Several months after Warren’s trial, I was asked to give a motivational speech. As I stood on a stage in Coronado, California, dressed in red, I spoke with the same passion, compassion, and fire that I had used in the courtroom. Trembling, I had written the words “LOVE” and “GENSHAI” across my palm again. It was not easy.
I had become a passionate advocate for the rights and dignity of victims of human trafficking and sexual slavery, and I had been asked to speak on that topic. Human trafficking continues to be the second-largest crime in the entire world, next only to drug trafficking. It is rarely talked about because of the shame surrounding it. I knew that shame, because I was once owned, too.
“Slavery is no longer legal anywhere in the world,” I told the audience, “and yet it is more prevalent today than at any other time in human history! An estimated twelve to twenty-seven million people in the world today are slaves, and more than half of those are being sexually trafficked. It’s not just overseas; it’s in our backyards. Ninety U.S. cities are documented as actively engaging in sexual slavery. Law alone will not abolish slavery. I have testified over twenty times to save women and children from the same fate that I suffered, and yet girls are being violated this very minute where I come from.… Individually, we must not accept slavery into one little section of any part of our hearts, our minds, or our community…”
As I finished, I reminded them that I was just one person.
“I am asking you, as one more person… to do what you can do.” I wanted them to realize their very real opportunity and ability to change the world.
When it was over, a beautiful older woman approached me timidly, but with urgency in her eyes.
“My husband has something for you,” she said. Her voice made a shiver run through me. “I asked him three times, are you sure you want to give this to her?” she said, shaking her head. “He has never even thought of giving it to someone else. He’s carried it with him every day for years…”
Full of curiosity, I let her lead me out of earshot of the others to an older gentleman. He was a little taller than me, with gentleness and great wisdom etched upon his face.
It was his eyes that caught me, however. They were compelling and filled with tears as he grasped my hand and pressed something cool and weighty into my palm. In awe, I glanced down to see a large silver coin with wings on one side and writing on the other. It was a 10th Special Forces Group coin inscribed with his name and his many years in service. It read: De Oppresso Liber—Free the Oppressed.
The man, whose name was Jack Lawson, could hardly speak for the emotion welling up inside him. “As I sat and listened to your speech, I told my wife, I know I have carried it all those years for her.” I gasped at the enormity of what he was saying to me. “I’ve gone behind enemy lines around the world,” he continued. “So many fathers came to me in the fields of Vietnam, eastern bloc countries, and Africa, where they would bring me their daughters and beg me, ‘Take my daughter! Take my daughter!’ as they believed I could somehow give her a better life than what she was destined for in their fields and their cities and their brothels.
“In all the work that I have done,” he said, his voice breaking, “I realized that I carried this coin for twenty-five years to give it this day to you.”
Words cannot describe how I felt as he wrapped my fingers around the coin and hugged me. I remain very humbled to have received that kind of acknowledgment. I’m not different from any other person on earth, and with the greatest of reverence, I honor the journey of each person, and their purpose. Like Jack and so many others, I happened to have experienced enough fire and then had the opportunity to step into a moment of truth. I think we each have many of those moments in life. It’s what we choose to do with them that counts.
In both the pages of my past and those of my people, horrendous atrocities have occurred. It is a reality. Yet most of us dared not stand against it. We became enslaved to our denial, and the sickness of our secrecy became a breeding ground for supreme societal control.
Like the others, I strictly adhered to the belief that one man’s way was the only way: first my father, then the Prophet, and then Warren. One man could—and in our belief system should—have literally dictated every aspect of my life, especially as a woman. We all suffered, men, women, and children, believing this one man was beyond reproach simply because of his title. “The Prophet always does right” was the extreme brainwashing. It robbed us of our ability to determine healthy or unhealthy decisions regarding our very own lives. Like Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz, we were not supposed to see what was behind the curtain, but I finally discovered how critical it was to take away names and titles and look honestly at patterns of behavior. I had to analyze Warren’s behavior with absolute honesty. But I also had to take gut-wrenching, personal inventory to own up to my own accountability. It was only in that moment of brutal honesty that I was able to gather the strength and courage to flee from what I had finally and clearly defined as oppression.
Interestingly enough, later in Texas when I was introduced by Dr. Beall to the personal bill of rights, I was stunned and almost speechless. I felt a surge of deep, honest recognition, as if my soul knew these rights and had wondered up to that moment why God didn’t allow women to have them. In my society, and even during the trials in Texas, I hated it when men and defense lawyers would say, “You had every right to ______”—whatever their argument was. But I was quick to clarify that women did not have every right. With few exceptions, results show that men’s and women’s rights are vastly different in the FLDS, because women are treated as chattel, to be yoked and chained and traded like mere possessions and property. Those who say that women have the same rights within the FLDS culture are either misinformed or not telling the truth.
Perhaps one of my biggest lessons was learning the healthy difference between passive, aggressive, and assertive characteristics of behavior. I think this is one of the great balances necessary for healthy individuals and cultures, and I have considered it carefully. To be passive means you don’t stand up for your own rights. To be aggressive means that you stand up for your rights while not honoring the rights of others. Both of these patterns of unhealthy behavior were dominant in our society, with men and women in substantial measure and in all of their relationships. What was missing was assertiveness, as it was predominantly programmed right out of us. Assertiveness means that you stand up for your rights while honoring the rights of others. It is difficult to be manipulated or to manipulate others when you are genuinely assertive, so that was why it was a danger in a culture built on manipulation.
I have watched some of my siblings on the outside develop this healthy, powerful quality of assertiveness, as well as other members who have left. In regard to my siblings and parents, we are each still on our own unique journey. My mother, two youngest sisters, plus three older sisters are still deeply entrenched within the FLDS, at least for now. My family members who have left or been kicked out often struggle to bond together. We learned how to shield one another in battle but are still learning how to love fully. I readily admit some mistakes I’ve made in alternately opening my heart and shutting it off again when it has felt threatened. But the beauty I see lies in the possibilities. Since I am not the same person I was ten or even five years ago, I choose not to hold another person hostage to anything except their magnificence. I certainly will not label what others are or are not capable of because of my choices, fears, and humanness.
I have seen miracles happen. I have tasted the deliciousness of life in their midst! And I will forever believe in miracles and in people. We are not alone in our struggles and our triumphs in the outside world. This is why I believe transformation is possible. It is the true spirit of Genshai—the delicate balance needed for transformative change to occur: transformation of a person, of a community, of a nation, and of a world.
I know it is possible, one person at a time.