As my principal, Warren expected me to check in like a wife would do to her husband. I still had no desire to waste hours of my time in his hallway. Anytime I didn’t want to be obedient to him, Warren noticed and made it difficult to enjoy my work. I felt suffocated by his double standards for men and women, and for his personal behavior and what he expected of his pupils. When he went on a rampage expelling students and getting after some of my brothers again, I wanted to yell, You hypocrite!
In public, I put on a brave face, but Mother Paula saw right through me. She took me for a walk one afternoon, enjoying a warm rock by the edge of the water near the irrigation pond. There I confided in her more than I ever had to anyone, opening up to her about my struggles with Warren.
“Uncle Warren is not your husband, Becky. He cannot dictate what you do unless you allow it.”
I stared at her. No one had ever said anything even remotely like that concerning Warren. I had been taught to obey him without question. She planted the seed that it was literally my choice if I came back that fall or the next to teach at Alta Academy. While my heart hurt to think about leaving my students, I suddenly felt an enormous sense of relief. To be free and away from Warren sounded more delicious than anything I could imagine. But I didn’t know if I had the courage to go through with it. Somehow I felt constantly under Warren’s thumb.
I helped Christine choreograph the operetta, our yearly music and dance performance that the chorus class did each spring for the community. I went through the motions and did what I could, though I felt like a zombie on autopilot. I had realized that if I left teaching at Alta, I would have very little reason to go on. Sure, I would be free from Warren, but I would also be away from anything else that gave my life meaning. That evening I was leaving the grocery store when I ran into my beloved aunt Martha, who had moved with her family to Colorado City when the Prophet had entrusted a new calling in the church to Uncle Jim. I greeted her enthusiastically. How I had missed her!
After hugging me, my aunt stepped back and looked at my face. Unlike anyone except Paula, she saw past my smiles to the dark circles under my eyes and the pain behind them.
“What is happening with you, Becky?” she asked. In that moment I knew I could trust her. I took a breath and laid my soul bare, confessing to my aunt all of my pent-up sadness and the fact that I was just another body in Rulon Jeffs’s home.
Aunt Martha listened to me sympathetically, then looked directly into my eyes.
“You need to get involved in the community. Find somewhere where you belong, Becky, or it will kill you. You’re so very young, with a whole life to live. You must find a place where you are needed, and you need to give and serve until you forget yourself.”
I went home that night and crawled into bed, curling up into a fetal position. I knew she was right, but where could I give of myself that it would make a difference? Where could I be so needed as to forget my worries? And where Warren couldn’t crush me?
The next day I arrived early to the operetta rehearsals. Christine was just as creative and energetic as ever. After a little while, I noticed several points at which things were not operating efficiently, or where the teens and children felt a bit confused in the production. I threw myself into the day and directed the participants without encroaching on Christine’s toes. Before the day was over, I could tell my help was making a real difference.
That night, I again climbed into my bed exhausted, but with excitement in my bones. I might be powerless to change Warren’s mind about the worthiness of my own brothers, but there were young people in need of help right where I was. One of them, Samantha, came to talk to me afterward about struggles she was facing in the community and her family. We talked for a long time and became fast friends.
At the next practice, I watched carefully. Many of these kids were just numbers in their households, too, and several of them sat very low on the hierarchal totem pole in our society. When we praised them for a job well done, I saw them shine with a new light. I could validate them, and most important, I could love them.
Three hundred fifteen miles away from Salt Lake City, I had found my home.
I kept flying back and forth between Short Creek and Salt Lake City, to stay involved with the practices but teach school during the week. Our first performance of the operetta In Grand Old Switzerland was a monumental success. As usual, the entire community came out, and they enjoyed the fresh spin that Christine and I had put on it, especially with the dancing we’d added to the production. What gave me the most pleasure was not the delighted applause from the audience, but the radiant smiles of the cast. I was hooked.
That summer of 1996, Christine and I choreographed our first dance of young daughters of the community for the 24th of July Pioneer Day Celebration. Costumed in sweet white dresses with blue-and-white-checkered cummerbunds, straw hats, and sunflowers, the performers were a sensation, and Rulon was charmed by the singing and dancing. I loved connecting with the ladies and showing my husband that I was using my talents to please him.
There was another place I was obligated to please my husband, but I was not “living up to my duties.” That very summer, Warren Jeffs put me in my place. One afternoon, he summoned me to his Hildale office to say, “Mother Becky, it has come to my attention that you do not always do your duty. You must get close to Father.”
