She Was Married at 16 Inside a Secret Cult
[music] >> For nearly a century, an isolated, secretive, and abusive community flourishes in the American Southwest. Unlike anything I think we’ve seen before or since, truly a real theocracy running right in the heart of America. Its members suffer under strict religious rules. You are trained only to do as you’re told and not think outside the box.
A polygamous society where arranged marriages and sexual abuse of minors is commonplace. Ruth, how old were you when you got married? 16. 16 years old. How old were you when you became pregnant with your first child? 16. With unconditional obedience to a leader that they believe to be a prophet, according to their religion, the only one who could really communicate directly with God.
So, the orders that you were receiving were coming from God. A cold-blooded leader who rules with true dictatorial power, controlling every aspect of the lives of those who believe in him. Everything was just getting stricter [music] and stricter and stricter and stricter and everybody was in trauma mode. The prophet’s name is Warren Steed Jeffs, a man with a depraved and evil mind.
He’s a pedophile. He is probably a psychopath. Certainly, he has no sympathy or empathy in any meaningful way for all the victims that he has terrorized and and done harm to. >> [music] >> Somewhere in the US West, where the Utah and Arizona borders meet, is a town called Colorado City, Arizona. Some of its residents are members of a fundamentalist and polygamous Mormon offshoot group.
They had isolated themselves from the mainstream and followed a special leader. But one day some of them managed to escape his powerful grip. It’s a quiet evening in the town of La Verkin, Utah. Veteran reporter Mike Watkiss reports on a perilous rescue. My dad sexually molested us, all of us girls. I just want to cry.
I’m afraid to even make more friends cuz I feel so dang bad at the sorrow the women go through. How many brothers and sisters do you have? 56. Everybody’s living in fear. >> I wish I wouldn’t have got married when I was 16 cuz I’m too young to have three kids. These kids are being abused and the authorities refuse to help them.
Let’s go get my kids. The two best friends, Vonna Houck and Vonna Broadbent, both just 16 years old, are on the run. You’re a runaway at this point. I am. You’re a runaway. Yeah. I just I don’t want what’s out there. And trying to escape a life of servitude within the fundamentalist religious community they grew up in a few miles away in Colorado City, Arizona.
I don’t want to become some 50-year-old man’s wife or something like that. We’ve always been told that people out here are wicked. And I don’t believe everyone is wicked. Now, they look forward to starting a new life with the help of Flora Jessop. Flora’s life mission is to help desperate people like them. When it comes to babies, I’m willing to stand my ground.
I’m willing to go to jail. I’m willing to lay my life down to protect children. Because I know what they go through. I was them. Also a Colorado City native, Flora Jessop was born and raised in the same polygamist [music] community as these two runaways. I was born raised in the [music] FLDS cult. My dad was married to my mother and her younger sister and between the two of them they had 28 of us.
I got out when I was 16 years old, the first girl that ever got out and lived. It took courage to leave at 14. They forced [music] that courage on me. It wasn’t a choice. A lot of the girls that did leave at my age didn’t make it. Were, you know, on the streets. Prostituted out, stabbed, shot. I got lucky. Flora Jessop and Penny Peterson have been running an underground network to help women and children escape from the clutches of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints and their supreme leader, Warren Jeffs. Jeffs is a
polygamist with dozens of wives and father to perhaps 100 children. His followers believe he’s a living prophet and God speaks through him. He dictates how they must live their lives including who they will marry. >> What will the Lord do to the unholy people? They shall be destroyed. Warren Jeffs is not like other cult leaders, charismatic, charming, a good speaker.
In fact, he can be deadly dull and boring. What he in is instead is the heir to the throne. Born in Sacramento, California on December 3rd, 1955, >> [music] >> Warren Steed Jeffs is the son of Rulon Jeffs, a high priest apostle from the Circle of Friends, a fundamentalist splinter group of the Mormon Church.
