Escape. Part 26

Most women who fled would willingly leave all their children behind, or just take the smaller ones and leave the older ones at home with the understanding that if they were allowed to take half their children, they wouldn't fight for the rest. I did know of one woman who got all of her children out, but when the FLDS came after her, she sent all of them back and relinquished custody. Another woman escaped with all of her children and won temporary custody. But then she died suddenly from a brain aneurysm in the grocery store and all of her children were sent back. We were told her death was sent from G.o.d as punishment.

I had made it further than any woman I'd ever known. If meeting with Merril was the next price I had to pay for our freedom, so be it.

I told Arthur I would meet his father in the produce section of Smith's the next morning. Arthur made all the arrangements and came with me. When we walked into the store, I was approached by one of the undercover police. He told me not to worry, I'd be safe.

Arthur lit into me. "What are you doing? You set a trap for my father!"

"Arthur, your father gave me no other option."

"I am not going to let you do this to my father," he said as he headed toward the entrance of the market to warn Merril.

Every nerve in my body was electrified.

When Merril walked into the store he met Arthur and the police. He was served with the protection order. Merril insisted he be allowed to speak. The police agreed under the condition that they be close by.

Merril kept his voice low. His eyes were on fire.

"What you have done is inexcusable," he said. "You'll never get away with this. If you know what's best for you, you'll stop right now."

I knew better than to argue with him. I let him rant.

He insisted that the custody case I filed in Utah would be thrown out of court or transferred to Arizona. "You'll never win because the children don't want to be with you. They all want to be with me. You have yourself in a position where you'll never see your children again."

I felt calm in the face of his wrath. I knew that more than anything else, he wanted to feel my fear. I would not give him that pleasure.

"Merril, I think a judge will look at this whole case and not just your side."

This made him even angrier.

"Carolyn, your very existence is on the line with the course you are pursuing."

"I would rather be dead than live one more day like I did for the last seventeen years."

I could see him stiffen. He attacked me for trapping him. "It's not very smart of you to play these games. I came here thinking you had enough character not to do something like this."

I didn't care how long he went on. The police were watching his tirade and finally told Merril he had had enough time.

"She's blown this all out of proportion. There's no reason for an order of protection," he said.

"You can make that case in court in two weeks," the officer said. "If it's not necessary, it will be removed."

Merril lashed at me again. "See what you've done! We can't talk to each other for two more weeks!"

I had no intention of ever speaking to him again. But I was concerned that he might succeed in getting the case transferred to Arizona.

Two weeks later Merril and I faced off again in a Salt Lake City courtroom. Merril had retained Rodney Parker, an attorney who had made his fortune defending the FLDS in court. Parker acted as though this was all a big joke, and maybe to him it was.

But I think I caught him off guard when he looked at me for the first time. I didn't look like some wack job. Women who fled the FLDS were always portrayed as totally insane and under the influence of the devil, and while Parker could tell I was scared, he also realized I wasn't crazy.

The judge read the complaint. I think she felt like the circus had just rolled into her courtroom and was unfurling its tents.

Rodney Parker argued that Arizona should have jurisdiction over this case. The judge corrected him and said that Arizona could release it to Utah and she would request that. Parker did not seem prepared for this. He started arguing about the order of protection.

My attorney made a motion to speak with the judge. He told her Merril had threatened me by saying my "existence was on the line" in front of three police officers standing nearby. Parker looked stricken and turned to Merril and started talking. He hated being unprepared in court, but Merril had obviously not been completely forthcoming with him.

A few days later I learned that my case would be heard in Utah. A big win.

Dan Fisher helped me get my children into public schools. (Bryson was too young and Betty and Arthur weren't emotionally ready.) We both thought that even if it was only for a few weeks, connecting with other children and wearing normal clothes would help normalize them. It also would help me gauge where they were academically and what grade would be appropriate for them come fall.

Betty and Arthur refused to give up their FLDS clothing. Betty was incensed that her siblings were going to dress in worldly ways and go to worldly schools. She interfered whenever possible. She was angry, argumentative, and mean to me. I finally asked my younger sister Karen to let her stay at her house. I couldn't handle the stress or problems Betty was creating for the rest of us. Karen was ten years younger than I and my full sister. She was in an arranged marriage but she and her husband both fled.

