My Senate testimony unleashed a new round of attacks that were even more intense. Some accused me of lying when I said I’d fled during the night—they declared online that they’d helped me pack and move to Salt Lake City. Others said I had never been abused and that I had made up those stories as a justification for leaving my family and faith. Betty denied that the physical abuse I wrote about in Escape ever happened. She said that I was the only one in the family who was violent with children, and she accused me of blaming others for what I had done myself. Others accused me of selfishness for wanting children to be separated from their parents.
Others who said outrageous things had never met me but claimed they’d gone to school with me and that I had always been a liar; nothing I said could be believed. I didn’t even know who these people were.
I felt like hundreds of baby piranhas were all trying to take pieces of my flesh. It was relentless, but I had no intention either of backing down or of engaging in the fray, which would only have escalated the attention around these bogus attacks. I even had calls from the Utah attorney general’s office asking me about complaints. I have known Mark Shurtleff, the attorney general, well since I first escaped. He knows my credibility is impeccable. We even spoke together at the Austin, Texas, branch of the Young President’s Organization, an elite business group, in March, the month before the raid.
The night I fled from the FLDS, I crossed a line. The day I took Merril to court to fight for full custody of my eight children, I was considered equal to the devil. In Escape, I talked about the crimes of the FLDS. Then I testified in the Senate. This makes me one of the worst apostates the FLDS has ever faced.
Shortly after the attack on Dan Fischer, my mother, Nurylon Blackmore, called me. She was born into the FLDS and left when she was fifty-five, after Warren took over because she felt he was too dangerous. Our relationship has had its ups and downs, but she stood by me when Harrison was so desperately ill, and she helped me fight to get him medical care. She was appalled by Merril’s callous disregard for his son and his cruelty toward me.
My mother sounded urgent and exasperated. “Carolyn, I have to know what’s going on. I’m getting calls nonstop from your sisters in the FLDS. I’m being told I have to write up an affidavit against you and publish it. Elisa was the first to call. She tried to persuade me that lying about you was not only the right thing to do but it was something that had to be done. I continually refused.”
Mom continued, her frustration rising. “Then I started getting phone calls from your half-sister Shirley. She wasn’t asking politely or trying to persuade. She was telling me what I was going to do and demanding that I do it. She came after me like a bulldog. Well, her approach didn’t work with me either.”
After what the FLDS had done to Dan, none of this surprised me, though I was relieved that my mother had stood up for me and refused to be recruited by one daughter to lie about another. Her refusal to lie was a setback for the FLDS, but there was no turning back the tide of vitriol and lies unleashed against me.
Mom said my full sister Lydia also called begging her to lie about me. Mom asked her outright why it was so important. Lydia told her if she didn’t lie, Merril was going to lose all of his kids. My mom said that might not be such a bad idea. That’s when the phone call ended.
Mom and I talked a little longer, and I told her what I had been involved with, and we both discussed why the FLDS was coming after me in a furor. Mom sounded exhausted. We have had a complicated relationship. But while it was hard during my childhood, she saw my marriage to Merril for what it was and supported me as much as she could. I think the FLDS wanted to take me down even more than it did Dan because I had such a compelling story. Not only was I Merril’s ex-wife, but I was related by marriage to many of the women and children in the YFZ compound. I knew the FLDS for the criminal organization it was, and I had no qualms about telling what I knew after seventeen years as an eyewitness.
Several family members attacked my credibility online. The FLDS used Betty to attack me, which I find despicable. The week after the hearing, in a polygamy blog in The Salt Lake Tribune, Betty talked about how unhappy she had been in her life outside the FLDS. “There were a million reasons to come back and not one reason to stay,” she said.
Betty was PR gold for the FLDS. A few months later I heard that she was writing her own book, although I don’t know if that’s actually happening. “It’s time for the other side of the story to be told,” she said. She accused me of trying to keep her from her faith and of seeing her as a representation of everything I hate. Not true. Betty is representative to me only of my children, whom I love more than anything else in my life.
The harassing phone calls to my children from their half-siblings escalated. Some days there were as many as twenty. My kids were hammered with questions about why I had testified in Congress and were told that everything I said was a lie. My children defended me. The older ones knew the truth because they remembered it.
The hostility intensified between my kids and their half-siblings. I knew how close they had once been and how hard this was for them. But I stayed out of it. I didn’t want them to have to choose, although eventually they did. They became so disgusted by Merril’s other children that they finally cut them off. Even though they knew their half-siblings were being told what to do and say, the calls made them too uncomfortable. My kids love me. We all know that the bonds we’ve forged as a family are closer than anything we could have experienced in the FLDS.
The FLDS wasn’t having any real success in damaging my credibility on the Internet, so it began a new campaign: Why was I the only one complaining? If the environment was really as abusive as I claimed, why weren’t more women speaking out? That line of attack went nowhere and proved nothing. Most of my peers in the FLDS would have had little hope of surviving in the outside world without tremendous support. Most had not been to college, and some hadn’t completed high school. They knew how hard the FLDS would fight to take their children away from them—even if they managed to get out with all their kids.
