Carolyn Jessop; Laura Palmer (45 page)

My heart stopped. I’d won. We were safe. I knew Merril would never put the effort into coming up to Salt Lake City. The fight was over.

It was a huge win. I had proven that it was not in my children’s interests to ever be in Colorado City. We were finally and truly free.

This was a groundbreaking case at many levels. If I could get my children out of the cult, any woman with enough determination could, too.

The absolute power the FLDS had over women had been cracked. I had proved that a woman could not only flee and live on her own but also win custody of her children.

It was a proud day.

Brian

A
fter I won custody, I went home to gather up all my children to take them to the zoo. We were going to celebrate! Betty refused to go with us and Arthur was very upset. The younger ones were confused and felt they should be angry, but they were too excited about the zoo to muster any anger. We all had a great time, and when we got home we had pizza and root beer floats. It felt like the weight of the world had been erased from every aspect of my being.

The school year started and life began to feel more normal. I was feeling stronger and less debilitated by the PTSD. It wasn’t such an ordeal getting the kids out the door. I was stronger and more optimistic than I’d been since the escape.

Merril came through Salt Lake City one night and took the children out to dinner. He was heading home from Canada with a new wife. Merril had married a young girl, Bonnie Blackmore, who was a Canadian citizen. He introduced her to my children as their new mother. Bonnie was barely older than Betty.

Two weeks later, he wed another young girl. Ally Barlow from Hildale, Utah, was the next in his marrying binge. In less than a year, he’d married seven new wives. He was sixty-eight years old with thirteen wives and more than a hundred children now, including many stepchildren. I think he needed to prove that he could still have any woman he wanted.

When Merril wasn’t marrying more wives, he was liquidating assets and building housing in Texas on Warren Jeffs’ compound in Eldorado, which spanned nearly two thousand acres. A few months after he married his under-age brides, he moved them to Texas and destroyed all traces of their ever having lived in Colorado City, presumably so there would be no evidence that could be used against him.

I knew I had to find a job to enable me to pay my utility bills that winter. With Harrison and Bryson, it was impossible to work a regular 9-to-5 job. I ended up going to work for a small locksmithing business run by a couple I’d met over the summer who’d once been part of another polygamist community with no ties to the FLDS. Paul and Lodeen had fourteen children and needed help with their bookkeeping. Paul said it was fine to bring Harrison and Bryson with me to work. There was a room downstairs where Harrison could sleep and Bryson could watch cartoons.

I took the job with delight. I have a good head for numbers and was put in charge of collecting past-due accounts. Lodeen gave me a big stack of invoices, some of which went back two years. I tracked down phone numbers on the computer and made an endless stream of calls. Payments started coming in.

I was earning enough money to pay my bills. There wasn’t a lot left over, but this was the highest ground I’d managed to reach. Once I got the children off to school in the morning, I went to work with the boys. In the afternoons I shuttled kids to one appointment after another.

After an appointment for Harrison one afternoon, the ignition on my van froze. I couldn’t turn the key and start it. I called Lodeen to see if anyone was in the shop who could come over and help me. Paul came by.

Paul and I had an easy relationship and a lot in common because of our polygamist pasts. That afternoon he told me he had never truly given up the idea of living polygamy but felt the right person had never come along—until he met me.

I was stunned. He told me that I would probably never find a man willing to take on a woman with eight children. In his view, polygamy helped solve this kind of problem. He and Lodeen had worked hard and were now in the position of being able to help me. Why should I have to live alone because I’d been dealt a bad hand?

I told Paul I had no problem being alone and that there was no way I’d ever consider polygamy again. I’d fought hard for my freedom and I knew I might have to fight hard for the rest of my life, but there was no way I’d go back to polygamy. Paul wanted me to look at the positives. But frankly, I didn’t think there were any.

I told Paul I appreciated everything he had done for me. He and Lodeen had offered me a hand up instead of a handout, and I was deeply grateful for that. But that was it. I wasn’t interested in anything else.

For the first time in my life, a man respected me when I said no. Paul said he still needed my help at his business if I was willing to continue. I didn’t really want to work for someone who wanted to marry me, but I didn’t know what else to do. My job was enabling me to survive. I continued working, and he never said anything about marriage again.

The job went so well—I brought in $30,000 in past-due accounts for them—I realized my abilities hadn’t been wiped out by the trauma of the last year or my PTSD. What I knew I needed was work I could do from home. There was no way I could support my family on a teacher’s salary.

I decided to become an accountant. I could do that from home and make my own hours. I looked into graduate school at the University of Utah and realized I needed to pass the GMAT test in order to apply.

