The Witness Wore Red: The 19th Wife Who Brought Polygamous Cult Leaders to Justice

by Musser, Rebecca

  “Dear Sister Merrianne Jessop Jeffs, with the authority of the Holy Melchizedek Priesthood, by the keys and powers thereof in oneness with the Priesthood in the Heavens… placing hands upon your head, Thinking of the Lord. Please get on the other side of the bed…

  “We seal the holy love of God in your mind and heart. Just loyal to you as a baby in peace from this time forth and even moment by moment, we bless you with the power of God. To now become Heavenly sensitive. We bless you through the power of God. Let the Heavenly comfort hear us, your childlike Heavenly comfort wife…”

  Warren continues to instruct Merrianne and he asks for the “all-consuming fire from Heaven.” Then he adds:

  “Now prepare, dear sister, for the greater light, the revelations of God on your behalf… Move the ladies back away…”

  The rhythmic heavy breathing gets faster, and goes on for three and a half minutes.

  “What do you feel Merrianne?” Warren asks.

  “I feel fine, thank you,” comes the tiny voice again.

  Several more agonizing minutes of heavy breathing went by, until Warren directed two wives, asking Naomi to “untie them,” and asking Lori to “distract the child.” More breathing took place until Warren ended with a prayer to God in Heaven, speaking about his “quorum” of three wives, and asking God to deliver them from all light-mindedness and selfish will. Warren also prayed about “advancing those who can advance” before ending the prayer and demanding that Merrianne come and give him a hug.

  “I’m so sorry to do that to you,” said Angela gently as I put my pen down, shaking.

  “No, I needed to hear it,” I said.

  My face showed my intense shame. The level of depravity that had befallen the people was shocking in and of itself. But the fact that these grown women, leaders among their sister-wives, had allowed themselves to become abusers of a young child scarred my soul.

  That week I struggled to look my team in the eye, or even myself in the mirror. This was my past, my training, my flesh and blood. Had I stayed, would I have fallen so far as to participate, too?

  From the deepest levels of my heart, I wanted to cry out, Hell no, I never would have! How I wanted to believe that I would have left long before being forced to participate. But as I listened to Warren’s orders and the women’s responses, I knew with a deep shame that blind obedience was the very trap I had lived in for so long, the one that shackled each one of these women as boundaries were shattered again and again. I was not so different from them.

  CHAPTER 33

  The Rock of Genshai

  When I arrived in Salt Lake City from Austin, I immediately turned on my cell. Ben was to bring Natalia down for her next scheduled surgery, and we’d planned to meet at the airport. I was excited to see my sweet toddler, and nervous for what lay ahead for her. The next moment my phone signaled a text from Ben.

  “I can’t bring Natalia down. Find your own ride home.”

  Two years of applications, appointments, tests, and travel to Salt Lake—all to lead to this appointment to measure balloon expanders for the implant surgery in just three weeks’ time, including surgical volunteers at Shriners Hospitals that could complete the operation. How could he?

  Without Natalia there, we were disqualified from the special programs at the hospital. I didn’t know any other place where she could have the procedures done without $25,000 down and a 60 percent copay, which I did not have. Inconsolable, I sat with my face to the window as all the other people left the plane before me. I felt like I had nowhere to go.

  The next few months I was virtually homeless, sometimes sleeping in my car, but mostly relying on the support of a few friends and family. The kids were often with me, sometimes having to spend nights in the car, too. I wasn’t proud of it, but I was determined to create a better life for them. My good friend Kara took us in for several weeks while I searched for viable income. Still, I had to be honest: who would hire me? A woman with a crazy schedule of trials and surgeries, who desperately needed health insurance? I was going to have to do something flexible and yet profitable, but I didn’t know how.

  Patrice introduced me to a multilevel-marketing skin care company. Initially wary, I tried the products and realized that perhaps this was a way to care for my stressed body while providing income simultaneously. A powerful benefit was that the company initiated motivational training calls each Saturday from some of the best in the industry that we as distributors could access. One such call was from a guest named Kevin Hall who introduced an ancient, powerful concept from India called Genshai. It touched me deeply, and I wrote the word and its meaning in my cell phone, then went on with my busy life.