Some FLDS women get shipped off to mental hospitals when they try to stand up for themselves or their children. I recently met a woman who works for the Dove Center, a domestic violence shelter in St. George, near Colorado City, where I used to live. She told me that they see young women who are diagnosed by FLDS doctors as bipolar when they are not. These women were put on powerful psychotropic medication and labeled “mentally ill” when they tried to assert some control over their lives.
Women in the FLDS all knew of situations when Warren Jeffs had taken children from one mother and given them to other wives. For us, losing our children was a real and terrifying fear. When women were separated from their children, often no one knew where the children were sent. Sometimes these mothers were under the watchful eyes of “spies” who would report back to Jeffs on what they were doing while they were “repenting.” When Jeffs severed a man or woman from their children or spouse, it was supposedly because the person had sinned. His or her task was to go and repent. Jeffs would ask the person to write out his or her sins to see if they matched what Jeffs knew already.
There were so many reasons why it was terrifying to take on the FLDS. I had a strong sense of myself and had spent several years preparing to flee. But even with all of that, I almost didn’t make it. Without Dan’s help, I’d have ultimately failed. He got us into hiding when we first fled and a posse of men was hunting us down.
A Face-off with a Former Enemy
Testifying in Congress was one thing, but testifying against one of the most powerful women in the FLDS was another one altogether. Shortly after I got home from Washington, Jeff Schmidt, a CPS attorney in Texas, called me to say that the state was building a case to remove several children from mothers who were refusing to comply with court-ordered parenting classes. Barbara, Merril’s wife, was one of them. Texas was seeking custody of two of her children, including the fourteen-year-old who was married to Warren Jeffs at t
welve.
Even after the Supreme Court ruled that the FLDS children in state custody had to be returned to their parents, CPS continued to pursue its case against Barbara Jessop because she was refusing to work with it and would not take parenting classes. The only compromise was that CPS decided not to try to win custody of her oldest son, who was seventeen. So the custody case centered on her fourteen-year-old daughter and eleven-year-old son.
Jeff asked me if I would be willing to testify about abusive behavior I had witnessed during my seventeen-year marriage to Merril. This gave me pause. I was already under attack by the FLDS for publishing Escape. My congressional testimony had intensified the pressure. What would happen if I told the truth about Barbara and Merril’s abusive behavior in court and under oath?
No doubt I would be accused of seeking revenge or trying to sell books. The pressure on my mother to write an affidavit full of lies underscored the hostile environment I’d be entering. But what scared me most was confronting someone who had made my life hell for seventeen years. We all feared Barbara more than Merril because she was crueler than he was. Not only was she abusive to nearly everyone’s children in the family, but we were forbidden ever to speak about it. Barbara determined the severity of the punishments we received and what we could and couldn’t do with our children. She controlled the family finances and had the power to obliterate anyone who got in her way. Merril protected her and came down hard on anyone who upset her.
I told Jeff I wanted to help but shared my concerns about how I would be attacked on the stand. Could I end up actually hurting his case?
But I never had any real doubts. My outrage about a child being given to a man more than four times her age for sex trumped my own fear of standing up to Barbara.
Barbara had never been held accountable in her life. Texas was now going to try. I knew she would willingly give up all of her fourteen children before she would answer to someone she felt had no right to question her—even a judge in a court of law.
Three days before I went to Texas my father, Arthur Blackmore, called and urged me not to go without some sort of protection. Dad knew full well how dangerous it was to stand up to the FLDS. He had been kicked out of the cult three years earlier after a confrontation with Merril over the sale of a motel they jointly owned. Dad had sold the motel and paid off the balance of the mortgage. He gave Merril two-thirds of what remained, but Merril wanted all of it. He told my dad he should contribute his profits to the construction of the FLDS compound in Texas. Dad refused.
By that point my parents were divorced. Under the terms of their settlement, Dad was to provide an adequate home for Mom. To fulfill his legal obligation, he used his profits from the motel to buy Mom a house. Merril claimed Dad had no such obligation. He said that as long as he was fulfilling the will of the prophet, God would protect Dad from any legal consequences of disobeying the court. My father held firm against Merril and told him the money was already gone.
Several weeks later Warren Jeffs sent several men to Dad’s house to inform him he was no longer a member of the FLDS. They told him he’d have to relinquish the home he was living in—one he’d spent his life building—and leave his two wives and nine children. They also demanded that he turn over all of his retirement savings to Jeffs. Once again Dad refused.
“Talking about Merril and his personal family issues in court is one thing,” Dad warned. “But if you’re going up against Barbara, there’s more of a chance they’ll do something.” Dad said the FLDS community was especially riled up right now and very antagonistic toward anyone they saw as a troublemaker. Jeff agreed with my father; he’d encountered plenty of hostility himself and said he would make sure I had protection.
Brian agreed that he should come with me to Texas. I can face almost anything if Brian is by my side. He knew how important it was for me to stand up to Barbara in court and kept giving me pep talks. I was pretty sure I had the strength to go through with my testimony, but Brian’s confidence shored up my own.