The group preserved the Mormon polygamist teachings of of founder, Joseph Smith, after [music] the original movement was abolished early in the 20th century. You typically need three or more wives in order to reach the level in heaven to become a god of your in your own right and have your own planet to populate.
Warren’s mother was Marilyn Steed, the fourth of his many as 75 wives that Rulon took during his lifetime, some as young as 14. From an early age, Warren strives to catch his father’s attention while competing with his many siblings. His ambition leads to cases of abuse [music] and perversion.
But Warren was a nasty cat from a when he was very young. He was abusing his sisters sexually [music] way back before his father ever became prophet. >> Although it is unknown [music] if Rulon Jeffs abused his wives and children, which may have served as an example to his [music] son, the incestuous abuse of minors is all too common among other polygamist families.
>> [music] >> Many of the women spoke about the rampant child abuse that had gone on in their lives but either by their father or by other relatives and in many instances they were told by their mothers to just expect this kind of behavior by men. Warren Jeffs grows up in Little Cottonwood Canyon on the outskirts of Salt Lake City, Utah.
His father Rulon opens the Alta Academy as an alternative [music] school for the children of their fundamentalist group. Rulon appoints his son Warren as the principal. So, this was his first opportunity to really start to wield power and he would wield it in a very strong and strict way in many ways. >> When he was 21, you know, this dorky 21-year-old kid suddenly telling all these kids how to live their lives.
Warren Jeffs also starts to reveal some of his sadistic traits. [music] >> He had his wife come up and he started to twist her hair until it became obvious in front of the class that it was becoming more and more painful [music] and her face was turning more and more red. According to their religion, a woman’s natural duty is to serve her husband.
Her only value is based on how many children she can provide. Women are required to always act sweet and subservient. Brielle Decker, a former student at the Alta Academy, who is destined to become Warren Jeff’s 65th wife, remembers. I was the 65th [music] wife of Warren Jeffs and I after I escaped, almost 8 years ago, so you don’t have the right to get angry, you don’t have the right to get sad, you don’t have the right and then you’re bad if you do any of those things.
If you’re not just [music] like happy with whatever your leader, your priesthood head, your person over you says, then you’re not sweet. They also believe that women can only get to heaven by being invited by their husband, either as a queen or a slave. I’ve seen women get in knock-down, drag-out, black your eyes and rip your hair out of your head to see fighting over who gets to deliver his plate of food when he comes home or give him his slippers.
I didn’t come out of it hating men. I came out of it hating women. These fundamentalists spread to various communes, where plural marriages often involve teenagers or even close relatives. They are arranged by the priesthood, a council of seven high priests who dictate the rules to their congregation.
Presiding over this council is the leader. Fundamentalists believe he is a living prophet [music] and his commands come directly from God. Members of the church are taught from the cradle to obey their leader and not have any independent thought outside of their religious beliefs. They must embrace a life of total submission.
We didn’t have books or music or games, toys, that kind of stuff. We didn’t have that. Typical day was getting [music] up and working in the garden or cleaning or sewing clothes, doing laundry. Laundry always had laundry. The largest fundamentalist community >> [music] >> and its stronghold is found in Colorado City, Arizona.
Flora Jessop, born and raised there, suffers a deeply [music] traumatic childhood, unable to rely on those she is supposed to trust the most. >> Because I reported the abuse of my father, they walled off the end of a hallway and I spent 3 years in solitary confinement because I was going against God’s commandments and I was telling secrets that I shouldn’t be talking about.
I wasn’t allowed to have any association with my mother or my siblings because I would corrupt them. At the age of 16, Flora Jessop manages to run away from her family. As terrible as it was for Flora, it will turn from bad to worse when Warren Jeffs becomes the leader of the community. Warren Jeffs was a historic inevitability.