My heart fell. Getting “close” with my husband was Warren’s way of talking about marital relations, specifically sex. He was damn right I was not getting close with his father! I had even told Rulon about my childhood accident with the rusty bike, because when he would get on top of me in the night, his fingers and his manhood were excruciatingly painful every time. It had been hard for me to be that open and vulnerable, but he had acted so kind at first that I thought he would understand. Before long, though, he seemed even more determined to get his way, ignoring my tears of pain, anguish, and humiliation.
When I could not devise a Priesthood-approved way of avoiding my shift, I had deciphered an ingenious way to please the Prophet while ensuring he did not touch me. Each night on duty, I would massage his sore and troubled feet until he fell asleep. Deep inside, I knew I was being manipulative in order not to be used for his pleasure. It had worked for a while, but apparently my husband was not pleased with my progress in being a “comfort wife,” the term the Prophet used to describe one who would submit to all of her husband’s “earthly” demands in bed.
Warren must have seen something in my eyes, for he said, more firmly this time, “You will get close to your husband. You must foster a serving relationship with him. If you have a problem with that, talk to him.”
When I left Warren’s office, I slipped back into the black mood that had threatened to take me before. At one time I had felt that it was God’s will that I be with Rulon. Over time it became disturbingly clear that marriages were not divinely orchestrated “by God’s will to the Prophet’s mouth”—as reinforced by scripture and Warren’s lectures and tapes—but instead decided over dinner conversations by sister-wives and power-hungry fathers.
On multiple occasions my sister-wives would take delight in going in to the mouthpiece of God to say, “Don’t you think that this particular man and woman would make a cute couple?” Almost immediately, the match would take place.
In addition, many of my sister-wives had beautiful little sisters. Whether it was their idea or not, I observed fathers coming to bargain with the Prophet concerning their younger daughters.
When one such deal was struck, a father came in for his daughter’s wedding luncheon proudly displaying two sixteen-year-old daughters, one on each arm, like a man coming to market with his finest goods. They were not twins, but from different mothers. The bride’s face shone with great hope and excitement, ready to be validated and take her place of honor beside the Prophet. In complete contradiction to what was being spouted at the pulpit and in Warren’s classrooms, however, the Prophet peered appraisingly at both girls.
“Which one is mine?” he asked.
The father looked at him eagerly. “Either one, or both!”
Rulon had a great laugh over that, but at that moment, I flushed in silent anger, watching the face of Rulon’s new bride crumple. God had failed to send the beam of light directly to the Prophet, and he didn’t even know which bride was his, despite her sacrifices and preparations for this great day. As the more submissive and obedient of the two, she became Rulon’s bride while her sister was given to Rulon’s grandson.
“Guess who wants to marry me now?” gloated Rulon one night at dinner not long after. Warren, a frequent guest at our table, was present.
“Who?” asked Warren.
Rulon mentioned a young girl whose father had come to visit him that day. Warren sniggered, and it wasn’t lost on Rulon.
“Of course I won’t marry her. She’s a fat ass.” Anyone who was not rail thin was often spoken of by the Jeffs men as a “fat ass” or “fat slob,” making me and several of my sister wives self-conscious and self-critical. Worse, I watched more fathers frequent the Prophet’s office and his table, desiring validation and standing in the community so much that they would put their daughters up on the auction block. Their biggest coup was when the Prophet would agree to take a daughter as his own wife.
Over the next seven years, Rulon would take on forty-six wives after me.
When I got married, I could not shake the feeling I had abandoned my siblings, despite it not being my choice. I kept an eye on them at school whenever possible, but disturbing reports came in of my younger siblings, especially the boys, struggling at home. As the Prophet’s wives, Christine and I couldn’t display any tolerance for rebellious behaviors, but whenever we had the opportunity to take the kids quietly aside, we tried to validate their good behaviors and beg them to get on the right track at school and home.
A definite rise in rebellious behavior had coincided with the arrival of my father’s coveted third wife. We’d all been surprised to learn that our cousin Maggie, who was close to my age, would now be “Mother Maggie.” The kids at home had been excited, and they tried to be good for the new wife. It became quickly apparent that any happiness would not last.
Mother Maggie had come from a very authoritarian home. My mother told me that Mother Maggie insisted that my father physically create order in the household. With an insane desire to please his new wife, he beat his children into submission. Mom was in mental anguish. When Irene had beaten us, our mother had looked to her husband for safety. Having him become the abuser just to please another wife broke her.
Irene sought out Maggie’s sympathies, and the two combined forces against my mother. Maggie quickly showed herself to be resentful and manipulative toward my younger siblings, particularly Amelia. With Christine, Savannah, Brittany, and me all out of the house, the others were forced to fend for themselves.