I felt that I was finally standing on solid ground-until my attorney told me that Merril should be allowed to have visiting rights with my children. I didn't like the idea, but Doug told me that Merril had rights as their father and if I kept him away, it could work against me in court. That might have been true in a more normal case, but in reality, Merril was a danger to my children. I should have pushed harder.

Doug White had been recommended by a group called Tapestry Against Polygamy. He had represented women pro bono in polygamy cases, but the stakes had not been nearly as high as in mine. Most of the women he'd worked with were from smaller polygamist communities that were afraid of the law. Often when these women fled, that was it. No one came after them. Those who ended up in court often found that the men didn't show up. Most of the cases he won, he won by default. But he had never handled a case like mine.

I later learned that White's view was that a man should always be allowed to see his children, no matter what he's done. If I'd known that at the time, I would have found another attorney.

Arrangements were made for Merril to see the children for an hour in a nearby park. My brother-in-law Robert agreed to supervise the visitation.

By now it had been six weeks since we'd escaped. One might think that since he was fighting so hard for custody, he might have spent some time with the children. But that was not the case. Merril never cared about our children. He cared about making an example out of me so other women didn't make a break for freedom the way I had.

Merril arrived at the park with Barbara. She pranced around the picnic table, seemingly delighted. Merril shouted at Robert for the entire hour, attacking him for his role in helping me settle into my new life. "If you knew what was good for you, you'd send her back right away and stop partic.i.p.ating in this nonsense," Merril said.

I was pus.h.i.+ng Harrison in his stroller and walking around the perimeter of the park with my sister Annette. "Barbara is thinking of all the ways she can punish you when she gets you back in her clutches," Annette said.

"She should save herself the time," I replied. "I'm never going to be under that b.i.t.c.h's power again."

Barbara was watching us walk around the park. I think she finally realized that she had no power over me anymore. "She can't stand it that you're so happy right now and she can't hurt your children," Annette said.

I realized she was right. Barbara couldn't hurt my children or me-not that day, not ever.

When Merril said goodbye to the children he told them to "stay faithful."

He didn't kiss or hug them, but he never had.

Several days later one of Dan's friends drove into his yard and saw several of my children playing. He stopped the car and asked ten-year-old Patrick how he was doing. Patrick's face lit up in a big smile. "We're living in h.e.l.l!" he replied automatically. His words said one thing, his smile another. Patrick, like my other kids, was having the time of his life. Leenie kept a cupboard full of cookies and snack foods. Her freezer was loaded with ice cream. The day we first arrived she said my children were welcome to help themselves anytime they were hungry. She also told them when they came over for a snack that they could give her a hug.

This was a gift Leenie gave both to my children and to me. I had to learn how to hug my children again after we escaped. In Merril Jessop's family, it was against the family laws to hug and kiss our children, so n.o.body did it. When Arthur was a baby, I hugged and kissed him constantly. But his older brothers and sisters taunted him about this until he started to cry. My hugging and kissing him was causing him so much pain, I stopped. When Betty was a small child, she would never allow me to hug or kiss her because she knew her other siblings would mock her.

It's hard to explain how routine an abnormal life can become. But over time, I simply stopped hugging and kissing my children. Of all my eight children, I probably held Harrison the most because when he was in a spasm it was one of the few things that helped. I held my children when I nursed them and felt the miracle of that bond, but once they became toddlers, our physical contact stopped. For a time that broke my heart, but then so much of life crushed down on top of me that this one loss got buried under the rubble and I never gave it much thought until Leenie told me how important it was to show affection to my children. Holding them again helped reconnect me to life in a tender way.

Dan and Leenie invited us to join them for a week in San Diego, where they had a beach house. My children had never seen the ocean and were excited at the thought. Betty refused to come with us because we were being so wicked and because we told her that she couldn't wear her FLDS clothing on the beach. So she stayed behind, but it was okay because she was actually doing better at Karen's house. It seemed to be a relief for her not to feel responsible for keeping all of her brothers and sisters in line with FLDS doctrine.