  I attended a conference for the company with Patrice. Her boyfriend, Jamison, was the son of Michael George Emack, an FLDS leader charged with bigamy and sexually assaulting a child. Whenever she brought up the trials, I had always changed the subject.

  That weekend, Patrice got right in my face.

  “You get him off!” she shouted. “Whatever it takes!”

  Patrice didn’t understand that I did not have the power to get anyone out of his sentence. Second, she did not know that it broke my heart to have to sit on the stand as a witness for the prosecution of these men, particularly Mike Emack. Of all the men on the docket, he was one I truly respected. Only one thing kept me moving forward, and that was the photos of the young girls in evidence, and their rights and freedoms.

  The first Texas trial scheduled was that of my cousin Raymond Merrill Jessop in Eldorado. I had not been close to Ray, but I had fond memories of cliff jumping with him and other cousins into the water of Lake Powell, all long sleeves and big smiles. However, Raymond was being charged with sexual assault of a child, a first-degree felony in the state of Texas. At age thirty-two, Ray had married Janet Jeffs, one day after she turned fifteen. Her mother was the same Sally Jeffs, who had denied the existence of underage unions on Larry King. Janet gave birth to Ray’s child when she was sixteen. Through his lawyers, he denied paternity, even though DNA evidence marked him with a 99.9 percent likelihood of being the father.

  I had been most disturbed with the evidence regarding Janet’s labor. She had been prohibited from going to the hospital on orders from Warren to protect him, her husband, and the ranch from questions. Sally, the midwife, watched her daughter suffer immeasurably for three days. And now Raymond was not only denying her as his bride; he would not claim the child for whom Janet had nearly given her life.

  Raymond’s was the first paper case without a victim in the witness stand, and they had to fight for it with a solid foundation of evidence. It was taking a long time. By law, I could not be in the courtroom except when I was testifying (except for closing statements and jury sentencing), but I had loads of team members who kept me informed legally of almost every nuance of the trial. I was rarely in the dark, but it didn’t assuage my loneliness while I waited on an isolated ranch where my security was strictly monitored. I was allowed off the ranch only for my time in court. To make matters worse, it was Eric’s strategy to have me testify twice in each trial: first in the guilt-innocence phase, and again at the sentencing phase.

  Each day I had to face the inner turmoil of testifying against my own cousin. Each day I had to be emotionally prepared—dressed, ready at a moment’s notice with “LOVE” written on my hand. Each day I just sat there.

  On Friday, October 30, I missed Kyle’s Halloween party. The next day I missed both kids dressing up in the costumes I had helped Ben to put together before I left. Kyle was a fierce pirate and Natalia a darling dinosaur. I missed taking them trick-or-treating. In a vulnerable state of longing to connect with them, I asked Ben to send me pictures.

  “Why?” he texted back. “So you can show all your cowboy friends what a great mother you are? Tell them the truth. You’ve abandoned your kids.”

  Nearly everyone from the attorney general’s office had driven back to Austin for the weekend. Except for my guards and a few investigators
, I was very alone—with only Ben’s ugly texts, and calls from Patrice that I couldn’t bring myself to answer. I played the violin for hours in an attempt to calm myself down, but my anxiety continued to build. I couldn’t eat or sleep without nightmares. By the wee hours of Sunday morning, I was a wreck. I lay in that bed, thousands of miles from my kids, feeling totally useless.

  Suddenly I was filled with anger. Hadn’t I done enough? Hadn’t I suffered plenty? Couldn’t someone else do this? I threw the covers back and shoved on a pair of jeans, a hoodie, and sneakers. In the predawn darkness, I slipped away from my security detail, leaving the flat lawn and following the twisting path down the slope, far from my cabin. I finally came to a place where not a soul could see or hear me, and I fell onto a cold, flat rock, curling into a fetal position. In anguish I cried out to God, “Why me?”

  I had already testified in Utah. I had already told the truth. There’d been hundreds of people on that ranch, hundreds of people who had left the FLDS… wasn’t there at least one other person able to validate the records? My whole body shook with sobs as I cried like a child.