Whenever I could, I would call my mother, but my father became so paranoid that she could speak to me only in the middle of the day when he was at work, or hide to talk on the phone. Speaking in code words—like stormy to indicate something was brewing, or thunder to say that my father was close by and she couldn’t talk, because his temper or paranoia was flaring out of control—she filled me in about what was happening at home.
On Halloween night 1996, Cole was kicked out of the house when he attempted to save the younger kids from a severe beating. The next day, my mother called Christine and me.
“Your father wouldn’t listen, and I knew if Cole tried to stay, even to protect us, he was in great danger. I had to… I had to drive him to the highway, and drop him off…” She burst into tears.
Cole was now completely alone in a wicked land. I couldn’t speak. My beloved brother had been forced out of all of our lives.
A few days later, Mom received a phone call from Hyrum Smith, a well-known Utahan who worked for FranklinCovey, a Utah-based training business. Hyrum reported that he had picked Cole up from the side of the road and kindly drove him to Colorado. He said that Cole was one of the finest young men he had ever met, and that she should be very proud. We were grateful to know that Cole had arrived safely in Colorado, but the lines of communication were cut from there on out. Cole was to be dead to us, and my brother, having no desire to “taint” us, would not contact any of us for five long years.
After Cole’s expulsion, Mom finally confirmed rumors I’d heard that Trevor, Joshua, and Jordan were not only smoking; they had also started using drugs and alcohol and were going to rave parties—a word I’d never heard before she and Christine explained it. They tried to quit but were not successful for very long. The boys and Amelia all struggled with rebellious thoughts and behaviors. I knew what they were feeling, but I encouraged, cajoled, and reprimanded them. They had to be better; they just had to! The alternative—being cast out of the church into eternal damnation and becoming a son of perdition like Cole—was unthinkable. If they were having trouble now, I couldn’t imagine what they were in for “out there.”
Most kids who left or got kicked out of the FLDS ran into very real, very debilitating issues. Boys and girls who had lived all their lives to please their families, church, and Prophet were cut from family ties with no education. Ninety percent or more of them wound up heavily involved in drugs, alcohol, promiscuity, and prostitution, or as the victims of some kind of physical, emotional, or sexual abuse.
I was grateful the twins were working hard to be clean and sober. Joshua and Jordan had found employment with a world-famous knife maker, where they were working exceptionally hard and learning fast. But one week, I learned that Joshua had made brass knuckles, as many boys his age might forge in a shop class. While he was showing them off to one of my other brothers, Dad walked into the room and came at him with no explanation, crushing Joshua’s fingers until they were bloodied and broken to punish him for having such a weapon. Our father felt totally justified in doing it, proving to Mother Maggie and Mother Irene that he, indeed, ruled his household.
In horror, Christine told Warren what was going on with our younger siblings, and he asked her to create a time line of our family and all of the abuse that had taken place through the years. She asked me to help her, as I had an uncanny memory, even for the incidents I wanted to forget. She then faxed it from Hildale to Warren’s office in Salt Lake City and received a scathing response from him.
“Never fax a document like this again,” he said caustically. “Don’t you realize if it had fallen into the wrong hands, it could have brought the whole FLDS faith under condemnation?”
Within twenty-four hours, however, my father was the one condemned and relieved of his Priesthood. Our mother and her children were packed up and sent to stay at Grandfather Steed’s ranch in Widtsoe. This was a devastating shock. We were supposed to be a “forever family.” I think Mom had hoped that the Prophet would step in and sternly lecture my dad, Maggie, and Irene to stop these abusive behaviors. She’d wanted to keep her children safe but had never expected this result.
With Rulon’s permission, Christine and I immediately drove up to meet our mother and siblings at the ranch. We did our best to calm their fears, but I could read the misery in each of their eyes. Many families were already living in the overcrowded buildings on the ranch, so the only place for all of us to stay was bunked together in one large and crowded room. We had only a wood-burning stove for heat, so it was either blistering hot or bone-shaking cold. We were all expected to pull our weight on the farm, even in below-freezing temperatures. We cooked, cleaned, mucked stalls, and watched over livestock, among other arduous chores. Several of my siblings became ill, with Elissa catching the very worst of it.