I signed up for a GMAT prep class and started going on Saturday mornings. It was hard to find the time to study, but I was thrilled to be using my brain again and doing something for myself.

One Saturday I started getting dressed for school but didn’t put any energy into it. I just didn’t care. When I looked in the mirror I thought I looked awful. I was wearing black jeans and a big heavy sweater. My hair was frizzy from a new perm. But so what?

Then a strange and unfamiliar feeling came over me. I had a sense that I was going to meet the love of my life that day. I wasn’t looking for the love of my life! That was what was so unsettling. I knew everyone in the class already. I was running late and brushed the thought off as something crazy.

That day we had a substitute teacher. He introduced himself as Brian and said he had an MBA from Harvard. That got my attention. I’d never met anyone who’d gone to an Ivy League school. He was good-looking and clearly very fit.

I noticed during the class that he paid a lot of attention to me. Why was he looking at me? Was it my imagination? No, I realized it wasn’t. He’d ask the class a question and stare at me.

He told us we were going to go down the rows and answer the questions in the book. I was second in line. I read the question, answered it, and then looked up. Brian was staring at me but didn’t say anything. Had I gotten the question wrong? I must have looked puzzled, because he snapped out of his reverie, commented that my answer was correct, and moved on to the next student.

As the class continued, Brian kept encouraging me to participate. I felt confused by his attention, so I stayed quiet.

During our break, Brian said to some of us that he’d send us a study guide for the GMAT class that he’d prepared if we’d give him our e-mail addresses and phone numbers. We all signed up.

On another break, I overheard Brian telling someone nearby that he was divorced. After class, several of the students went to the front of the room to chat with him. I felt shy, but I didn’t want to pass up the chance to talk to someone with a degree from Harvard. I drifted up to the front along with everyone else. Brian had his eye on me.

But then the dean of the business school came in and invited Brian to lunch. I could see that waiting around to talk with him was a waste of time, so I left and did not look back.

It turns out that Brian told everyone he had to leave. After making apologies to the dean, he jumped in his car.

Brian could see me walking down the sidewalk on the right. If he left campus, he’d have to turn left. Left meant never getting to know me. He had taken a new job in San Francisco and was already working there. Turning left was the safe decision. But he’d been making those all his life. He turned right.

Brian pulled up to me in his BMW and rolled down his window. “Carolyn, I know you don’t know me and this may seem sudden, but would you like to get some lunch with me? You can ride with me or follow me in your own car. Whatever you’re more comfortable with. But I would really like to get to know you.”

My heart nearly came to a halt. What a surprise. What a
happy
surprise. But what should I do? Should I say yes and go to lunch with a total stranger? The safe thing was to say no. But I didn’t. “I’d love to get some lunch with you,” I said, and got in his car.

Now what? There I was sitting alone in a car with a strange man. What a weird feeling. I had never felt so shy in my entire life. Ever. I was thirty-six years old and on my third date. (My first two dates were awkward non-starters.) This was the first date I’d ever had with someone I found really attractive.

Brian mentioned something about his son. I looked at him and said, “Oh, you have a son?”

“I do. Two boys, in fact. What about you? Any kids?” he asked.

“Yes, I have eight.”

Brian started laughing. He thought I was joking.

I looked at him because I didn’t get what was so funny.

Then it was his turn to look surprised. “You have eight children?”

I nodded.

Brian looked like he was choking on something. “Seriously, you do not look like you even have any kids. I thought you were joking. Is a sports bar okay for lunch?”

I’d never been to a sports bar in my life. I said that sounded great.

The mention of my eight children broke the ice. Brian came from a family of six. He said his mother was very beautiful. “Like you. You remind me of my mother in a lot of ways,” he said. Well, that seemed all right.

Brian admitted that he had begged off having lunch with the dean so he could try to catch me after class. He said if that had failed, he would have called me with the number he had from the study guide sheet.

“You made up the study guide thing just to get my number?” I said, shocked.

“No, not exactly. I’m e-mailing everyone a study guide. I just didn’t need their phone numbers.” He smiled.

Over lunch I told Brian how I’d ended up with eight children and about my escape and the seemingly never-ending custody battle I’d finally won. Talking to him suddenly felt as easy as breathing and as natural as blinking. No man had ever listened to me as intently as he had.

Brian had just gone through a divorce, and in talking we realized we’d both been married for seventeen years, almost to the day—he was married three weeks before I married Merril and divorced two weeks before my escape. Both of us had been divorced for eighteen months, and neither of us had dated seriously since.

