At fourteen with husband

Elissa Wall, who was central to Jeffs’ conviction, has now written a book. Were those teenagers sex slaves or was it religious freedom being expressed in an out of the mainstream way that should be respected? Here’s an earlier story on her. A lawyer opposes her book. And here’s an article on the book from the Salt Lake City paper with links to related articles. How much do you want to bet there will be more books on this? Juicy sex stuff = big profits.

Elissa Wall: Warren Jeffs’ FLDS Church and What I Left Behind

It’s hard to understand what it means to be in the FLDS unless you’ve lived there. It’s even harder to understand how little freedom there is for women to choose for themselves. For eighteen years of my life I was an FLDS member. I wore long pioneer style dresses, styled my hair in the FLDS up-do fashion, and I believed that Warren Jeffs was the prophet–the embodiment of God on earth. When I was fourteen years old, I, like many young FLDS girls, was forced by Jeffs to marry a man whom I did not want to wed. My husband to be was not a fifty-year-old man, he was my nineteen year old first cousin.

When I learned about my coming marriage, I did everything I could to stop it–even going to the top men in the church and begging them to give me just a few more years before marriage so that I could grow up. My pleading was met with rejection. They told me the marriage was God’s will; if I didn’t go through with it, I would be banished from my house and most likely from the FLDS. Worst of all though, I would lose my family.

A fourteen year old girl faced with that “choice” doesn’t really have one. After a week of pleading my case, I whispered “okay” when they asked me if I took this man to be my husband. What followed were the three most difficult years of my life, years spent stuck in this marriage that I did not want.