A few weeks in, Mom received a phone call and asked me to stay with the kids while she and Christine were escorted to a mysterious meeting. We didn’t hear from them for weeks. Tensions were running high among all the family members. While Grandfather Steed was alive, he had certainly been strict and severe, but music and laughter had pervaded the ranch. Now, many of our cousins saw fit to preach the word of God to my four younger and “wicked” brothers, Joshua, Jordan, Zach, and Levi. One night I walked out to the barn to discover that the twins were secretly plotting to run away. I stopped them, but I could hardly stand to hear the boys confide in me their open, bloody psychological wounds. They felt betrayed and abandoned by our father because of his behavior, especially since his new marriage, and knew that our mother had no power to protect them. I had felt a lot of judgment over my younger siblings’ rebellion and use of drugs. The more I learned about the traumas they’d experienced, the more I understood.
As December turned to January, the situation remained strained, exacerbated by the fact that though pneumonia wracked Elissa’s ten-year-old body, she was still expected to do heavy chores in the freezing cold and was getting worse. Without warning, our parents suddenly showed up together at the end of the month, ready to take everyone home again—and to start over. I was overjoyed; not only had they reconciled, but Mother Irene had been forced to leave our parents’ home. It was something we had secretly hoped for as children but never thought would happen. Part of me felt sorry for her, until my memories of all the beatings flooded back.
Before they left, my father took me aside privately. He was furious with me for helping Christine with the time line that had prompted the Prophet to dismiss him from his family.
“That’s no one’s business, Sis,” he said angrily. “You girls lied on that time line and you see how it’s ripped our family apart. The things you wrote—”
“—should never have happened, Father, but they did,” I retorted angrily. It had already sent me over the edge to have to write down all the things in black and white about what my father had allowed and later perpetrated. It had been harder still to have to hear more horrifying stories from my younger siblings. But for him to deny everything? To act as if we were the ones perpetrating lies? I had never stood up to my father, but I did now, fire in my eyes.
“Don’t you even try to act all innocent!” I retorted. “I now know things about your younger children that were never even written on that sheet! What kind of a father are you? You’d better make sure nothing like this ever happens again!”
Suddenly he drew his hand back as if to strike me. My heart faltered.
“Go ahead,” I said, trembling, my fear mixed with fury. “I’m sure my husband would like to know all about this.” My father’s face filled with more cold malice, but he lowered his hand, then turned and stalked out to his car. I watched out the window as he put on a false smile for my mother and the younger kids. As they drove away, tears for each one of my siblings and my mother welled up within me as I prayed. God be with you till we meet again. Dear God, please.
As I settled into Hildale as my permanent residence, I reveled in my freedom from Warren. Nineteen ninety-seven was a pleasant, relatively peaceful time for me in the Prophet’s Hildale home, interrupted only by Warren’s visits from Salt Lake.
One morning I was in the kitchen, the smell of yeast strong in the air. Three or four of my sister-wives and I were on kitchen duty, baking enormous quantities of delicious bread to feed the veritable army lodged in our home. Normally I loved baking bread, but on that particular day I was distracted by a young visitor, one of Warren’s newest wives, to whom I was sending waves of silent, yet tender compassion as she baked alongside us. Warren had been stalking her since their arrival. Because Stacey wanted nothing to do with him, he pursued her relentlessly, despite many, many wives at home hungry for a crumb of his affection.
When Warren popped into the kitchen, eager to see his new wife, he greeted the other women and turned to me.
“Mother Becky,” he said, nodding in deference. My stomach twisted when he winked at us, then slid his arms around Stacey’s waist. For him, this was all fun and games. His face and body were animated as they often were when showing off in front of his father’s wives. The more Stacey refused to play along with him, the more ardent he became, forcefully turning her around to face him and trying to French-kiss her in front of us. The young girl turned her face away, and a familiar and sickening metallic taste filled my mouth. I was biting my lip, knowing too well that feeling of not wanting to be kissed, touched, or fondled in front of other women. I yearned for him to stop as we all looked away. He finally did stop, like an insolent toddler whose toy had been taken from him. He picked up a freshly baked loaf of bread that had not yet been cut or bagged.
“She’ll get it,” Warren said to the rest of us nonchalantly, tossing the bread up into the air two or three times. Then he stopped and laughed. “She just needs to be bred!”
At that moment, he thrust the loaf at his wife’s chest and smirked at her before walking away. Poor Stacey was horrified, still holding on to the bread in her humiliation. I seethed inwardly. To an FLDS man, if a woman was in any way rebellious, the solution was to get her married and keep her pregnant. Then all of that rebellion would be “bred” right out of her.
I watched Stacey over the next several months having to submit to her husband, her light growing dimmer as the hope and fire in her eyes waned. I wondered how many times in the last few years I had looked into my own eyes and seen that same surrender of life force.
