For roughly two years, this game worked. Then my children began to grasp that their father had a responsibility toward them regardless of my actions. By that point Merril was moving to Texas and was no longer a part of their lives. After I won full custody, he made no effort to see them, even when he was in Salt Lake City on business. Merril made a great show of wanting his children back, but it was all a facade. Once custody was decided, he essentially disappeared from their lives and made no effort even to arrange the visits I would have allowed. The kids got the message.
Merril looked shocked by LuAnne’s testimony. He had always been able to abuse a woman by turning her children against her. This was quite possibly the first and only time one of his children had confronted him with the cruelty of his behavior, and people were paying attention. Judge Walther seemed impressed with LuAnne’s composure and listened with great interest.
At one point Natalie asked LuAnne if she was attending college. LuAnne said she was a full-time student at a community college. “Who is paying for your tuition?” Natalie asked.
“I am paying for it,” LuAnne replied. “I started saving for college when I was fourteen.” LuAnne had done a lot of babysitting, and then when she was old enough, she got a job as a bagger at Albertsons.
I was the next witness called. Natalie had me read into the record some of the church material that had been seized during the raid. I read financial instructions from Warren Jeffs to Merril, in which Jeffs told Merril to get all of his financial interests out of his name so that I couldn’t get anything from him legally. When Jeffs referred to me in the record, it was as the “apostate woman, Carolyn Blackmore.”
I read these passages very matter-of-factly. It was clear to Merril that I was not intimidated, and I’m sure this really bothered him. Power in the FLDS is based on intimidation and fear. It was at this moment, I think, that Merril finally “got it.” He realized that he no longer had any power over me—that I had escaped both physically and mentally. When the trial began, he behaved as if I were still his property. But after my calm reading of what Warren Jeffs had said about me, during which I offered no reaction, Merril was noticeably flustered.
It was nine o’clock that night before the judge called an end to the day’s proceedings. We were due back in court twelve hours later, at 9:00 a.m.
Merril left with the other FLDS men who had accompanied him to court, except for one—his son Danny Jessop. Danny was already gone: another FLDS member had advised him to leave the courtroom when LuAnne took the stand. I think they were worried that LuAnne might be asked about the sexual assaults that Danny had committed against her younger sister.
I was told that the courthouse police had photographed every FLDS vehicle that arrived at the courthouse. When Danny Jessop made his abrupt departure, he left in a white Ford F150. It matched the eyewitness’s description of the truck used in the early-morning gunshots.
That morning the FLDS had entered the courtroom acting as if the trial was a big joke. But by the end of the day, the snickering had vanished. Perhaps they had finally realized that there was nothing funny about this case.
The next morning Merril’s attorney approached Natalie and asked for some numbers. The FLDS wanted to settle. Natalie and I both knew we could fight forever and that there was a limit to the amount the judge would award. Legally, in awarding judgment, she was required to consider Merril’s other children under the age of eighteen. (He had six in this category that I knew of, out of a total of fifty-four children.) Both attorneys talked with the judge several times, then reached a settlement by late afternoon. Judge Walther had indicated how high she was prepared to go if she ruled in the case. She also told both attorneys that she wanted adequate money for Harrison’s care.
Merril knew that the judge was going to award child support and that I was eligible for six years of back support. The latter was a number he needed to bring down. It was a huge victory for me that Merril was required to pay anything. The settlement for Harrison was the main reason I made concessions in other areas. (For example, I agreed to be responsible for my children’s health insurance and for any uninsured medical costs.) I was awarded $2,350 a month for child support, which would continue for the rest of Harrison’s life, even after my other children turned eighteen. I had to deduct from that some of the Social Security income that I received from Merril’s account. So for now my net monthly payment would be $1,500. The retroactive settlement from 2003 forward came to about $90,000 with an interest rate of 6 percent. Merril was to begin paying that in increments of $100 a month. But if he was ever more than thirty days delinquent, the entire amount would come due.
Eventually, if I can find Merril’s assets and get a lien against them, I hope to set up a special-needs trust for Harrison. But that’s a battle for another day. I know Merril illegally transferred assets out of his name. If I can prove that those assets are actually Merril’s, I can make a claim on Harrison’s behalf. My disabled son needs every additional layer of protection he can get.
As both attorneys read their agreement into the record, I could see that Judge Walther was pleased with the arrangements made for Harrison. Merril left the courtroom that day defeated and angry. I was stunned by my success. A court case I thought might take years to win had been settled in less than half a year. I knew the FLDS would willingly spend a million dollars to help Merril avoid ever paying me a cent. That was one of the main reasons I didn’t go after Merril sooner. The timing had to be right, and after the raid it was. The FLDS had obviously decided that it had more to lose by fighting me than by settling. Based on questions I have been asked by authorities, I suspect that the church records seized by Texas during the raid are very damning in terms of what they reveal about FLDS financial and business dealings. The FLDS did not want any of that to see the light of day if it could be avoided. The longer it fought, the more likely that that damaging evidence would be released.