A guy like [music] him was going to come along in that community because for so long there were no checks and balances. From an early age, Warren Jeffs displays his burning ambition for power and control. The son of the high priest of a fundamentalist polygamous [music] Mormon splinter group, he climbs its hierarchy by abusively gaining his father’s favor.
This secretive community is the perfect breeding ground to support Jeff’s lust for perversion and sadism. In 1986, Rulon Jeffs is named the new president of the priesthood and assumes the role of the prophet. Instead of relying on the other high priest to run the church, he makes Warren his trusted main counselor.
Warren Jeffs is now just one small step from grabbing the power he craves. The other six members of the priesthood were no longer important as important. Some of them had broken off, started their own town, their own sort of branch religion from this. So, he had become much more important than some of the earlier prophets. Under the Jeffs absolute rule, the congregation renames itself the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ and Latter-Day Saints, or FLDS.
By the late 1990s, Rulon and Warren Jeffs control almost every single aspect of the life of their nearly 10,000 followers, including their assets and their homes. Their possessions belong to the United Effort Plan Communal Trust, [music] an organization that grows to be worth many millions of dollars.
So, that meant that individual people really did not own their property but the trust, the FLDS owned their property. Again, it’s another way of, you know, maintaining control over people. There’s corporations that are basically FLDS controlled that have made There’s some one company that has made a fortune in the aerospace, finely precision machinery.
You know, they’re These are They’re not stupid business people. They They know how to make a buck. They work hard. Construction proves to be the fundamentalists most profitable business. Not only within their own community, but with large-scale projects. They secure these lucrative contracts by dramatically underbidding their competitors.
They gain their competitive advantage by using unpaid laborers. Boys as young as 12 years old. We’ve had a lot of boys, young boys die working on huge construction projects. Running huge equipment. Another source of income is the skillful abuse of the state and federal welfare systems, which are taxpayer-funded.
It’s a practice that the community calls bleeding the beast. With this many wives, the first wife was not entitled to food stamps or welfare, but all the second and third and subsequent wives would be. And they would be collecting >> [music] >> food stamps and welfare for the the numerous children that they gain.
Law enforcement grants, they get city grants, they get trans- [music] um highway department grants. As a matter of fact, after 9/11, Colorado City and the FLDS received the third largest homeland security grant in the [music] state of Arizona. They have made a lot of money and all of that sort of goes into the the church kitty run by the prophet.
But perhaps the Jeffs’ most valuable asset are the women they control in a polygamous society. The number of wives is seen as a status symbol for men. >> [music] >> It is said, “He who bestows them has the community in his hands.” The women could only be married to people that were approved by the leadership. That had been done by Rulon Jeffs.
That had been the way their community had been run. Young women have no voice in who they are going to marry. And many become wives and mothers in their teens, long before reaching adulthood. People go by what the leader [music] is acting like. Like, who do they think he’s going to partner you up with? Instead of teasing you about like, you like so-and-so.
Despite the oppressive control, Rulon Jeffs remains a revered living prophet protected by his followers who help keep their community closed to the outside world. We’re not going to have the camera on in here. Are you a police officer? No. Private property. Are you his private security? You’re not welcome.
At one time, the FLDS controlled Colorado City and Hildale completely. It was like a fiefdom carved out of two states in which all public funds, the police department, the mayor’s office, all government, the schools, everything was controlled by the FLDS. Meanwhile, Warren Jeffs continues his most obscene and sadistic activities.
He’s a pedophile. He was raping children long before anyone knew about it. And he raped his own children, including his own son, who couldn’t live with the memory of what his father did to him, and he killed himself. On August 8th, 1998, a stroke [music] renders the aging Rulon incapable of ruling over the FLDS.
>> [music] >> Warren Jeffs steps in as the acting president of the church. I only remember Warren Jeffs >> [music] >> basically being in the church. I mean, he tried to say his father was in charge. He tried to use his father’s words, but his father was handicapped kind of. Warren Jeffs is now perfectly positioned to take over the full leadership of the FLDS.
