Authors: Elissa Wall
Stolen Innocence (52 page)
“How are you feeling, Elissa?” he asked, smiling at me from the podium to the right of the judge’s desk.
“Pretty good,” I told Brock, focusing exclusively on his reassuring face. “A little nervous,” I blurted out suddenly.
“Looks like you’re pregnant,” he said.
“Very, very pregnant,” I answered, trying to get comfortable in front of all these people who’d come to hear my story.
“Now, do you know the defendant in this case?”
“I do,” I said, glancing at the defense table.
“This gentleman here?” Brock asked me. “Who is he?”
“He is Warren Jeffs,” I said, clearing my throat and trying to adjust my very pregnant frame in the hard wooden chair.
It was at this moment that our eyes locked. As I looked hard at his small, round eyes, an odd sense of tranquility fell over me, as if I suddenly understood that this man no longer had any power over me. Our gaze remained fixed for what seemed a minute, with Warren working to intimidate me with his “death stare,” trying to make it look like it was the glare of God. The entire courtroom fell silent, with neither one of us willing to back down. After several more seconds, Warren shook his head slightly and finally looked away. I was no longer his victim, and with that realization I was liberated.
I tried to remember what the lawyers had told me—listen to the question and pay attention to what is being asked of me. After a few minutes, I could feel myself settling down, and with Brock’s gentle voice guiding me, I answered as best I could. When the state’s questions came to a close, I worked to mentally prepare myself for Bugden’s attack, but when it came time for the cross-examination, it was defense attorney Tara Isaacson who rose to her feet and strode toward me. Slender and standing nearly six feet tall in her three-inch heels, she towered over the two male defense attorneys.
“Ms. Wall, I think you said that your wedding day was the worst day of your life; is that right?”
“Yes, it was,” I replied tentatively.
“That day, or that time in your life, was the darkest time of your life?”
“That is correct.”
“You didn’t want to do it.”
“No, I did not.”
“You were miserable? Is that fair to say? You didn’t want to go anywhere near Allen; is that right? You were miserable all day and night?”
“Yes,” I replied.
“Of the day of your wedding?”
“Yes.”
She began to ask me about a photograph taken the day after our wedding of Allen and me reclining on the ground. We were both smiling, a fact that she made sure to point out to the court. I was unsure what she was trying to do, and my confusion mounted as she did the same thing with several more photographs taken the evening of the wedding to Allen, and the following morning.
“So, after your night of misery with Allen in the bed, where both of you, you said, were tossing and turning—is that right?”
“I was, yes.”
“Okay, and you had a bouquet of flowers in your arm…and he has his arm around you.”
“Yes, he does.”
“And it looks like your arm is around him?”
“It’s actually not.”
“You hid it behind him?”
“Yeah.”
“So, you are both smiling, right?”
“Yeah, but it wasn’t by choice.”
“So, you are being forced to smile in this picture?”
I didn’t like where this was going, but I had no way of stopping it, and over the next hour, she pressed me to respond to countless questions intended to show that I’d been untruthful in what I’d said about Allen and Warren. It was hard for me to hear a woman doubting that my pain was real, and after a while I started to tear up. I felt so embarrassed showing weakness and crying in front of all these strangers. But her relentless attempts to discredit me and my claims began to wear me down.
“Okay, so let me just see if you agree with me. Allen’s got his arms around your waist. And you are holding on to a tree. And it looks like he’s trying to pull you into a creek or something?” Isaacson asked about another photograph she was offering into evidence.
“Yes,” I replied, my voice growing timid.
“And are you laughing, smiling?”
“In disgust, yes,” I said, trying to defend myself against this onslaught.
I was so relieved when the judge called a recess after almost two hours of testimony, but when we returned to the courtroom, it was more of the same. Isaacson was relentless, and the way she muddied up the facts made me angry. I did my best to rebut her attempts to paint me a liar and make Allen and Warren appear blameless. I could not allow her to twist the truth.