On Monday evening the FLDS contingent left the courthouse angry and concerned. On Tuesday morning they woke up to more bad news: a story in The Eldorado Success listed more details of the crimes that Merril’s son Raymond Merril Jessop was accused of committing. The news story was based on court documents filed in the case against him. I think knowing these storm clouds were ahead might have made the FLDS eager to get my custody case against Merril resolved.
Raymond’s trial, which ended in conviction on November 13, 2009, was the first of the trials of the FLDS men indicted in the aftermath of the raid on the YFZ Ranch. Raymond was convicted of the sexual assault of a child, but the prosecutors also submitted court documents alleging illegal banking activity as “extraneous offenses” and “prior bad acts” that could be considered in the penalty phase of his trial—and they were. (He ended up with a sentence of ten years in prison.) The documents also contained allegations that Raymond, thirty-eight, had endangered his sixteen-year-old wife. During the sentencing phase of his trial the non-FLDS people in the courtroom listened with shock as prosecutors related how Raymond had allegedly refused to take his pregnant wife, who had been in labor for three days, to the hospital because Warren Jeffs had instructed him not to. The assumption was that Jeffs feared that hospital doctors might realize the girl was only fifteen when she got pregnant and report Raymond to authorities.
On September 29, 2009, I left the San Angelo courtroom victorious and filled with a sense of making history. From my perspective, the legal system had said, Welcome to America. You’re finally a full citizen of the free world. At the ranch Merril may have been a god, but to the court he was just another deadbeat dad. His message from the court: Welcome to America. You are financially responsible for your children.
The ruling also sent an important message to all FLDS fathers: No matter how many children you have, you must support all of them. In the eyes of the law, it didn’t matter if their children escaped or if they walked out of their lives and regarded them as apostates. The fathers would still be held accountable.
To FLDS women and children still trapped behind the compound walls, the court sent another message: There is hope. You don’t have to live without health care, food, clothing, or basic necessities if you find your way out of the cult.
The far-reaching impact of my victory brought back memories of one of my grandmother Jenny’s best stories. A man was traveling and came to a deep ravine. He knew he could still continue with his journey because he was young and strong enough to climb through the ravine to the other side. But once the man got to the other side, he realized that many subsequent travelers would not be strong enough to climb through the ravine and would thus be unable to complete their journey. So he halted and built a bridge, making it possible for others to complete their journey regardless of their physical strength.
Because of Harrison’s medical condition, I was forced to face down the FLDS. Lisa Jones, the attorney who handled my custody case, was an incredible comfort during that time when I fought the massive resources of the FLDS. She and Natalie Malonis are two smart, tough, and determined women who use their legal training to fight for what they know is right. They are the engineers who made it possible for me to build my bridge.
Winning custody of my children built a bridge halfway across the ravine. Winning child support completed the job. I hope the landmark ruling in my case is an inspiration to all women in difficult or abusive relationships. You can stand up to a perpetrator and win.
Justice prevailed again on December 15, 2009, in the second FLDS trial when Alan Keate was convicted of the sexual assault of a child. I don’t know Keate—he was part of the FLDS community in Salt Lake City—but it was my understanding that he’d been invited to move to the YFZ Ranch because he had many beautiful daughters. Keate, now fifty-seven, married a fifteen-year-old girl who gave birth to a child three years ago. It took a jury of nine men and three women only ninety minutes to find Keate guilty. The jury also heard evidence that Keate married off one of his underage daughters to Jeffs, and two more underage daughters to other men.
It took the jury a lot longer to sentence Alan Keate than it did to convict him. After deliberating for four and a half hours, the jury came back into Judge Barbara Walther’s courtroom with its decision: thirty-three years. Keate must serve half of it before he is eligible for parole. At fifty-seven, this is practically a life sentence.
His sentence is three times that of Raymond Jessop who was convicted on the same charge. I was told that one of the jurors in the Jessop case wanted him to get only probation. The jury had to negotiate, which is how the relatively light sentence in that case was reached. Another factor may be that in the sentencing phase of Keate’s trial, the jury heard testimony about the three other underage daughters Keate had married off to older men, including Warren Jeffs.
Keate’s sentence sends a powerful message to FLDS perpetrators as well as to those women and girls they have harmed. I am thrilled at the severity of the sentence because I believe in the severity of the crime. It will never stop until men realize there are consequences for breaking the law.
I’m told Texas has spent close to twenty million dollars so far preparing these cases for trial. The state deserves a lot of credit for its aggressive prosecution and its determination to hold the FLDS legally accountable for crimes against underage women.
Keeping Hope Alive
My first meeting with Betty in two years came about suddenly. Moments after the settlement in my child support case, Willie Jessop, the unofficial spokesman for the FLDS, asked if I’d like to see Betty, adding that he hoped we could put the controversy of the case behind us. I always assume that an ulterior motive drives most FLDS actions, and this was no exception. Perhaps the meeting was Willie’s idea, but I wouldn’t be surprised if Merril wanted to make the point that by controlling Betty, he could still control me. He knew he could use her to try to hurt me. I didn’t care whose idea it was; I wasn’t going to pass up an opportunity to see my beloved daughter.
Betty looked pale and worn as she got out of the car, strikingly thin and fragile. Where was the old fire in her eyes? The moment she was close enough, I wrapped my arms around her in a tight embrace. My heart was racing. Betty gasped. “How are you, Mother?” was all she said.
