Welcome and Episode Introduction

Part 1 of 3 · Ep. 1652

John Dehlin [00:00:00] Hello, everyone, and welcome to another edition of Mormon Stories podcast. I am your host for today, John Dehlin, or one of your hosts. I am also joined today by the wonderful, brilliant, thoughtful Jen Camp. Hey, Jen.

Guest [00:00:13] Hi, everybody.

John Dehlin [00:00:15] Thanks for. And I should say, Jen, you are the kind of the producer on this one. You are the one that made this episode happen. So I'm calling you out. This would not be happening without you.

Guest [00:00:25] Well, I was super excited and really wanted to hear her story from her mouth. So I'm super excited about the podcast today.

John Dehlin [00:00:34] And now listeners and viewers are like, well, who is her?

Guest [00:00:36] Who is she?

John Dehlin [00:00:37] And we'll tell you today. We are here. We have in studio, Elissa Wall. Hey, Elissa, how are you?

Elissa Wall [00:00:45] Hello, John and Jen and audience. It is really awesome to be here with you.

John Dehlin [00:00:51] Yeah. And so for those who have no idea who Elissa Wall is, many of you will know or should know, because Elissa was featured on the recent Netflix documentary Keep Sweet about the life and history and the takedown of flds, or the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ Latter Day Saints prophet Warren Jeffs, who's now in federal prison. Elissa is important for many reasons, but she is probably known as one of the main, if not the main people who brought down Warren Jeffs or at least brought him to prison. And she's been on Oprah. She's been on countless media outlets over the years. She is also the author of an amazing book. Hold that book up, Elissa. The book is called Stolen Innocence. Read that. Read the subtitle there.

Elissa Wall [00:01:37] Yeah. Stolen Innocence. It was published in 2008. It's my story of growing up in a polygamous sect, becoming a teenage bride, and breaking free of Warren Jeffs.

John Dehlin [00:01:46] Yeah. So you're the woman that helped get Warren Jeffs into prison, is that right?

Elissa Wall [00:01:52] Yes, I am. It's always interesting to sit and listen to people talk about my accolades and how I arrived where I am, because there's always that voice inside of us that wants to downplay the role that we have played in our life and how it's impacted the world around them. And there's a part of me that still gets very humbled and incredibly grateful every time I realize how essential I've been in the journey of the flds, but more so within my life and the people that I care the most about.

John Dehlin [00:02:25] So, yeah. Yeah.

Elissa Wall [00:02:27] Thank you.

John Dehlin [00:02:28] Well, we're super honored to have you. Just to finish off reading your kind of bio, you are a dynamic woman with many roles including mom, entrepreneur, public speaker, advocate, and New York Times bestselling authority. As you mentioned your book Stolen Innocence was published in May 2008, detailing the events of your life in the FLDS cult, where you were forced to marry your second cousin at the age of 14 by Warren Jeffs. Since the publication of your book, you've spent the last decade reclaiming your story and sharing your journey of personal growth with those around you to make a lasting impact on people who have been abused. And you're currently living in Shore Creek, which is where all of this went down, which is in kind of southern Utah, northern Colorado. Where is it?

What Is Short Creek and the FLDS

Elissa Wall [00:03:14] Short Creek is just a term for both cities. It's Hildale, Utah, and Colorado City, Arizona. Because it's a town that actually exists right on the borderline. It splits the community right in half.

John Dehlin [00:03:23] And you're living there now. And one of your goals is to revitalize. You've even run for office there, right?

Elissa Wall [00:03:29] I have.

John Dehlin [00:03:30] One of your goals is to revitalize Short Creek.

Elissa Wall [00:03:33] Yes, definitely. I moved back to Short Creek in 2016. It was a pivotal year for a lot of shift that had been started many years ago. Putting Warren Jeffs in prison was just one little piece in the necessary foundation to create change. And over the years since Warren's conviction in 2008, it's been a process of how do we actually impact the people? How do we create ways for the community to evolve and to change? You know, it's one of those things they say you cut off the head of a monster, sometimes it grows back many a hydraulic in that process of preventing that as much as we possibly could.

Elissa Wall [00:04:10] And when I say we, I am really lucky to be in the ranks of a bevy of incredible, resilient individuals that are constantly trying to give back to the community we came from, which is just a fundamentalist, polygamous communities. And it's not just the flds. There's a lot of people from all different kinds of backgrounds like that that really want to see change and regrowth in the community as a whole.

John Dehlin [00:04:38] Yeah.

Elissa Wall [00:04:39] So to be in the ranks of that and to work right alongside with people like Shirley Draper and all different kinds of individuals is inspiring, sometimes intimidating, because we look around and you see the strength and the resilience that everyone displays every single day.

John Dehlin [00:04:58] But.

Elissa Wall [00:04:58] But when we realize that we're all just humans and we're just doing the very best we can, it reminds me of how important it is to continue to tell our stories and to share them with the world. With the recent release of the Netflix documentary, it was a reminder to me at how important Even my story is to the world at large. And to get to be here with you and to just dive deep with the story and to get that chance to. To say it from my own words. I think with the release of the book, it really was a beautiful way to encapsulate the beginning of my journey. And I was 21, 22 when the book came out. And today I sit here as a 36 year old woman and there's a lot of life that can be lived in a decade and a half.

John Dehlin [00:05:43] Yeah.

Elissa Wall [00:05:44] And I'm excited to share a lot of what most people haven't heard. Even the Netflix documentary itself didn't quite capture or cover when it comes to my personal story, but also the story of Short Creek.

John Dehlin [00:05:56] Yeah. So to the point of what you're doing now in Short Creek, we're going to be ending really talking a lot about how you want to start a new podcast, a new website, and you're going to be dedicating a lot of significant time to helping both shine a spotlight on these issues, but also to help the community learn and heal and grow. So stay tuned for the end where we're really going to be hitting that hard. And in the show notes, we'll be including all the good links. But you know, I've been interviewed by global media before too, a few times, and it just always strikes me how you can sit down with them for hours and hours and hours and maybe 10 minutes or 3 minutes or even 10 seconds will appear in whatever end product that they create.

John Dehlin [00:06:37] And so when Jen and I and Gerardo were watching Keep Sweet and we saw you, one of the things that came to us is when has Elissa ever been able to just tell her full story long form, start to finish, with high quality audio and video and it can just be, you know, unedited full story. So that's what I'm super excited about today. We're probably going to do it in either two or three parts. There's going to be your early years in the FLDS church growing up. That will either be part one or, or, you know, that that will be part of part one for sure.

John Dehlin [00:07:11] Then there's the part about bringing down Warren Jeffs and the court battles and all that. That will either be part of part one or it will be its own part two. And then a third section will be what's next, you know, healing and growing and then what you're trying to do and what we can learn from all this and how we can all do our part to help clean up the mess that was made. So those are the two or three parts that we're going to be covering today. We'll probably be covering them over multiple sections because we do long form here. So that's what you're in for. Buckle up for several hours of an amazing heart form. Felt inspiring story. Right, Jen?

Guest [00:07:51] So excited. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

John Dehlin [00:07:53] All righty, Lisa, so where should we begin? Is there any other disclaimer or setting intention? Is there anything else we need to do before we just dive into your. I don't want to. I don't know if we call it a Mormon story. Is this a Mormon story? Do you. Do you even when I say the word Mormon, do you even associate with that word or not?

Elissa Wall [00:08:10] Absolutely, because it was definitely a part of my life and it still is a part of my life in that so many people that I love and care about. We all come from a common denominator, even you and me, John, we share a common background. And there's beautiful aspects of commonality in that there's elements that we don't have to go overly explain to one another, and there's this deep connection that can come from that. But then where it kind of splits off is how each individual person has reconciled that background in their own lives and to see the delicious and unique ways that people have adapted in their world.

Elissa Wall [00:08:49] I'm really excited because my goal today here is to really to be in the seat with the listener and to get that opportunity to tell my story all the way through. Because as you said, I have worked really hard with all different kinds of media outlets to try and tell this story so that it could impact change. Because we live in a world where so much is accomplished with social change. Yes, there's the justice change that comes when you do use the court systems to stand up against tyranny of all kinds. It's long and arduous and sometimes it's forgotten by the change makers.

Guest [00:09:27] Right.

Elissa Wall [00:09:28] And being able to share your story, to claim the whole entire story, the vulnerable experience of what that claiming process is, but then how it shows up in the eyes of the audience and the ears of the audience. And I just tell all of you listening today, thank you for being on this ride with me. It's going to be a ride and there will be tears. And I hope that it resonates with you as a listener that those emotions that it brings up, I invite you to let it be because I am just like you. And remember, don't put me in a category all by myself. I come from A unique background. I have a unique story, but I'm really just like all the rest of us. And that is we're doing the very best we can with what we have. And it's always getting better because we're always getting better as individuals.

John Dehlin [00:10:15] Beautiful.

Elissa Wall [00:10:16] Thank you for being here.

John Dehlin [00:10:18] Beautiful. Okay, so you're okay being associated with the term Mormon, So I guess I'll say it. Where does your. Where does your Mormon story begin?

Born Into a Polygamous Family

Elissa Wall [00:10:27] My Mormon story. My Mormon story begins as a child. I was born into a polygamous family in the shoot break off group called the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. Now this is a fundamentalist polygamist sect that broke off from the mainstream Mormonism right around the time of John Taylor,

John Dehlin [00:10:50] who is the third prophet of the Church of Jesus Christ Latter Day Saints.

Elissa Wall [00:10:53] Right? Yes. And it really broke off because of the topic of polygamy.

John Dehlin [00:10:59] And it was at a time we're probably talking 1880s. Probably.

Elissa Wall [00:11:05] Great. I'm gonna default to you for history dates. Yeah, yeah, I can't. I'm a woman one. And I'm also a deep feeler. And so I describe life in feeling, not in details.

John Dehlin [00:11:16] Yeah, yeah, I'll do my best.

Elissa Wall [00:11:18] Me too.

Guest [00:11:18] Me too.

Elissa Wall [00:11:19] So you guys keep. You guys keep my historical facts. Great. And I always tell people, you know, when you're in the depths of a story, sometimes those really scrutinizing the details, you'll. You miss the point. It's.

John Dehlin [00:11:33] Yeah, yeah, totally. I was just. I was just trying to give our listeners and viewers kind of a sense of scaffolding. It looks like John Taylor was prophet from 1880 to 1887.

Elissa Wall [00:11:45] Yes.

John Dehlin [00:11:45] So that's when he was prophet. And you're saying there was the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints and then keep going around 1880. Ish.

Elissa Wall [00:11:54] Definitely. And it was after the manifesto that it really clinched this break off. And you know, we were told a very different history of the Mormon religion and the Mormon how it even came about than even, I think most mainstream Mormon believers or non believers now had. Like, we had very different perspectives of how our faith was even established here in this world.

John Dehlin [00:12:19] So. Yeah, so, like the story we all hear. Well, first of all, none of us were ever told that Joseph Smith practiced polygamy. That's. Believe it or not. We're in 2022 right now. Most Mormons prior to 2010, 2015, were never taught that Joseph Smith was a polygamist. We learned that because of the Internet. And then once we learned that Joseph Smith actually practiced polygamy. Then we learned that polygamy was practiced starting with Joseph Smith around 1833, 3, 34, but then he was killed. Brigham Young took over. They moved out to Utah.

John Dehlin [00:12:57] And that between 1834 and around 1890, the Mormon Church openly practiced polygamy. But then the federal government started persecuting them for practicing polygamy, putting our ancestors in jail, seizing their property. So that by 1890, when Wilford Woodruff, who was the successor of John Taylor, became president of the LDS Church, in the manifesto that you just mentioned, he declared to the world, we're going to stop practicing polygamy. We're not going to do it anymore. That was 1890. The manifesto was issued. Now the church kept practicing polygamy for another 15 years, secretly lying about it and hiding it. So a second manifesto had to be issued. So by like 1905, ish, the Mormon Church, and you know, give or take five or 10 years, the Mormon Church literally stopped. And that's the story we're told now. What's the story you were told?

Elissa Wall [00:13:54] I love it. I love to hear all of the different pieces. And I also tell people that it's all in the eyes of the perceiver. And I'm just one perceiver of the experience of the flds. And I was just one of the students sitting in. In history class as we got this rendition of what it was. But to kind of boil it all down, and there's lots of nuances, and to all of you beautiful flds, ex flds that are out there, we all have our own story and we all have our own perception, and I deeply respect that.

Polygamy, Joseph Smith, and FLDS Theology

Elissa Wall [00:14:24] But to, for, for us, the. The story of even Joseph Smith really centered around the idea of celestial marriage, which is the practice of polygamy. And that so much of the way we were, the history was weaved into this idea that Joseph SM was following the call of the Lord and the formulation of Mormonism in general, the establishing the Book of Mormon. But then as things came together, it was all in this idea to prepare the world for the fundamental, most important practice, which was the law of celestial marriage. And so for us, the whole entire history of Mormonism was built on this idea that it was all coming together so that when that was brought to this earth and dispensation, as it was told, that we would be prepared for it. And so the history of Mormonism and the Book of Mormon was all threaded around polygamy.

John Dehlin [00:15:19] You're basically saying Joseph Smith's defining culminating doctrine in theology.

Elissa Wall [00:15:25] Yes.

John Dehlin [00:15:26] Was eternal polygamy like that's like his crowning doctrinal achievement as God's prophet. That's your perspective.

Elissa Wall [00:15:34] Yes.

John Dehlin [00:15:35] Of his highest calling or purpose.

Elissa Wall [00:15:37] Definitely. And you also. For me, as a child, most of my historical training on Mormonism and even the depiction of when we would read the Book of Mormon and how it would be established in our life was always done by Warren Jeffs. So my whole life was through the lens of Warren Jeffs and his teachings, because I went to the religious school that the FLDS had here in Salt Lake in the Sandy area.

Elissa Wall [00:16:06] And when we would go through all of this, as he would teach Mormon history, it was always through his lens and it was always motivated from his angle. And I tell people that all the time, because it didn't make it wrong or correct. It was just from that angle of it. But yes, to put it into a simple form, that was the purpose of Mormonism in general. That was even the purpose of the Book of Mormon was this crowning central tenant of eternal polygamy as it went on. That was even for us, why Joseph Smith was murdered and martyred was because of this very important belief around polygamy.

Elissa Wall [00:16:48] You know, there was people with even in the church that didn't agree with it and it was weaved to us in this way was that's why then the Brigham group came across the plains, is because they were trying to continue that practice. They were following in the true and everlasting way, whereas other people were false prophets or other people were distracted from the true power of God. And why it had returned to this dispensation as we move forward in it. Why the church broke off from polygamy was also weaved and spun to us in the same way. This was the devil and this was the outside apostates trying to once again eliminate the true and everlasting practice.

Elissa Wall [00:17:33] And so the manifesto and all of these other things that was always spun to us is that was the evil spirits. That was these. These good men being put under the influence of false prophet ship.

John Dehlin [00:17:46] So Wilford Woodruff issuing the manifesto, and he was a false prophet kind of falling astray.

Elissa Wall [00:17:52] Yes, he was the classic example of falling astray.

John Dehlin [00:17:55] So you mentioned John Taylor, who came right before Wilford Woodruff.

Guest [00:17:58] He.

John Dehlin [00:17:59] He kind of represents the beginning of the FLDS branch.

Elissa Wall [00:18:02] Absolutely. He represents that the last point where the prophet was truly called of God and did not fall astray. And then that's where it breaks off into John, my Barlow, and tell us

John Dehlin [00:18:14] that if you can tell us briefly

Elissa Wall [00:18:16] that story yeah, it. With the church starting to really question the practice of polygamy as, as Utah became a terror, went from a territory to a state, you know, we, we know all the nuances of the reasons why the church ultimately chose to abandon polygamy and all that played into it. But for the people that originally established the flds, which was originally called, referred to as the work, they were already practicing polygamous families. And a lot of the background that every family has was, was that they firmly believed in it and they were unwilling to abandon the practice. They were unwilling to abandon their families.

Elissa Wall [00:19:01] They were also unwilling to live a life that didn't allow their children to practice it. And that's where they started to go to more of a Candlestein meetings. And it was quite small over the history of the flds. And I'm condensing it a lot. And so I invite people to explore the history deeper if they want all of the details along the way. Then you had a congregation that kind of started in the Salt Lake area

John Dehlin [00:19:30] and you get the sense that Taylor himself sanctioned the beginning of the FLDS church or the work. Isn't there a letter that was written that's. And I don't expect you to kind of know all this history cold, but

Elissa Wall [00:19:44] there's definitely parts of that. But that's where we got the version that was told to us inside. But absolutely that John Taylor was the one that had a revelation about this. He was the one that ultimately ordained John my Barlow, which was the next one from there. And oh, excuse me, John Woolley. Excuse me, I'm getting my, my historical reference. The next prophet within the FLDS line after was John Woolley. And, and so each one of them have their claim to why they held the power.

John Dehlin [00:20:10] And basically Taylor said, listen, the formal church, according to the legend, John Taylor said, okay, the, the big church has to get. Stop practicing polygamy. We're going to stop, but the work needs to continue because this is what Joseph Smith was all about. So I, John Taylor, Mormon prophet, I'm going to sanction this splinter group to unofficially, officially carry on the work. And that's, that's according to your beliefs, where it all began. And I think there's credible, I think there's credible history that backs up the possibility that this really happened.

Elissa Wall [00:20:44] I would agree with you completely. And you have all kinds of references to it. And I believe every fundamentalist group from Mormon background, they all kind of share that same split point and why they sanction themselves as the work for the flds that's really what they believed is they were the work, which is why they called themselves the work. And it was easy for them to attract other people that were also a little bit. They were very concerned about what direction mainstream Mormonism was going by abandoning such a central tenant of what they believed. Now, this is for all the Brighamite side of things. You know, we hear a very different story from anyone who didn't follow that, that line.

Elissa Wall [00:21:25] For the original group of people that started to establish Short Creek, they were an offshoot of this. And as the persecution around polygamy got more intense and people felt more like they were no longer welcome in society, it started to drive it underground. And you had a group of the people that were following the work, or later the flds, that decided to start to establish communities outside of everything, you know, to leave the Salt Lake areas and to go into areas where they could completely and openly practice it. You had groups that were going down into Mexico, and you had groups that were establishing themselves in parts of southern British Columbia and Canada.