After I’d been on the stand for nearly four hours, Judge Shumate instructed the lawyers to finish. He openly reminded the attorneys of my very pregnant state, and expressed concern about the length of time I’d been sitting before the court. I was unaccustomed to this type of sympathy and respect from an authority figure. Over the course of the day, I had come to see the court not as simply a blunt-force instrument of the state, a callous machine, but as a complicated tool carefully designed to implement justice. Here I was two weeks from delivery, hormonal and exhausted, and every effort was being made to make me feel comfortable and confirm that my voice was heard.
Yet I couldn’t deny the toll that the gruelling day had taken on me. The questions from Isaacson had been intense, and over the following months I would use them as a model to prepare for what would be in store for me in the actual trial. That first day at the preliminary hearing, I was still too green to understand the connection that her questions were trying to draw and refute her attempt to show that a smile in a photo implied happiness—a point that I could have easily countered if I’d had a better grasp of what was happening. It was a clever approach, and I had been unready for it. That would not happen again.
L
ess than a month later, in December 2006, I gave birth to my daughter, Emily. I had been out of the FLDS for a little more than a year, and even though I’d shaken free of most of the mental shackles, it was still hurtful to hear that followers of the priesthood were being told to pray that I be destroyed in the flesh during childbirth. I took comfort in my faith that God was watching over me, and had once again blessed me with a beautiful baby.
I did my best to savor the sweet beginnings of my daughter’s life in the middle of this strenuous legal process. The defense filed a motion to drop the charges, making a fairly persuasive argument that Warren Jeffs was simply a religious leader doing his job. But word came in late January that Judge Shumate had found sufficient evidence to bind Warren with two counts of rape as an accomplice, and ordered that Warren remain in jail without bail pending trial. Fittingly, he was housed in a facility called Purgatory Flats.
If I harbored any lingering doubts about going forward with the trial, they were washed away when Lamont and I were invited to view a startling confession that Warren made on January 25, 2007, which had been caught on videotape in Purgatory. A split screen popped up, with Warren in his jail-issued green-and-white striped jumpsuit on the right and his brother Nephi on the left—each on the phone on either side of the Plexiglas barrier. The two men looked eerily similar, with the same thick glasses and mousy brown hair parted to the side.
In the beginning of their visit, Warren instructed his brother to have someone deliver a blessing to a sick girl in the community and sent a message of support and love to his followers. Since his incarceration, he’d been phoning in from the jail and had lots of privileges afforded him. The previous day, the jail had even recorded several phone calls in which Warren admitted to having lost the priesthood thirty-one years earlier for being “immoral” with a sister and a daughter.
Despite this grim disclosure, he seemed in good spirits when the meeting with Nephi commenced. The video was grainy, and it was strange to watch Warren in so private a moment. Half an hour in, it appeared the conversation was over and Warren went to hang up the jailhouse visiting phone, but then he had something further to say. Both men picked up their phones, and for nearly six full minutes Warren said nothing, while his brother waited patiently. Warren stared blankly and seemed to listen intently, almost as though he was receiving a revelation from God.
Warren broke the silence by instructing his brother to take dictation, and Nephi compliantly pulled out his notepad.
“I’m not the prophet,” Warren began.
The words blew me away, and I turned to look at Lamont. We both sat riveted as the man we’d long been told was God on earth delivered a message neither of us ever could have predicted.
“I never was the prophet, and I have been deceived by the powers of evil, and brother William T. Jessop has been the prophet since Father’s passing, since the passing of my father.”
He continued, “I have been the most wicked man in this dispensation in the eyes of God. And taking charge of my father’s family when the Lord his God told him not to because he could not hear him, could not hear his voice, because I did not hold priesthood. I direct my former family to look to Brother William T. Jessop, and I will not be calling today or ever again.
“Write this down also,” Warren directed Nephi, who sat hunched over the small overhang he was using as a desk. “As far as I possibly can be, I am sorry from the bottom of my heart.”