  I continued crying until I was empty. I lay with my face pressed against the cold rock in total surrender.

  In the burgeoning colors of dawn, the simmering Texas sun suddenly burst out of the thinning clouds. The rays seemed to caress my skin little by little with prickles of warmth and light, filling me like I had never been filled before. Then I was touched by a beautiful voice.

  “Don’t ask ‘Why me?’ ” the familiar voice said. “Instead, ask ‘Show me.’ ”

  At first it didn’t make sense to me, but I was too tired to fight. Long moments of silence later, I realized that asking Why me? kept me in victim mode: wallowing in self-pity, closed off to solutions. Show me, on the other hand, had totally different energy. Not only did someone believe that I had the strength to make it through; I would not be alone on this journey. I let the meaning sink deep within my bones as I lay there. Okay. Show me, then.

  Suddenly the wake-up alarm on my phone sounded, and as I went to turn it off, I saw the definition I had written weeks before of the word Genshai:

  Never treat another in a manner which would make them feel small; not anyone, not even yourself.

  Recognition dawned inside me as strongly as the Texan sunrise. Since that day in the attorney general’s office in Austin, I had been absolutely vicious to myself. It was a repeated pattern in my work, with my family, with Ben. In the trials I had allowed the brutal barbs of family, friends, and media to make me feel small, and guilt to make me feel worthless. But I didn’t have to make that choice any longer.

  It was okay for me to treat myself with respect. It was not wrong, egotistical, or selfish as I’d been taught. Just as it was the right of every one of those girls I testified for to live a life of dignity, it was my right, too. The ugly texts and calls would not stop, but I learned to take a deep breath, to treat myself with respect, and to say, “Show me.” I did not have to wait long to be shown.

  Other witnesses came to the ranch to await their time to testify as well. The next day I met Dr. Lawrence Beall, a psychologist from Utah. Dr. Beall’s life work dealt with helping others to overcome trauma, abuse, and severe, unhealthy conditioning. He had worked with more than twenty former FLDS members, many of them women. He brought a powerful perspective to the courtroom, explaining to the jury what sexual assault does to the psyche of a young woman. Equally important, he established the difference between coercion and personal consent, and what conditions must be in place for one to really give consent—conditions rarely present in the FLDS culture.

  In what started as a casual conversation, Dr. Beall and I talked about the struggles I’d faced in my relationships. Finally, I shared with him the intense shame I carried about the sexual, spiritual, and emotional abuse happening to my “children” and “grandchildren” in the FLDS community.

  “You got out of the FLDS,” Dr. Beall explained wisely, “now you’ve got to get the FLDS out of you.” We discussed the belief paradigms among FLDS women, particularly the shattering of boundaries. I had one of the biggest breakthroughs of my entire life when Dr. Beall introduced me to a list of personal human rights written by Dr. Charles L. Whitfield in Healing the Child Within. To see my fundamental rights listed in black and white created a mammoth shift in the reasoning part of my brain, which had been forcibly blocked since my days as an Alta Academy student. I read out loud: “I have the right to say ‘no’ to anything when I feel I am not ready, it is unsafe, or violates my values.” Just for breathing, I deserved the same fundamental human rights as everybody else—even men! For a woman from the FLDS, this was a huge awakening. This was Genshai.

  Over the next several days, it felt like I was rebuilding the foundation of my life, stone by stone. Only this time, it was not built on the sand of unhealthy beliefs and nonexistent boundaries. I was able to walk into the courtroom on Wednesday, November 4, 2009, to testify with grace and strength. Now I wrote the words “LOVE” and “GENSHAI” on my hand. The repeated challenges of Mark Stevens, Raymond’s defense attorney, could not move me. I was like that rock on the ranch.

  The Schleicher County jury found Raymond Merrill Jessop guilty of sexual assault of a child. On November 10, 2009, the jury sentenced Raymond to ten years in state prison and an $8,000 fine. I sat in the courtroom as the sentence was read. Yet there was no triumph inside of me. The clinking sound of the handcuffs on my cousin’s wrists startled me. I felt a visceral clinking in my soul. As they led Ray away, I felt a very real part of me went to prison with him.

