felt like I was being locked into my prison cell again. Merril started making jokes and we all laughed. Ruthie, Ruth’s daughter, came into the office and said my son Patrick was not obeying her. She acted as though she’d be doing us a favor if she was abusive to him.

Merril laughed nervously and made an excuse for little Patrick. I sat up in my chair and smiled at him. Without saying a word, Merril and I had an agreement. I’d give him sex in exchange for the protection of my children.

At that point, even though I had given up on salvation, I still felt my children were better off growing up with their half siblings than leaving the community with me for a totally alien world. I felt we were better off in a world with known dangers than one in which everything would be strange, frightening, and new.

But sex with Merril was as far as I was willing to go. I wasn’t going to let him work me like a slave. He had pushed me as far as I could go and I think he knew that.

My actions since returning from Caliente had an impact on Cathleen. Merril had sent her to Page to work in his business there by day and run another motel he owned by night. She came home only on weekends for seven years and hated being away from her five children.

At first I think she thought I was stupid for resisting Merril. But then she realized I had something she wanted. I was home with my children and not working. Cathleen had pleaded with Merril for years to let her come home. She was shocked that I managed to get back from Caliente after only a year. Maybe, she thought, I was onto a good thing.

Unbelievably, Cathleen tried to rebel.

One day she came home midweek. When I saw her I asked her why. “I am tired of being abused by Merril and his accountant. I’ve been trapped between them ever since I went to Page. I quit and came home.”

She said she planned to talk to Merril that night.

When I saw her the next morning her eyes were red and swollen. “Did you talk to Merril?” I asked.

“I did. But it was like it always is. I can’t talk without crying and that makes him angry. He scolds me until I can’t talk.”

“So what did he say?”

“He accused me of using my children as an excuse and said I’ve never done the job in Page the way he wants me to. That’s why I’m always in trouble with him.”

I had a smirk on my face. “No matter what you do it will never be the way he wants.”

“I said I was still coming home.” Cathleen looked whipped. “He said I’d be sorry if I did. I told him I wanted to talk to Uncle Rulon. He said I could but it would be something I’d regret more than anything I’d ever done.”

“Cathleen, listen to me. What can be worse than the way he’s already treating you?”

Merril took Cathleen with him that day to Caliente. Tammy was there managing the motel. The two of them had a long talk with Merril. They asked him why some of the wives in the family had to be out on the front lines, working extremely hard without ever getting any rewards. Other wives, they said, had far fewer responsibilities and got to go on trips.

Merril said it was odd. He told them he never understood why some wives had personalities that were totally in sync with their husband’s while others did not. He’d talked to Uncle Rulon about this. The aging prophet had said that some wives worked hard to be a blessing to their husbands but were little more than workhorses. According to Merril, Uncle Rulon said that this is heartache for them on earth but after they die, the hurt they have suffered is instantly healed because the Lord gives their husbands an appreciation for them in death that he never had for them in life.

Cathleen heard this as glorious news. When she told it to me the next day I said I thought it was preposterous. How could any woman endure a life of misery with such a cheap promise of appreciation after her death?

But Cathleen dutifully returned to Page to work she hated and that also kept her away from the children she loved. One night I heard her oldest daughter crying. I went upstairs to the dining room and saw a child sobbing on the floor in a heap. My eight-year-old daughter, LuAnne, came running over to me with big angry eyes. “Do you know what happened? Mother Barbara came up to one of Mother Cathleen’s girls and started hitting her on the head with Barbie’s extra-big crochet hook.”

I grabbed LuAnne and got her away from there. If anyone heard her reporting on Barbara she’d be in danger. Merril walked into the dining room and over to the crying child. He clapped his hands. “Stop this nonsense!”

Having seen her shuddering and crying on the floor a few hours before made me realize that even though I could protect my children somewhat from Merril’s abuse by having sex with him, I was helpless to keep them from witnessing the abuse of their other siblings. I was also sickened by my inability to protect the other children. I made sure my children slept in my bedroom again. No one would be able to come into my bedroom and touch them without waking me up.