In statements eerily reminiscent of Home Economics classes at Alta Academy, Warren would constantly admonish us as the Prophet’s wives to seek to be “close to Father.” That was the term for being sexually intimate.
“To follow the Prophet means eternal life,” he would somberly intone, once again wielding the salvation stick. “Not following the Prophet means death.” Church leaders often spoke of “spiritual death”—an eternal life devoid of hope. It was what we all feared most.
While living in Hildale, I became closer with my sister-wife Cecilia, who had so offended Ora by giving away her dress. Sunny and sweet, and stunningly beautiful, she had been highly sought after in her day, before her father gave her to the Prophet. Like me, she had begged for her freedom, but her father wouldn’t listen. She had become Rulon’s fourth “young wife.” It was the only thing I’d ever heard her quietly complain about, and only rarely.
Cecilia’s sweet disposition—and likely her curvaceous figure—ended up getting her into a lot of trouble. We were admonished to keep our distance from all men, but it was not unusual for several of Rulon’s young wives to have a “favorite son” to help out, or to take them into St. George for shopping, of course in a small and respectable group. While this commingling would not have been tolerated otherwise, it was allowed here because the Prophet’s family was considered beyond reproach. Before I was married to Rulon, Cecilia had gotten involved with Warren’s younger brother Darren. He had used the secret panels of the Salt Lake property meant to protect us from a government raid as the way to access her secretly. Their tryst discovered, they had confessed and repented.
Apparently, Darren was soon married off, but Warren’s youngest brother, Morgan, then sought Cecilia out, and they got into trouble both in Salt Lake City and Hildale. When Cecilia and Morgan’s flirtation was discovered, Warren came down to Hildale to investigate and pulled me into his office to interrogate me. I had been oblivious to all of this. I adored Cecilia, who was like sunshine to me in a very dark world. I had never seen this in her, nor had I looked for it.
The two were never excommunicated or publicly humiliated, I believe in part because of Cecilia’s marriage to the Prophet and her father’s standing in the church. I was also unsure of Cecilia’s degree of guilt. I had seen Warren blow similar things out of proportion. Whatever the case, Warren’s insinuations made their actions seem as immoral as death. I was embarrassed at my naïveté, but Warren insinuated that on some level I had to have known.
“What is it within you that needs cleansing?” he asked me as I sat in a chair opposite him. I hung my head. Certainly I was secretly angry with my husband for forcing sex on me, but I had never, ever harbored the desire to have an affair! Still, after I left Warren’s office, I began to brutally beat myself up inside. I was already painfully aware of my character flaws. But when I got quiet, the only thing I could think of that needed cleansing was my sexual abuse as a child. What Sterling had done to me when I was small had made me feel unworthy of marriage to the Prophet. I spent a considerable amount of time feeling stained, defiled, and dirty, and I had a strong desire to be cleansed.
That opportunity came a short while later. In January 1998, Parley Harker, the First Counselor in the FLDS Presidency and next in authority to the Prophet, died, and Warren was called to fill his position. This was a colossal event in the church and in the hierarchy of power. For his first few months in his new role, Warren was jubilant and seemed like another person. I began to see him actually treat the people with kindness. At one point, I almost thought I could actually like him as a leader, if not as my “son.”
His words, however, had still struck a chord deep inside of me. It was our custom to fast and pray at least once a month for one day about any areas in our individual lives that needed additional strength, but I went without food for several days, trying to wrap my head around Warren’s admonition: What within you needs cleansing? The question had haunted me for months.
Although I was not fully aware of most of their histories, I discovered that Cecilia and a few of my sister-wives had asked to be rebaptized. Baptism by immersion meant to fully submerge the body in water so that it could be cleansed from all sin. This generally took place in a large basin or pool of water blessed for that express purpose.
Most members of the church were baptized at eight years of age, as it was considered the age when one can tell right from wrong. As a child, I had been baptized by immersion in the font at Alta Academy, where we also attended church. I had made a holy covenant with God and Jesus Christ to always remember him, and to keep his commandments so that I could always have his Spirit to be with me. Something within me broke open years later as an adult. Perhaps a rebaptism was the way I could be fully released and absolved of what Sterling had done to me and of my angry thoughts toward my husband. Perhaps being cleansed from this early trauma might assist me so that this persistent presence of evil that Warren saw in me would go away. Perhaps then the Spirit could always remain with me, and enable me to perceive evil and keep it from me at all times.