He redefines much of the church literature and restructures the school’s curriculum. He institutes the new edict supposedly on behalf of his father. In 1986, Rulon Jeffs is nominated to be president of the priesthood, of the fundamentalist circle of friends, [music] assuming the power of the prophet. Lurking in his shadow is his son, Warren Steed Jeffs.
After Rulon suffers a stroke, Warren restructures the leadership of the FLDS to solidify himself as a sole authoritarian ruler. The FLDS was not a good community. It was extremely authoritarian, very controlling, very harsh on women, very harsh on children. Uh it depended in large part on child labor. Through the United Effort Plan, the UEP, controlled all the property, all the housing.
There was nothing that the Jeffs family did not control. Then in 2002, Rulon Jeffs passes away. I’ll never forget the day. Uh we went up to Colorado City. It was cold and overcast and they were It was the funeral for Rulon Jeffs, their ruler, the guy, the prophet, Warren’s father, who had uh been the leader for 18, 20 years. And uh and there was big, about 6,000 people showed up in that little town.
They buried him. It’s a loss, but uh it’s uh will be continued on. The watchword is to carry on. Everyone seems very much at peace. Within weeks, Warren Jeffs officially assumes the power of the prophet and the presidency. A new era of the church begins. Rulon Jeffs, arguably, was a much more reasonable ruler than his son, Warren.
And Warren Jeffs became the end of the FLDS as it was known because he was so disruptive. So, bad became good and good became bad. And it was so fast. Like, he did it within a few years. He had [music] reversed so many things at a consistent rate. Protected by security inside a walled compound, he lives with his numerous wives.
The count skyrockets after he marries many of his own father’s widows. Jeffs quickly issues edicts aimed to further restrict freedom of movement and thought, always using the argument that God commands these decisions. We live in such a wicked day. The people on this land of America are an adulterous generation. We do not want to be like them.
The prophets have declared, “I’d rather have my son or daughter in the grave than commit sins of immorality.” They didn’t have any education because Warren Jeffs had banned the internet. He banned television. He banned movies. He got rid of all the dogs. There were no pets to be seen. Everybody It was very quiet.
You might see these giant oversized trampolines, but sports were banished, too. Basketball. He even finds ways to profit financially while increasing his [music] mind control over the community. Warren pulled all of the FLDS kids out of public school and insisted on homeschooling. So, suddenly you have these these schools that used to have hundreds of kids.
Now, they got a handful of kids who are not FLDS are still being run by the FLDS community and they bankrupted the school. Well, I think the invitation from the church to strengthen the home schools and the private schools had a very significant impact. It’s a cult. All those children up there are out of public schools and they’re not being educated.
[music] I wish the children to be educated. I wish them to leave the girls alone and the boys alone till they’re [music] 18 years old before they pick on them for marriage. Meanwhile, tax money pours into a virtually empty school, eventually ending up in the pocket of Warren Jeffs. Jeffs uses this money to expand his loyal entourage, and also indulge in activities that run counter to his own preaching.
He was out traveling around and >> [music] >> partying. He was going to New Orleans to Mardi Gras and going to strip clubs and all kinds of things like that because God wanted him to to witness the wicked world. And like all dictators, there comes a time when Warren Jeffs feels the need to assert his power and excommunicate anyone whom he believes may threaten his authority.
They’re excommunicated from the church. They have to walk away from the homes they built. They have to leave the wives, multiple wives, and usually dozens of children. Warren Jeffs wields the power because all the homes, businesses, and other assets of the followers belongs to the United Effort Plan, and the UEP is controlled by him. Women and children are also considered church property.
One of these followers, Ross Chatwin, resists Jeffs commands [music] and refuses to leave the town and his family. My family and I do not plan on leaving our home anytime soon. I am pleased to report that my wife has committed to stay by my side regardless of Jeffs commandments to leave me. But for others, >> [music] >> this would mean the beginning of the end of their families, as well as isolation from the community.