I was so upset I called Cathleen at Page that night and told her everything I had seen and heard. “Cathleen, you may get a reward from Merril in your next life, but what about the abuse your children are getting in this life?”

The conversation stopped. Cathleen was silent for a long time and then said goodbye. I knew she was terribly upset. But she didn’t know what to do to protect her children.

Harrison’s Cancer

I
remember walking to the store on a chilly day in early spring when I saw a slow line of cars pulling away from the cemetery. A four-month-old baby had just been buried. I knew his mother. This was her second son, and one who had been born apparently healthy.

But a week earlier he’d started screaming and wouldn’t stop. Twenty-four hours later in a Las Vegas hospital, he was diagnosed with a terminal brain tumor. The tumor had grown into an area that controlled his breathing. He was put on life support, but there was absolutely no hope. His parents signed papers allowing him to die.

I could not, would not, even begin to imagine how his mother could cope with the pain from such a catastrophic and unexpected loss. When I got back from the store I found Harrison and held him close.

With long, curly eyelashes that touched the tip of his brows, Harrison was so pretty he could have been mistaken for a baby girl. He was a tease who loved to play peek-a-boo and cuddle and to be held. LuAnne, who was eight when Harrison was born, gravitated to him right away and considered him her baby, mothering him in every way she could think of. He was chubby and an excellent eater. Harrison thrived. He met every developmental milestone on time or ahead of schedule.

His first birthday was coming up on May 17, 2000, my fourteenth wedding anniversary. I marveled at how healthy he was. He bounced back from illnesses faster than any of my other six babies had. Without a doubt, he was my dream baby.

A week later I was mopping the floor. Harrison was sitting nearby and smiling at me. I smiled back at him, then his smile vanished. The right half of his body went into a spasm that lasted for about thirty seconds. I ran across the wet floor and grabbed him. But the spasm had stopped and another smile lit up his face.

I was worried. I called the night clinic and made an emergency appointment for him. He was checked out and everything seemed perfectly normal. But I felt uneasy. I had never seen anything so sudden and so frightening sweep over a child before.

Two days later he had another spasm. I had started working at the grocery story to save money for my escape. Barbara told me about it when I got home. She said it had happened while she was feeding him lunch. But once again, he’d bounced back quickly and seemed fine.

I made an appointment for Harrison in St. George. But the weekend before our scheduled visit he had another spasm, and this time it didn’t stop and it controlled his entire body. I was at my father’s doing laundry and we called an ambulance.

Several tests were done in the ER, but the cause of the spasm could not be found. He was admitted and the pediatrician did more tests the next day. At one point, a doctor told me Harrison had the hiccups. He was making a sound similar to hiccups, but I knew that wasn’t it.

We stayed at the hospital for several days of tests. It was hell for me. This was more terror than I had ever known and it was a terror I was powerless to understand. Test after test came back negative. Merril came to the hospital once to visit us when he was in St. George on business. He seemed concerned but was also convinced that Harrison would get better. After a few days, Harrison was diagnosed with a postviral infection. The pediatrician told me this could last for three weeks.

I didn’t know what I would do. Harrison’s condition had gotten worse. He was screaming all the time and he slept only with strong medication. At home, it was even more awful. Harrison began vomiting from the spasms. I fed him constantly but had to stop nursing him because when he went into a spasm he bit my breast. He seemed famished—the spasms took a lot of energy. But the more he ate, the more he vomited. And screamed. He screamed nonstop seemingly from terrible, terrible pain.

The pediatrician prescribed some antinausea medication, but nothing gave him relief. She told me this could last as long as three months. I didn’t know how we would make it. I wasn’t sleeping. His suffering was relentless. I felt so utterly powerless and defeated by my inability to do anything to help him when he looked at me with his big, beautiful, but tortured green eyes.

Someone gave me the name of a holistic doctor in Las Vegas. Linda said she’d take us there. Maybe he’d have an answer that eluded traditional medicine.

