Triumph: Life After the Cult--A Survivor's Lessons

by Carolyn Jessop

  The prophet always reminded us that the stakes could not be higher.

  KEEP SWEET! It is a matter of life or death. You have had the teaching regarding what is required in order for us to survive the judgments, sufficient of the Holy Spirit of God that we can be lifted up and then set down after it is over. That will be the remnant which will go to redeem Zion. The wicked will be swept off the face of this land. The wicked are they who come not unto Christ. There is only one people who comes unto Christ, and that is this people under His servant.

  FLDS Prophet Rulon Jeffs, Sandy, Utah, December 4, 1992

  This religious doctrine created and enforced the arbitrary limits that defined who I was. With no genuine and sustained exposure to the outside world, I had no way to challenge my indoctrination, which is how mind control thrives. I believed I was being protected from the destruction of God and a dangerous, frightening world. It never occurred to me that this “protection” was in fact destroying me.

  I had been conditioned in the FLDS to believe that my husband had the right to treat me any way he wanted because he was a man of God. If I argued or protested, he had the right to turn me over to what the prophet called the “buffetings,” or blows, of Satan. To be a woman who is cast out from her husband and no longer under the protection of his priesthood is one of the worst fates imaginable in the FLDS. I never liked the way Merril treated me, but in the beginning I felt it must be my fault because my religion said that a husband treats a wife the way she deserves to be treated.

  A turning point came for me on a three-day trip to Phoenix with Merril and Tammy. Patrick, my fourth child, was with me and about six months old.

  Just before we left home, there was an outbreak of viral pneumonia in the community. It was almost an epidemic. In more than one case a baby or small child had nearly died in the ambulance while being rushed to the hospital.

  Patrick had been fine for the entire trip, but as we were leaving Phoenix, he started fussing. Two hours later he spiked a high fever. I gave him Tylenol, but his fever got worse and he began vomiting. He had all the symptoms of viral pneumonia. We needed help as soon as possible.

  Merril could have stopped at an ER on our way home, but I would never have dared ask him to do that. I knew as soon as I got home, I could call the ambulance. If the paramedics told Merril how serious Patrick’s condition was, Merril might allow him to go to the hospital. In the FLDS a mother needs her husband’s permission to take her child to the hospital.

  The more Patrick vomited and cried, the more annoyed Merril became with both of us. “Merril, he keeps throwing up, and I can’t keep his fever down,” I explained. “I have got to get him home.”

  “He’s all right,” Merril replied. “Maybe not feeling his best, but there’s no need to make more out of this than it really is. Maybe he’d be a little better behaved if his mother was interested and concerned about the comfort of others.”

  “He’s crying because he has such a high fever!” I was getting more and more upset. “He’s so hot and miserable.”

  Merril stared at me. “Maybe he is miserable because his mother’s actions are making her a miserable person to be with.”

  There was no point in trying to reason with him. He decided to stop in Flagstaff for dinner. I insisted that I needed to get Pat home and begged him to eat at a fast-food restaurant. Merril scolded me again and again, insisting that Patrick would be all right if his mother would get herself in harmony with his father. Merril also warned that I would be in trouble if I kept insisting on having my own way.

  Tammy was elated by my distress, even though she knew how serious viral pneumonia was. My degradation made her feel righteous and gave her a chance to score points with Merril. She began ridiculing my efforts to help Patrick and said I needed to learn to listen to my husband.

  We entered the restaurant. By now Patrick was so listless that he could only whimper; he had no strength to cry. Tammy and Merril took their seats in the restaurant, and I went straight to the back of the room to find a quiet place to walk back and forth with Patrick. I thought if I could get him to sleep, he might fight the infection better. I was furious with Merril.

  Tammy and Merril ordered and tried to ignore me. I was still within earshot and could tell from Tammy’s voice that she was annoyed that I had tried to tell Merril what to do and that I thought Patrick’s health was more important than dining with them. “Father, why would a woman refuse to listen to her husband and put both of us in an awkward position publicly?” Tammy asked. “Carolyn understands what you have asked of her.”

  “She will have to learn a hard lesson if that is what she wishes to invite into her life,” Merril said. “It isn’t wisdom for any woman to get on the wrong side of her husband. She is doing no good for her baby by allowing herself to get out of control with anger.”

  I was terrified. Patrick’s life was at stake. My religion had taught me that my husband was a man of God and that he would make all the right decisions; all I had to do was obey. But obedience could cost my baby his life. In pure desperation I had started thinking for myself. I knew what was right but was being prevented from doing it.

  I looked up and saw an attractive African American man at a nearby table listening to what was being said. The look in his eye said he couldn’t stand watching a woman being treated this way. The two white guys who were eating with him couldn’t have cared less. But every time the other man looked at me, it was clear he was disgusted with Merril’s behavior. Even though we were not sitting together, our FLDS clothing gave away the fact that we were related.

  Merril and Tammy spent over an hour having a leisurely dinner. While Merril paid the bill, she and I went out to the truck. The man who had been observing me in the restaurant approached Merril and threatened to pound him into the ground for the way he was treating me.