Dan arranged to have some of his family and friends who were coming on the trip take turns driving my family. That made it much easier on me. He even had someone to help me with Harrison. Dan's continual kindness to me was miraculous. When we got to San Diego we had two rooms in a hotel that was down the beach from Dan's home. The kitchenette was stocked with food, so I wouldn't have to shop. One of the rooms had a sliding gla.s.s door that opened directly onto the beach.

The moment we awakened, we put on our swimsuits and my kids raced through the soft sand to splash and play at the water's edge.

Merrilee and Bryson ran up and down the beach chasing sea gulls. They were still at that wondrous age when they believed that if they just ran a little faster they could wrap their arms around a big bird.

Bryson was almost two. He couldn't talk a lot, but one of the words he said very well was ducks ducks.

He toddled up and down the beach on his chubby legs, waving his arms and shouting, "Ducks, ducks, ducks."

Merrilee was busy building princess sand castles. She was just about to turn six and princesses were her new discovery. The week we escaped she watched a Cinderella Cinderella video for the first time. Merrilee watched it so many times that the tape finally broke. Everything in her life now revolved around being a princess. video for the first time. Merrilee watched it so many times that the tape finally broke. Everything in her life now revolved around being a princess.

Patrick and Andrew used their imaginations to build forts out of sand and play games on the beach. They were still scared of the water because in the FLDS you are not allowed to go near it. None of my children knew how to swim, so they'd only wade up to their knees.

I spent three relaxing days with my children on the beach and at the hotel. At night I'd go up to Dan and Leenie's beach house to be with the adults. It was wonderful to be able to drink wine, laugh, eat, and talk. I hadn't socialized like that before. Dan and Leenie brought a lot of their married children along on the trip, so their beach house was happy, noisy, and fun. Arthur, who was fifteen, and LuAnne, who was eleven, spent most of their time there with the older children. These were the most carefree days of childhood they'd ever had.

I had never known this kind of happiness was possible.

I Meet the Attorney General

Shortly after we returned from San Diego, Merrilee turned six and we had a princess birthday party for her. It was the first party she had ever had in her life.

Even though birthday celebrations were practically taboo in the FLDS, over the years I'd given my children small presents on the sly. When my older children-Arthur, Betty, and LuAnne-were young, I was able to get away with making them a birthday cake. But none of my kids had ever had a genuine birthday party that celebrated their being who they are. As the cult became more extremist, anything that even hinted at making someone feel special on his or her birthday became strictly off-limits. Even compliments were banned. Warren Jeffs taught that it was unacceptable to acknowledge compliments. A person had to rebuff the praise or say something like, "It's all because of my priesthood head."

Dan's wife, Leenie, had the same birthday as Merrilee, so the celebration was even more of a bash because it was for both of them. Their house was decorated with balloons and streamers. There were tables full of food and piles of presents. Jolene had found a princess gown among her children's Halloween costumes. Merrilee was ecstatic. This was unimaginable joy for her, and for my other children, too.

We all sang "Happy Birthday" before the candles were lit. One side of the white cake with pink frosting had candles for Leenie, the other for Merrilee.

My daughter was radiant and opened her presents in amazement. My children had never been in toy stores. The younger ones had been so stripped of worldly things such as dolls and stuffed animals that these presents were unbelievable not only because of what they were but also because Merrilee knew they were for her.

This was an unforgettable moment for me. My daughter was happy. Every adult in that room cherished her. I had never been able to experience what would be an ordinary joy to most families: a six-year-old's birthday party with family and friends. Laughter, singing, and silliness washed over me like a stream of love. I could simply enjoy watching my dear little girl get to be a fairy-tale princess. I was free to be happy. I could do things for and with my children that I'd never been allowed to do before in their lives.

Merril was furious when he learned about Merrilee's birthday party from Betty. He was unhappy because he did not have the power to prevent me from taking the children to San Diego. It was remarkable, though, to feel how much s.p.a.ce opened up inside me when I didn't have to fear Merril's punishment anymore. I was so accustomed to being afraid that I had no way of gauging how much of me that fear consumed.

For the first time in my life I could put my children to bed at night and know they were safe. No one could wake them up and make them go upstairs for prayers and then abuse them. I could feed them breakfast in the morning and not worry that later, when my back was turned, someone would punish them for eating.