Elissa Wall [00:22:06] And ultimately they kind of coagulated together to what would form the flds. And so that when I came along and I was born in 1986, the prophet was Leroy S. Johnson, and him and his family and a few other families had homesteaded the Short Creek area, which would later be known as Hildale, Utah, and Colorado City, Arizona.

Elissa Wall [00:22:31] If you talk to so many people who have an understanding of life prior to Warren Jeffs, because that's really what my story highlights is the rise and fall of Warren Jeffs, because I had a front row seat to that. But there was a lot of history and a lot of life that happened prior to that. And even for my own family, my dad converted into the flds. Oh, yes. He was a mainstream Mormon believer, and he converted into it because actually his wife had her family convert into it. And his goal with even exploring it was he was trying to prove them wrong. But ultimately, as he explored the work more specifically, at the time when leroy S.

Elissa Wall [00:23:17] Johnson was the prophet and leader of the flds, he really began to be called to the way of life because it answered a lot of the questions that he had even in the mainstream Mormon Church, because like a lot of other people, you would read some of the doctrine and there would be more questions than answers. And he felt like that the movement of the work and what Johnson was doing fell a lot more in alignment with his belief and his testimony of Joseph Smith and what Joseph Smith established.

John Dehlin [00:23:52] Yeah. Oh, go ahead.

Guest [00:23:54] I have a question. In the flds, do you feel like or were you taught that you. You are the mainstream Mormon and we're kind of the offshoot, like the mainstream LDS churches. The is the offshoot and you guys were always on the path.

Elissa Wall [00:24:10] Absolutely. I think that was the unique aspect of it growing up for me. I definitely identified as Mormon, but we had a heavy dose of elitism and that was we were the one and only way. Like, we were truly the true and everlasting church at that point. And the mainstream Mormonism and even other breakoff groups, because even from the work or the line of John Woolley and John Y. Barlow and the Roy S. Johnson, they had different breakoffs that happened within the work itself, where people would disagree with some of the practices and the way that revelations were coming from God, which we saw that happen in the late 80s when you had a group of people break off from the flds that were later known as Centennial park, and they continued their own idea of what the work was versus what Rulon Jeffs, who was the next successor after leroy S.

Elissa Wall [00:25:06] Johnson, what he started to do. So you see this very fascinating spider web of how it all kind of came from this root of Joseph Smith and then it spiraled out from there. And everyone has their own depiction of what it is, and we still see that happening to this day.

John Dehlin [00:25:23] Yeah, yeah. There's an episode I did early on in Mormon Stories. The very first video I ever recorded on Mormon Stories was with Ann Wilde.

Elissa Wall [00:25:31] Oh, yes.

John Dehlin [00:25:32] She was the first Mormon Stories video. And she tells the story of how she converted to fundamentalism from mainstream Mormonism. She actually stayed active in her Salt Lake City East Bench Mormon ward as a polygamist, but just still raising her kids in the church even though she was practicing polygamy. But you know, what you talk about with your dad and your mom is this idea that the Mormon Church, sure, they claimed to stop polygamy in 1890, but they didn't change the doctrine. So DNC 132 still calls polygamy the new and everlasting covenant to this day in 2022. And we've covered that in our recent episodes with Sandra Tanner.

John Dehlin [00:26:14] But if you go back and read the statements of Joseph Smith, the statements of Brigham Young, John Taylor, Wilford Woodruff, the Journal of Discourses, which were recordings of General Conference talks by early Mormon prophets, seers and revelators, they say things like, polygamy will never be taken from the earth. You can't get to the highest degree of the celestial kingdom without polygamy. You know, you have to have at least three wives to be able to make the celestial kingdom, that sort of thing.

John Dehlin [00:26:38] And then again, it's called, in the current version of the Doctrine and Covenants, in the current Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, it's called the New and Everlasting Covenant. And so if I'm your dad or I'm your mom, if I'm raised Mormon in the 1980s, let's just say, or the 1990s, and I just really want to learn my Mormon history, I start reading these things and, and saying, wait a minute, it was never supposed to be taken away. I want to get to Celestial Kingdom. But, but Brigham Young or whoever's saying, the only way I'll get to Celestial Kingdom is if I start living the principle.

John Dehlin [00:27:12] And so it's a natural. And Ann Wilde story talks about this, but it's just this natural gravity that's been happening for a hundred, 100, over 100 years, where mainstream LDS Church members start studying the history and then get pulled towards fundamentalism or living the principle. Because that's, it's, it's safe to argue that is the true Mormonism, because that's the Mormon. It's the Mormonism you could argue Joseph Smith died for. And that's legitimate. That's not just your spin. We all know now that Joseph was put in Carthage jail primarily for covering up the polygamy he was practicing and trying to hide. So it's, it's 100% legitimate for a Mormon to start looking back to fundamentalism if they're trying to live true Mormonism.

Elissa Wall [00:27:58] I would completely agree with you on that. And in talking with my father now and realizing where his journey came, because I think one of the things that I've ran into, even with the way that I've shared my story with, I've written my book, and even the topic of Warren Jeffs, like, it brought it to an extreme version, and it's bringing it back down to ground level, where we remind people these were good people. They didn't just wake up one day and decide to start a cult that became an extreme version of something.

John Dehlin [00:28:26] Or like sex fiends that are just to sleep with everybody.

Elissa Wall [00:28:29] Not at all. It was, it was good people that were really trying to follow what they believed was a fundamental aspect of Joseph Smith.

John Dehlin [00:28:37] Yeah.

Elissa Wall [00:28:37] And that's where we always, like, every home had a picture of Joseph Smith, and every home had a whole succession of prophets. And yes, you saw the point where it broke off from Mormon, the Mormon lineage of their prophetship, the mainstream Mormon line of prophetship and ours began. But we always, we always believed that we were the true and everlasting. We were the few key holders to all of it and that everybody else was apostates or Gentiles. That was the three categories. There was us, the Hevelds, there was apostates and then there were Gentiles. For me growing up, even though I didn't understand a lot of this history around the nuances of how it was just always this they became, they were led astray by the evil spirits.

John Dehlin [00:29:24] The apostates.

Elissa Wall [00:29:25] The apostates, the Mormon. The mainstream Mormon Church was led astray. And in that process, they were trying to root out anyone else that believed the true way because they had been completely taken over by Satan and false prophets. And so that's why we lived so secretive from my, throughout my entire life. And you saw that in the beginning of the history of the work was it was very secretive for a lot of people. If you look back on anyone that continued to live polygamy, there was a time frame in the history where it was very scary.

John Dehlin [00:29:57] The raids.

Elissa Wall [00:29:58] Right, the raids.

John Dehlin [00:29:59] You want to talk about the raids

Elissa Wall [00:30:00] really quick, we can. But even prior to the raids for people, I think that's why they gravitated towards the work on the flds is because they saw it as a way to stay safer in numbers. Instead of just one family trying to continue to live polygamy, more of them coming together to become self sufficient and take care of each other would make the chances of them being able to survive that far better.

Elissa Wall [00:30:24] Within my own family, looking back on my mother's, where she came from, she was a multi generational polygamist. Her family lived it, her mother lived it, and you see it go back all the way. And so when my family came together, on one hand you had my dad and his first wife who were converts and had lived the mainstream Mormonism. They were college educated. And then you had my mother, who was a multi generational child of the work and was heavily indoctrinated in it and lived. That was the only way to live, was what was being taught to us.

Elissa Wall [00:31:03] It created a unique aspect because as the children came along within my family, we had different perspectives, even if they were subconsciously given to us. You had my dad, who had an outside world perspective, and then you had my mom, who had followed the line of perspective of being very afraid of authorities and how it had to be secretive.

Elissa Wall [00:31:26] So as a child of that mashup, it's really easy for me to see where My ideas came from and also where our fears or our allegiances came and how that played into my life story as time goes on.

John Dehlin [00:31:42] Beautiful. If you don't mind, tell us about the Short Creek raids just because I think it's a really important milestone in the history that help us understand how the laws and law enforcement absolutely have had to try and figure out, well realized how problematic it was to try and enforce the laws on people living polygamy.

The Short Creek Raids and Early FLDS History

Guest [00:32:02] When did the raids happen compared to your story? Okay, so way before you were born much.

Elissa Wall [00:32:08] Yes, definitely before I was born. But the raids, the 1953 raid is kind of. It's a pinpoint of an accumulation of a lot of interest that was being had upon fundamentalist groups that were continuing to practice polygamy prior to even the 1953 raid. We had a rich history from many different families of fathers that went to prison because they continued to practice polygamies and how their families were driven deep underground. And we would hear what we would consider be faith promoting stories throughout our entire life of women that continued to believe and continued to practice it even when their husbands were in prison for polygamy.

Elissa Wall [00:32:50] This all kind of accumulated because in 1953, if you zoom back to that time, the Short Creek area was growing. There was quite a collection of people that were gathering to further the work, as it was told to us.

Elissa Wall [00:33:08] And everyone was in this pursuit of living in polygamy at the time. It was rough living, it was very difficult living. They were out in the desert, very far away from a lot of other civilization. And it was true homestead way of living. And the more people that came together, the easier it began began to be for them to be able to survive there. You also had new families that were converting into the area and coming in. And there was a lot of young girls that were still being. That were being married at that time.

Elissa Wall [00:33:40] A lot of it was out of necessity because for families to continue to survive, the girls, everyone needed to be a part of creating this community. And so there was a long history of polygamy and underage marriage in the practice of polygamy. I think it's been that way back, dating all the way to Joseph Smith, as we hear stories of him marrying very young girls. And it's just continued all the way through the FLDS history.

John Dehlin [00:34:09] So the raids. What? Yeah, so.

Elissa Wall [00:34:12] So the raids. The 1953 raids was accumulation of the Arizona agencies who were trying to root out the practice of polygamy. Utah had long taken a stance for many years where they weren't actively prosecuting polygamists. And it was beginning, beginning, beginning to be very politically sticky for people to touch the topic of polygamy and the 1953 raid on the Arizona side of Short Creek. Then the morning of the raid, the people had gathered into the area because they had some notice that the authorities were coming.

Elissa Wall [00:34:54] And at the time, the FLDS prophet was Leroy S. Johnson. And he really, everything that I've heard of him, he really was a truly good man, and he cared deeply for his flock and community that he had been building. But he called all the people together and they decided to do something unique. And that was they were going to face it with their shoulders held high and take on this acknowledgement that they, yes, they lived polygamy. So we would hear these great stories of all the people coming together in a schoolhouse there in the Short Creek area. And they were. They were listening as the sirens of the police were getting closer and closer, closer to the town.

Elissa Wall [00:35:40] But what had motivated the 53 raid was there was concern of polygamy being practiced in Arizona by this group. And the governor at the time was utilizing that. It was underage girls that were being married into it as the motivator as to why they had to go in there and save the children. And that was condensing the motivation behind it. But they had every agency involved, they had child protective services involved at the time, they had the police. And the governor's ambition was to root it out once and for all.

Elissa Wall [00:36:11] So the people of the FLDS at the time, those of them that were on the Arizona side, a lot of their families were drastically impacted at that time. Men were arrested, children were taken, mothers were taken on buses that day and started a two to four year process where children were put into the system with the intention that they were going to be adopted out. And the same method that Arizona was using in the Native American cultures to root out their culture, they were trying to apply the same model into the FLDS of how that they would disassemble it and ultimately strip people of their culture so that it wouldn't continue on the people that were living in the.

Elissa Wall [00:36:55] The Utah side of it, they had a little bit of a different story in that a lot of them ran into the hills. And the same thing you heard stories of the mothers, of their experience of running into the trees and waiting for days on end for someone to come and rescue them. Which is where my mother's story comes from, because her family owned. The Steed family, Newell Steed family owned a ranch up in the Witso area, in up by, kind of by Panguitch and Tropic in Utah. And they had their own homestead there and a majority of their living was done there, even though they, they had a home in the Short Creek area.

Elissa Wall [00:37:33] But my mother grew up being deathly afraid of authorities because her family too was being pursued by authorities for their practice of polygamy. That time frame between 1950 all the way into the late 60s and there was a lot of work to try and bring the people back together. You know, Leroy Johnson started a four year process of going and fighting for every single one of the children that were being taken into the, the system and being with the intention of adopting them out. And he would round up all. Ultimately, Leroy Johnson did. He was able to successfully fight the authorities on the method they were using.

Elissa Wall [00:38:16] There were men that were prosecuted for polygamy in Arizona and there were men that were put in prison for a significant period of time from that 1953 raid. And why that was so pivotal within my life journey is because it was constantly being used as a faith promoting example. And I think a lot of us that are from Mormon backgrounds, that's a really important term, faith promoting stories, because usually they're all tied back to the same ambition. And that is, how can we, how can this story make you be more of a believer?

Elissa Wall [00:38:49] And they're often used in place of answers. You know, if we have an answer for a concern that we might have around doctrine or something that's happening in our life, instead of focusing on the answer of why it's happening or giving more information, it's like, well, we're just going to distract with a faith promoting story.

Elissa Wall [00:39:09] And much of my life was weaved with these stories, all of them very valid and all of them very important, but still very motivated to keep us in the work. Doing the Lord's. Doing the Lord's work.

Guest [00:39:24] Yeah, that's the same. We have the same in the mainstream LDS that we like to call it thought stopping. But like we, we'll have a question and you know, we'll ask the question in class or wherever, you know, something we've been thinking about. And instead of answering the question, they'll like thought stop it and then go into a story or some faith promoting, you know, message that they want to give us, but it's not answering the question that we had at all. So I, I feel like we have that same, same kind of dynamic.

Elissa Wall [00:40:02] I think a lot of people do that come from unique religious backgrounds. That concept of thought stopping I really appreciate knowing that because I'm just gonna pick that up and. Cause it encapsulates what we went through. And even for me, that, that, that journey of thought stopping and how it later ripples into your life because it's, it's a form of programming that is incredibly destructive in, in life in general. Because it's used. For me, it was used on every level. Even something as simple as, you know, why do I have to do my chores? It was just so ingrained in the way of life that all of a sudden it became about the Lord instead of I don't want to sweep the floor.

John Dehlin [00:40:44] Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I think what, what you're bringing to my mind is our series with Luna Lindsay Corbin, where Looney Talk. Luna talks about the 31 techniques of high demand religions or cults. And thought stopping is one of them. But another one is persecution.

Elissa Wall [00:40:59] Yes.

John Dehlin [00:40:59] Yeah. Persecution doesn't weaken a high demand religion, it strengthens a high demand religion.

Elissa Wall [00:41:05] So definitely.

John Dehlin [00:41:06] So all that. We'll put a link to that in the show notes. But persecution is just. And like you said, Jen, we have our own persecution stories, whether it's haunts mill massacre. We won't talk about the Mountain Meadows Massacre, but we'll talk about the Hans Mill massacre because that's when we were persecuted. Or we'll talk about Joseph Smith getting tarred and feathered, or we'll talk about Joseph's martyrdom with Hyrum. We'll leave out that they were put in jail for destroying the printing press, you know, or for practicing polygamy secretly and lying about it. But we'll include that they were murdered because that feeds the persecution complex. And it sounds like the raid of 1953 was an important part of your narrative that was strengthening to your people.

Elissa Wall [00:41:47] Absolutely. The persecution story is so deep in my background and even the story of the flds, it was constantly a tool that was being used, the thought stopping, just like you're saying. And then the persecution and even how preparing people for future persecution, because that was always Warren's method of how to keep control is this. If you don't do this, then it's going to produce more persecution. And how even the concept of the persecution side for me as we, as we unweave my story through this process as something I speak to is how I became the persecutor to the people that I loved the very most.

Elissa Wall [00:42:27] And in that journey individually of how that felt, to take that. And it brought so, so much clarity, even in my own history of my own depiction of the history of Mormonism, to look back on all those people who were once persecutors and to have a question of how many of them were just trying to do the right thing.

John Dehlin [00:42:45] Yeah.

Elissa Wall [00:42:46] Because I know for me, as going from believer to apostate to persecutor was such an interesting journey in that process.

John Dehlin [00:42:55] Yeah, I can't wait to get to that point. But tell me if I'm right, that when the US Federal government and the state of Arizona did the. Did the raid in 1953 and incarcerated all the men and many of the women, what I understand is that became a huge social services disaster. And what they learned is we might need to keep polygamy a criminal offense, but we really have to be careful enforcing it, because if we actually just round up all the men, women, and children, number one, it's a. It's a PR disaster for the state. But then we've got all the. We've created all these orphans and all these, you know, families without a breadwinner, and it becomes a social nightmare. And so we really can't prosecute polygamy. Was that an outcome of the 1953 raids?

Elissa Wall [00:43:50] I really appreciate the way you encapsulated that whole thing because, yes, you put it beautifully. And that that was the ultimate consequence of the 53 raid is it really backfired on the federal government and Arizona, and it just promoted this concept where we're going to let polygamy kind of exist in the shadows as long as they don't make too much of a fuss. And that became very evident even in my own journey, at how unwilling any agency was to. It was much easier to pretend it didn't exist for any government agency than it was for them to kind of focus on the problems that were coming from it.

Elissa Wall [00:44:29] And it also created a really weird climate because it's really easy to look at polygamy now and say polygamy is the problem. Well, in all the work that I've done with people from all walks of polygamy, I've really come to this. This theory that polygamy is actually not the problem.

Elissa Wall [00:44:46] It's more like a petri dish, and it holds all the viruses and all of the germs of the human condition, and it creates the environment that produces some serious, serious problems. But it's really easy to see it as the problem, and that's just too much of a simplification to a very complex issue.

Elissa Wall [00:45:06] Inside of the flds, we saw that play out over and over, but also as the History of the FLDS continued. And after the 53 raid, it was kind of a hands off approach from most government agencies. It really did allow the FLDS to flourish at that point in time, after it all came back together and the original intensity of the saga, it gave the leaders of the FLDS a lot of fuel to contribute to the narrative. And it also gave a lot of proof as to everything that they were saying about the outside world and how we're the one and only people. And here's proof, because we're getting committing all this persecution.

Elissa Wall [00:45:46] And this is how the devil stops the Lord work. The Lord's work is he tests the people. And that concept of testing the people played such a huge part in my personal journey.