We flew to Texas on Friday, August 15, and I worked on my testimony with Jeff all day Saturday and part of Sunday. Despite the strenuous preparation, I was still petrified. In Merril’s family, criticizing Barbara’s behavior was suicidal. Sure, I was now in a strong place in my life, but seventeen years of learned and reflexive behavior kept barging in. I was absolutely convinced of the rightness of facing down Barbara in court, but how did I translate that certainty to the cellular level? I kept telling myself that Barbara no longer had power to harm me or my children.
Compounding my anxiety was the news that Betty might be called to testify against me. At this point she and I had lost all contact. The last time we had spoken was a few days before the raid, and it was a peaceful conversation. She talked to her siblings off and on throughout the crisis, but she refused to speak with me. One of the kids tried to get her to talk to me, but Betty adamantly refused even to consider it. Now that she was completely under FLDS control, they’d use her to try to undercut me.
In Washington, I had been nervous because I felt the enormity of my responsibility. But testifying against Barbara Jessop was personal. Theoretically I knew I was safe, but part of me still felt like I had bought a one-way ticket back to hell. I had worked hard to make a new life and had been enormously supported in therapy, but seventeen years of fear and terror don’t exactly evaporate overnight. Undeniably she was one of the masterminds behind the engine of evil that had controlled our lives. Also, the FLDS had hit back after Dan and I testified in Washington. If it lost this case, I didn’t want to think about the fury that would be unleashed on me.
In the courtroom, Barbara was sworn in and was asked for basic information. She stated that she was living in an apartment with three of her children and maintained that she and they were the only ones who lived at that address. After the raid she had agreed to keep her children away from the adult males on the YFZ Ranch. Jeff Schmidt then asked her to name everyone who lived at the home. She named herself and her three children.
Jeff asked Barbara if anyone else stayed in her home during the day or spent the night there. She said no one ever did, although she acknowledged that there were nights when she was not in the house.
Jeff asked if there were times when her fourteen-year-old daughter and eleven-year-old son were ever left alone in her home overnight.
“I don’t want to answer any more questions,” she answered. “I stand on the Fifth.”
The court, presided over again by Judge Barbara Walther, then had to decide if Barbara could take a blanket Fifth Amendment exemption for herself. (The Fifth Amendment protects against self-incrimination.) The court decided she could not and would have to answer each question individually.
JEFF SCHMIDT: Can you please name your offspring, in order, the natural children that you’ve given birth to?
BARBARA JESSOP: I stand on the Fifth.
Jeff then tried to get Barbara to identify her daughter in a photo. She took the Fifth. Jeff objected because he couldn’t see how this could be incriminating since she’d already admitted that they were mother and daughter. Barbara’s attorney countered that she needed to take the Fifth because of the ongoing criminal investigation. Judge Walther ruled in his favor because she said he had the right to object if he felt his client might be incriminating herself in another case. Barbara’s attorney also claimed the photo of Barbara’s twelve-year-old kissing Warren Jeffs was irrelevant to the case.
After taking the Fifth more than twenty-five times, Barbara finally got a question she agreed to answer.
JEFF SCHMIDT: Would you also agree with me that it is in a child’s best interest that a parent protect their children from anything that may cause them physical or emotional or psychological harm?
BARBARA JESSOP: Yes.
JEFF SCHMIDT: You agree with that?
BARBARA JESSOP: Yes.
JEFF SCHMIDT: Would you also agree with me that a parent has a duty to provide financial support for their children?
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br /> BARBARA JESSOP: I stand on the Fifth.
Barbara took the Fifth to more than fifty questions before her testimony ended! This was a mother who risked losing custody of two of her children. It was hard to comprehend why she and her attorney thought that taking the Fifth over and over again would help her case.
What casual observers couldn’t appreciate was the line Jeff had crossed in asking Barbara who was in her house at night. She and Merril were together nearly every night and always had been. Merril Jessop, despite his twenty-plus wives that I’m aware of, was essentially monogamous. Yes, he slept with other women, but he often returned that same night to the bed of his third and favorite wife. Merril did not practice plural marriage in the traditional way. For a man as powerful in the FLDS as he is, that was a potential embarrassment.
Barbara could not testify that he was there every night because she and the other mothers had signed agreements that adult males from the ranch would not be allowed around their children. Nor could she say that she was leaving her children alone every night to go off with Merril, as had been her pattern for years. The fact that they were together every night was a problem any way you sliced it.
When I came into the courtroom to testify, Barbara and I looked at each other. She was sitting next to her attorney, Gonzalo Rios, and had to lean over a little to see me. She was smiling and had a friendly demeanor that I found unsettling. She was trying to pretend that we were friends, but it was a lie. Abusers often use this tactic in public to intimidate their victims. I just stared back at her.
I was shaky as I took the stand. My body remembered what my mind tried to forget. This was the first time I had seen Barbara since I escaped. My face felt pale. Life seemed to rush out of me.
I scanned the courtroom and saw friendly faces of strangers. Brian was sitting in the back of the room so he could see me and I could see him. If my strength faltered, I knew I could draw on his. I was forty years old and safe.
Triumph: Life After the Cult--A Survivor's Lessons Page 10