I went to find Merril. He’d been ignoring Harrison and showed zero concern. It was obvious to me that he felt Harrison was my problem. I certainly didn’t think he’d object to my taking him to Las Vegas.

But Merril turned on me with a vengeance when I told him what I wanted to do. He berated me for having such an idea. I was exhausted after three sleepless weeks. I didn’t care what Merril thought and looked at him exactly the way I thought of him—as an unbelievable idiot.

He grabbed my arm and threw me several feet in the alfalfa field. I stumbled over some clumps of dirt but would not let myself fall on my face. I would not give him that pleasure. It took every ounce of strength that I had. I regained my balance and stood my ground. He grabbed me again and threw me as hard as he could. I landed on my feet again but some distance away from him. I looked at him with disgust and defiance.

“Harrison is going to die because of your rebellion. It is your fault that he is sick. God will take him from you because you have been in rebellion to your priesthood head. You can take him to every damn doctor you can find, but no one will be able to heal him. God is going to destroy his life because of the sins of his mother.”

His chest was heaving with anger. His cheeks were flushed with anger. And he was almost out of breath.

My eyes were on fire but my words were measured.

“I already made this appointment. Do you want me to cancel it?”

He roared back like an angry bull pricked by the matador’s spear. “You know what I want! I have told you it will do Harrison no good to see any doctors as long as your attitude is what it is!”

I turned and walked back into the house. His physical violence had startled me. Merril had never attacked me before. I knew I was no longer safe in his home. I also knew this: Merril wanted Harrison to die to prove that I was in rebellion to God. He had utter contempt for his own son. I knew his real concern was that Harrison could live and not be normal.

When I got back inside I gathered up Harrison and my other children. We had to get away before Merril came back inside. I knew if he attacked me again it would be far worse.

I drove to my father’s house, where I knew I’d be safe. I told my mother everything that Merril had done to me in the field. She was outraged and said I should leave him—which was an extraordinary turnaround for a true believer like my mom.

I told my mother that there was no way I could leave with a child as sick as Harrison. But I also knew I would never be safe in his home again, not with someone with his history of violence. I told her that I was finished with the FLDS and that being condemned to hell for eternity was far better than the living hell that stretched out for at least fifty years ahead of me. But there could be no escape until Harrison got better.

My mother and I came up with a plan. I would spend the days hiding out at my father’s house and the nights at Merril’s. I could not risk getting my father into trouble with the FLDS, which had very strong beliefs against a father interfering in his daughter’s marital life, even if he felt she was being physically or emotionally abused. It is a sin for a woman to talk about abuse; if she’s being abused, it is because she is not in harmony with her husband. My parents would be considered sinners in the FLDS for listening to me talk about the abuse. Their job was to talk me into being more obedient to my husband’s will.

One day when I was at my father’s house, he came back from church and said that Warren had closed the public school system permanently. Everyone in the community had been ordered to educate their children in private religious schools. This affected roughly two thousand children.

As a teacher, I had seen what happened academically when families in our culture home-schooled their children. It amounted to no school. Families were now to band together in small groups and create their own religious schools. There was no uniform curriculum. Warren would tell each school what to teach. Warren didn’t want credentialed teachers teaching. He believed we had been contaminated by worldly knowledge. Anyone with an education was seen as a threat because we were too involved with the ways of the world.

It was no secret that Warren Jeffs closed the public schools; it was covered in local newspapers as well as the
Salt Lake City Tribune.
But, inexplicably, there was no public outcry or state action.

Education, which I prized, had almost no value in Warren Jeffs’ FLDS. The changes were dramatic but had occurred incrementally. First no one was allowed to get a college education. Then the public schools were closed and those of us who took pride in working there were seen as a threat.

I continued to stay at my father’s every day until very late at night. Then we’d return home after everyone was asleep in Merril’s house. I would lock my children into my room with me. Harrison would sleep for about two hours and then by early morning we’d head back to my parents’.

Merril cornered me in the family sewing room one afternoon when I was getting some material and patterns to take to my parents’ house to make back-to-school dresses for Betty and LuAnne, who were then eleven and nine years old. He insisted on talking to me. All I said was, “I don’t want to.”