I asked to have a private consultation with Rulon. For the first time in my life I shared the story of what Sterling had done to me, shaking uncontrollably the whole time. I was afraid the Prophet would be angry and force me out of his house, but instead he was kind. When I suggested rebaptism, he said that it was not necessary, but if it made me feel better, he would permit it. I stood up, my heart filled with joy. I would be clean and absolved of all sin, finally free of what Sterling had done to me!
A few days later, Warren arranged for my rebaptism in the font that had been installed in the basement of the Prophet’s Salt Lake home, the same one I had been baptized in as a child. Cecilia had talked to me about her rebaptism, and she waited with me until the Priesthood leaders were ready for me to descend into the water. Uncle Wendell, LeRoy Jeffs, and Warren were all present, though none of them asked me any questions. Dressed all in white, I simply stepped into the water and was immersed fully under it. Under the authority of the Priesthood, I was baptized. Warren and another Priesthood member confirmed upon me the Gift of the Holy Ghost. I was free! I had not told anyone else about my rebaptism, but for the next few months, my feet felt like they had wings. My life took on new meaning, and I taught with greater power and love.
In the midst of what felt like a new beginning for me, deeply disturbing news from my childhood home arrived. Mother Maggie was still causing major havoc, and to make matters worse, Mother Irene had been allowed to return. Dad, in his attempts to please Maggie, was doling out corporal punishment again. Trevor and Amelia had rebelled and been forced up to Canada for reform. Both had been drinking beer and going to rave parties, and Amelia had kissed more than one young man. My heart hurt for both of them. On my visits to Canada I had seen the way the people treated those who had been sent to the youth camps, and witnessed the backbreaking work they were forced to do. Amelia was not to go to Uncle Jason’s, but had to work her guts out in the wood mill and was also expected to cook for and clean up after other work crews after her shift ended.
Unable to do anything constructive for them, I threw myself into helping Christine with the Pride of Avonlea operetta. We choreographed the production together, and I played my violin in the orchestra as well as worked directly with the youth. This year, one participant was a painfully shy young man with thick glasses and drooped shoulders who had trouble making friends. We had been working with him week after week, and it was wonderful to see him start to hold his head erect and perform with confidence, grace, and skill. I said a prayer of gratitude every day for this opportunity—and I prayed daily that someone, somewhere, would show up for my brothers and sisters in a similar way.
I would soon get to see many of my siblings when everyone came down to the annual April Conference. Short Creek swarmed with the excitement of friends and family arriving. Christine and I tried to spend one-on-one time with visiting siblings, and we were both very troubled by the stories they shared with us.
As was the custom, I had sewn a special dress for church: a pastel brocade fabric for the bodice and yards of soft, chiffon polyester. I had noticed that new trends among the community often followed my new dress patterns. This dress was by far one of my most elegant, and I was secretly proud of my new creation.
I met my mother and sisters in the side hall just a few minutes before church was to start. My sister Allyson, who was then about four years old, looked up at me with big, shining eyes. I hugged her with all the love I had for her, and I invited her to sit with me in the section reserved for the Prophet’s wives. This was a big honor, to be in front of thousands of people being seated in the meeting hall. Ally hadn’t been feeling that well, but she brightened and nodded her head.
My sister and I took a deep breath and gracefully walked across the front of the church crowd to our seats. I had never liked being a part of the processional of the Prophet’s family, but it had become a necessary part of my life. We sat down and Ally was jabbering happily away when suddenly she stopped midsentence. I watched her face turn a sickly shade of green, and a helpless look came into her eyes.
“Becky, I don’t feel so good!” Abruptly she leaned over and started vomiting in my lap, right before Conference was about to start! She continued to heave repeatedly, and I looked down, wondering what to do. My sister-wives scrambled around for tissues, but despite this and the number of layers I was wearing, my lap became wet. Knowing that a line of ladies would soon be suffering from the smell, I gathered the corners of my skirt in one hand, took Ally by the other and stood up just as the crowd was being directed to sing the opening hymn. We had just stepped out of the door of the main meeting hall when Ally turned and looked at me, happiness in her eyes.
“Becky!” she cried loudly. “I feel sooo much better!” I couldn’t help but giggle and smile at her as we went back to the Prophet’s home and my room, where we both showered and changed. It was much more fun for us to listen to church, which was always broadcast over speakers into everyone’s rooms on the Jeffses’ property anyway. I would miss seeing friends and family, but I was also grateful not to have to face the forced formality of sitting in line after the service, greeting each visitor who stood in line for hours just to shake the Prophet’s hand.