One man named Richard Holm, he’d given millions of dollars to the FLDS. He’s very successful businessman. You know, Warren came to him and said essentially, you know, you’re a sinner and you need to repent for your sins. Go away and write down your sins and then you send me what they are and I’ll consider letting you back in.
While he’s doing that, Warren is taking his multiple wives and children and giving them to other men, assigning them to other men. Over time, the number of available adult single women decreases. This leads to more instances [music] of child brides, as well as the dramatic rise in teenage pregnancies. Women start to be seen as a valuable commodity as the unbalance between the number of girls and boys leads to fierce competition between the younger males.
And only the most loyal boys, the ones that are shown that they can be more loyal to the prophet than to their own families, those are the only ones that are allowed to stay. Hundreds of boys, age 13 and above, have fled or been expelled from this society and at the demand of its fanatical prophet leader, Warren Jeffs.
To avoid future competition for wives and also a potential threat to his authority, Warren Jeffs has to suppress the male population. He expels many of the community’s young men after using them as slaves [music] for a good part of their youth. When they reach their teens, he declares them as degenerate for reasons like watching a film or listening to music.
Families must choose between the prophet and their own blood. Many of the FLDS members, and especially the [music] women, feel like hostages trapped in the powerful grip of Warren Jeffs. >> There were all kinds of mechanisms [music] to keep women in line. If they start to raise hell, they could put them in mental institutions and they had a cozy relationship with a couple mental institutions, [music] so they could put women who cause trouble into one of these mental institutions, then have them diagnosed as crazy, so if they ever went back,
they could never get their kids. The local authorities are not an option these victims can call upon. What I got from them is that they’re trying to communicate to me that I don’t have the right to go in there and make a complaint about the fact that my daughter could be being raped right now by a 39-year-old man.
>> [music] >> Members of the FLDS also work within local law enforcement. Being polygamous themselves, they have been instrumental in keeping the local community practices away from the state authorities. [music] Is there a pattern of girls being married in this town? 15, 16-year-old girls being married to older men? I understand many of the law officers have young wives.
Well, I’m not going to comment on that. That’s personal business and and do you talk about your personal business? I don’t I’m I’m not married to teenage girls. Neither are mine. Okay, are any of your officers? >> No, they are not that I know of. >> none of the law officers in this town are married >> Actually, I’ll make no comment on that, okay? It’s none of your business.
They sent men out to become law enforcement certified. The problem with that is these people don’t adhere to the law of the land. They adhere to God’s law, which is the rule rules of the prophet. My understanding is that you are a sworn police officer Done. in both the state of Utah I have no comment. >> and the state of Arizona and that you have teenage brides and perhaps impregnated this young woman when it would be a statutory rape.
We don’t have anything to say except to the court. With complete control over the FLDS and its community, Warren Jeffs rules like an authoritarian dictator, protecting his most loyal followers and terrorizing those who fall from the ranks of his privileged elite. I think he likes pain, like seeing people [music] go through pain.
He likes to take away their hope really slowly. So, he had tactics like [music] he would find out what you really wanted and just like take it away from you in little tiny pieces. It was torture. [music] Whatever sort of psychological diagnosis he suggested, mean bully who found a convenient way to get power, >> [music] >> not because he’s a charismatic, good-looking great orator, because he’s a conniving little who went on the coattails [music] of his father, seized power, and realized, “I can get away with whatever I want.” How
long will Warren Jeffs be able to maintain his authoritarian rule in public and his sadistic perversity in private? How long will his victims tolerate his brutality? [music] After years of operating in his father’s shadow, upon the death of his father, Rulon, Warren Jeffs seizes control of the FLDS. This begins a new age of absolute dictatorship over the fundamentalist community.