When I hugged Betty, I realized that even though she looked weak and haggard, her power was undiminished. She was polite and unemotional. I knew she was on guard; her half-brother Rich had been sent along to monitor everything she said.
My relationship with Betty has never been easy, but I have always loved my daughter deeply. I’ve always felt a special bond with her because when I was pregnant with her, we almost died together in an automobile accident. But that didn’t prevent the conflict the FLDS stamped into our relationship. My desire to protect Betty ignited a raging hostility in her. As one of Merril’s favorite children, about to turn fourteen, she was furious when I fled. On July 4, 2007, two days after she turned eighteen, she returned to the FLDS. I was heartsick, but I couldn’t stop her from going back.
Our communication was minimal, at best, after she left. What little conversation we had, whether by phone or text messaging, was brief and tortured. But after the first year I noticed a slight shift. She became more communicative and wanted to know how her siblings were doing. She told me more about her life. She had been assigned to cook, clean, and iron for FLDS boys working construction in Arizona. (I was quite relieved that Merril didn’t ask her to join him at the ranch in Texas, but I said nothing.) When she told me that she had started to teach the boys to read and do math, I was proud and told her so.
To help break the ice at our impromptu reunion, Brian showed Betty pictures of our family on his phone. She seemed to lighten up and laughed as she looked at photos of her brothers and sisters. We had just celebrated Bryson’s eighth birthday with a Frankenstein cupcake cake. Betty disapproved of the cake—cartoons or any figurative representations of literary or storybook figures are banned in the FLDS—but she clearly missed her baby brother.
Moments later LuAnne arrived and pulled Betty into a big hug. The girls hadn’t seen each other for two years, although they had talked occasionally by phone until the raid shut down all communication. Brian took pictures of the two of them with his phone as they were laughing, being silly, and teasingly pulling each other’s hair. Then he took pictures of the three of us together.
Betty and LuAnne had once been very close, but after we escaped, their relationship became strained. Betty’s anger disrupted our family, and by acting as her father’s emissary, she constantly tried to sabotage the stability I was trying to create. She would become abusive toward her siblings if they did something she thought Merril wouldn’t like. “Father doesn’t want you to do that!” she’d scream. “You will be in so much trouble!”
In the first six months after I won custody from Merril, Betty ran back to her father three times. The third time she took LuAnne with her. It was horrendous, but I acted swiftly. Gary Engels, who worked for Arizona as an investigator and was based in Colorado City for a time, went to the authorities and insisted they act. Merril’s house was surrounded by police, who were ready to break down the door to get the girls. (This was before Merril moved his family to Texas.) Merril negotiated with the police and agreed to turn the girls over to them in the morning. Just twenty-four hours after they ran away, Betty and LuAnne were back home with me. Betty never ran away again because Merril stopped making the arrangements.
After about two years, because of the tension she created at home, Betty went to live with my brother, Arthur, in Salt Lake City. But we never stopped seeing her, and we certainly never stopped loving her. The day she returned to the FLDS broke our hearts; all of us wept, including Betty.
Betty and LuAnne made a vivid contrast to each other. Betty’s hair was piled up on her head in the required FLDS style. She wore a long and frumpy dark green dress that made her look exactly like every other FLDS woman. LuAnne was wearing a tan pullover and a floral print skirt that stopped just above her knees. She
radiated happiness. She told Betty about her college classes and caught her up on what their other siblings were doing.
I urged Betty to come to dinner with us, but she refused, saying she wasn’t hungry. I didn’t believe her—I suspected the FLDS had set a limit on the time she could spend with us. I wanted to prolong our visit as long as I could, so when she vetoed dinner, I asked her if we could at least go for ice cream. I knew this was something she couldn’t resist. She loves ice cream, and it’s rarely served in the FLDS.
As we were driving to Baskin-Robbins, LuAnne asked Betty if she was on Facebook. Betty said “No!” but then in a whisper she asked, “Is that like MySpace?” I knew she was curious, but with Rich eavesdropping, she couldn’t pursue something so totally forbidden by the FLDS.
As LuAnne and Betty were chatting, Betty said, “You don’t really understand what living really is until you go to bed at midnight every day and get up at four o’clock in the morning.” She was bragging; maybe she felt like we were wimps, because she was able to live on such little sleep. But when LuAnne told me about their conversation, my heart sank. Off and on for the past five years, I had heard stories about acute sleep deprivation in the FLDS. Now I knew they were true. It was yet another sign of how extreme life had become in the FLDS.
When LuAnne asked her, “What have you been up to?” Betty said, “I’ve just been working, working.”
My dad, who was with us because he’d come to Texas to testify on my behalf, asked Betty what she meant. Betty said, “I just go from one job to the next. I mean, look at my hands! They are so dirty and terrible. Isn’t it wonderful?” No, it wasn’t wonderful at all. The FLDS makes a virtue out of forced labor. Betty looked too weak and exhausted for me to believe she felt “wonderful” about any aspect of her life.
Triumph: Life After the Cult--A Survivor's Lessons Page 24