  All I heard was Merril’s side of the conversation, but it shook him up. As far as I know, it’s the only time he was ever confronted about abusing his wives. It was the first time in my life that any man had ever stood up and defended me.

  Of course, no one within the FLDS would have confronted Merril—he was one of the most prominent and influential men in our community. And when we were out, in the outside world, most people ignored us and never intervened. But this moment altered the very foundations of my world. When this man stood up for me, I felt like a human being who was worthy of dignity and respect for the first time in my marriage and my life. His simple actions in my defense opened up an alternative universe in which I had rights, where I was not Merril’s possession.

  In fact, it was mind-blowing to see that men in the outside world valued women at all. I was twenty-six years old and still believed the FLDS propaganda that men outside the cult treated women very badly. Although I’d been to college and had been exposed to other people and ideas in a limited way, I didn’t develop many relationships there, and those I did confirmed my view of outsiders. One of my classmates, a woman in her forties, had cried one day because she had just found out her husband had been having an affair. Another woman told me about the violent relationships she’d been involved in. I kept to myself most of the time because I didn’t understand how things worked in this strange new world. I was afraid of outsiders and knew they did not accept or understand my way of life.

  What happened in the restaurant was a moment that cracked the mind control I’d been under my entire life. If women outside the FLDS were treated so much worse than we were, why had this man stood up for me? Could I have been fed lies? The experience was disconcerting; it was outside my frame of reference, and I really didn’t know what to feel.

  I took advantage of Merril’s being somewhat shaken to buy some ibuprofen at the gas station next door. I took Patrick into the bathroom, changed his diaper, and secretly gave him the medicine to bring his fever down. When I got back in the truck, I didn’t say a thing. Patrick’s fever dropped, he stopped vomiting, and he fell into a deep sleep. When we got back, he was diagnosed
with viral pneumonia at the local clinic.

  Most FLDS women do not perceive themselves as victims. Few among them even know that, as Americans, they have rights. Not until a year after I fled did I understand that as an American citizen, I have constitutionally guaranteed rights that my government is pledged to protect. The actions of a total stranger were my first small glimpse of that world outside the cult, and I felt empowered by it. Merril did not stop being abusive, of course, but I did start to think of myself in a radical new way. The perpetrator didn’t change, but I changed my relationship to him.

  “Perfect obedience produces perfect faith.” The FLDS mantra had been an organizing principle of my life and governed many of the assumptions I operated under. My new way of thinking made me a rebellious wife, and that in turn gave Merril the right to turn me over to “the buffetings of Satan.” Most women were terrified by that prospect, but I was no longer so sure. Merril’s cruelty when Patrick’s life was on the line seemed diabolical to me. How much worse could being “buffeted” by Satan really be than my present reality?

  I was not yet willing to give up every aspect of my religion, but I’d already begun questioning its inexplicable dogma. What was true and what was false? What needed to be tested by reality? What if I sailed over the horizon?

  One FLDS tenet I still believed was that life is a proving ground and if we pass our tests here, we’ll reap the benefits in heaven. But if we’re rewarded too much in our earthly existences, we’ll pay for that in the afterlife. The more we suffer here, the better we do there. Tests in this life are sent from God.

  All that was well and good, but I just wasn’t buying the idea that Patrick’s suffering was some short-answer quiz from God that I had to ace in order for him to survive.

  I’m living proof that mind control can be overcome, but the process is a long one, and it occurs in stages. It would be years before I would be completely free. But those first heady moments of thinking for myself were essential to my ultimate triumph over the FLDS. A stranger who stood up for what was right transformed my life in ways he will never know. All I can do is express my gratitude to him and try to do for others what he did for me.

  The Freedom of Forgiveness

  Forgiveness did more to free me from the FLDS than almost any other quality and liberated me years before I fled. But it was a slow and deliberate journey.

  One summer day in the early 1990s, I walked into Dan Barlow’s Sunday school building. I had no idea what I was getting into. I had several small children by then and was excited to be on my own and learning something, anything. A group of us had gathered for a class in acupressure. We were all eager to learn new things, especially since FLDS members were no longer allowed to attend the local community college. (Before the ban nearly all of us at one time or another had taken classes. It was stimulating and a refreshing change from the daily grind.) This was also an unusual occasion because the teacher of the acupressure class was a woman from another polygamous community. It was extremely rare for FLDS women to be allowed to interact with women from non-FLDS polygamous groups. This class had been approved by the prophet Rulon Jeffs, and several members of his family were there.

  I honestly don’t think that most of us knew enough about acupressure even to say why we wanted to study it. We were just hungry to learn. Several of Merril’s other wives and daughters came. We entered the building as a large crowd.

  The teacher and several other ladies hosting the class were all dressed in normal street clothes and didn’t look like polygamists at all. They followed a different prophet in Salt Lake City and were not associated with the FLDS. All we had in common was the belief in plural marriage. The most dramatic difference between us was that these women were allowed to choose their own husbands. Love and desire could be part of their marriages, which was rarely, if ever, true in our world because our husbands were chosen for us. Being able to dress normally and marry for love gave them a level of independence and self-expression that was almost unimaginable to us.