Therefore, two weeks later I was delighted to be engaged with my people in a serving way that I loved. The cast presented our Pride of Avonlea operetta. My eyes shone with love and appreciation for what each performer had brought to the stage, and I loved looking out at the people and seeing the absolute joy upon their faces. In the FLDS, our lives were filled with so much work, damnation, and end-of-the-world destruction; it was delightful to have something to celebrate. Sherrie and Ally were able to come, and I saw firsthand how the operetta brought hope and joy to many of us, young and old alike.
After the operetta, life returned to an almost monotonous routine. During Rulon’s visits to Short Creek, the chief of police and a local deputy took him out daily for lunch and provided him with an official escort as he met with the city officials—all FLDS Priesthood leaders, of course. Other FLDS visitors would come from outlying areas to meet with the Prophet and discuss matters of business and marriage plans for their daughters.
A few days after the operetta, news came from Canada. After gut-wrenching pressure and backbreaking work, our sister Amelia had finally caved. In order to get our mother, the Prophet, and Warren off her back and to survive the imminent end of the world, she had agreed to be placed in marriage. On May 31, 1998, Amelia was given to Collin Blackmore, Jason’s son and our cousin through marriage.
I was happy to be allowed to go to Canada for the wedding, but when I arrived, I was shaken. Amelia had always been a spunky, free spirit, but I saw a surrender and deadness in her eyes and her soul. I pushed away my feelings and sought to find the bright side. Like my mother and Christine, I had become proficient at the skill of sticking my head in the sand, because our very survival depended on it.
During that visit, I became acquainted with several of Winston Blackmore’s wives, some of whom I had met when I was in Canada as a young girl. One day when I was on duty, I had to be in the same room with Warren, Rulon, and Bishop Blackmore, who joked with the other two men.
“I have to marry off a particularly rebellious young filly,” he declared. “Getting her pregnant will settle her right down.”
I had not much liked Winston, but that flippant comment turned me sour. Through the years I had heard him say similar comments about women and realized he had likely made that exact same comment about my sister Amelia regarding her forced marriage to our cousin Collin. He couldn’t care less about any woman; his desire was to control. That thought burned within me, but I had to hold my tongue and show absolutely no emotion.
I did enjoy meeting one of Winston’s younger wives, a wonderful character by the name of Alicia Lane Blackmore. Using humor, she could get away with saying things no one else could. For example, when we were introducing ourselves she said it was so much easier going by numbers instead of names. “That’s all we are anyway,” she laughed. A few evenings later, when all the men were in Priesthood meeting and Cecilia and I were walking the property, I heard a high voice from across the grounds.
“Hey, Number Nineteen!” Alicia called. “How are you? It’s Number Ten!” Cecilia was astonished, but I was nearly rolling on the grass, clutching my stomach in laughter. It felt so good to hear someone tell it like it was. And it felt so good to laugh.
Upon our return to Hildale, it was my turn to be on duty with Rulon again. As much as I tried, I was never off the hook from having to sleep with him, even with operetta practices or visiting Canada. I was required to do my time, and I had been ordered by Rulon to schedule my undertakings around my shifts with him. Still, the outside activities, as well as my rebaptism, had raised my spirits. I felt like I had a new beginning with my husband. I had been washed clean, I had more confidence in myself, and while I didn’t look forward to marital relations, I did wish to show my respect for him.
Rulon, however, thought my newfound confidence meant that it was time to further my education in the bedroom. He made sure I knew who was in charge. He’d been known to preach, “The greatest freedom you can enjoy is in obedience.” That night he forced me to do unspeakable acts, pulling at my head and my hair to make sure I did it “just right.” When I didn’t, he made sure I knew that, too.
“Ora knows how to do it just right,” he said, moaning.
Then let Ora do this to you and leave me alone!
I was bitterly angry, and after he came I spent nearly an hour in the bathroom, silently crying. When I emerged, he was asleep. I climbed into the opposite side of the bed and continued to weep quietly. Every time I had opened myself to Rulon, showed him vulnerabilities, told him what Sterling had done to me, he still forced me to do things I didn’t want to do. I had always followed the church’s teachings. Why would God punish me in this way? I finally decided that I did not like God. Nor could I trust Him.
When my tears finally subsided, they were replaced by a fire in the pit of my stomach. I remembered a lesson that Warren had taught in family class to his father’s wives.
Now that you are married to our Prophet, or any wife to her husband, the keys of Elijah transplanted that branch, namely you, and now you are connected to a man that is the source of life, literally—the source of life to you. As you reach out in your faith, having it so available, so right around you, the Spirit of God will flow into you.… There begins to grow a love, such a love that will make you one with him. A wife can say to her husband, “I love you.”