Brian later said he realized at lunch he wanted to have a relationship with me even though he knew it would turn his life upside down. He was scared but didn’t let that stop him from saying, “Do you want to go see a movie tonight?”

“Sure,” I said.

“I work in San Francisco but I come to Salt Lake every two weeks to see my sons. I’d like to date you when I’m not seeing my two boys.”

I smiled. “Sounds good to me.”

He took me back to my car and kissed me goodbye. Really kissed me.

We never got to the movies that night because Brian wanted me to meet his friends. All of them had degrees from prestigious schools. A few had Ph.D.s. I’d never socialized with such educated people before. What a difference. It was stimulating to be around such vitality. The next day I met more of his friends at breakfast and lunch. By the time Brian went back to San Francisco, I’d met almost every friend he had in the city and I was in love for the first time in my life.

Brian began calling me every day from San Francisco. After two weekends of dating in Salt Lake, Brian began begging me to fly to San Francisco with him. I pulled out all the stops to find a babysitter and did.

For years I’d lived a nightmare. Now I was living a dream. I could not believe someone like Brian cared about me and wanted to introduce me to his family. His dad had been career military and Brian had been an army captain. Part of what attracted me to him was that he’d worked hard for everything he’d achieved but still remained open and caring in a strong and natural way. He gave me hope that I might be able to pull myself out of the bad place I was in. It was easy to be with him but still so unreal. What a joy to be able to laugh with a man.

I had been to San Francisco with my father several times. But I’d never seen how beautiful some of the outlying areas were. We stayed with Brian’s sister, who lived in a house on a cliff that looked over the ocean.

I remember standing with Brian on the edge of the cliff and feeling the deepest peace I’d ever known in my life. I thought that when I escaped, I’d gone over the edge—the edge of everything I had ever known.

Freedom was something I had always been able to imagine. It was the opposite of oppression, slavery, and degradation. But love?

I had never known what it felt like to be loved by a man—to have the love that says,
You matter,
the love that says,
I adore you, I believe in you, and I want you by my side.

Love was brand-new. The thrill was, I wanted Brian, too.

Better and Better

M
y children stabilized more each month. Betty was still the wild card in the family and ran away a lot. Calling the local police department was becoming a regular part of life.

I thought I was doing well, too, until I was knocked down again by PTSD. I had a fever and chills and felt completely debilitated. That’s when I learned what caring meant. Brian was on the phone to me several times a day. I had never been protected before, never known what it felt like to really matter to someone. I had never been more than property to Merril. Now I was not only a person but a cherished one at that. I could feel emotions that had been cut off and cauterized coming back to life. Even when I was sick, I was more alive in spirit than I had been during my seventeen years of marriage.

The fever and chills spiraled into pneumonia that winter. One Saturday I found I couldn’t breathe very well and I thought I’d stay in and try to get better. I went to find LuAnne to help with Harrison and found that Betty and LuAnne were both missing. It had been several months since Betty had last taken off, because I think she and Merril both knew it wasn’t working to their advantage. This was the first time Merril had tried to take more than one of my children, however.

The first thing I did was call Brian. I told him I was too sick to call the police. I was sure the girls were in Colorado City. Brian pushed me to call the authorities, walking me through it step by step.

I promised him I would. Then I remembered that Arizona law enforcement had put an investigator in the community in 2004 as an outsider to help people like me. Gary Engels worked out of a trailer he shared with social service workers from Child Protective Services. The idea was to give women a place to turn to for help—but very few used it. This was the first time there had ever been any real law enforcement in the community—all the other police were FLDS members who looked the other way. The local police followed him with guns whenever he moved about the community.

“There is nothing like this in America,” Engels told the Southern Poverty Law Center, which tracks hate crimes in America. “It’s like a fiefdom. Everyone lives and survives by the will of Warren Jeffs. He can take away your family, your business, and your home. What king ever had that power?”

The Southern Poverty Law Center characterized the FLDS as a hate group in 2005, putting it on a list with the Ku Klux Klan and the Aryan Nation, among others. In doing so it cited statements such as this from Jeffs on race: “The black race is the people through which the devil has always been able to bring evil unto the earth.” Jeffs’ hateful speech is not limited to just race. Homosexuals were a frequent target: “The people grew so evil, the men started to marry the men and the women, the women. This is the worst evil act you can do, next to murder. It is like murder.” On violence, there is this statement from Jeffs: “I want to remind you what the prophets have taught us, that whenever a man of God is commanded to kill another man, he is never bloodthirsty.”