John Dehlin [00:46:00] Yeah, I guess another narrative coming out of it must have been God protected us ultimately. So you've got the persecution to fuel it, You've got the government learning that they have to leave it alone, and you've got all the members saying, hey, God protected us, so we've got God's blessing. All that came out of it.

Elissa Wall [00:46:17] Yeah, it definitely was that causation from a correlation aspect that was happening because it gave everyone proof that they were living the right way and it fueled the testimony into most of the people. And so I came into the FLDS quite a long while after. But Even still, the 53 raid and the. The proof of persecution, the proof that we were doing the Lord's will, but also the faith promoting aspect of it, because we would read all of these stories of people that had been into it. But the central theme was, this is proof that I'm doing the Lord's work. And this is proof why you should do the Lord's work.

John Dehlin [00:46:58] Yeah, powerful. Okay, so I guess between the raids and your parents, it sounds like through your mom's side, they lived. They lived the aftermath of the raids. And that would have been the environment that your mom grew up in, which is like the flourishing, the relative flourishing of the FLDS church in the 60s, 70s and 80s. That was your mom's background. Right.

Fear, Priesthood Power, and Warren Jeffs's Rise

Elissa Wall [00:47:23] Definitely converts into it. For a lot of people like my mother, there was an element of fear that was really essential to why Warren was ultimately able to do what he did is because you had a whole generation that grew up in an intense amount of fear of the outside world. And it forced an even more intense seclusion from the outside world. And that's where you saw things start to really shift, was in the years following the 53 raid.

Elissa Wall [00:47:53] When the raid happened. Leroy Johnson was the current prophet and leader of the flds, who would be his successor was Warren's father, Rulon. After Leroy passed away, he lived a long life and he really tried to lead the people for most of that life. But that's also a pivotal point within the history of the flds because Leroy's passing created another split within the work, within the people, because you had some people that were believers that Rulon Jeffs was the next successor because he was claiming himself the next successor. But what, from my understanding, what the problem was is Leroy never did name a successor.

John Dehlin [00:48:36] Yeah.

Elissa Wall [00:48:37] And so the decision really fell upon people that would step forward. But also there was a lot of shifts that were happening even within the structure of the FLDS and how they were practicing Mormonism in general. And some of it came with this concept, concept of the one man rule. And it was this revelation that, that started to kind of happen. And I'm not 100% sure as to what created this revelation around the one man rule, but it was this idea that the structure that a lot of people are familiar with within Mormonism has prophet and it's got the counselors. You'll correct me if I'm wrong, because we didn't have that at all.

Elissa Wall [00:49:15] We were just told about it. Then it got the quorum of the 12 and continues down in this, in this pyramid. When I came along, all it was was the prophet who was at the top of the pyramid and one other layer which was he had a few counselors, he had a few people that. And so it was three people that ran the flds.

Elissa Wall [00:49:37] When Leroy Johnson was in his later years, they started this practice of arranged marriage. It was always kind of somewhat practiced by people of what it was like for a young woman to come and talk to the priesthood, as they called a lot of the power of the flds. You know, for a lot of people that have Mormon backgrounds, priesthood is just kind of one of those words that you just know, you get, you're not taught kind of. But for a lot of people that don't understand when we say priesthood, they're like, it's very confusing. What is it? Is it a brotherhood? Is it a.

John Dehlin [00:50:12] Like Catholic priests?

Elissa Wall [00:50:14] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:50:15] What is it?

Elissa Wall [00:50:15] What I tell people a lot is it's this, this depiction of this imaginary intangible power that is, that comes from God through usually the patriarchy. We never had any beliefs that priesthood ever came through the line of women. It women could only access this power that was gifted from God through that of a man. And that's the only connection that they would really have to priesthood.

Elissa Wall [00:50:42] It was really important to the FLDS because priesthood became synonymous with everything. You know, we were working for the priesthood, we were trying to continue the priests, the priesthood's will. And it also became kind of interchangeable with church. We didn't really call the FLDS the church. It was the priesthood.

Elissa Wall [00:51:05] And so it was a term that was kind of mashed up and to mean a lot of different things. Why the priesthood was important to the people of the FLDS is because it was all powerful. And it became that way over time, and it became more so that way, as each successor would come in and bring their own perspective. And with each successor of prophetship, they also had new revelations.

Elissa Wall [00:51:30] It wasn't just fundamentalism. And the original belief system that was practiced by. That was introduced by Joseph Smith and then later continued by Brigham Young and John Taylor and so on and so forth. It was always there was something new that was being brought to it. And one of them that had started in leroy's time, that then was definitely promoted extensively so was this idea of the end of the world, that the end of days were coming. And it was this really interesting story of, you know, the world's going to come to an end because the Lord is ready to bring his the true dispensation of Zion.

Elissa Wall [00:52:07] And in that process, what would happen is, is the good and faithful people would come together and that they would be lifted up off the earth and there would be a series of destructions that would wipe off all evil from the earth. And once that was complete, then the righteous people would come back down and they would establish a utopia.

Elissa Wall [00:52:28] And we would have these vivid stories and ideas planted into our heads as children of what that would be like. And it was this magnificent place where, you know, the streets would be paved with gold and no one would experience pain, and there was abundance for all. And it was. It was depicting this magical world that we were all going to be happy in. And it was often used as that carrot that was hung over our head, because for a lot of us that grew up in the flds, it was a very difficult reality. There was not a lot of joy. There was not a lot of reason to be living in it.

Elissa Wall [00:53:07] But we were always hoping for this future time. With this onset of the end of the world coming, leroy started some of these practices, such as arranged marriages, where instead of girls and boys coming together to decide who to marry, because that left too much option for people to be led astray, and it kept creating problems where the boys and the girls would fraternize with each other.

Elissa Wall [00:53:34] Then he realized that I believe what part of what was happening was that there was other men who were also doing arranged marriages. And to combat that, that's where the revelation of the one man rule came in. And that is only one man is that true link to God. He is the one that gets the revelations and everyone else flows through that. Everyone's a conduit of that and they are a messenger of that message from the one man. And it was a way of condensing power. Yeah, at the time it was probably for good intentions. But that condensing of power is what created a lot of future problems for the next generations.

Elissa Wall [00:54:17] Because the, the condensed power into one man ultimately gave Rule and Jeffs the ability to radically change the things the way that he did after Leroy's passing Rule and came in and he would eliminate things like the 12 apostles. And all of this would then was told to us that the original organization and infrastructure of the way that Joseph Smith had set up the church, that we would only once again practice that organization and have things like a temple and these other things after the destructions. And so that's where you got this narrative of to really truly live fully in our beliefs, we had to wait for the world to come to an end as.

Elissa Wall [00:55:02] And life would end as we knew it. And then Zion would be established on earth and then the people would live the Mormon faith in its fullness.

John Dehlin [00:55:11] And that's so fascinating because what's the. The premise of fundamentalism is. Let's get back to how it was at the beginning. But you know, that's not the way humans work. They, they want to consolidate power and change. And so you're telling me that Leroy Johnson and Rulon Jeffs intentionally and consciously change things away as fundamentalists change things away from the way Joseph Smith did it? Because Joseph Smith had a first presidency, which meant two counselors and the quorum of the 12. And he had 70s, you know, and bishops. Like he had all, all these ways to distribute power.

John Dehlin [00:55:48] And you're saying that, that your leaders who called themselves fundamentalists intentionally changed things away from the way Joseph and Brigham did it, but said, hey, someday we'll get back to the original fundamentalism. It'll just be after the millennium. Yes, but in reality they were straying from the pure, true, original way it was done. That's kind of ironic.

Elissa Wall [00:56:08] It is ironic. It's very similar to how the Mormon mainstream Mormonism handled polygamy. It's the same thing that's What I was just going to say, someday we'll practice that. That's a someday. But until that someday, this is what you're going to have to do to be righteous enough to actually live it the way that we're told to live it.

John Dehlin [00:56:23] It's hard to stay fundamentalist.

Elissa Wall [00:56:25] It is. It's definitely hard to stay fundamentalist. And even the term flds, which means Fundamental Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, like, it is definitely a spin off from the original Latter Day Saints term of how they name the church, you know, that wasn't even established until the 90s. The name.

John Dehlin [00:56:45] 90s, yeah. Oh, wow.

Elissa Wall [00:56:47] It was always known as the Work for a long time. Nobody believed. Nobody described themselves as fundamentalists until ruling. Jeff's came along and he was the one that was a brilliant man, really. If you zoom out and you get away from what it felt like to be in his religion. Brilliant in that he knew what he was doing. He knew how to manipulate everything to where he could condense it. You know, his trade was he was an accountant, and he was the one that was in. That was in charge of the church's money, which is why a lot of people theorize why ruling actually took over versus some of the other men who had far more influence socially and within the community.

Elissa Wall [00:57:29] Rulon had the power of the money, and power always follows money. So that's where Rulin took over. And not only that, is he started to then change. A lot of ways that money was utilized in the FLDS distributed. We saw there was a charitable trust that had been started by the people in Short Creek area. It would later be known as the uep, which is United Effort Plan, which a lot of Mormons have a background in what that means. And everyone has a different idea of what the United Effort Plan means.

Elissa Wall [00:57:59] But it was this concept of communal living, and it was. It was very sparkly on the front of what would it feel like for everyone to live in abundance? What would it feel like for everyone to. To contribute equally and to receive equally. But for the FLDS in general, that that meant a lot of things because for a lot of people that came in, specifically the original homesteaders of the Short Creek area, along as. Along with the original landowners and homeowners in the group that would be known as Bountiful in British Columbia as well as the Salt Lake area, everyone contributed to this concept of the uep, the United Effort that we had as a people.

Elissa Wall [00:58:45] This was also a tool that was used against the people. As time went on and it was that condensing of power. Because when you can control someone's beliefs, when you can control their prayers, when you can control their families, and when you can control their money and their home, you really, at that point in time, have slaves. And that's what it became, is the people of the FLDS became slaves to their leader.

John Dehlin [00:59:11] And that was under Ruling Jeffs. And I looked up, it looks like ruling Jeff started in 1986ish, which is when Leroy Johnson died. And I'll just note that Joseph Smith implemented something very similar called the United Order. So the UEP would have had its roots in the way Joseph Smith ran things.

Elissa Wall [00:59:31] Absolutely. And which is where we go back to that fundamentalism, the United Order. And you see how that played such a huge role, by the way.

John Dehlin [00:59:41] It failed the first time and they kind of undid it.

Elissa Wall [00:59:44] And so everyone, every fundamentalist group has been trying to do a different version of, of the United Order, which is

John Dehlin [00:59:52] basically kind of like communism or socialism within a religious construct. Is that right?

Elissa Wall [00:59:57] That would be a really great way to put it. I think it's really hard because a lot of people don't like to associate those two terms because we look at it as all negative. But for the people that are living United Order, I think a lot of them, because I've had this conversation with my dad, I'm like, you know, talk to me a little bit about this idea where everyone just gave everything willingly and for those that were actively living it and trying to practice was fed to them in this way that by giving your all to the Lord, you become equals among one another.

Elissa Wall [01:00:32] And as equals among one another, that's when the true purity of the priesthood can be established amongst you. And so for most people that were contributing to this concept of United Order, they really did have good intentions. And they really believed that part of this, part of the struggle between the physical experience of the body and the experience of spirit and our souls was you had this concept of sacrificing your physical life. And that became such a huge theme in the. The depictions of Rulin and Warren sacrifice the now for salvation more than any of the other prophets leading up to it. And that was another tool is it was like, you know, if we can get people to be okay with the really, really crappy life they're living right now for this potential future, way shinier, happier, ultimate illusion of what they really want, then it was just another form of control because you got people to be able to put aside their survival mechanisms and literally abandon that fight or flight concept, instead of self protecting, it was self sacrificing.

John Dehlin [01:01:49] Yeah.

Elissa Wall [01:01:50] And the self sacrificing part of this belief was very destructive. And it continued to establish more and more and more control within the church itself because people were willing to sacrifice their inner intuition, their voice. They began to sacrifice their wants and needs and desires and their very own physical safety along with all of their physical possessions.

John Dehlin [01:02:16] Yeah. Another term in the Mormonism I was raised in is law of consecration. And the scripture I remember learning is, and the Lord called his people Zion because they're of one heart and one mind, and there was no poor among them. They dwelt in righteousness and there was no poor among them. I imagine one of the justifications for the UEP was to alleviate poverty amongst your people as well.

Elissa Wall [01:02:42] Absolutely. And it was its origination, because if you. If you reach back to the people that originally started it, it was a really interesting concept of how to. To kind of help each other move forward and protect it also, because that was always a part of it is how do we protect what we create so that it doesn't go away and we can just continue to build and to build. And I think every human wants this idea of being a part of something greater than themselves.

Elissa Wall [01:03:08] And I look at it, and that's one of the things that really drew my dad to convert, was he wanted to be a part of something bigger than himself. He wanted to matter to more than just his own money or retirement or all of these other things. And even as the woman I am today with the journey that I've had, I still share that desire. We want to. To contribute more value into this world and into our lives than we take from.

Elissa Wall [01:03:34] And to see how, for my journey and the people that I came from, how that desire, that true, pure desire to. To create more value was twisted and perverted and manipulated for so many years to create the tragic events that would unfold as time went on.

John Dehlin [01:03:56] Yeah. So good intentions, even amongst the leadership of the FLDS Church, including Rulon Leroy and Rulon probably had good intentions.

Elissa Wall [01:04:06] Definitely.

John Dehlin [01:04:06] Yeah.

Elissa Wall [01:04:07] It's. It's been an important journey as an advocate and a speaker for my people to. To have a sense of neutrality when speaking of these things, because I think when we polarize into one side or the other, into victim or perpetrator completely, it takes away from the. The true essence of the story and, and what happened, because by looking at ruling and saying he was just an evil man, it takes away. And it's really easy for people to Put that aside. In some of the work that I've done when my purpose for speaking a lot of the time was maybe somewhere along the way, it will reach people that are currently entrapped in the belief system. But really, the only way to reach that is to maintain a sense of neutrality and to realize the humanness in everyone, even people like Roland and Warren Jeffs.

John Dehlin [01:04:55] Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So Rulon takes over in 86, 1986, has. Has control of the purse strings, consolidates power, gets rid of a first presidency or quorum of the 12, carries on with the tradition of assigning marriages. Is that.

Elissa Wall [01:05:14] Yeah. In the same year.

Guest [01:05:15] Q.

Elissa Wall [01:05:16] The magnificent soul that would be born as Elissa Wall.

John Dehlin [01:05:20] Oh, 86.

Elissa Wall [01:05:21] Yes. I was born right around this same time. I was born in July, and I was the 19th child of my father's ultimate 24. My mother was his second wife. He would ultimately have three wives and would be on his journey to obtaining ultimate salvation. Because for the people of the flds, that's really kind of. To break it down. How they practice polygamy is there was a belief that you needed to have at least three wives to really obtain the highest degree of glory. And every single one of them that a man was given from that time past, the three wives was only going to clinch his place in heaven more.

Elissa Wall [01:06:02] For a lot of the people that were living in polygamy, this push to have three wives was kind of significant. And you would see men that would really work hard to be dedicated, to give more, to offer more services to the church in hopes that they would show the intensity of their belief and their testimony so that they would be selected by God to get more wives.

Elissa Wall [01:06:29] 86 was, as we've been kind of talking, was kind of a very pivotal point for the flds. You know, I was born, and ultimately I was the. I was the piece that would begin the domino effect that would ultimately change it drastically and dramatically. So I see 86 as a really important year.

John Dehlin [01:06:46] So do we.

Guest [01:06:47] Yeah, so do we.

Daily Life Growing Up in the Community

Elissa Wall [01:06:49] So it was really good growing up, though, because I often. Sometimes when we're reaching back into our memories of life, it's easy to glaze over the nuances of what life was like. But for a lot of the listeners today, that's really what we want to dive into is what was it really, really like? And to kind of give the short version, but then to dive into it as we bounce ideas back and forth and questions. I was raised as a product of my environment, even though I was born in Sugarhouse, Utah, in the Larger Salt Lake Valley and Rule and Jeff's headquarters were in Sandy. He had a school that was a private school that was called Alta Academy.

John Dehlin [01:07:34] That was in Sandy.

Elissa Wall [01:07:35] That was in Sandy.

John Dehlin [01:07:37] And right in the heart of Utah, Mormonism.

Elissa Wall [01:07:40] Right in the heart of mainstream Utah Mormonism. But that was part of the tool that was used for the people inside of the flds. Because even though we were right in the middle of the city and we were part of the city, we were not. We were miles apart because we didn't do a lot of what the people in the city did. We didn't have television, we didn't read a lot of outside books or information. We didn't do a lot of the news. My dad would. Because he kind of grew up that way. But that was something that my family always kept secret was is we.

Elissa Wall [01:08:12] You know, we didn't. Nobody was supposed to be watching the news, but my dad often did. But what it was is there was this constant push to distance yourself even further from the outside world growing up, and it was constantly being established because we were always being told, you are the Lord's chosen people.

Elissa Wall [01:08:35] And what that did is that created a really subtle, but also not so subtle a climate of elitism and racism and bigotry that it took me a lifetime to kind of unwind and unweave in myself. Because when we would look at our neighbors, for me as a child growing up, it was this.

Elissa Wall [01:08:57] This feeling of almost pity because I felt sad and sorry for apostates or Gentiles, particularly because ultimately they were all going to die. And hopefully later, after we've established Zion, then we would start all of these temple processes and ordinances that would allow for us to call all of those lost souls and ultimately create salvation for them.

Elissa Wall [01:09:27] So for me, as a child growing up, I not only was a part of my church, but I was a part of this very intense movement in this world to ultimately save the world. And even though we were small, but part of why it was so important is we had to stay secret. We had to stay quiet, and we had to absolutely follow and be obedient, no matter what.

John Dehlin [01:09:51] It's kind of mind blowing to me because I live in Holiday, Utah, which is, let's just say, 10 to 15 minutes southeast of downtown Salt Lake City, kind of East Bench, suburban Salt Lake City. And you were in Sugar House, which is just like five to 10 minutes north of where I am right now. It's just so hard to imagine you living in the heart of Mormonism, but living as a fundamentalist but this has been true for a hundred years. Fundamentalists have been all throughout different parts of Salt Lake City, East Mill Creek, Sugar House, Sandy, Bluffdale. There's been polygamists in the heart of Mormonism from the very beginning. And it's just bizarre to think about that.