I could not say “I love you” to Rulon. I had loved him as a grandfather figure, as my Prophet and Priesthood Head, but I had reached out in my faith and how he repaid my trust seemed unconscionable. In my position, I could not help but see that so many women were treated in like manner or worse by their husbands.
At times when I was on duty with Rulon, I would catch wind of the Prophet’s business as it concerned a young girl unhappy in her marriage. As he was acutely hard of hearing and kept the volume up loud on the telephone, I couldn’t help but overhear most of his conversations. It was at these times I realized I was not the only one in my community struggling with issues of violation.
I had a cousin whose mother had been taken from her unworthy husband and been remarried to a man named Phillip. As was the custom, the woman and her children were “given” to that new man as a whole package. Phillip, who held high standing in the FLDS, began raping my cousin, his new stepdaughter, but no one knew. Once she got older, Phillip approached the Prophet. Perhaps Phillip was scared of her belonging to another man—or of her exposing his molestations.
“This girl belongs to me,” he told Rulon, who without thought gave the sixteen-year-old in marriage to her stepfather—a man more than twice her age. In the meantime, she developed schizophrenia (considered an evil spirit among the FLDS, not the result of trauma). Her illness worsened dramatically after she discovered she was pregnant and her due date approached. I think she was subconsciously afraid that her child would be molested, too. In her worsening terror, she would run away in the family’s minivan. I overheard several telephone conversations in which Rulon would always send a brother or other Priesthood Head to bring her back to her husband.
One day when I was on duty, Mother Norene, an older sister-wife of mine who had one of the most compassionate hearts in the whole community, came in to beseech the Prophet.
“She took the family’s minivan again,” Norene explained, referring to my cousin. “With no money, and no gas. She is stranded in Cedar City, and is begging for your help. She would like to come back into the fold, but she is terrified of going back to her husband.”
“Tell her God wants her to go home and obey her husband!” he said harshly. With a pitiful look in her eye, Mother Norene left, resigned to share that message. It was not until later that Rulon and the community discovered that Phillip had been sexually molesting my cousin for years and that he had carried abusive behaviors into their marriage.
Rulon was furious. “He lied to me! He lied to us all!”
I stared at him, dumbfounded. As the all-knowing Prophet, shouldn’t he have been aware of this before he forced her to marry Phillip? Even though I had seen suggestions and requests greatly influence the Prophet’s behavior, it was daily ingrained in us that he was the mouth of God—the one and only man blessed with total, omniscient gifts of the Spirit. It shocked me that he had not seen what was happening. He was supposed to know everything about everyone! The thought was disturbing to me. What else did he not know? I couldn’t let that thought take seed, however, or the rest of my world would violently crash down around me. Once again, I knew I had to remove all doubts from my mind or I would end up like my cousin.
Therefore, I was grateful for the distraction of the upcoming Pioneer Day theme parade, and I threw myself into working with the families and the children. I lived for the hours away from home and the presence of precious, innocent youth that I could love and serve with all my heart.
I also went for rides on our neighbor’s horse, Miss Tree, and borrowed four-wheelers as often as I could. On rare occasions I would meet my younger friend Samantha, and we’d secretly spirit away in one of the fleet of minivans at Rulon Jeffs’s home. She loved music as much as I did, and we would speed too fast down a deserted back desert highway, singing at the top of our lungs to the wicked and forbidden music of the A-Teens rendition of ABBA’s “Super Trouper.” At other times, I climbed the water tower or even El Capitan, the steep rock face that towered over the Creek. Those moments away had kept me sane when I had to face being on duty again.
Soon enough, I received my call from Rulon, to the phone in my room. “Mother Becky, it is your turn to be on duty. Come and stay with me tonight.”
“No.”
There was silence for several long seconds. Finally he spoke, his voice sharp. “What do you mean?”
“No,” I repeated firmly, “I am not ready to stay with you again. I will not be on duty tonight.” Let him withhold affections from me like he had Mother Julia! He’d been unable to have children long before our marriage. He was certainly not withholding anything from me that I wanted or needed.
A few days later Warren came down to visit on church business. He called me into his office. I knew a good tongue-lashing was coming, but I was not prepared for what was to follow. Rulon’s son looked at me with the most menace I had ever seen in his eyes.
“You don’t ever, ever, ever, ever, ever tell your husband no,” Warren said spitefully. “Especially you, because your husband is the Prophet. Your husband would never do anything to hurt you.”
He paused, to make sure I was really listening. “I repeat, do not say no again, Mother Becky. If you do, you will be destroyed in the flesh.”