When I called Gary and reported that my daughters were missing, he said he’d investigate immediately. The police in West Jordan, Utah, faxed orders to the Mohave County, Arizona, office to go pick up Betty and LuAnne. None of the local officers wanted to go into Colorado City late on Saturday night, but Gary insisted. The orders were there; they were required by law to act. Extra police officers were called in from Arizona to accompany them.

The doors were locked at Merril’s. A young girl answered Gary’s knock and slammed the door in his face. Betty and LuAnne had only been in the house fifteen minutes.

The officers circled the house. Through the windows they could see a large group of people standing in a circle and talking. The police were worried about a stand-off. The house had not been surrounded very long when the FLDS police officers told Gary that was not Merril’s house. This was a lie. They told Gary he should stop harassing innocent people and leave.

Gary said he had orders stating that Betty and LuAnne were at this residence. If they weren’t, he said, why did the people inside refuse to talk to him? A search warrant was in the works, and Gary said that the moment he had it he was going inside.

Shortly thereafter, Merril called Gary and lit into him. He insisted that this was not his residence and he had no right to be there. Merril said he had no idea where Betty and LuAnne were. “Carolyn is only trying to cause trouble for innocent people because she is unable to control her daughters.” This was a lie and Gary knew it.

Gary did not back down. Merril called him again with more threats. Gary said when he had the search warrant, he was coming in. The girls would be taken into custody and Merril would face charges.

Merril called back with an offer. He admitted that Betty and LuAnne were inside, and he said that if they could stay the night, he would see that they got back to my house the following day.

Gary called me and said it was up to me. He’d move if I told him to. I wanted my daughters back as peacefully as possible, so we agreed to accept the deal. I could not risk someone getting hurt during the stand-off or when they went in with a search warrant.

Betty and LuAnne came home the next day, and Betty never took off again. I think Merril realized what the consequences would be if he tried kidnapping any of his children again.

Merril continued to liquidate his assets. He sold his Big Water Motel, which had sixty rooms, and another smaller one. He sold his rodeo arena, which was the largest in northern Arizona, and most of the equipment from his construction and trucking companies. His cement company was closed, and so was the motel I used to run in Caliente. Merril was liquidating hundreds of thousands of dollars in assets, and not a dime went to child support.

We never reached an agreement because I was collecting a small amount from his Social Security, and he did not want to pay child support. He only wanted to pay the Social Security money. My attorney refused that offer because we knew Merril was lying about his income. Legally he owes me child support based on his assets and income. But I have to prove he still has hidden assets and is profiting from them. This would cost a tremendous amount of money in investigative fees, and even if I proved that Merril had unreported assets, there’s no guarantee that Merril would ever pay what he rightfully should.

My dad owned a third of the motel in Caliente. Merril wanted my father to give that money to Warren. My father refused, saying it was going to my mother to help her buy a house after their divorce. Merril was furious and told Dad that he had no obligation to my mother. After thirty-eight years of marriage, my father felt differently. Merril said God would take care of him legally if he was doing God’s will. Dad wasn’t buying it. My father was excommunicated from the FLDS by Warren Jeffs and ordered to return to Jeffs his two wives and the more than ten children still living at home.

Gary Engels estimates that more than three hundred men have been kicked out of their families by Warren Jeffs and excommunicated. The men are told to repent from afar by sending Jeffs long letters detailing their sins. If their list of sins is identical to the list of their sins Warren Jeffs has received from God, they will be allowed to return to the FLDS. That, of course, never happens, but Jeffs has used this tactic to accumulate a massive amount of detail about what men considered their worst deeds and most shameful secrets from men desperate to reunite with their families.

Jeffs sent some of his goons to my father’s house to tell him that he had been kicked out of the work of God. He was no longer to manage the local grocery store, which he’d done for more than eighteen years. His home was to be turned over to the FLDS.

Jeffs’ emissaries told my father to delineate all his sins in a letter to the prophet, leave the community, and repent. He was instructed to pray constantly for God’s forgiveness and with sweetness in his heart thank God and the prophet for their grace in allowing him to repent.

My father asked the men if they would give Warren a message for him. When they agreed, my father said, “Could you sweetly tell Warren Jeffs to go to hell?”

The goons looked scared. How dare my father speak like that to the prophet of God! Didn’t he understand the risk of eternal damnation? His complete disregard for Warren Jeffs was like a body blow to them.

Merril was soon on the phone to my father to say he was taking over the store. My father had no objections to that but told Merril he was planning to take his retirement money with him. During his years running the store my father had accumulated a substantial retirement account. Merril told my father the money should go to Warren Jeffs. My father refused and said Jeffs would have to fight him in court.