Stricter and more extreme rules limit the freedom of movement, thought, and choice. Those who Warren Jeffs perceives as a threat to his authority are expelled from the church. They are forced to leave behind their families and the homes they built. People in the twin towns of Colorado City and Hildale live under the rule of an undisputed leader and his loyal followers.
He has absolute control over these people. He really does. This is a new leader, and if he was to ask for violence, there’s undoubtedly that’s what he would get. But an underground rebellion begins to take shape among former members of the FLDS. You had a number of women who had escaped and gotten out.
Flora Jessop, Penny Peterson, a couple of women I can you know names that I should be enshrined in history. Women who had gotten out and they were not going to take [music] it anymore. I started this knowing that there were the abuses going on. But uh nobody was really telling the deep story. I was 14 years old.
They come told me I was going to marry a man 48 years old. I was going to be his fifth wife. Um I didn’t want to do it. I ran. Fast and as hard as I can go. Some of the women who escaped organized an underground railroad to support other women and young boys desperate to flee the church. And then came back and started fighting for my siblings when my 14-year-old baby sister was forced to marry her stepbrother.
And raped so brutally on her wedding night that she nearly died from the [music] hemorrhaging. And that began my fight to take them down. Somebody had to be the one who stood [music] up on the front lines and took the hits. And I accepted the choice knowing that I was not going to be able to have a relationship with my mom >> [music] >> and my brothers and sisters.
I say the crimes that are committed here that the state and law enforcement should address are such things as statutory rape. Does that happen here? >> Oh definitely. These These plural wives, none of them are legally married. They’re all And are some of them younger than 16? Yes, some of them are. And they marry first cousins? Oh definitely.
A lot closer. They have aunts marrying nephews and and and uncles marrying nieces. That close. That’s quite prevalent. Yet the prosecutors encounter a persistent problem. Court date would be set, women wouldn’t show up. They were too afraid to testify, to come into court and testify. They knew if they did, Warren would tear apart their families or do something to them.
But accessory to rape isn’t the only possible charge against Jeffs in his community. Like many other congregations, the FLDS has a long history of fraudulently receiving government benefits. And very often it is because people who create cults also like not paying taxes. And if you create a 501c3 religious nonprofit, no property tax, no taxes on contributions, less accountability.
As authorities seek to charge Jeffs with crimes ranging from conspiracy to commit sexual misconduct with a minor to tax and welfare fraud, he decides to flee the area. He establishes a new secret commune in the town of Eldorado, Texas. This new ranch, where some of the most prominent FLDS families move, is named Yearning for Zion.
After the dedication of the ranch’s new temple on January 1st, 2005, Warren Jeffs goes on the run again. There were people scattered all throughout the West that were in cahoots with Warren Jeffs to keep him underground and not found. They traveled a lot at night for one thing. I mean, he would, you know, he would have a car in Colorado, for example, and then they would drop off the car maybe in Utah, they would pick up another car.
While on the move, Warren Jeffs shows up at member gatherings to lead services and conduct marriages. Some involve child brides in secluded chapels. He moved some of his wives to various states. At the same time, he takes new brides. Briell Decker will become his 65th wife. Well, I don’t remember registering that he was on the run until after the ceremony.
>> [music] >> Remember when he was talking to my father when he was sending me back to his house. She can’t do all this stuff because I’m running from the law. I wasn’t able to wear my wedding dress. Like I didn’t I didn’t even have time to get it. My mother was not invited. My wedding was not anybody there except for who Warren Jeffs wanted there.
Which was he had to have three witnesses so he called in like two of his brothers and my father was a witness. Fearing they will be questioned by state authorities, Jeffs also relocates his children. By this time, the states of Utah and Arizona are offering $10,000 rewards for the capture of Warren Jeffs. Once the FBI gets involved, the reward balloons to $100,000.