Elissa Wall [01:10:33] You're absolutely correct on that. And it still is like, it still

John Dehlin [01:10:36] is all over Ogden, like Davis, Cowboy county, it's everywhere. Utah County.

Elissa Wall [01:10:42] And I tell people all the time, even though, because I think for a lot of non Mormon backgrounds, they think that it kind of was all about Warren. And with the fall of Warren, then it's all over and done. And I always have to remind people, no, it's not. It's still very much going on. And back to my thing, polygamy is not the problem. It's the application of how people live within it. And even for all of the polygamists that are living all over Utah, United, all over, specifically the western United States, all up and down into Canada, clear, all the way down into Mexico.

Elissa Wall [01:11:17] There, there is this. There's always been this shield that everyone has existed behind, and that is, it's illegal. So therefore we keep everything secret. And at some point we have to remove that veil of secrecy and get to the core of the problems, which is what so much of my story was. I wasn't focusing on rooting out polygamy through my journey. It was really focusing on the abuse that was happening behind that shield.

John Dehlin [01:11:46] Yeah, child abuse.

Elissa Wall [01:11:47] Child abuse.

John Dehlin [01:11:48] The main thing, right?

Elissa Wall [01:11:49] Yes, main thing was child abuse.

John Dehlin [01:11:51] Yeah, yeah. But it, but just still the, the idea of not only back in the 80s, but today, polygamous being all around us here in the heart of Utah. Mormonism. Yeah, it's a, it's a, it's a wild thing to think about. And it's a reality even in 2022.

Guest [01:12:08] Yeah, well, I grew up in Sandy and I would drive by the little. It. It to me it seemed like a compound of houses with a high wall and gates, but almost weekly, if not a couple times a week. And I remember driving by all the time and being like, I wonder, that's interesting that they want that high of a fence. You know what I mean? Like, I didn't even like think about what was behind there, who, who lived there or whatnot. But yeah, it's interesting to find out exactly where the school was and where all of this took place. Now looking back, I've seen that, that it was right there just around the corner.

John Dehlin [01:12:49] Oh, so you, you know where Alt Academy was now?

Guest [01:12:53] I do now. Like, I can. I drove by it all the time, but I. I didn't know what it was at the time.

John Dehlin [01:12:59] You didn't know it was a fundamentalist school led by Rulin and Warren Jeffs? You didn't know that?

Guest [01:13:05] No.

John Dehlin [01:13:05] Growing up and driving by it all the time, is that crazy?

Elissa Wall [01:13:09] It is crazy. When I. When I meet people and the touch points that all of our stories kind of have it in so many ways, I'm like, wow, it's a small world. Because we always have that. Like, we have these shared stuff spaces or points where we were worlds apart, but right there in that moment, we were connected for just a moment.

John Dehlin [01:13:26] This is totally tangential, but it reminds me of Elizabeth Smart. She gets abducted by Brian David Mitchell. Well, he just takes her up into the Wasatch Front Mountains here in Salt Lake County.

Guest [01:13:37] Right above her house.

John Dehlin [01:13:38] Right. What?

Guest [01:13:38] Right above her house.

John Dehlin [01:13:39] Right above her house, yeah. And then, like, when they find him, he's just like, what? They were at a mall, like, here in Salt Lake County. But, like. Like, it's all happening right here. People just don't realize there's all sorts of hidden and weird things happening right here amongst us when we're living our normal lives, thinking it's. It's somewhere else.

Elissa Wall [01:13:59] Definitely. I also, this is kind of that point where I always have this, like, really important disclaimer with it. And that is, I think, so many people. It's always happening around us. And one of the things that's really easy to do for people that. That may know, okay, my neighbors may be a polygamist is, you know, not what. Now what do I do? I hear all these horror stories, what happens in polygamy, But I tell people, just like humans, one of the most important things is to be kind and to seek more information.

Elissa Wall [01:14:30] Because just because someone hears my story, it doesn't mean that everyone living in polygamy, that this is happening to everyone. This is not a blanket depiction of polygamy or what is happening within these polygamous families. This is an example of what happens in closed, unrestricted ways of life that are not getting more information on how to adequately live and to protect and to offer equal rights to people.

Elissa Wall [01:15:04] Because my story is an incredible story and I'm very honored to have it. But to be on this end of it and to herself have survived it. But please, if you're listening and you happen to know a polygamous neighbor, just be kind to them. They're humans. They're people. And a lot of them are truly trying to just live their. Their. Their best life based on their beliefs and their ideas. And some of those beliefs and ideas are quite warped.

John Dehlin [01:15:28] And they may not believe in the fl. They may not be part of the FLDS church. They may not recognize Warren or ruling Jeffs as legitimate prophets. They may hate child abuse and do everything they can to make sure they have no part of it. They may dress normally. They may dress in hip fat, you know, hip, latest modern fashion. They may drive fancy new cars. They may look super suburban and hip and cool. Like they're all. There's just as many different types of polygamy as there are polygamists.

Elissa Wall [01:16:01] Absolutely.

John Dehlin [01:16:02] Yeah.

Elissa Wall [01:16:03] I appreciate encapsulating that because it really is. And it's easy to want to simplify it, but that's where we all get kind of astray, is when you simplify complicated issues and problems, then sometimes it produces more harm than good. And I know with my story and why I share my story is to just remind people that it's just one perspective of it, but it's also an important perspective of it because it's shared by a lot of people the feeling of abuse and the feeling of coming from a cult, basically, because even though we were a fundamentalist Mormon break off, the way that it was being practiced was very cult like.

John Dehlin [01:16:42] Yeah, for sure.

Guest [01:16:45] I want to get back to your story, but first, since you brought it up, like having neighbors that you believe are polygamous, what would you suggest? Like you said, be kind. What does that mean to you?

Elissa Wall [01:16:59] Thank you for asking. Because this is something that I'm passionate about. We see it a lot because even people that are still believing flds, they have moved out of the Short Creek area. Now we're going to talk about the whole story of how it got to where it is. But a lot of them have moved all over the United States and they still have their traditional dress that's very unique to the flds. They still have their hair, and they're still just kind of living their life. And so for a lot of people that may be listening, you may know them, especially if you live in the Cedar City area.

Elissa Wall [01:17:32] What I say wouldn't be kind is it's just the same to treat people with respect, no matter their creed, no matter their belief, to not ignore the signs of where and how you can help them, but to always treat them with respect. I know for me, growing up in it, I can't tell you how many times where, when we did engage with the outside world, what it felt like to just be stared at, to be gawked at, to know we were different and to feel it on every level and to not have people approach you or, or even question any, or not even see you as a person.

Elissa Wall [01:18:10] And for a lot of people that are currently maybe in that they. They want to be seen as humans. And so there is. There's great value in befriending them. And I hear stories now of people that were still a part of the FLDS even after Warren Jeffs was caught and put in prison. And what really turned the tide for them is their neighbor was kind enough to start a relationship with them, to just start a friendship, to help them get a job from some manufacturing plant down the road. And it was this slow process that helped them to kind of wake up from a sedated mindset to maybe there's more.

Elissa Wall [01:18:50] But part of the reason for that is, is because I know for me, some of the points in my journey that were the most essential and crucial was when the outside world was a piece in shattering the illusion of what I had been told about the outside world. And for people to be kind and to see me as a human, no matter if I were where I fit in, all of it was really important because then I was able to say, well, in my head, the story was, well, that didn't happen the way I was told. I was told that they were going to be horrible and mean and they were immediately going to try and persecute me or rape me or murder me.

Elissa Wall [01:19:26] What else is not true? And we have story after story after story in the human experience and history that shows that the small act of kindness and the courage and the bravery it means to step outside of your own views and your own ideas and just be respectful of someone else go far, far outweigh any act of aggressively trying to stop someone from doing something we don't agree with.

Guest [01:20:00] Yeah, I agree. Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:20:02] This reminds me of Sam Zitting's story with, with. With the growing up on polygamy couple, because it was a. It was a. It was a traditional LDS Church family that kind of showed love and support to Sam that made him feel comfortable breaking away. And they ended up adopting him into their family legally. And Sam got emotional, even crying about how much he loved this Mormon family for just showing him kindness, just basic kindness. And I think this applies not just to Mormon fundamentalist relations, but I think this applies to progressive and post Mormon relationships.

Guest [01:20:42] That's what I was thinking.

John Dehlin [01:20:43] Believing orthodox Mormons.

Guest [01:20:45] Yeah, I hear that in so many Mormon stories. That, you know, that come here that are now questioning or are not believing anymore is that, you know, we're taught also, don't read anything, you know, outside of lds.org don't look at any of these books. Don't, you know, listen to these things or anything like that. Don't. Don't look outside what is told that you can look at or read. And it's when something doesn't quite fit that narrative when, when they said, oh, you know, this person is not believing anymore. She's. She's a bad person. You know, don't talk to her, don't contact her, don't be her friend anymore.

Guest [01:21:30] And something inside of you says, you know what? She has been the sweetest person ever for me. You know, my relationship with her. I don't understand. You know, something inside you says, I don't, that doesn't feel right. You know, it's that intuition talking to you that you finally kind of pause for a minute and think about, and your critical thinking starts to turn on, you know, for a minute. And we see that in. In this community and all the Mormon stories. Elise. I feel like there's just that one. There's that one spot where someone was just the kindness of them or something didn't feel right. And pausing for a second, definitely. And just having that kindness is what made all the difference.

Elissa Wall [01:22:23] Well, I kind of encapsulate it where kindness invites compassion, and compassion invites clarity, which often leads to comprehension. And so for someone who receives that kindness, it also allows for them to be a little more compassionate of who's showing them the kindness, even if it's on a subtle level and vice versa. There's. When we're kind, we're innately more compassionate, and we then seek for more information, more clarity onto why someone's living the way that they are, which then often leads to comprehension on both sides, where the people, for myself, you know, the people of the flds, who are living this very unique secular lifestyle, they're able to see more information about the outside world, and the outside world is able to see more information about them.

Elissa Wall [01:23:07] And then we find common ground, because that's where change begins, is the common ground of that we all really are human. And even in my own story, that. That led to so much of my ability to. To claim my story, to be able to speak it, and to start to create the ripples of change within it with my story was to realize that there was common ground in my life as well as a lot of other people that were experiencing different kinds of abuse.

Guest [01:23:37] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:23:38] Well, let's get back to that story.

Elissa Wall [01:23:40] It's really easy for us to kind of go on tennis, but this is part of it. I think this is. This is a deeper discussion that. It's really easy for my story to kind of glaze over some of this deeper discussion. But this is the threads that tie back to all of our listeners who may be hearing something and say, oh, that's how it shows up in my life. Because really, that's where I'm at with sharing my story is I want people to remember that there's a lot of it. We're all just human. And there's great value that comes from hearing other human stories. And even though you. You call it Mormon stories, really, they're just human stories with different details tied to them.

Guest [01:24:20] Yeah, definitely.

Elissa Wall [01:24:21] So it's. I remember particularly as a child, there's. There's one memory that always stands out, and it's fascinating because even on the COVID of my book, it's a picture that was used because by the time I was going into school, you know, six. Around the age six, going into first grade, then life inside the FLDS is pretty. Pretty well established. It was a couple of years after Rulon had completely taken over. The split had happened. And so the people that were no longer following Warren had established their own little community. And for those of us in the flds, they were the apostates.

John Dehlin [01:24:58] Was that Centennial Park?

Elissa Wall [01:24:59] Yes, that was Centennial Park. And there is an example of what happens when families are split apart, because my mother had many sisters who were married to men who ultimately went and established the Centennial park movement. And we wouldn't talk to him. We didn't fraternize.

Elissa Wall [01:25:17] And more and more, not only did Rulon have his people not fraternize with the outside world, but you didn't fraternize with anyone who was an apostate as well. And you also saw what happened within families where if you had a child who was questioning to such a point that they no longer believed in rule and they no longer really believed in it, or. Or their questions were too great, then they would be either kicked out of the home or they would be asked to leave, or ultimately they would just leave. But then when that point happened for most of the kids, they would lose contact with their families.

Elissa Wall [01:25:54] And in my own family, I watched that happen. I had a couple of other brother, older brothers, who were the children of the first wife, and they left around that same time, and they decided to follow the Centennial park movement of people

John Dehlin [01:26:10] can you explain for those who have no idea, including me, what was the nature of the schism? Was it just they followed a different prophet or they believe different teachings? How did the Centennial park people root or base their justification in. In splitting off from. From ruling?

Elissa Wall [01:26:30] This is actually a topic that I'm really interested in diving deeper into with some of my next work is kind of understanding this more because I think everybody had a different perspective. Most of my understanding was because they did not agree with that one man rule concept.

John Dehlin [01:26:46] Oh.

Elissa Wall [01:26:46] And that was kind of the final nail in the coffin. But then also there was a lot of people that did not agree with Rulon being the man to take over. And I'm not 100% sure as to why they didn't. A lot of them said that's not what Leroy wanted and that he had all made reference to other people that were going to take over. But really it was.

Elissa Wall [01:27:06] You see it often in religious organizations when one leadership passes, there's a reorganization that happens as the next leadership. And there was a lot of reasons why the Centennial park group left. And I'm sure if there's anyone listening to it or may have more information, they could add to this question, because I only know what I was told. And that was really. It fell apart because of the one man rule revelation that was coming and also the passing of Leroy Johnson and the successor, Rulon, taking over.

John Dehlin [01:27:45] And I've been taught to think of the Centennial park people. They didn't dress in the more conservative kind of pioneer dress. Maybe they had nicer, more affluent houses. It was kind of like an f. Like a modern. A more modern, hip, affluent version of the FLDS that lived within a few miles of Hilldale. That's how I was raised to think about it.

Elissa Wall [01:28:10] And that's a really great depiction of what it was. Yes.

John Dehlin [01:28:13] And so you would have. You would have. Once you moved down to Hilldale, you would have lived pretty close to these people. But. But looked at them as bad apostates.

Elissa Wall [01:28:23] Yes, definitely.

John Dehlin [01:28:24] Are you saying that this impacted your own dad and mom?

Elissa Wall [01:28:28] Absolutely.

John Dehlin [01:28:28] Okay, tell us how they tie in.

Elissa Wall [01:28:30] Yes, because I had two older brothers who chose to follow the. The split. And it was, from my perspective, as well as some of the stories I've been told, it was. It was quite difficult for my mom. I mean, not my mom, one of my moms, because we all kind of saw all of our mothers as our mom. They all have the same authority to tell us what to do. And. But there was also this clear understanding of who our mother was but for my, my, my dad's first wife, it was really hard for her to have her sons at that time be on the other side of it and be apostates and us be the righteous ones.

Elissa Wall [01:29:07] And then for my mother too, there was this point in my life where my mother's oldest son, he was brilliant individual and he had grown up his whole life with a lot of questions. We all were educated in Alta Academy, including all, most of my mom's kids. You know, most of them were graduates from. And it was a school that ran from 1st to 12th grade and encompassed everything from your traditional reading, writing, arithmetic, to little splashes of science.

Elissa Wall [01:29:44] But most of it was always motivated by religious teachings. And so a majority of our daily school life was, it started with religious teachings. There was always one religious class right after lunch and then it always ended with it. So it was bookended as well as right in the middle. And so the, the religious elements were ever present in, in our lives.

Elissa Wall [01:30:07] And for my mother, being a multi generational, she truly had a very firm testimony. And I look at her life and I see so much compassion because I firmly believe that through everything she truly was following what she believed was the right way. And how that showed up in her children was very different.

Elissa Wall [01:30:29] Because one day then my brother, my oldest brother from my mother was asked to leave the home because he had become too much of a dissenter. He had too many questions. He wasn't following the priesthood, he wasn't doing what he was supposed to be doing. But really from my dad's perspective, his story is he was really concerned that because Jared was being led astray, that it was going to bleed into the other children.

Elissa Wall [01:30:59] And for the men of the flds, you know, a lot of people look at him and they say, okay, they hold the ultimate power, but really they're just as subject to the tyranny and the hierarchy of the church as the women, just in a very different way.

Elissa Wall [01:31:17] But for the men, they have to, they have to toe a line just like everyone else does. And they're always given this rhetoric and these stories that because they are given the priesthood and they are ordained into the different levels of the priesthood, that therefore they have to be the conduit for their family. So what happens in their family is a direct reflection of the father of the family and the mothers of the family. And so their, their worthiness and their ability to obtain salvation is dependent on what their kids do. It's quite backward. And so then it breeds this very intense nature of control, controlling Everything.

A Family Fractured by Polygamy

Elissa Wall [01:32:00] Controlling everything about the kids lives. And that's really hard to do. I mean, I'm a mother now and I realize that trying to control kids is. Is a rough approach to having a family. We see it all the time.

Elissa Wall [01:32:15] But my dad really couldn't. He didn't feel like he could control my older brother. And my mother was just trying to be the good mother. And there was this day, this one day where I felt this. This deep, ominous feeling within the house. And I was quite young still. I was around 7 or 8. I can't remember for sure on the timing, but I was still in that childhood. Those childhood years where we're very focused on our own experience and not so much about what was happening in the home.

Elissa Wall [01:32:46] But my mother gathered some of her younger children and my older brother into the car. And I'll never forget the look on my mother's face on that day because it was the most tangible example of pain I'd ever seen on my mother's face. But there was no explanation as to what was happening. You know, I'm rambunctiously sitting in the back seat with my younger siblings, not even comprehending where we were going and what we were going to do is my mother was directed to go and drop her son off on the highway and leave him.

Elissa Wall [01:33:28] And that's exactly what she did. And I remember looking at my mother and I could feel that something was so off and so wrong and still not really realizing what was all happening until we stopped. You know, they're driving up Parley's Canyon and we pull off on an exit and my mother stops the car and my brother gets out. He's got a backpack with a sign on it that I believe it said Denver. And he. That's the last time we see him. And the, the pain that I. The. The ripples of pain that I watched my mother's body experience and her ability to hold her resolve in it.