  CHAPTER 34

  Truth and Consequences

  Between the seesaw of the trial docket and Natalia’s health, I was swamped with demands and looming deadlines that I had to be emotionally and physically prepared for. Even though I officially had no place to call home, I wouldn’t let anything stop me from getting Natalia the care she needed this time.

  Just before Thanksgiving, Natalia underwent her first major surgery at Primary Children’s Medical Center in Salt Lake, which had accepted her into a special program. Dr. Siddiqi and his team expertly inserted balloon expanders in her forehead and behind her right ear. Natalia woke with a terrible headache and lay whimpering in my arms for days. As soon as she had healed enough to overcome the pain, she had to return to the hospital each week for painful new injections, for two months straight.

  It was brutal to leave her and Kyle once again to go back to Texas for Allan Eugene Keate’s trial in the first week of December 2009. Allan’s wife Nora had been my eighth-grade teacher, and as I sat in the witness stand I was frankly disgusted as Allan allowed his lawyer to deny his marriages and his children. He had shamed his young victim—thirty-eight years his junior—before the Prophet when she was unwilling to submit to him sexually. In addition, Allan had proffered three of his own teenage daughters for marriage to other older FLDS Priesthood men of high rank. This included Veda, who had married Warren when she was only fourteen. The jury found Allan guilty of child sexual assault, sentencing him to thirty-three years in prison.

  In early January 2010, Natalia underwent her biggest surgery yet, which cut most of the black congenital nevus away. Diana graciously put us up at her home in Salt Lake so I could spend as much recovery time with Natalia as possible. I was scheduled to fly out for Mike Emack’s trial two weeks after the surgery, and the thought of leaving my baby in this tender condition tore at me. She clung to my neck as I carried her out to the car from Primary Children’s Medical Center. All I wanted was to hold and comfort her. I had finally buckled my precious daughter in her car seat when Wes called.

  “Becky, you’re off the hook for this one. Mike Emack’s trial won’t be happening. He pled no contest to sexual assault of a child, and Judge Walther just found him guilty. He was sentenced to seven years in prison.” Later Mike would also plead guilty to bigamy, sentenced to serve seven years concurrent to this one. The entire way to Diana’s house, I could not hold back the t
ears of relief.

  As Natalia healed, it was delightful to watch her look at herself in the mirror in great wonder. She still only had one eyebrow, which few people noticed, since she was so very blonde. One day my little diva noticed me using an eyebrow pencil. “Mommy,” she asked, “you draw eyebrow me?” I took my brow liner and lightly sketched one in for her. She looked at herself severely from side to side. Abruptly she erupted into a torrent of giggles. She hugged me and ran from room to room, mirror to mirror. Giggles followed her—both hers and mine.

  In early March, I returned to San Angelo, to testify against my cousin Merrill Leroy (Roy) Jessop, who faced charges of sexual assault of a child. At thirty-five, Roy was very close in age to me and was one of Warren’s fiercest supporters. His arrogant treatment of FLDS women, including shaming young wives before the Prophet if they did not reach a certain level of submission—caused the jury to find him guilty and hand him a seventy-five-year sentence.

  My father called, clearly upset. “Roy’s sentence is proof that the government is persecuting the people and the church!” he cried. With all media banned in Short Creek, he and other members had been hand-fed these stories by their leaders.

  “Dad, it’s far different than what you’re being told. Roy’s letters to Warren were sick. Come and see the evidence for yourself.”

  That was the last I heard from my dad for several long months. He and so many others thought the evidence was planted to disparage the FLDS.

  Patrice’s brother Joe told me, “The government planted those things. They doctored pictures and documents.”

  “You all need to get over yourselves,” I replied. “Do you really think they would spend millions of dollars just to trick a few thousand people?” Joe couldn’t answer, nor could he accept what I had to say about it, either.

  In April, Lehi Barlow Jeffs, my old schoolmate and Warren’s nephew, pled no contest to sexual assault of a child and bigamy. Judge Walther sentenced him to eight years for each offense, to be served concurrently.