Jeffs is placed on their most wanted list. So now everybody’s looking for Warren. It just so happens that uh uh a state trooper in Nevada just outside of Vegas sees this flashy burgundy Escalade racing down the freeway and can’t really see the plates very well. So he pulls it over. Uh and state trooper Eddie Dutcher made himself quite an arrest that night.
Inside the car, Dutcher finds Warren Jeffs, his brother Isaac, and one of his wives, Naomi. A search of the vehicle and driver’s computers, mobile phones, a GPS tracker, an assortment of disguises, including several wigs and sunglasses, and a stash of more than $50,000 in cash. When these items are pulled out of the car, Jeffs displays [music] no reaction.
You know, that he just stood along the side of the road and he was very quiet. And I think he was startled. I think he was absolutely stunned that you know, that he’d finally been caught. On August 28th, [music] 2006, after nearly 21 months on the run, the chase for one of America’s most wanted criminals finally ends.
Warren Jeffs had been brought up in this very enclosed society. So, and [music] and somewhat privileged and could do whatever he want without any kind of ramification. And now for the first time in his life, he was finally going to be in a situation that he did not control. In the early 2000s, a group of FLDS escapees create a secret network to help women and children flee the polygamist Mormon group.
Aided by reporter Mike Watkiss, authorities launch an investigation into the church and its leader Warren Jeffs. After being on the run as one of the FBI’s most wanted, Jeffs is finally arrested on the outskirts of Las Vegas. By early 2007, which is about four or five months following his arrest, he’s throwing himself against the walls, essentially trying to end his life uh because he’s in such misery.
He’s fasting. At one point, they have to take him out of there and take him to a hospital and try and, you know, build him back up. Warren Jeffs also makes a shocking confession to one of his followers. He tells him, you know, I’m not the prophet. I I’ve been I’m a wicked man. I I was never the prophet.
And he goes into this whole confession, basically renouncing everything that he has apparently stood for up until this time. Jeffs claims that before dying, his father Rulon told him that after [music] his death, William E. Jessop should take leadership of the FLDS. Instead of following his father’s orders, Warren Jeffs usurps the power of the president and the prophet.
Jeffs’ problems have only just begun. In 2007, Alyssa Wall, a former member who at age 14 had been forced into a marriage with her own cousin, becomes the first woman willing to come forward [music] and press charges against Jeffs. This trial has not been about religion or a vendetta.
It is simply about child abuse and preventing further abuse. The court finds [music] Warren Jeffs guilty of being an accomplice to rape. He is sentenced to 10 years in prison, but this is not the only charge leveled by authorities against Warren [music] Jeffs. On April 3rd, 2008, a woman identifying herself as Sarah makes a phone call to a domestic abuse hotline claiming to be a 16-year-old minor who is being abused by a 50-year-old man.
The crime is taking place inside the Yearning for Zion Ranch. The ranch was the new FLDS secret compound that Warren Jeffs dedicated in Eldorado, Texas, where part of the FLDS relocated and kept living according to their religion despite their prophet being in prison. And when the authorities became aware of that, they raided that compound and they took out 400 children.
The children are taken into custody by the Texas Child Protective Services and placed in foster care for several weeks. For the first couple of weeks that they had those children, they said that they were very quiet when they first got there. And then after about 2 weeks, they started playing and, you know, laughing a little bit and just started to act a little bit like kids.
But when the concerned biological parents demand that their children keep taking vitamins supplied by the FLDS, the foster care families notice something odd. And as soon as they started taking these vitamins, the family said these kids turned into zombies. Sat silently, didn’t move, didn’t participate, just sat there.
We don’t know what they were providing them with. There was no questions asked. Some foster families also suspect that many of these children are victims of sexual abuse. In the family that had the nine children, four of those children, those little boys, had been sodomized so badly that they had no bowel control.
This is the type of abuse that is very typical in [music] this community. In the end, authorities find out that the phone [music] call was made by Rosita Swinton, a woman who had a history of mental problems in making similar types of calls. Without a real witness, the case ends up being dropped. In ruling this way, the Third Court of Appeals has stood up for the legal rights of these families and given the mothers hope that their families will be brought back together very soon.