Elissa Wall [01:34:13] I, I have no clue where she got that strength because for her, that's what it was. For a lot of people to hear this story, they immediately want to jump to this judgment of my mother. Why would she do that? And trust me, there was a point where I even had that same question of how could she do that? But this was really important because it showed what happened in my own family when someone is led astray. And my dad was so adamant to have a worthy family.

Elissa Wall [01:34:48] And it was, it was always layered in to my family is that we were, you know, we were the Wall family. And there was elements to the way that our family lived that were not always in perfect alignment with the church. For instance, my family lived a unique version of polygamy. And that was. It was not peaceful. It wasn't a peaceful practice because you had quite a collision of. Of women who came from very, very different backgrounds. And to try and mash that up into one household that was in the middle of the city to where there was nothing that the mothers could really draw from, of the world around them for how to entertain their children or how to train their children and school and all of the other layers that it was.

Elissa Wall [01:35:36] There was a lot of dissension within my family as a whole. And, you know, there was. There was a difference between the first wife's children and the second wife's children. And they were treated very differently in a lot of ways. But more so, I watched throughout my life as my mother, she was such a strong, fervent believer around the teachings and the true essence of the practice of polygamy. And she was drawing upon her childhood, where her family was often held up as this prime example of what it means to practice polygamy in purity and in true essence of how it was imagined by Joseph Smith.

John Dehlin [01:36:20] What was her maiden name?

Elissa Wall [01:36:21] Steed. She is the daughter of Newell Steed, Noel and Alice Steed. And Noel had he married quite a few sisters and as well as a few other women. But when Noel's family is often referred to, you know, a lot of the people of the FLDS saw them as that example, but also sought to model that way of life. My mother coming from that, and then coming into a home where there was very different values, there was different ways of practicing it. And then you had the first wife, who is reaching from her background of monogamy. So you can imagine it was a very complicated dynamic within my family.

John Dehlin [01:37:05] So your dad's first wife Was raised traditional LDs?

Elissa Wall [01:37:10] Yes.

John Dehlin [01:37:10] And then converted?

Elissa Wall [01:37:11] Yes.

John Dehlin [01:37:12] With my dad, his first wife.

Elissa Wall [01:37:14] Yes.

John Dehlin [01:37:15] And did all three. Did all of the wives live in the same home in Sugar House with the kids all together?

Elissa Wall [01:37:22] Yes. Ultimately, when my dad got his third wife, yes, we all lived in there throughout my childhood because my family had. When I was very, very young, the same day that Leroy Johnson passed away, actually, my family experienced a house fire and my childhood home was burned down. That's also when the people in the Salt Lake Valley were quite. There was quite a few people that were living in the Salt Lake Valley that were part of the flds, and they rallied together and they housed and clothed and took care of my family, as well as helped my dad to rebuild the home. And that home is where all of us lived for the remainder of my childhood until my family was ultimately broken apart.

John Dehlin [01:38:10] Is that home still standing today?

Elissa Wall [01:38:12] It is still standing today.

John Dehlin [01:38:13] Oh, wow.

Elissa Wall [01:38:14] I'm really careful how I refer to it because I don't want the current family that lives there to feel this bombardment of people coming in. But, yeah, it's just right there on Claiborne Avenue in Sugar House.

John Dehlin [01:38:25] Okay, and so you live there with your three moms and your dad in the middle of Sugar House, Utah?

Elissa Wall [01:38:34] Yes.

John Dehlin [01:38:35] Okay. And so what years did you live in Sugar House? You know, from what. What years and what ages? Just so we can get a sense for.

Elissa Wall [01:38:46] Definitely. So my family moved into it just before 1986. And then I was removed out of the home and moved to Southern Utah in 99.

John Dehlin [01:38:57] 99. So you were there 13 years?

Elissa Wall [01:39:01] Yes.

John Dehlin [01:39:01] You were in that home in Sugarhouse for 13 years. So you would have attended Alta Academy from kindergarten through what grade?

Elissa Wall [01:39:09] Yes. So I attended Alta Academy from first grade to sixth grade. It was Owls Academy has its own unique history because there was a point where the end of the world was coming so intensely.

John Dehlin [01:39:24] Oh, this is the Olympic story.

Elissa Wall [01:39:25] Yes, the Olympic story. Yes, definitely. And we can do it in a chronological order.

John Dehlin [01:39:29] We can do it now?

Elissa Wall [01:39:30] Yeah, definitely.

John Dehlin [01:39:31] Okay.

Elissa Wall [01:39:31] So as a child, having this experience of watching my mother drop off her son, it was this realization that would be this understanding that a mother couldn't choose her duties over being a mother. I mean, it couldn't choose her motherly duties over the church. And I watched that play out over and over and over in my life. So subconsciously, it established this really this understanding that it didn't matter our wants and desires. What mattered was the will of the church.

John Dehlin [01:40:08] And if you goof up as a kid, your mom might drop you off. So you better be.

Elissa Wall [01:40:11] Definitely.

John Dehlin [01:40:12] Is that fair?

Elissa Wall [01:40:13] Absolutely. So I always say we had this library of fears that were often used to continue to control and advance the indoctrination that was happening to me as a child. And when you draw on a library of fear, you usually can get a lot of compliance from kids for a long period of time.

Elissa Wall [01:40:33] And that's where in my life, that compliance to the belief systems, as well as the new revelations that were coming, that was always the driving force, is whatever it took to get us to comply to what we were being told to do. And it was always in this theme and thread of, this is the Lord's word, this is the Lord's will. And so it not only was our parents saying it, it was the priesthood saying it. It was the prophet saying it, it was Lord saying it. And that string of authority was really important because it was the driving force that got not just myself, but so many people in the FLDS to do really, really terrible things that I don't think instinctually people would choose to do. I don't think instinctually my mother would choose to drop off her son.

Guest [01:41:21] How old was he?

Elissa Wall [01:41:22] He was in. I believe it was. He was about 19 or 20. I'm not 100% sure how old he was when that happened. I know that I talk about it in depth in my book, and I did a pretty good job at trying to be very detailed and chronologically aware of all of the events that were happening. But for me as a child looking at it, it was very sobering. It was very, very sobering.

Guest [01:41:47] Yeah.

Elissa Wall [01:41:47] It was also during a time when all of my older sisters had gotten married and all of them had been married in an arranged marriage. You know, I had one sister, two sisters that married, ruling himself, the prophet. And then I had another sister who married his son all within the same summer. I had four sisters that were married all at the same in the same summer. And then I go, keep on.

Guest [01:42:13] No.

John Dehlin [01:42:13] How many wives did Rulon end up having?

Elissa Wall [01:42:16] Oh, I am not the best person to quote that number.

John Dehlin [01:42:20] Three or more.

Elissa Wall [01:42:21] Yes. There was tons of them. And some of it is kind of a moving target because for some people there's one number and for other people there's another number ruling head well over. You could probably look it up because Google knows all things they say. But for my.

John Dehlin [01:42:39] Well, that must have been prestigious for your siblings to be married to the prophet.

Elissa Wall [01:42:45] Definitely prestigious. I think that that played into some of the. The pressure that my dad was under to really force his kids to comply because we kind of. There was a history of our family not really getting along, especially in the hierarchy of the church. It wasn't so much that the rest of the congregation knew what was going on inside of our families, but I know that Warren and Rulan definitely knew because there was this point after my sisters had been married that summer and my brother had been kicked out, and I had another brother who was sent down to Short Creek area because he was put on the work cruise.

Elissa Wall [01:43:26] So there was this process of all of these things happening that was changing the structure of my family. And it was all happening at the direction of the priesthood, the direction of the church, to have these. My My brother is sent away to work her crews because that was part of their practice is if you had a child who was struggling to believe and struggling to comply, they would work them into submission. And that was the experience of some of my family members, is they were sent on some of these work crews where the boys were be. There were missionaries, as the boys were told. You know, they were on a mission for the priesthood. They were on a mission for the church.

Guest [01:44:08] Church.

Elissa Wall [01:44:08] But in essence, it was a work camp, and it was that it was designed to get them to work so hard that they couldn't think about anything else.

John Dehlin [01:44:18] And Wikipedia says 65 wives for ruling Jeff.

Elissa Wall [01:44:21] So there you go. 65. I'll remember that one. There's a lot of those details that sometimes I'm like, that's not.

John Dehlin [01:44:27] Oh, that's fine. It doesn't matter.

Elissa Wall [01:44:29] It's not mine to have to store.

John Dehlin [01:44:31] I just like, maybe listeners of yours to get a chance for. So. So two of your sisters were married to the prophet, and then another sister, you said, was married to his son, but not Warren. Not son.

Elissa Wall [01:44:42] Different son.

John Dehlin [01:44:43] And then your brother. A brother was cast off, and then another brother was sent to the. To the work camps.

Elissa Wall [01:44:51] Yes.

John Dehlin [01:44:51] It almost reminds me of, like, the Russian Gulag, like Siberia work camps.

Elissa Wall [01:44:56] It definitely does. There's. There's a lot of similarities in that. And for a lot of people that come from the fl, they have. Particularly the boys, they all have these stories of the work camps and what it meant, because for them, they were. They were working unpaid, and they were usually working in very extreme conditions, and they were far away from their families. For the FLDS church, it's how they were able to gain so much wealth. It's how they were able to gain so much progress in establishing the community such as Short Creek, and to grow it and to build it the way that it was because they had free labor.

John Dehlin [01:45:32] It's kind of child trafficking, maybe.

Elissa Wall [01:45:34] Oh, absolutely. It's not kind of. It definitely was child trafficking.

John Dehlin [01:45:37] Yeah. Oh, man. Wow. So that just must have been wild for you to grow up in this family, seeing all this around you, but also probably normal.

Elissa Wall [01:45:47] It was normal. And see, that's the thing that I. It is. When I look at it now, even for me, I'm like, whoa. But for the child, if we go back to that, that the eyes of the child that I was at that time, this was normal. And all of it was just proof of everything that they were saying. You know, these things are going to happen because it's weeding out the dissenters. It's weeding out those that are losing their testimony. And for my sisters getting married, that was just what women were supposed to do. You know, from before I was even out of the womb, there was this continual culturing, brainwashing and programming of what it meant to be a woman inside of the flds.

Elissa Wall [01:46:25] You know, we were being. We were being groomed for one job, and that was the job of being a wife, one of many wives, hopefully, and to have as many children as we could possibly have that God would grant us.

Elissa Wall [01:46:40] And this is really important because for the women of the flds, even my mother. But then as things continued on, we became more and more and more just as property. We were property of the church. We were property of the fathers. You know, the girls were turned into the priesthood by the fathers. And what that meant was the father would bring her the. His daughter to the prophet and to the leadership, and he would say, this girl is ready to be married. And then there would be a revelation of whom this girl should be married to. There was an arrangement that was made, and the woman would then be given to the men.

Elissa Wall [01:47:21] And they were using those words. It wasn't. This isn't just the way to describe it. That's what it was. We were told, you know, with a righteous testimony and a pure pureness within you, you, women will be given to a righteous priesthood man.

Elissa Wall [01:47:39] Yes, there was a lot of women in the FLDS who were free thinkers, my mother being one of them. She, even though she was a product of her environment, she was very much a believer that. That women can do things. You know, she was an herbalist herself and very interested in how to. To heal and to take care of every ailment or illness in a way. Because the FLDS did not subscribe in mainstream medical. They still don't. They had a deep suspicion around it and from. For me, even as a child, because I grew up chronically ill myself, I spent a majority of my childhood very, very sick from things that were very treatable, such as chronic hair infections and tonsillitis, extreme tonsillitis.

Elissa Wall [01:48:27] I was bitten by a tick when I was really young, and I was sick for a year and a half, Whether it was Lyme's disease or not. I was debilitatingly ill for that period of time. And my mother's approach was always. She had to treat it and take care of it from a natural side of things because we didn't go to the hospitals. And even from myself, there came a point where my chronic ear Infections and tonsillitis had gotten so bad that my parents finally did bring me into the doctor. They finally brought me there because I wasn't maturing the way that I needed to.

Elissa Wall [01:49:07] And there was really a lot of concern, but it really continued to be more of a correlation as to why we don't utilize medical world. The medical world, because there was an issue with the anesthetics that were given to me during the operation because it was. It was seen that I needed to get some tubes put in my ears, but more so I needed to have my tonsils removed because they had been so inflamed for most of my life that they were causing a lot of other issues. But in that process, somewhere there was a mistake and I had ended up coding on the operating table and woke up later in the hospital with them trying to take care of it.

Elissa Wall [01:49:47] And I had had a severe allergic reaction to whatever they had given me. And it was seen as a faith promoting experience for me as a child because when I would be told of the story of what it was like, it was, God wanted you to be here. He wanted you to, you know, the devil tried to take you away. And he was using the instrument of the doctors to do that. But you have a really important role to play in this world. And so therefore the God had gifted you life once again.

Elissa Wall [01:50:21] And that was important because I did end up getting my tonsils taken out. I later had to go back in and get my tubes put in and different things happen. But my family had chosen not to pursue any kind of a lawsuit or anything for medical malpractice because that was something that the church told them we don't do. But partially because they didn't want people digging in deeper, they didn't want any outside influences digging in deeper. And that became one of the practices that created so much trauma for the people in the FLDS is nothing that was going wrong was ever effectively dealt with. It was always swept under the rug.

Elissa Wall [01:51:00] Whether that was child abuse, whether that was sexual assault, whether that was physical abuse on children and women. It was always swept under the rug because we didn't want the authorities or anyone investigating the problem deeper. And that really started a very.

Elissa Wall [01:51:28] It became a virus within the FLDS because there was a lot of problems that then were handed down to the next generation. You had kids that were abused as children that would then turn around and abuse their own children that would. And it was this vicious cycle of victim, perpetrator, victim, perpetrator. And it was just kind of common, you Know, child abuse was just what happened. There were some families, it was worse than other families, and particularly abuse, sexual abuse of young girls.

Elissa Wall [01:51:59] Being on this end of my story now and getting the opportunity to connect with so many people that come from the flds as well as other fundamentalist Mormon groups, abuse was such a huge part of our day to day lives. And it's really sad to me that that's kind of what a lot of the shared experience is, is on trauma.

John Dehlin [01:52:23] Yeah. As I'm thinking about Sam too, talking about how Hilldale eventually has its own police force. Just like you were discouraged from seeking traditional medical help, you would never, you would never turn in your dad or an uncle or a cousin to the police if they had been guilty of abuse or pedophilia or even spousal abuse. She never went to the law enforcement, is that right?

Elissa Wall [01:52:48] Yes. No, they never went to the law enforcement.

John Dehlin [01:52:50] And that allows the abuse to perpetuate within the community, within the family.

Elissa Wall [01:52:55] Definitely it does. And I'm glad that you kind of brought that up because one of the things that we saw that changed. If I zoom out of my own personal story for a moment and I just look at the broader side story of the flds, you know, I was a part of the congregation in the Salt Lake area for most of my childhood. And there was also the congregation that was happening in Short Creek, because we've talked about that a little bit.

Elissa Wall [01:53:17] And the, the community of the Short Creek, they were a very self sufficient community. They had established actual towns and cities for both sides because they were working to become more of a functioning, legitimate society. They had also started their own police force, and they saw that as a way to be able to fit in enough with the outside world that the outside world wouldn't come in and try and police themselves.

Elissa Wall [01:53:45] And the only people that were a part of that police force were active members of the FLDS who were seen as worthy enough to hold that position. And then they were sent off to police school, but then they were ultimately just brought back into the area. And so everyone that was a part of the flds, we all knew that the police were FLDS police. They weren't. And they were just there to prove to the outside world that we were doing what we were, what the outside world said we should do. But they were really just the tool of the church.

John Dehlin [01:54:16] Fascinating.

Elissa Wall [01:54:17] It is. After I started getting better in my life, after my tragic story of my surgery and getting more. Well, I started to go back to school at Alta Academy because I'd taken A bit of a medical hiatus away from school. And this was at a very interesting time, too, because Warren really started to take over. Because what we didn't realize is that around this time, Roland had had a series of strokes, and Warren had done a very good job at hiding from the people the severity of where Ruland's health was.

Elissa Wall [01:54:53] We hear stories now from some of his wife's and people that were very close to it. And even in the Netflix documentary, it did a pretty good job at showing what was happening. Where on the surface, the people of the FLDS believed that Rulon was still in control and he was the one that was getting the revelations from God and handing them down to the people. But what we find is that in reality, it was Warren, and he had navigated his life where he was right there ready to take over and definitely acted on that.

John Dehlin [01:55:27] Was there one teacher at Aaltham Academy, Warren, or were there multiple teachers? How did that work?

Elissa Wall [01:55:33] Yeah, there was lots of teachers, and most of them were people from the community. You had a lot of even Rulon's wives that would come and teach different grades and different topics. Warren was the one who. He was particularly in charge of any priesthood teachings. So he would manage the morning class that would happen first thing in the morning. And a majority of that class was focused on church teachings as well, as we always were, highlighting a chapter in the Book of Mormon. And we were always tested, and a lot of our curriculum was formulated from that. But then he also taught home economics, which was the female version of all of that.

Elissa Wall [01:56:10] And he would do extensive teachings and trainings on how a woman could effectively grow and flourish as a woman and a wife. So most girls got a majority of their teachings around femininity and around who and how they should show up as a female from Warren himself.

John Dehlin [01:56:28] Why are you smiling, Jen?

Guest [01:56:29] This is just absurd. What Warren Jeffs would be teaching females on how to be feminine.

John Dehlin [01:56:35] Yeah.

Guest [01:56:36] And what their roles. Role is. It's just like, it sounds absurd now. Like, I'm, you know, I'm definitely holding space for what. What happened and how that was for the women within the flds. But my. My smile is, like, in the space I am now. Like, that's just so absurd that Warren Jeffs would be teaching the women's classes on how to be a proper woman or wife.

Elissa Wall [01:57:05] It really is absurd. Like, if you look back at it from the lens that we're looking at right now. But at the time, strategically, Warren had navigated himself into a position to where he was really, truly in control of the youth, especially in the Salt Lake area.