I think this was the first time in my entire married life that I had ever intimidated Merril.

He went to my father and urged him to get me into line. Merril downplayed the situation and said our conflict was relatively minor. My father said he had heard that there had been physical violence between us. Merril tried to brush that off, too. Dad reminded him that I’d been married now for many years and he didn’t have any influence with me anymore, nor did he see how he could help the situation.

I knew our crisis had escalated when I heard Merril had talked to my dad. It would be only a matter of time until he went to his buddy Warren Jeffs. I would be in even worse trouble once that happened. I began writing a letter to Warren that told my side of the situation. I wanted to be allowed to live in the community but away from Merril in a space of my own.

I wrote whenever I had a few moments of help with Harrison’s care. It took me several weeks, but I finally had a seventeen-page letter that detailed the awful history of abuse that Merril had dealt out to his wives and children. I was building my case to explain to Warren why I was unsafe in Merril’s house.

Several of my friends and sisters called me to say they’d seen Merril driving around the community with Warren. I knew things were going to blow. The next Sunday in church, it happened. Warren gave a rip-roaring sermon about fathers who try to interfere in another man’s family to protect their daughters. I knew my father faced excommunication from the FLDS if he continued to allow me to stay in his home.

My father called Warren as soon as he got back from church. He explained that there was more to the story than he could appreciate. He said I had a letter that explained why I wasn’t willing to go back to Merril. Warren agreed to take the letter and meet with my father and me later that night. We were told to keep the meeting secret and wait until after dark before we drove to Uncle Rulon’s house. Then we were to park down the road and knock on the front door at a specific time.

We did exactly as we were told. Warren had one of his brothers waiting for us and took us to a room where Warren was waiting. He seemed irritated that he had to deal with this situation and acted as though it was a lot of nonsense. Still wearing his suit from church, he sat in a chair with his hands folded in his lap. Most of the time he looked down and only raised his head when he spoke.

My father did the talking. I gave Warren the letter. He said he would read it and discuss it with his father and call me at my father’s home the next day. He didn’t want Merril’s family to know that he was talking to me. Warren asked me if I wanted a release from my marriage. I told him I did not because I knew I risked being placed in a worse situation. Warren went silent and cold, but I was not putting myself on his chessboard to be moved around from one marriage to another.

My father asked if he could speak with Warren privately. Afterward, he told me that he’d said he knew me well and knew what I was capable of doing. He told him I had been pushed too hard and that if Warren didn’t pay attention to me, I could cause him a lot of trouble.

Warren heard this as a threat, but my father wasn’t threatening him. He was telling him the truth. He knew if I was forced back into Merril’s abusive household I wouldn’t ask for help a second time. I would escape.

Warren called me the next day and said he had read the letter. He told me that I had written only about Merril’s sins and confessed to none of my own. Because of this, Warren doubted that I had been truthful. He wanted me to come and meet with him and Merril. Warren wanted to give my seventeen-page letter to Merril. I knew if that happened he’d pass it around to all his wives and children. I asked Warren to keep the letter to himself. Warren agreed Merril could read the letter when we met.

Merril met me at noon the next day. Neither one of us spoke in the car. Warren laid down ground rules when we got to his house. He said he would know which one of us was wrong by seeing who lost control. I knew I would have no trouble staying calm. But it would be a huge problem for Merril.

Merril read the letter and practically stopped breathing. I think this was probably the first time in his entire life that someone had called him on his crap. He took several deep breaths after he read it and then laid the pages on the floor.

Warren turned to me and said that I had confessed Merril’s sins and now it was time for me to confess my own. I wasn’t that stupid. I knew anything I confessed to could be held against me.

I confessed to a few small crimes. “Well, sometimes I walk past something on the floor and don’t pick it up. There have been times after Sunday dinner when I didn’t wash the pans that I had used. Once I burned some rolls for Sunday dinner….” My list went on from one small offense to the other.