They gave all of those children back and those case workers have told me that they physically had to push children across the room while they begged them not to make them go back. Ironically, there’s an upside to this hoax call. During the raid, authorities discover a troubling case involving one of these children, 14-year-old Mary Ann Jessop.
Based upon the raid that that conducted at the ranch and the documents that were produced, and the photographs that came out of that, she was married to Warren Steed Jeffs at that age, again, obviously against the law. Besides the documentation, authorities also find shocking audio recordings filled with bizarre details.
That temple had an interesting little feature, big long bed. Warren’s a big tall man, and you know, I mean, basically he built himself a little rape bed right there in the temple, you know, all wide and supposedly ordained of God. He would take these little girls as his wives, and have his adult wives hold them down while he raped them and recorded it.
When the state of Texas brings Warren Jeffs and some of his closest followers to trial in 2011, these recordings serve as hard evidence. But during the course of that trial, they played for the jurors an audio tape that Warren had had recorded while he was in essence raping a 12-year-old girl, and you hear this guy’s creepy voice sort of grooming this child, and her child this meek little [music] voice of this this little girl as uh as uh Jeffs was raping her.
[music] With clear proof of his guilt, the judge and jury are merciless with Warren Jeffs. On August 9th, 2011, he’s sentenced to life in prison [music] plus 20 years. The state of Utah takes over the church-controlled United Effort Plan Trust, returning all its assets and property [music] to current and former members of the FLDS.
One of them is [music] Briell Decker, who left the church and started a new life. I applied for Warren Jeffs house >> [music] >> and was granted it. And I >> [music] >> had to find a buyer and so I it’s 45 rooms. I found a buyer and it is a worldwide organization called the Dream Center. Warren Jeffs [music] former house, once a symbol of his authority, is transformed into the Short Creek Dream [music] Center.
It becomes a place to support the local community, including women and children who left the FLDS. I do work [music] there as an advisory board member. Difference between how dark it was to know how much hope there [music] is, how much freedom I have to choose and sort out what I want and all these options. >> [music] >> It’s a very empowering.
So, how has life changed in Colorado City and Hildale over the last several years? There’s been a real breath of change. They’ve got a wonderful new high school up there that I understand is doing very well. So, the community I think is doing pretty good, but you know, the faithful there’s still pockets of them up there. There will always be adherents to the religion and they’ve scattered off into new little compounds in South Dakota.
Despite being in prison, [music] Warren Jeffs still runs the FLDS from his cell in Texas. In 2011, he reasserted his position as prophet. So, who’s who’s leading it now? The group? Warren Jeffs is. I mean, his family, you know, his wives and his kids and his brothers, they all still suck up to him and they go in to see him regularly and he doesn’t seem [music] to have any problem getting messages out to his community.
I think he’s still running the show through the most part. >> Warren Jeff is the prophet of God. He was in the beginning from the time he was ordained to that office and he is now. Recorded sermons and written edicts keep reaching the community. These include his arranging marriages that his followers obey like they always did.
This is our religion. We love our religion. It is the people who follow him that have enabled him to become who he is. The parents need to be held accountable for the [music] crimes that have been committed against their children cuz they are the first line of defense that a child has and [music] every one of the mothers up there have failed that, including my own.
Warren Jeffs has left a dark traumatic legacy >> [music] >> and the consequences of his evil somehow seem to never end. >> There are so many people who have suffered under this man’s authority for so many years and many suicides, many people that have [music] have really suffered, especially the children. The pain is knowing that there’s still a lot of suffering in that community and the young women are still being abused and little boys are being exploited as slave labor and then kicked out of their families and
you know, to know that uh you want to put a stop to these kind of things and and as much as things have changed, I know that’s a lot of that’s still going on.