Elissa Wall [01:57:20] And if you look at other dictators throughout history, they've taken. They've all taken a similar approach. And that is, you get the youth and you get control. And Warren had been doing that for a long while with Alta Academy. And then he just kept stepping the game up. You know, he even came out with a book that very much highlighted everything from the roles of a man and a woman to marital relations to all things. And it was called Enlightened Truth. And Warren was the main motivator behind that particular publication. It was a giant volume. And that was a lot of what he would go through with the women is he'd go through the text and then he would very detail, in a very detailed way, explained to the women what each piece meant.

Elissa Wall [01:58:06] And so the layers of programming were incredibly intense because not only would we get those aspects of Warren, because then he would also have. He created a whole series of tapes where he went through the history of the world and the history of the FLDS church and gave his own version of those histories. And so every class, whether they were in first grade, all the way to high school, would go through that series that Warren himself had put out there. And we would learn everything about history from Warren's perspective. And I didn't realize it until long after I had left that a majority of what I thought had happened in history was false, was a false narrative.

Elissa Wall [01:58:46] And I had to. That was one more piece of the crumbling that happened for me. So we would get all of the indoctrination at school, and then we would go home and we would listen to the Bible stories and. And the Mormon Book stories, the Book of Mormon stories. I mean, for me, I never actually read the Bible as a child because we were encouraged to just listen to the tapes.

Elissa Wall [01:59:08] So, once again, it was putting his spin on everything that he could with it. But the side effect to all of that is it ingrained in a generation of people this relationship that we had, even to his voice, that was really essential to what Warren was ultimately able to do. It started long before he took over. And it started with the youth. And it started with subtle, intense, culturing programming and brainwashing.

Warren Jeffs's Teachings on Women and Control

John Dehlin [01:59:37] If you had to just quickly summarize what Warren's take was on how to be a woman. Could you even summarize it in a lot of ways?

Elissa Wall [01:59:47] No, because he was so detailed on it. It was bizarre even in the ways that he would tell a woman to take care of a man. And you saw that really get Worse, especially with anything that came out of Texas from the Texas raid. That would happen later, years later. Warren's revelations about what a woman should and shouldn't do are bizarrely detailed and quite perverted.

Elissa Wall [02:00:11] But to encapsulate it, really what it was, it was about submission. It was all about being submissive, not questioning, not having your own voice, absolutely submitting yourself, mind, body and soul to the will of the Lord. And the will of the Lord was known to you through your husband, and that was also known to you through the husband, through the priesthood. So it was constantly reestablishing this connection of power and where a woman fit in it. And we weren't even on the totem pole. We were property of the totem pole.

John Dehlin [02:00:45] Wow. You weren't lowest on the totem pole. You weren't on the totem totem pole.

Elissa Wall [02:00:49] No, we were not on the totem pole.

John Dehlin [02:00:50] Of the totem pole. That's profound. Wow. Yeah.

Elissa Wall [02:00:55] What we started to see happen was as the narratives came down, the end of the world is coming. Time is short. Time is short. Especially after ruling fell ill. Then it was kind of turned on the people, where Rulon became ill because the people are not righteous enough. And there was this new narrative that started where Warren was saying, father, in reference to Rulin, will become renewed if the people are righteous and faithful enough.

Elissa Wall [02:01:24] And he started to reference the things that were happening in the world around as why time was short. But really what this. The purpose of this was is because by putting pressure on the people, he was able to get more and more out of the people. And it was no longer about creating a quality of life and how to live the Lord's work. It was how to dedicate yourself fully and completely to the prophet. And he used whatever narrative he could, starting with even the Olympics.

Elissa Wall [02:01:52] As the year 2000 started to approach, then there began. There began this teaching over the pulpit that the time was short and at any point in time, the righteous would be lifted up. And it was really scary. As a child, I remember kneeling on my. By my bed and just sobbing and weeping because I felt like I was not good enough and I was never going to be lifted up. And that was a tool that was used often where it was like, oh, you did a bad thing, you're never gonna be lifted up. And it was always this. This ever present, present pressure, and it was never enough.

Elissa Wall [02:02:30] And even for the men, like when you hear stories of the fathers and the men at the time, you know, they had these large families and they had multiple wives and they were supposed to be this priesthood head. But the pressure that the men were under to be always, they were never enough. They could never give enough money, they could never give enough time. And there was always this drive for more, for more, sacrifice more. But what this also did is it started to remove people from their own embodied experience and disconnect them completely from the living for self. And you were absolutely living for nothing other than the priesthood and the prophet and the Lord.

Elissa Wall [02:03:09] That was. But it was a very perverted way of doing it because often it came at the sacrifice of your own well being, the well being of your family and the well being of your children. We saw this in my life. I watched this happen quite radically because in 90, I think it was 98 then Warren got up one day and just announced that he was closing Alta Academy. And the reason he was closing ELT Academy is because time was short and the Lord was deciding who his righteous people were. And I'm sure there was a lot of other reasons to it, but in my memory that was a big portion as to why and that the Lord would be moving his people.

Elissa Wall [02:03:47] And so then the narrative started to be handed down that the Lord was gathering his people and that people were going to start gathering into the Short Creek area. So all of the home, all the people that were in the Salt Lake Valley that had been attending the Alta Academy so school were then given curriculum to do at home.

Elissa Wall [02:04:07] So I did a whole entire year of homeschool at my home in Sugarhouse from the Alta Academy curriculum because everyone was moving. And we saw that first with Roland Jeffs and Warren, the compound, the Jeffs compound in Sandy area started to become empty and they started to move and relocate down into Short Creek. And it really came all to a pinnacle in the year because the goal was to all be moved before the 2002 Olympics. So that was the driving force.

Elissa Wall [02:04:38] And why the 2002 Olympics were so important was because Warren's take on that was the Lord was creating an event that was going to call all of the people from all over the world into the Salt Lake area where the destructions were going to start.

Elissa Wall [02:04:55] And the reason for that was, is because the most betrayal had happened in the Salt Lake Valley by the Mormon Church, the mainstream Mormon Church becoming astray and then trying to root out the real practices of everlasting, the everlasting Church, then that was going to be the recompense for that action.

John Dehlin [02:05:20] It is such a crazy worldview, even a religious worldview, that there's this all loving all powerful heavenly Father in heaven, but he wants to stick it to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints for their disobedience. So he's going to call people from all over the world together, put them in Salt Lake City during the Olympics so that he can torch them all. Like, what does that say about how you view God?

Elissa Wall [02:05:46] Well, to hear you say it now is quite comical and I'm having a hard time not laughing about it because it is, it's bizarre.

John Dehlin [02:05:54] And that's an awful God.

Elissa Wall [02:05:55] It is an awful God. And even at the time it was a little bit confusing to me because I, even though I was a product of my environment, I still had a lot of those questions on the inside. You know, I'd had this event happened one time where we were at this. We were at Bear Lake and we were there with the whole entire community. And they didn't happen very often. A, the flds in the majority of them have this weird view of water and that somehow the devil controls the water and if you play in the water, then you are putting yourself at risk at being influenced by the devil.

John Dehlin [02:06:33] That comes from Joseph Smith. That's in the Doctrine of Covenants. Oh, probably Satan has committed over the water. So that's actually, that's taught in the mainstream lds.

Elissa Wall [02:06:41] I find it funny because now as the woman I am today, so much of my exploration on femininity is it's, it's a, it's a feminine element. I'm like, ah, it makes sense that they think that the devil existed in the feminine element because at the time, you know, there was so much about the, the feminine that couldn't be controlled. So. But anyhow, we were in Bear Lake and even Rulin Jeffs himself came up there this time. But my family was playing on the beach one day and I was observing another family that was there and they were not a part of the flds. They were off on the beach playing and they had a few kids and a husband and a father and a mother.

Elissa Wall [02:07:22] And I was just watching them. And it was the first time in my life that I could recall and remember seeing what I thought love was supposed to look like. Because there was this joy and this feeling and just watching this family play and enjoy and have lunch. And the thought in my head was that is not at all like what we've been told they would do. Who would do a family from the outside world.

John Dehlin [02:07:55] You saw other families?

Elissa Wall [02:07:57] Yeah, I saw a gentile family, non FLDS family.

John Dehlin [02:08:00] Being loving.

Elissa Wall [02:08:01] Yes, being loving and very playful. With each other. And just. Just the watching that happen subconsciously, something came up, a red flag came up and said, something's not quite right. And that would be really important to me later on in life because that was kind of the. The first brick in this foundation of questioning that would happen for me. And as time went on and things like when my. When my family was sent away or my brothers were sent away, and even the connection that my father still had with some of his family that were considered Gentiles or apostates, it just always didn't quite sit right or seem right.

Elissa Wall [02:08:43] And this idea that the world was going to be completely destroyed was kind of difficult for me to wrap my brain around, even as a child, even though that's what we had believed since before I was born. For my family, the power of the church really became evident, even though we knew it. But how extensively Warren could control things, even though his dad was still alive and still in charge, became evident for me. In the year 99, we were all getting prepared for the. For the. The turn of the millennia. And that was really scary because we didn't really know what that was going to mean.

Elissa Wall [02:09:24] We knew that between the turn of the millennia and the 2002 Olympics, there was going to be terrible things happening and the destructions were going to be coming. And so there was always this pressure to be better, to be better, to be better. And with the Prophet leaving the Salt Lake Valley, it left a lot of the people that were still living here in the Salt Lake congregation bereft. You know, there was this concern that they're getting left behind because only certain families were being called to move to Short Creek. And everyone was kind of just on the edge of their seat of when their family was going to be called to move to Short Creek.

Elissa Wall [02:10:00] Our family, from my knowledge, had not yet been told that we were going to move to Short Creek. And this one summer day in 99, there was a situation that happened to where one of my teenage brothers got in a disagreement with my dad. And the way that it had been resolved didn't sit right with my mother. And she felt like that it really needed. Some things needed to change in our home. There had been many, many years of struggle and dissension between the wives and the children. And she really felt that she needed more advice on how to handle it. And she made the mistake, I guess you could say, of going to Warren and asking for his advice.

Elissa Wall [02:10:45] I remember after the event had happened, my mother had gathered up her kids, and I actually had a Chance to sit in the phone booth with her as she was calling Warren from a cell phone. I mean, like from a phone. Because she didn't feel like she could go home to make this call, and we didn't have cell phones at that time.

Elissa Wall [02:11:04] And to hear Warren's voice through the speaker of the phone and to hear my mother telling the story, there's part of me that I can close my eyes today and I can be right there. I remember as the sun was going down, I'm watching it and my mother's telling the story, and there's this really ominous feeling. And ultimately from that conversation, Warren told my mother to go home and pack up and that the Lord was going to deal with Lloyd greatly. And what that meant to be dealt with greatly was a. We had no idea what it was going to mean, but it meant that something was radically going to change.

Father Stripped of His Family, Moving to Short Creek

John Dehlin [02:11:43] Do you have a sense for what you're. And you don't have to share, especially if it's confidential, but do you have a sense for what was. You said that your mom was just tired of the conflict, but like, it sounds like your. Your dad ended up getting in trouble. Were there things your mom was kind of telling on him about to warn that you're able to share, and if you're not able to share, that's fine too.

Elissa Wall [02:12:04] I have asked a lot of people that were involved in. Because I was just 13 years old at the time, I was a teenager, I still kind of focused on my own experience and my own journey. But hearing stories from my mother later on, as well as from some of my other siblings who were involved in the time frame, My mother had been talking to the priesthood for a while about some of the things that she didn't agree with happening in our home.

Elissa Wall [02:12:26] My father sees that as a form of betrayal because it prevented him from being able to solve those inner conflicts of our family. But herein is the confliction of mindsets and culture. Because the way that my dad felt to deal with it versus how my mother felt that it should be dealt with were very different.

Elissa Wall [02:12:50] And my mother was of the belief that her connection to God came through my father. But ultimately it came to the prophet. And so by going to the prophet and prior to this event happening where my. In my family. A couple of years before this, my.

Elissa Wall [02:13:10] My mother had been taken to her childhood ranch with her children. And it had been kind of put as this. My dad's being reprimanded for things that he's done. This is the way it was told to the kids.

Elissa Wall [02:13:22] Things are getting. He's getting reprimanded. We don't know for sure if we'll go back, but ultimately what came from that is my dad and his wives were rebaptized and remarried. And this had happened a couple years before that.

Elissa Wall [02:13:37] And some of the directive had been, okay, you have to change what's happening. You have to live a harmonious, peaceful, polygamist lifestyle, or it's going to happen again. And it ultimately did happen. And the second time that the church reprimanded my dad for the way that he was practicing his family and taking care of his family, it ended with him completely being stripped of his family and his priesthood.

Elissa Wall [02:14:02] What I didn't realize at this time was the history that my dad and Warren had shared. And my dad was a brilliant individual. He was educated. He's an engineer as well as a chemist and a geologist. And he had used a lot of his skill sets to embedder the community of the flds, both in the Jeff's compound here in Sandy, as well as a lot of work he did was down in the community of Short Creek. And so he had a lot of respect and he had a lot of people that appreciated his expertise and influence, especially within Alta Academy. Then my dad was called to teach there for a couple of years, and Warren saw him as a huge threat, particularly that the youth really liked my dad.

Elissa Wall [02:14:53] They liked the way that he taught. They loved the topics that he was teaching, but he was teaching topics that, such as chemistry and science and geology that Warren did not see as important in any way. So he, very quickly, as soon as he could, removed my dad as a teacher. And then ever from ever that point, it was always. There was always this weird tension between Rulon and my dad when. Excuse me, between Warren and my dad. And when Warren got into a position to where he no longer had to filter things through his dad, you started to see a lot of the resentments that Warren had himself play out in the way that he handled things.

Elissa Wall [02:15:35] And Warren was an insanely jealous person. He's often referred to as a narcissist because most of the way that you see he practiced his life falls in line with how a narcissist functions. And everything that Warren did often was that way. It was about Warren. And anything that wasn't about Warren, he eliminated severely.

Elissa Wall [02:15:57] So for my dad, then that process of having his family taken away from him, he was publicly humiliated. And socially he became a pyre overnight very quickly. And my. My mother and her younger children were we were moved to the Short Creek community.

Elissa Wall [02:16:17] And one day I woke up and I was. I had my family and I had my dad. And the next day we're being driven to Short Creek and had no idea what was going to happen.

John Dehlin [02:16:29] So he lost his three wives and all his kids at that moment?

Elissa Wall [02:16:33] Yes, he did. Even though a lot of his children were grown and married and had kids of their own, all of his younger kids were taken away from him. Ultimately, his first wife chose to stay with him. And I'm incredibly proud of her for standing up for her own values because she would not leave him. And. But my mother and his third wife did leave my dad.

Elissa Wall [02:16:58] This was so crushing to my dad because what initially did is what. He didn't just lose his family. He lost everything that he had sacrificed his life for. He lost his connection to the community. He became. He wasn't even on the totem pole. Same thing.

Elissa Wall [02:17:15] He didn't have the priesthood. He didn't have the confidence of the church. And so everyone reflected what they were told about my dad and treated him as such. And he went from a member of the community and an upstanding member of the community down to absolutely nothing. All because of the word of Warren.

Elissa Wall [02:17:36] A lot of people would say, well, he had it coming because of the way that he treated his kids. You know, there was abuse, physical abuse that happened in our family. And part of it was just because with each generation, that's gotten better and better. I look at my dad and the way that he was raised and the amount of physical abuse that he was raised with, and he was light years better than his parents were to him. And with each generation, we see the standard in which we treat other humans. We're elevating that. And it's really easy for people to look at what my dad was doing and say, okay, that was wrong.

Elissa Wall [02:18:10] Whereas they're looking at the lens of it today versus the lens of it then, but also the lens of how everyone was practicing their parental authority within the flds.

John Dehlin [02:18:23] Yeah, because I'm sure there were men that were abusive to family members or even sexually abusive that Warren would be okay with if it met Warren's interests. Right.

Elissa Wall [02:18:33] Well, Warren himself is an example of that, because we hear now of the stories of the horrendous abuse that he was dealing to his own children. Sexual abuse, physical abuse, psychological abuse. Absolutely terrible. What we hear was happening within his own family and what he was also doing to other people, cousins and nephews, the things that were in his own sisters and all of that was always being swept under the rug. And it was a lot easier for him to hand select people that were a threat to him and pinpoint what he thought was wrong in what they were doing and use that as a tool to diminish their influence within the community.

John Dehlin [02:19:13] So it wasn't about abuse, it was about his power.

Elissa Wall [02:19:15] Oh, absolutely. It was about his power. And I can confidently say that even this point in my life, knowing all the different stories from all the different angles in my siblings, from my mother, from my dad, and just analyzing and realizing all of those had an influence in it, but ultimately it was about Warren and Warren exercising his control. Because what we would see is that became a theme. My dad was an example at a really important time in Warren's takeover. And we saw that play out over and over as he would select men. And the more that he could do that without anyone stepping in and challenging it, the easier it got for him to use that as a tool, another tool of fear.

John Dehlin [02:19:57] Because no one's going to defy him or step out of line or they're going to lose their wives and kids too.

Elissa Wall [02:20:02] Absolutely. And we saw that happen. I mean, even as time goes on in this story, we see so many points where he was publicly doing things to the people that everyone felt wrong. And you talk to people, post the experiences, and you realize that how many of us were like, something doesn't feel right? The key was, is there was enough programming to question that intuition that people did not act on it. And I think that included my mother and even my own siblings. They did not act on that intuition that made them question whether it was okay for the church to have that much authority over a man and his family.

John Dehlin [02:20:48] When I talked to Sam, I asked him how well he knew his dad, and he basically said he had no memory of ever spending any one on one time with his dad. That his dad, with three or four wives, just had a gazillion kids, dozens and dozens of kids. You didn't have a child father relationship that was any way personal or direct. Was it the same way with you, or was it different with you and your dad?

Elissa Wall [02:21:11] I think there was threads of that for most polygamous families, especially the larger the family got. I do feel, I feel very lucky because I think my dad was a lot more present than a lot of other parents were.

Elissa Wall [02:21:24] He would really try to do different things with his kids, such as hiking, overnight hiking, camping. He really did try. And this is me looking at it from a more hilled hole perspective, because if you would have asked me 10 years ago.