Warren had ordered my fathers’ two remaining wives, Rosie and Muriel, to turn themselves in for reassignment to other men. My father told them they were free to do whatever they wanted. He said he’d never owned them; he had become their husband through a covenant with God that he was still prepared to honor. The choice was theirs.

My father had raised thirty-six children in his life, eight of whom were stepchildren. Unlike Merril, his children mattered to him. So did their mothers.

Rosie decided she would stand by my father and had no interest in becoming a pawn in Warren’s sick games.

Muriel decided she could not risk her salvation and surrendered to “the will of God.” She placed herself and her four children at the mercy of Warren Jeffs. I do not know if she’s been reassigned in marriage. I do know that women who were ensnared in Jeffs’ web did not fare well. Several women whom I knew had been reassigned as wives more than once, some to as many as five different men. One woman said she felt like she had become a “priesthood prostitute.”

My father’s heart was shattered. He wept for days. His family was torn apart. Warren Jeffs had made a mockery of the faith and community my father loved.

There were leaders in the community who had tried to block Warren Jeffs and protect the values we had had. Key among those was Uncle Fred Jessop, who had been the leading FLDS bishop throughout my lifetime. Uncle Fred was widely admired and loved. He had been investigating Warren for fraud. Now in his nineties, Uncle Fred worried about leaving a crook and criminal in charge after his death. Secret meetings were held with other men, one of whom was his stepson, William Timpson Jessop. William turned traitor and went to Warren and told him everything Uncle Fred was planning.

Warren had Uncle Fred sent to another compound and told the community the Lord had removed him as a bishop and appointed William in his place. The other men who had been part of the secret meetings were kicked out of the cult. This is how opposition to Jeffs was eliminated—swiftly and surely. Uncle Fred was too beloved for Warren to have excommunicated him. His ploy was to make it look as though Uncle Fred was too old and deserved to retire.

Uncle Fred disappeared from the community in late December 2003. A few weeks later, in January 2004, Warren Jeffs made what would be his last public appearance when at a town meeting he kicked out of the FLDS twenty-one men whom he called “master deceivers” and reassigned their wives and children to other men. The men were told to keep sending money to Jeffs and work on their repentance from afar.

Jeffs had always been private, secretive, and somewhat paranoid. After his father’s death, he never went out into the community without security guards. At the time of that town meeting, no one knew that he was going into hiding. But as months went on, that meeting became the last time anyone could remember seeing him in public. He still sent tapes into the community and did sermons that were piped in over the phone.

In July 2004, a civil lawsuit was filed in Utah against Warren Jeffs and two of his brothers by his nephew, Brent Jeffs, who accused Jeffs of sodomizing him when he was a student at the Alta Academy, a private school in Salt Lake that Warren ran.

Brent’s lawsuit was motivated by his brother Clayne’s suicide in 2002. Clayne shot himself in the head after disclosing that he had been abused by Warren Jeffs. Brent had never told anyone about his own abuse until after his brother shot himself.

In his lawsuit, Brent Jeffs said Warren told him that he was doing “God’s work” when he assaulted him and that if he ever disclosed the abuse, “it would be upon pain of eternal damnation.” Brent Jeffs said he was routinely sodomized from the time he was five or six years old.

Jeffs refused to appear in court to answer those charges. Federal charges were filed against him for fleeing to evade prosecution. With armed zealots guarding him, plenty of money, and a network of FLDS safe houses in the United States and Canada, Warren Jeffs managed to conceal his whereabouts. Federal and state authorities were also wary of triggering another Waco and did not want to move on Jeffs in a situation where many others might die.

Even though he was in hiding and on the run from the law, Jeffs still wielded power through tapes, phone calls, and messages he relayed back to the community. From time to time he would appear to perform a marriage. But these were rare and secretive moments that people learned about only after they had occurred.

By the time he dropped off the radar, Jeffs had effectively wiped out any opposition to his reign. Those men who were left behind—men like Merril—were total disciples. Merril’s devotion to Warren Jeffs had never wavered over the years, even as the community sank to deeper levels of extremism.

During the winter of 2005, I was driving home with Betty and Merrilee on a snowy day. A car in the opposite lane swerved into mine. I turned my van to the side of the road to avoid a collision, but the car still crashed into the back of my van.

The children weren’t hurt, but I had terrible back and shoulder pain as a result. I went to see a chiropractor, who said that area was too tight to work with and adjust. He sent me to a massage therapist, Lee Bird, who turned out to be a godsend.

Lee was learning Feldenkrais massage, which is based on a belief that new connections can be formed between brain and body that can help retrain the nervous system. During the course of my treatments, I told Lee about Harrison and how hard it was for me to still lift him.