Merrilee's birthday party opened my eyes to something I'd been trained not to do: have fun with my children. Every time I did something enjoyable with my children in Merril's family, I was criticized for it or told it had created a problem. This went on for seventeen years, whether I took my children to the park, baked cookies, or played games with them outside. I was conditioned to believe that if I did anything fun with them, I'd be made to pay and pay and pay. As the years went by, I ceased doing the things that would cause trouble.

But I was free now. I made myself do things with my children so I would learn how to break out of the cycle of fear that had been cemented around my soul.

Someone gave us some McDonald's dollars, and that, as simple as it sounds, was a challenge for me. I knew I could do it-no one was going to punish me for this-but I was still afraid. I had to keep telling myself, "Carolyn, it's okay, it's okay, you can do this."

We did it. We went to McDonald's. But when I got home I was a nervous wreck. My reaction shook me up. I put my kids to bed and stood in a hot shower to calm down. My body, my reflexes, and my instincts were all programmed for fear. I could not undo overnight the damage that had been done to my psyche over many years. The only way over was through-I knew that-but it was still debilitating and stressful. All I could do was face the fear and keep going.

But fear was still all around me. My family had to pay a price for my freedom. My sister Linda almost paid with her life. Someone in the community must have known I went to her house the night before I escaped and a.s.sumed she was in some way complicit.

Some weeks after my escape, she took her family hiking in a remote location in her truck. On her way there she lost her steering. This was surprising because she was driving slowly and the road was clear. Fortunately, she was able to maneuver her truck off the road without any of her five children being hurt. When the mechanic came he told her someone had tampered with the steering wheel.

I had to face off against Merril again in court in June. But his attorney was prepared this time and managed to deftly turn the tide against me with the help of the lawyer I thought was going to protect me.

The issue was custody. Merril's attorney presented him as the good and steady all-American guy on Father Knows Best. Father Knows Best. Yes, he had a lot of children, but he cared about them all. Yes, he had a lot of children, but he cared about them all.

The two attorneys asked the judge if they could meet to try to work out a deal. I didn't quite know why that was happening. The judge put a time limit on their meeting and the rest of us sat and waited.

When my attorney, Doug White, came back, he told me they'd reached a deal. I would get temporary custody, but Merril was going to get full visitation rights. The protective order would remain in place. Merril agreed to pay for counseling for his daughters-which he'd opposed-but only if the therapist was neutral about polygamy. In other words, the therapist was to be an advocate for the children and keep whatever feelings he or she had about polygamy out of the counseling sessions.

I felt blindsided. My attorney had rolled over and handed Merril nearly everything he'd demanded. I told Doug I didn't need as much protection as my children did. He said that I didn't have any grounds on which to prove Merril should not be allowed to see his children unsupervised.

"I have fought these cases before," my attorney said, "and men will work hard to get the right for visitation, then once they get it they drop the whole thing and never see the kids. It is not something that is worth fighting for because it really isn't an issue."

It was an issue to me-I felt we had been sold down the river. At the time I was unaware that I had the right to reject the deal my attorney made. I had lived so long without rights that I didn't understand the ones I now had.

The attorneys outlined their deal to the judge. She asked me if I was in agreement with this. I was in such a state of shock that I stood before her feeling numb and dazed. I had no idea I could converse with the judge, so I just said that yes, I agreed with the deal.

What I learned later was that the judge discounted my allegations of abuse against Merril because I agreed in court to let him have unsupervised visitations. This made me look like either a bad mother or a liar. My credibility was shattered. Legally, I could now lose my children.

A guardian ad litem was a.s.signed to this case, but that had the potential to work against me because at this point all my children were saying they wanted to return to Merril. They believed there would be terrible repercussions against them if they sided with me. They knew that in FLDS society their father held all the power, and in their eyes that made me powerless. I hadn't been allowed to parent them in a traditionally loving and nurturing way when I was living with Merril. They knew I was their mother, of course, but they had others.

When the first meeting with the guardian ad litem was a few days away, Merril pulled out all the stops. Two of his older daughters, Esther and Merrilyn, found a way to get onto Dan Fisher's property and find my Betty and LuAnne. They took them for a walk down the road and showed them how to give themselves hickies on their arms. Two days later when they met with the guardian ad litem they said the hickies were from my hitting them. The guardian knew it was a lie. I found out about this when Patrick and Andrew showed me how Betty had taught them to put hickies on themselves. She said that Esther had taught her how to do it on Merril's orders. He wanted all of the children to give themselves hickies and then tell the guardian ad litem that I was hurting them.