Elissa Wall [02:21:40] I was still embroiled in that experience of anger and bitterness. And it was really easy to look at what was, what didn't go well. Whereas the lens I'm looking from now is trying to be a lot more balanced with what was going well. And I think even for my dad and my mom and what was happening in our family, there was a lot of things that were still going well.

Elissa Wall [02:22:01] And it's important to me to keep reminding myself of that part of the story too, because that shows the humanness of it. It wasn't all bad, and that's the unique aspect of this story of even the flds, it was not all bad. And even the people that have left and built a life for themselves. The more we can return to that balanced perspective of calling out what was very, very wrong, but also compassionately holding space and appreciation for what was good.

John Dehlin [02:22:33] So what was it like for you

Elissa Wall [02:22:35] to lose your dad as a 13 year old girl going, just starting that, that puberty phase of life? It was very confusing because my mom had a saying that she used my whole life and she pulled out, pulled it out this time and it was, if you don't know, put it on the shelf and put it on the shelf. And for me, I was so confused as to what was happening and why it was happening and being told put it on the shelf was very hard for me.

Part 2 of 3 · Ep. 1653

Elissa Wall [00:00:00] We were moved into the Short Creek area and put into the bishop of Short Creek, which was Fred Jessup. We were put into his home.

John Dehlin [00:00:09] Warren's brother.

Elissa Wall [00:00:10] No, Fred Jessup is not Warren's brother at all. Fred Jessup was one of the original founding fathers of the Short Creek area. He had been the bishop of the area for quite a long while, and he had a lot of loyalty and appreciation from the congregation down in Short Creek because he had been there helping them build and caring for the people for a long time.

Elissa Wall [00:00:34] Fred Jessup was interesting in that he could not have children of his own, and he had become kind of the collection point for all of the women who had their husbands taken away. And when I came into his home, he had a large family. He had almost 20 wives by that point and over 60 kids that were under his roof.

Elissa Wall [00:00:55] But every single one of those kids came from broken homes and broken families. So it created a very difficult and hard climate within the home because you had a lot of kids that didn't have a lot of answers. And trying to navigate that was really difficult for me personally. Losing my dad was so hard because I had a view of a lot of love and appreciation for my dad. And I know a lot of my other siblings have a different view of him, but for me, that was my perspective. I really loved my dad and I cared so deeply for him. So to have him taken away with never knowing whether we were going to go back, but then having the community in Short Creek really pushing this narrative, you know, you're never going back to your dad.

Elissa Wall [00:01:48] And ultimately, my mother married Fred as a wife, and so we became Fred's children. And from that point forward, the way that the FLDS would promote the belief was that the minute the priesthood rearranged a family or a woman was taken from one man to be given to another man, everything would change for those children.

Elissa Wall [00:02:10] Their ancestral background would change, their last names would change, even to such a point that I was told that my very DNA was going to change to mirror that of Fred Jessup and that I was to forget my dad severely. We weren't allowed to communicate with him. We weren't allowed to talk to him. I didn't know if he knew what was going on, and I knew nothing about what was happening to him.

John Dehlin [00:02:36] Did you say you were taught that your DNA would change to be his DNA? Did you just say that?

Elissa Wall [00:02:40] Yes, that's what I was told, is that after my mother was married to Fred Jessup that everything was going to change. I was Fred's child now, even to such a point that my DNA would change. I know it's a bizarre thing to say now. And people are like, really? But that's the level of illogical concepts that the community was at throughout my childhood.

John Dehlin [00:03:05] It's wild.

Elissa Wall [00:03:05] It is when I think about it now. So that really changed everything in my story because one thing, I lost my family. I also lost my culture of the Salt Lake community. And the Short Creek community was quite a bit different. They practiced the belief systems of polygamy and FLDS quite a bit differently than we did in Salt Lake. And also for the Short Creek, they often called Salt Lakers, Lakers. You know, there was always this, you know, you had the Canadians, you had the Lakers, and you had the Crickers. And whatever congregation you were a part of, that was kind of your label. And so for me, to be a Laker, moving into a the land of the Crickers was a really hard thing, and to just find my ground with it.

John Dehlin [00:03:55] Thinking about what Sam talked about, one of the things that stunned me about his description of growing up in Short Creek was that the families didn't spend a lot of time together. According to Sam, you spent time with your moms and your siblings, but you didn't spend a lot of time with other people's families, at least more and more down the road. I'm thinking about that as one extreme. And then the other extreme is you go into the Alta School with a ton of other kids, knowing a ton of other families. One is a lot more socially engaging, more community, more connected. That would be the Lakers and then the Crickers. Over time, it would have moved towards being a lot more isolated socially. Was that your experience, or were the Crickers more social, socially connected when you move there?

Elissa Wall [00:04:46] The Crickers were definitely more socially connected. There were certain families that did keep to themselves, and I believe that he was a part of the. One of those families that kept to themselves a lot more. But that was what was kind of interesting for me, is how socially engaged the community of Short Creek was all the way to the point that everyone knew everyone's business all the time, as with small organization, small towns or small organizations. And so it was tough because to learn the social nuances of Short Creek was quite difficult for me. And then also the hierarchy, whether people agree with it or not, there was a hierarchy of families within the Short Creek place. You know, the last name mattered big time for the Short Creek area. And I was not a Wall and I was not a Jessup. Now I was somewhere in between. And so I had no status socially.

John Dehlin [00:05:36] Wait, why weren't you a Jessup?

Elissa Wall [00:05:38] Because I was adamantly not going to be a Jessup. There was a space in time where I would get into intense disagreements and arguments with other people from Fred's home as well as from the community. Because I was an adamant defender of my dad. I believed that he was going to get his priesthood back and that ultimately this nightmare was gonna go over. I was one of those kids, like, from a divorced family, where I was. I had this version of how it was gonna go in my mind and it was going to happen.

John Dehlin [00:06:06] So you resisted being Jessup?

Elissa Wall [00:06:09] Definitely. It was really hard for me. I did not buy into it hook, line, and sinker like we were supposed to buy into. It makes sense. And the climate in Fred's home was quite hard because I went from a home where I was the oldest girl and I was there taking care of all of my siblings and doing the home tasks to now I was in a home where there was 20 girls between the age of 11 and 17.

Elissa Wall [00:06:33] And it's hard. That's a tough age for girls, especially when you layer on all of the issues that were happening within the community, as well as the lifestyle and the struggles that they were all coming from. And they were all. We all had a shared back, and that is that we were. We were struggling and traumatized from the pain of having our families decimated and then being put in the situation of being Fred's child.

John Dehlin [00:06:56] A foster home, really?

Elissa Wall [00:06:58] A very extreme version of foster home. Yes.

John Dehlin [00:07:01] Is it all under one roof?

Elissa Wall [00:07:02] Yes, that was the other tough thing is Fred had a massive house right up against the mountains in the Hill Dell area, and everyone lived under the same roof. And so it took all of my experiences of living in a polygamous home and just aggravated all of it, because all of it was still very apparent even in Fred's home. The. The struggles, the arguments, the jealousy, the dissension, it was all still very much apparent in Fred's home. And it was kind of hard because I look at it now, and I wonder if my mother felt like she jumped out of the frying pan into the fire.

John Dehlin [00:07:37] Yeah, because she started all that.

Elissa Wall [00:07:39] Well, whether she started it or not, it was. She went through.

John Dehlin [00:07:42] Yes. I shouldn't say that. I take that back.

Elissa Wall [00:07:44] No, that's okay. I think it's a fair point, because that's kind of how my dad looks at it, is that she started some of this, and so that was the result of it. But I Don't think for a second it's what my mother wanted. I think she just wanted a better world for her kids. And she was following her understanding of what was the righteous thing to do.

Elissa Wall [00:08:09] But ultimately, it's what created the. It's what actually initiated the destiny of all of her children. Because at that point, my life was forever changed, and all of her children were set. There was. There was things set in motion that were bigger than all of us. And me being moved to Short Creek was the beginning of a new journey for me that was incredibly difficult, and I don't know if I could ever do it again. But the ability to survive what would. The next season of my life was really. It was important to. To have that experience of having my family taken away and being kind of an island all on my own.

Adjusting to Life in Fred Jessup's Home

Elissa Wall [00:08:53] And that's what it felt like being moved into Fred's home. Everything that I knew my world had been. Was shattered. And now I was in this new world with all of the same pressures and all of the same struggles. Only I felt like I was further down the road than I was in this path to perfection.

John Dehlin [00:09:11] And all the wives lived under the same roof? All of Fred's wives?

Elissa Wall [00:09:15] Yes, they did.

John Dehlin [00:09:16] How many?

Elissa Wall [00:09:17] Again, when my family came in, I'm not sure how many Fred ultimately married because he married quite a few. He was given a lot of wives even after my mother was married, but he had almost 20 when my mother was married.

John Dehlin [00:09:29] So you had 19 other moms under the same roof. And I'm thinking of Little Orphan Annie now, like all these sisters that you gained, I'm guessing there were some nice ones, and I'm guessing there were some bullies.

Elissa Wall [00:09:43] Yep.

John Dehlin [00:09:43] How are you treated by your sisters and brothers?

Elissa Wall [00:09:47] Well, as I was referencing this concept of Laker and Cricker, I already kind of had a niche in my. That I was a Laker. And there was this commonality with a lot of the people because they were from. They were born and raised and from the Short Creek area.

Elissa Wall [00:10:03] It was hard. I'll be honest. I learned a lot about the females of the FLDS through that experience of what the realities was like to share a household with a lot of females. And there was a lot of difficulties that came from that. Was there some good things? Absolutely. I learned a lot of how to function in the social environments of the flds.

Elissa Wall [00:10:29] And there was a lot of really great people that lived in Fred's home and people that, to this day, I can connect with. And I see. And the fascinating thing to me is Even though we're worlds away, we still share this common thread of realizing there was a point in our lives where we were brothers and sisters. And that's been the unique example to me of what the resilience looks like for people that have come from this background is we still have these common ties of loyalty and care. And the way that we view one another is quite compassionate. And I've appreciated it to know that even from my experience of living in Fred's home, I gained quite a few really incredible people in my life that I probably wouldn't have had I not experienced it the way that we had.

John Dehlin [00:11:19] I mean, you're so gracious and wise now, but I'm wondering at the time if you felt bullied and picked on at all.

Elissa Wall [00:11:24] Absolutely, I did.

John Dehlin [00:11:26] And I'm wondering what are the types of things they would say or do to you as a way to bully you if you want to share. And that's not to say they're bad people or that we're demeaning them because everyone's a victim in the system.

Elissa Wall [00:11:38] Absolutely. I see what you're saying with it. And a lot of that bullying really came from just that, you know, I was not willing to let go of my dad for quite a long while, and I would get in these arguments with some of the girls, and it was this, you know, you're Fred's daughter now. No, I'm not. Even after I was moved to Short Creek, then I was put in eighth grade. I had done my last year in Ellt Academy in sixth grade, and then we had done seventh grade at home in Salt Lake. And then I was immediately put into public school down in Short Creek for my eighth grade year.

Elissa Wall [00:12:14] And even as much as the name that they registered me under, they registered me under Elissa Jessup. And I fought that. And it created a lot of problems because I was just supposed to be accepting and submissive. That showed me, if I look at it now, that resistance was. Became a theme of my life that ultimately led to my survival.

Elissa Wall [00:12:35] But that's mostly what I was bullied for, was I was a little different. I was a little different. And I was so unwilling to submit to this idea that my dad was out of my life forever. I also had some brothers that were rebellious in the terms of what a traditionally righteous and worthy boy should be.

Elissa Wall [00:12:58] And often they were being reprimanded, and it kind of bled into other people. You know, if one of my brothers got in trouble, then it showed something about me. And everyone's kind of lumped in the same situation as their mothers or the other brothers and sisters.

Elissa Wall [00:13:17] So it was often just me conflicting with other kids on everything from how I was doing chores or how I was showing up or how we were dressing or praying or not doing these things. And it's also go. It's very difficult to go from three mothers telling you what to do to 20 mothers telling you what to do. And all of them have that same authority.

John Dehlin [00:13:39] Wow. At some point, 2002 happens and the prophecies don't come true. I want you to just keep going with your chronology, but I want to make sure we.

Elissa Wall [00:13:52] Absolutely, we can go into it. Well, the year the millennial switched over. And I.

John Dehlin [00:13:59] That was 2000.

Elissa Wall [00:14:00] Yes, year 2000. And that was kind of this point where I was like, okay, what's going to happen? Is this going to start the wave of destructions? I was currently living in Fred's home when that happened.

John Dehlin [00:14:13] So you were in Short Creek by 2000?

Elissa Wall [00:14:15] Yes. And I tell people all the time, the destructions did start in my life because everything that I knew and loved, the world as I knew it came to a crashing halt and radically changed. It was often tried to be spun to me as that was the beginning of you being a part of redeeming Zion. You know, it was always spun in this weird, weird way. But my world did come to an end in the year as the turn of the century happened, the turn of the millennia, really. And.

Elissa Wall [00:14:47] But also within the people as a whole, there really started to be this intense push and as all of the people from Salt Lake were moving into Short Creek, because with the turn of the year 2000, then it was okay. The end of the world didn't come because you. The people have been gifted more time. That was the story, that was the narrative that Warren was saying. You know, the people have been gifted more time. The people have been gifted more time. So make good use of this time,

John Dehlin [00:15:15] because that is the thing. Like, it was such an aha moment for me when you talked about the millennialism of the FLDS Church specifically, but of Mormonism and Christianity more generally. It was an aha moment for me when you said that millennialism, the idea of Christ's eminent return, Millennialism has always been used to. To pressure the members to be more obedient and to sacrifice more. That was an aha moment for me. And it's so true in your case, but it's just so.

John Dehlin [00:15:54] It's so fascinating, whether it's Jehovah's Witnesses or the LDS Church or the FLDS Church or any of the millennialistic religions, how there's such a history of there being predictions for the end of the earth. The predictions don't come true. And somehow the leaders are able to gain more obedience and more faithfulness when their own predictions fail to come true.

John Dehlin [00:16:21] And so I never tire of hearing about how everyone's waiting for this prophecy to come true. It doesn't. And it doesn't make everyone go, wow, he doesn't know what he's doing. He's not a prophet. Get out of here. Instead, you're more devoted.

Elissa Wall [00:16:37] There was definitely a lot of that. But one thing that started to change is when the destructions didn't come, then there was this kind of climate of like, okay, but a lot of people who had any point of influence started to question a little. And we saw another split happen right around this time where Warren reprimanded more men. And particularly we saw a split happen with the community in British Columbia. There's a community right there by Creston, British Columbia, that had been there since the days of Leroy Johnson.

Elissa Wall [00:17:14] And the leader, the bishop at the time, was Winston Blackmore. And one day Warren gets up and he explains that Winston is a false prophet and deals with him greatly, as Warren would continue to say. But. But ultimately what it led to was a split happening. And that was a difficult time because there was the same thing that had happened years before. There was families that were split right down the middle, and there was people that followed Winston because they were concerned about what was happening. But then there was people that it just ingrained them deeper. And it's just what you're saying, because the predictions don't happen, you would think that it would logically help people question, but in reality what it did is it just ingrained them further.

Elissa Wall [00:17:58] And it was more tools that were used by Warren as to push people even further and deeper into it, to clinch more control as things would go on. So by the time that the split had happened within the FLDS, right around the year 2000, and the end of the world didn't come. The Olympics are coming, and there's this intense pressure on the people. Everyone had moved to Short Creek at this point. And it's this pressure cooker of. Of things that are happening. And as we find in the story, it just keeps getting more and more so that way.

Elissa Wall [00:18:33] It was right around this time that in my own life then things took a turn, much for the worst, but I was sitting in. In prayer circle one day with my family in Short Creek and Fred Jessup, who was my father at the time, he alerted me to the fact that I was going to be married. And he had done it in kind of a subtle way, just put his hand around me and told me, you know, the prophet has a place for you. And it wasn't in a public forum. And so there was a part of me that was a little confused, and I was a little bit taken aback because I was 14 years old.

John Dehlin [00:19:15] I mean, that timing is probably not coincidental. That's when puberty. Around when puberty happens in a kind of a cynical mind is like, yeah, as soon as a girl becomes of kind of post puberty age, she's a candidate for marriage. But I don't want to push that on your story. But that's where my mind goes.

Elissa Wall [00:19:35] Well, it's a very fair point because that's very much how it was. You know, they had a saying that if you have a rebellious girl, get her married and get her pregnant, and it will solve everything. And you watch that happen over and over and over in the women's experience that are within the flds. And I think because of the rebel nature that my older brothers were, because at this point, I had another brother who had. I had three brothers that had left the Fred's home. And I think they saw that as a little bit of a threat.

Elissa Wall [00:20:11] When I tell this story, I'm often questioning even myself, like, what were the reasons why did this happen the way that it did? And I think there was a lot of them. But I really do agree that there was a part of it where the greatest solution to solve a rebellious girl was just get her married. And there was something about me that was a threat or a concern as to whether I was going to pollute other girls and make them start questioning or thinking for themselves.

Guest 2 [00:20:40] I was wondering that when you were talking earlier about how you were like, I don't want to take the Jessup last name. I don't want to. You know what I mean? Like, you're having these little. Little fight backs, you know, because of love for your father, but to them would seem rebellious, like, within the family. So I'm wondering if that's why. Because you said that you had older sisters still, and they skipped the older sisters and then told you you were gonna be married. And I was wondering if that's one of the reasons why, like, your dad would choose you.

Elissa Wall [00:21:16] I definitely assume that now because of how it all laid out. I mean, how it all was. You know, there was. There was quite a few girls that were older than me. And that's a tool that I used. As the days went on after Fred had told me the questions in my mind and I look back on this and I realized this was the birth of my personal resilience. Because I do believe that that instinctual part of me that was always present and at the different points in my life I was able to keep quieter, easier, really rose up inside of me. And my ability to question was quite an anomaly.

Elissa Wall [00:21:54] And it's one that I'm really, really grateful for because my fight to question is why I'm here today. And this rose up intensely at this time because I remember going to my mother and saying, Fred just told me I'm getting married. And she even herself was a little confused. She's like, I can't be. Like we were all kind of in a state of confusion. And so I went and followed up with Fred and said question whether he was talking to the right person. I mean, Fred's late in his 80s at this point in time and quite old. So it's very easy to think maybe he just got it confused with somebody else, which was my impression as this young 14 year old girl. I'm like, he's definitely got me confused with somebody else.