  The teacher began the class by introducing herself and explaining that she was in a polygamous relationship. She ran a health food store in addition to teaching acupressure. She was tall and had a gentle manner. Her poise, grace, and beauty were assets we could all admire, but it was her hair that we downright coveted. She had a beautiful dark braid. We all grew our hair long, but few of us had hair as naturally thick and lush as hers. She had several children and a lot of experience, yet she also seemed really comfortable in herself as a woman.

  After lunch she told all of us from the FLDS how she’d become involved with acupressure. We all knew that eating properly, taking vitamins, and using herbal remedies could have a tremendous impact on healing our bodies. But natural methods are not always enough. We didn’t understand that thoughts, persistent bad attitudes, and depression could make us sick. We’d never considered the mind-body link seriously. We didn’t dare. We had all become such masters in stuffing and shoving our feelings inside that we had good reason not to think about the consequences. For us, the unexamined life was not only worth living, it was the key to surviving the oppression that defined us. We learned in class that day that sometimes a body cannot recover physically until emotional issues are healed. This was a radical idea for us. Our religion required us to be divorced from our emotional lives.

  Our teacher expanded on the mind-body link by telling us about a time when her health had crashed. She did all the right things but still did not heal. Then someone working with her asked if there were any emotional issues she hadn’t dealt with. She told us that her father had sexually assaulted her as a child. As she talked about the abuse, she held up a book, Feelings Buried Alive Never Die, and told us that it changed her life by giving her a way to deal with her trauma. She said she not only improved physically but she became a far better mother and far more functional in general. The women with her looked on proudly as she described how hard she’d worked to heal.

  The reaction among the FLDS women could not have been more different. The FLDS considered it unacceptable to talk about abuse of any kind, but especially sexual abuse. We spoke openly among ourselves about sex with our husbands, but talking about abuse was off limits, especially if the abuser was a father or husband, because they were what we called our priesthood heads—the men we had to answer to. (Boys, at twelve, are given the priesthood by the prophet. When a man is assigned a wife and has a family, he is known as their “priesthood head.” FLDS women always have a man who rules over them.)

  A silence fell over the room as our teacher talked about her abuse. Everything shifted. Women stared at the floor. Our teacher explained that we had to deal with our emotional lives if we wanted to be truly well. The room became even quieter, and even more women stared at the floor.

  The woman had touched a nerve because in the FLDS dealing with emotions was taboo. “Keeping sweet” was shorthand for “staying silent.” We never dared admit we had negative feelings. In fact, I began to worry that when people told the prophet what the class was about, the rest might be canceled. I would have hated that—I was riveted. Secretly I’d always wished that women in our community could open up and confront the abuses we’d endured. But we had no tools to deal with crimes committed against us. I didn’t have a lot of experience with psychology, but I knew hanging your head in shame was never a solution.

  I felt protective toward our teacher. She’d taken a risk in opening up to us, and I wished we could support her like friends and offer more than strained silence. During the break she took questions and mentioned that she’d brought several boxes of the book for purchase. A long line of people wanted to talk to her about their personal health concerns, but few inquired about the book. I noticed one woman quietly asking to buy a copy. I was eager to read the book and decided to buy one, too. I remember walking from the front of the class to the back proudly holding the book in my hands as several women stared at me in disbelief.

  After the class ended, complaints flew throu
gh the community about what had been taught. They were not about anything specific; they centered on the class not being in harmony with the priesthood. I knew exactly why people were critical; the teacher had opened the door to talking about abuse, and that was a line too perilous to cross.

  While the drama was playing out over the controversial class, I was looking through the book and finding it fascinating. I’d read only a few chapters before I became concerned that the book would disappear from my bedroom if I didn’t find a place to hide it. So I locked it in a cabinet in my bedroom, where it stayed for several years. Something inside me knew this book could change my life, but I wasn’t ready. I was more interested in protecting the book than in actually reading it. It remained hidden—until my son Harrison nearly died of cancer in his spine.

  The first winter of Harrison’s illness was the toughest period of my life. He was eighteen months old and in and out of the hospital. Every morning began the same way: Do I take Harrison to the hospital, or is he well enough to make it through the day at home? After several surgeries and treatments to keep his immune system suppressed (so it wouldn’t attack his nervous system), Harrison had seemingly endless staph infections. It became rare for him to finish an antibiotic before we were treating a different strain of infection.

  In the middle of it all, I found out I was pregnant with my eighth child. This was catastrophic news. I soon began hemorrhaging—it was my third high-risk pregnancy. How could I manage Harrison’s life, my own, and my unborn baby’s? I suffered such severe fatigue that my situation seemed even bleaker and more frightening than before. I felt myself spiraling into an out-of-control rage that kept building.

  I was constantly told that Harrison’s cancer was my fault because I was a rebellious wife. This chorus of condemnation came at me from all directions: I heard it from Merril, his daughters, and most of the other wives. All insisted that until I repented, nothing could be done for Harrison. Not only did I hate them, and my life, but I grew frantic because my weakened condition put all my children at risk. What would happen to them if I died?