As the weeks wore on, I became distraught about what was happening in the custody case. I knew Merril would spend unlimited sums of money to destroy my credibility in court and convince a judge that I was an unfit mother-the only way he could win sole custody in Utah.

Dan Fisher was upset that my case was going so badly. He knew that unless I got a first-rate attorney, I would lose custody of my children. We looked at one of the major family law firms in town. The attorney we spoke with was blunt: the firm did not want to take on a cult. The FLDS had been in court before and won their cases by financially wearing out their opponents. "This cult will dump a million dollars into this case before they'll walk away from it," the attorney said. "Carolyn is a hole in the dike for them, and there is no way they will ever let her get these kids."

Dan said he'd pay my legal bills. But then we got a big break. Utah's attorney general, Mark Shurtleff, agreed to meet with me. I had been meeting regularly with the investigator from Shurtleff's office about the extremism and abuse that had taken hold in the FLDS. But Dan and I both felt the attorney general needed to become more actively involved. Now we had our chance.

Dan and his brother Shem came with me. I brought a two-page list summarizing the abuse that was occurring in the FLDS because of Warren Jeffs. I organized my thoughts and composed myself. I did not want Mark Shurtleff to think I was some insane woman who'd grabbed her children and fled in the middle of the night.

When I shook his hand I looked him directly in the eye and asked him how much time I had. "Thirty minutes," he said. We sat around a table in a conference room. Dan said we were here because of the human rights violations that were taking place within the FLDS community. He said he felt the attorney general's office had to intervene.

I began by giving each person at the table a copy of my two-page list of abuses. It delineated the numerous marriages I had witnessed among under-age girls and the emotional devastation this had caused. I described how women were taken from their husbands and arbitrarily given to other men.

I told how young boys were trained as spies to go into FLDS homes and report back to Warren. I explained how Warren had terrorized young children by having animals tortured to death in front of them. I told them about the day all the dogs were destroyed and how Warren taught that a society that treated animals humanely was corrupt and had turned away from G.o.d.

It was chilling to recount what had become routine in my life. I talked about the teenage boys who were kicked out of the cult, dumped on highways, and told never to return. In a polygamous culture, boys are disposable, I told the attorney general. Sometimes they'd be kicked out on trumped-up charges-exposure to CDs or movies or kissing a girl. More often than not, they'd simply be told one afternoon that they had to be gone the next morning. (Dan Fisher's foundation for these boys knows the names of four hundred who have been summarily expelled.) The attorney general was riveted. He asked me question after question, seeking more detail and specifics. We were there for well over thirty minutes; every so often he would ask his a.s.sistant to cancel his next appointment.

I explained that for seventeen years, I was married to one of the most powerful men in the FLDS community. I knew Warren Jeffs and how he behaved. He was consistent, predictable, and to my mind very dangerous.

Two and a half hours later, when our meeting was finished, Mark's aloof, professional demeanor had s.h.i.+fted to one of sheer outrage. He stood up and addressed everyone at the table.

"This situation is really serious, and it has the potential of becoming a ma.s.s suicide. We have got to pull more help in on this situation immediately. We need to collaborate with the state of Arizona and pull in the feds."

The meeting was ending and we hadn't even talked about my custody case. Dan jumped in and insisted we focus on it. I was the first woman who had ever taken the FLDS to court for custody of her children. Most of the time, if a woman left, she did so knowing she might not be able to get all her children out. The reality of abandoning some of her children was the price a woman had to be willing to pay for her freedom.

Dan told Shurtleff that Merril had hired one of the highest-paid attorneys in the state to fight me. Dan and I knew that if Merril could win his case against me, no woman would ever again try. A representative who was at the meeting from Child Protective Services agreed completely.

Shurtleff shook his head in disbelief. Then he said that my case was going to be a high-profile one and he would find an attorney smart enough to protect my children. He was true to his word and moved fast. A few days later he put me in touch with a former judge, Lisa Jones, who had done custody cases for years and knew family law inside and out. She was now working for a major law firm and agreed to take my case pro bono.