In response to this stunning announcement, Nephi remained silent, seeming unmoved, as he followed Warren’s directions. “And write this,” Warren continued. “The Lord God of Heaven came to my prison cell two days ago, to test and detect me. And he saw I would rather defy him than obey him because of the weaknesses of my flesh. I am hesitating while I am giving this message as the Lord dictates these words to my mind and heart. The Lord whispers to me, to have you, Nephi, send this message everywhere you can among the priesthood people and get a copy of this video and let anyone see it who desires to see it. They will see that I voice these words myself.
“I ask, write this down, the Lord told me to say and I yearn for everyone’s forgiveness for my aspiring and selfish way of life, in deceiving the elect, breaking the new and everlasting covenant, and being the most wicked man on the face of the earth in this last dispensation.”
Warren’s voice cracked with emotion as he concluded his message. “I ask for everyone’s forgiveness and say farewell forever, you who are worthy for Zion, for I will not be there.”
I felt a bit sorry for Nephi, who now choked back tears and assured Warren that he would make it to Zion. Overwhelmed, Nephi clutched the receiver, unable to move as Warren hung up and turned to leave the room. It had taken Warren almost an hour to deliver these few words. We could see by his actions that he’d wrestled with himself, hanging up the phone, then picking it back up again several times, even at the very end, when Nephi tried to console him.
“This is a test. You are the prophet,” Nephi said, his voice shaking.
Warren again took the receiver. “This is not a test; this is a revelation from the Lord, God of Heaven, through his former servant—who was never his servant—who is dictating these words at this time, that you may know, this is not a test.”
Finally, after remaining paralyzed by the reality of his own admission, Warren knocked on the door of the visitors area to alert guards that he was ready to return to his cell. He exited the room, and Nephi remained behind, looking shattered by the new possibility that everything he’d believed in his life was a lie. I recognized the look on his face, for I had felt that way once before. Tears gathered in his eyes and he remained as if glued, with his back pressed up against the wall, for almost five full minutes, perhaps waiting for Warren to come back and tell him it was all just a test. But that didn’t happen.
Lamont and I were beside ourselves. We’d long known Warren’s devious nature, but to hear him openly profess his deceit and fraud left us speechless. While we had ceased believing in his power more than a year ago, both of us still bore the psychic scars from his treatment. To have him acknowledge that the whole thing had been a lie was at once liberating and revolting. I felt dirty thinking of all of the times he’d used my heart against me and the people he had praying for him back in Short Creek—the people he’d taken advantage of, who might never know the truth.
We wanted to reveal the footage to the FLDS people so they could make their own choice about the authenticity of their prophet, but the video recording would be ordered inadmissible at trial. In spite of Warren’s wishes that it be distributed for mass consumption, the defense argued that releasing the tape would poison the potential jury pool and prejudice a jury. As such it was kept under wraps for the duration of the trial.
Several days after Warren’s unexpected confession, we got word that he’d attempted to commit suicide by hanging himself in his cell. He was discovered by jail guards and taken to a local hospital for treatment and evaluation. Warren had long prophesized that he would die a martyr in an attempt to align with Joseph Smith, the founder of the Mormon Church, who died in prison terrorized by an angry mob. Authorities were adamant that they would not let this happen, and every precaution was taken to ensure his safety and well-being. During his lengthy incarceration at Purgatory, he’d been performing ritualistic fasts for days at a time and spent hour upon hour on his knees praying, leaving them cracked and bloodied.
All of these revelations instilled an unwavering certainty in Lamont and me that we were doing the right thing. God was sending us these signals to empower us with the confidence to move ahead.
Opinion is flitting thing, but truth outlasts the sun.
—
EMILY DICKINSON
O
n September 13, 2007, I appeared in court to testify against Warren Jeffs. The preliminary hearing had ended nearly a year before; now it was time for the real thing. The man I had known all my young life as “Uncle Warren” was finally being put on trial as an accomplice to my rape.