Forced Into Marriage as a Teenager

John Dehlin [00:22:40] Can I ask quickly, like this is important because Joseph Smith, the founder of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, married at least two 14 year olds. So we have to first say that this is not the marriage of 14 year old girls to an adult man did not start with Warren Jeffs, it started with Joseph Smith. And so we've covered quite a bit what it must have been like to be a 14 year old girl and to be told you're going to be marrying some random man who is a decade or two or more older than you. So I mean, I do want to just understand what's that like to be 14, 14 years old and told you're going to marry some man?

Elissa Wall [00:23:27] Definitely a good question. And I tell people the lens that I view my story on, it's very much like the angles of the sun throughout the day. The further in my journey I go, the angle of my lens and how I view things shifts over time. And I detailed all of this quite extensively in my book Stolen Innocence. And the value of that is I was at a different angle in my life and I was young, I was 20 when I was writing this book. And you see that, you see how, how much closer I was to that experience and being able to articulate the feelings around it more effectively than I AM today.

Elissa Wall [00:24:06] And for me, I knew that there were young girls married in the church all the time. I knew it. We had stories of all of our ancestors that had married young and we knew that it was just a part of it. We had kind of reached a point in everything where a lot of underage marriages weren't happening nearly as much.

John Dehlin [00:24:26] So yeah, as Lakers, it wasn't normal for a 14 year old girl to be married.

Elissa Wall [00:24:31] No, not as much. And even in my own family, my, my youngest sister had, my older sister had been, I believe 17, almost 18 when she had got married. And even for my dad, he was like, that's pretty young. But most of my other sisters were 19 and 20, past their 20s before they had been turned in to be married. But also, if I look back on that, there was also this understanding that the outside world was starting to question some of the practices of the flds. And we would have certain men that would come on to come to the pulpit on Sundays and would give us updates around maybe some of the legal struggles that the FLDS were up against.

Elissa Wall [00:25:11] And so we knew that there were outside forces in law enforcement and government that were questioning the practice of underage marriage. And they would tell the people about this, that this was one more step of persecution that was being dealt to the people of the FLDS to stop the Lord's will. How many people were going to succumb to this threat?

Elissa Wall [00:25:33] And even within my experience, if you see how it ended up happening, you see that the church knew exactly what they were doing. Warren knew exactly that marrying underage girls was wrong and was going to be challenged as time went on. But as a young girl going through it, it was very difficult because that instinctual part of me, I often refer to it as my spirit. Spirit was very present for me at the time and it was terrifying.

Elissa Wall [00:26:05] At the beginning when I was very first told, I thought maybe it was just a little bit of a confusion in that when I alerted Fred that a my age reminded him that I was 14 and that he probably had me confused with somebody, that it was going to be all cleared up and I would continue on with my life. Well, it did not happen that way. Fred made it very clear to me that no, this is you, you are going to get married. And that's when my self preservation started to kick in. And I don't know exactly why, but there was a part of me that rose up and said, this is not for me.

Elissa Wall [00:26:41] Like there that, that gut instinct, that feeling on the inside. And I went against the Grain unlike very few women of the FLDS have ever done. And that is, I questioned it severely. I went to Fred multiple times and explained where I was coming from, that I felt like I wanted at least two more years. I mean, imagine that you have a 14 year old child asking for two more years to be 16 years of age before they get married. And that was my request at the time is I just wanted two more years. I wanted to finish as much school as I could and I wanted to feel more prepared to be married.

Elissa Wall [00:27:21] At the time when Fred alerted me that I was going to get married, they didn't tell me who I was going to marry. And that had been a practice that had recently started to happen within the flds that I look back on now and realize it was another form of control because the girls were told they were getting married, but then they weren't actually told who they were going to get married until right before the actual ceremony.

Elissa Wall [00:27:45] And that was a way to prevent any resistance towards it because you're just, it's happening in the moment. After a couple of days I had, I was really concerned and I had asked my mother if she would start to talk to Fred for me. I was trying to ask Fred, you know, I need to talk to Warren about this because that was the answer I was being given is this is the Lord's will, this is the prophet. This is an arrangement that the prophet has called. And it was kind of being spun in a way where it's like, this is a gift to you. Why can't you be grateful for it?

Elissa Wall [00:28:20] You know, why are you resisting this? This is the next step of your life. And it was really hard as a teenager because socially, within the home that I was living in, everyone was trying to get me to be really grateful that this was happening. This was the ultimate, ultimate for women within the flds.

Elissa Wall [00:28:41] I was really struggling one night and I had come down once again to a prayer circle. I still didn't know who I was going to get married to and I was still trying to get Fred to give me permission to go talk to Warren.

John Dehlin [00:28:54] What's a prayer circle?

Elissa Wall [00:28:57] It's just what they do at the end of the day. The family comes together in prayer, if it's in the living room, but everyone comes together and it's just the end of the day prayer that's, that's done

John Dehlin [00:29:06] 50 people, all in a big circle,

Elissa Wall [00:29:07] all in a big circle and. Or just in the same room. It's, it's called the prayer circle or come down to Prayers. That's what it was referred to. Now also, people don't really. I get this question a lot, and I know it's kind of off topic. It's like, how did you all communicate in these big homes? And truly, these big homes had intercom systems. And so you'd be sitting there in your room and the intercom system would come on, and it was like Father's calling everyone to prayer. And you knew what that meant. That meant you go down to your prayer circle. And usually in those prayer circles, it was some families, then the Father would read some sort of a scripture, whether that was a sermon or out of the Book of Mormon.

Elissa Wall [00:29:45] So it was more indoctrination that was happening. And then everyone would say the night prayer and then you would go home and go to bed. There was also a prayer circle that would happen first thing in the morning at 5 or 6 in the morning in different homes. And so the day was bookended with this experience of everyone coming together and getting some sort of a directive from the dad or from the father and then saying their prayers.

John Dehlin [00:30:07] Someday I want to see a reenactment of that visual of father and 20 wives and all their children in a single prayer circle.

Elissa Wall [00:30:19] That would be a fascinating one because then it would have to be ended. Because at the end of prayer circle, you always did the same thing. And that was everyone went through a line and you all shook hands or gave Fred a hug or a kiss. That was just what everyone did.

John Dehlin [00:30:30] That's Father.

Elissa Wall [00:30:31] Yeah, that's Father. And everyone went through and you shook his hand and you said good night, or you gave him a hug or a kiss on the cheek, or he would kiss the wives as they come through. So it would be a very fascinating re enactment of it.

John Dehlin [00:30:43] He would kiss each wife every night at the end of prayer circle along with all the kids.

Elissa Wall [00:30:49] Sometimes. Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:30:50] Wow.

Elissa Wall [00:30:51] Yeah. And usually that was the only interaction that a wife had with him through the whole day, unless they were called to sleep with him that day. Like, they all had their schedules and every family was different. In Fred's home, it was Fred would just decide which wife he wanted to sleep with with him, and they would just go rest with him in his room. I don't know what was done behind closed doors, and I haven't really gone deep to find out, but that's just kind of how it was, is if you were called to stay with him, that's what happened, is you just went and stayed with him or took care of him. And at this point in Fred's life. He was very frail. And the wife's position was more caretaker than wife for him because a lot of his daily care was done by his wife's.

John Dehlin [00:31:36] He's in his 80s.

Elissa Wall [00:31:37] He's in his 80s at this point. And so I'm sitting once again at this prayer circle. I am not in a good mental headspace. And I was getting a lot of pressure from the family because people just wanted me to do what I was told. And it was really, I think, subconsciously there was a lot of people, it made them very nervous when someone was not doing what they were told to do. And to watch the event happen was quite nerve wracking to a lot of people because they're accustomed to just people doing what they're told.

Elissa Wall [00:32:08] I got a lot of pushback from the girls in the home too, because I think some of them were quite jealous. There was a lot of girls that were questioning why they had been passed over and why I was getting married. And then there was frustration as to why I wouldn't just do it because it was challenging. The roles and responsibilities and expectations of the females in the flds.

Elissa Wall [00:32:37] The subtle nuances that happened in this story, I always give a precursor to people, and that is that in the FLDS majority of our lives, the girls and the boys are kept separate. And there's an extensive amount of teaching around keeping separate. Don't fraternizing, not looking at each other, not talking to each other. You know, there was a saying that would say, treat boys, boys treat girls as though they are snakes, and girls treat boys as though they are snakes. And so it breeds, and it cultivates a lot of, like, separation between genders or. And there's not a lot of co ed anything that really happens.

Elissa Wall [00:33:14] You know, we're put on the same work crews together, but we're given very different roles and responsibilities of what to do. So for me, was it like you

John Dehlin [00:33:23] and 20 sisters in bunk beds in a massive room? I'm assuming sisters and brothers slept separately.

Elissa Wall [00:33:31] Absolutely, sisters and brothers slept separately. What was kind of interesting is, yes, that's normally how it was in Fred's home. But my mother had done something quite unique, and that is that she had really advocated for her children to be closer to her. And so for me, I shared a bedroom with two of my younger sisters and we were close to my mother's. But for most of the girls that were in Fred's home, they shared rooms with girls in their same age group.

John Dehlin [00:33:57] Got it.

Elissa Wall [00:33:58] And so, yes, there was a little bit of both that were happening in it. But the girls and the boys slept on different levels of the house completely, on different quadrants of the house completely. And Fred's home, I explain it to people, it was a very large hotel at this point.

Elissa Wall [00:34:13] There was over, I believe, like, 100 doors in that house. It was a huge home. It would have to be to be able to house that many women and children. But it still wasn't nearly as big as rule. And Jeff's home in short creek, and that was only filled with mostly wives, so you can imagine how it was. But very large home.

Elissa Wall [00:34:36] At this prayer circle, I had an empty seat next to me, and I was really quite surprised because there was a lot of people in this room. And to have an empty chair meant someone was sitting on the floor, especially the mothers. And there was one of Fred's wife's that was sitting on the floor next to me. And because of the way that we were trained and taught, you always respect your elders. You always respect those that are older than you and especially the mothers. And I was like, hey, please come and sit next to me or I'll move. And you sit here. And there was this really adamant, no, no, no, you stay there, you stay there.

Elissa Wall [00:35:07] And into the room walks my cousin. And he had been working really closely with Fred because one of the things that Fred was often given is he was always given a collection of boys from the community, and they were seen as missionaries. And so Fred ran kind of the missionary programs of the community. And so he always had a whole collection of boys up at his home. And the girls and the mothers were always making food for this collection of boys, but they were always worker bees. They were sent out to go work in the community, to do different things. And most of them were.

Elissa Wall [00:35:40] It was unpaid work. Well, I had seen my cousin, his name is Allen, quite a bit up at Fred's home, and I really struggled with him because I had known him my entire life. And during the time that my family had been moved to my mother's childhood home, he had also been on the ranch at that time as well. And so I'd gotten to know him a lot better. And he'd been quite a bully in my life. And I did not like the way that he made me feel when I was around him.

John Dehlin [00:36:10] And again, he was your cousin?

Elissa Wall [00:36:12] Yes.

John Dehlin [00:36:13] Tell me exactly how he was related.

Elissa Wall [00:36:14] Yes. So my mother and his father are brothers and sisters.

John Dehlin [00:36:18] You're first cousins?

Elissa Wall [00:36:19] Yes, we're first cousins.

John Dehlin [00:36:21] Holy smokes.

Elissa Wall [00:36:22] Yes. He walked in this. He walked into the room and came straight over. And as he's walking, I'm getting this very ominous pit in my stomach and I could not put a finger as to why. And I was concerned. I was like, okay, well, what is this? And he came and he sat right next to me. And as subtle as that is, it spoke volumes. And instantly I knew what this meant. For him to be allowed to come and sit next to me in such a public setting was very, very telling. And immediately I knew, oh my goodness, this is who they're gonna have me marry.

Elissa Wall [00:36:58] And I couldn't stop my reaction. I literally just leapt up and fled the room and went running into my mother's room and just, she came later and found me. And I'm just sobbing and explaining in blubbers and mumbles that they're gonna make me marry Allen. Like they're gonna make me marry Allen.

Elissa Wall [00:37:21] I can't marry Alan. Like I can't marry him. And she herself was confused. And she invited me and encouraged me to go and talk to Fred about it because once again, we were convinced that there was a miscommunication or something wasn't being told.

Elissa Wall [00:37:37] But that, as I said, so much of the social side of the FLDS was also used against people and the act of them not telling me, but instead having me be told in front of everyone, it was layering on one more level of pressure because now everybody already knew and everybody already now had the expectation of what it was going to mean for me. And that's where my push to change what was happening to me really just flared up. Because I truly, I can still look back at that version of myself as a 14 year old girl. And there was everything inside of me that was screaming no, everything.

Elissa Wall [00:38:22] And I reignited my, my, my fight to stop this from happening. And I went later to Fred and I just explained, you know, you're gonna have me marry, you're gonna have, make me marry Allen. And he confirmed, yes, that's who the prophet has directed that you're gonna be married. That's the arrangement that the Lord has for you. And I firmly believe, no, this, this, there is something wrong with this. Like, this is. And he, he really got, he started to get frustrated with me because this is not the first time that we had had this conversation and about me not wanting to be married. And finally I just said, I have to hear it from the prophet's mouth.

Elissa Wall [00:39:00] If this is truly the Lord's will, I have to hear it from the prophet's mouth. And I don't. I Don't know exactly where that demand came from. It just kind of came up out of me. And even for me, in the moment that it came up and out, I was a little afraid because a. You don't. You very rarely get an audience with the prophet, and rarely, never is it a woman by herself getting an audience with the prophet. She's always connected with a man to do that.

Elissa Wall [00:39:30] But Fred told me, well, you're. You're gonna have to call Warren and you're gonna have to see if he'll see you. And so I did. I took the steps. I took and did whatever was necessary to. To get in front of Warren. Ended up talking to him on the phone and explaining my situation, where I was, how I felt that the Lord. The Lord was telling me through my fasting and my prayer. And what I tell people is, you know, this had been going on for a few days. And from the day that I had found out that I was going to be married then my mother's response to hard things in life was fast and pray about it.

Elissa Wall [00:40:09] And for a lot of the people of the flds, that's how you deal with hard things, is you start to fast and pray. And so all of these days leading up to it, I had been fasting and praying and fervently praying that the Lord would hear my. Would hear my heart and would somehow bring me peace around what was happening.

Elissa Wall [00:40:28] So the next when I finally was able to talk to Warren on the phone and he still directed me, no, this is the Lord's will. And I adamantly the same thing. I said, I have to hear it from the prophet's mouth. It was very frustrating. I remember feeling that they were so frustrated with me and short and not kind about it at all. But finally was like, well, come and see me in my office then.

Elissa Wall [00:40:53] And I'll never forget the day that he told me to come to his office was a couple of a day or so later. And from the moment I got off the phone with him, there was an essence of relief because I finally had been given what I'd been asking for. And that was an audience with the prophet. Because I truly believed in that moment that the prophet was connected to God. And I believed that God was listening, truly believed that he was listening to my prayers and my requests. And the day leading up to my meeting, I didn't sleep a wink. And I just spent the entire time as they would say, on your knees, crying and begging and praying fervently that things would.

Elissa Wall [00:41:37] Would change the. The direction of what I was being requested and forced to do would change. And I finally came into my meeting with. With Warren and to kind of lay out what this was like. Warren, Roland Jeffs has had a massive compound in Short Creek. And just as you come into the town off of the highway that runs through the town, then you see this giant home. And that's only the tip of the iceberg, because the home just spread over this whole entire complex. And at this point in it, they had taken the compound that they had up in Sandy, Utah, and they had replicated it down in Short Creek.

Elissa Wall [00:42:19] And so the Jeffs family managed and owned an entire street block of houses. And that was the rule in Jeff's compound. And at this point, it was gated and walled. And so to even get on there, you had to have.

Elissa Wall [00:42:35] You had to be invited or you had to have permission from all the way up. We also knew that Rulon was really ill. And because I had two sisters that were married to Rulon, I had a little bit different perspective than most people did in that Warren was a lot sicker than most people knew. He had stopped coming to churches sometimes, and he would just. What we were being told as a people was that Warren would come and he would get up to the pulpit and he would say, I speak for my father. I'm here doing my father's will. I am the representation of my father.

Elissa Wall [00:43:06] So this narrative of I am my father, I am my father, really started to happen around this time. And this was spring of 2001. Coming up to Fred's home. You know, it's a beautiful home, especially for most people of the flds, it was. It was the top of the top of the top as far as living conditions. And, you know, they were royalty. They were royalty of our community and the home and their way of life represented that. That status within the community as a whole.

Elissa Wall [00:43:38] I walked up to the front door, and Warren's brother opened up the door and put me in the waiting room, and I was shaking like a leaf. And because I. Something in me knew I was there, and it was calling me to be there. But everything about the way that I had been raised and my culture, I was going so absolutely against everything that I had been trained to do. And I had that fear of, am I truly losing my testimony? Am I truly making a huge mistake that's going to rob me of my ultimate salvation? And it was this. This war that was happening within myself.

Elissa Wall [00:44:14] But every time I would try and imagine my life submitting to what they were told it would literally make me viscerally nauseous. My whole entire body would respond with this very ominous feeling and terror, just absolute terror of what that would mean.

Elissa Wall [00:44:35] I finally was called into Warren's office and I am, I'm very, I'm trembling. You know. He had always been a huge figure of authority in my life. I can't tell you the many times that I was called into his office at school for all kinds of, all kinds of things and always reprimanded and always used as an example. And so I had a lot of history with Warren of what it meant to be on his bad side, what it meant to be being reprimanded by him. And that had been kind of the relationship that I had. And so I looked at him as someone to fear and to sit in that room.

Elissa Wall [00:45:17] And if anyone has heard Warren's voice or listened to him, he has such a unique voice and he had this presence about him that just was very off putting. You didn't feel comfortable in Warren's presence. And I, I, I've talked to a lot of people who knew him, who had experiences with him and they all share the same thing. And there was just something that just kind of rubbed you wrong. The hair on the back of your neck stood up. And I think it's that, that primal protection that every human has that's like run.

John Dehlin [00:45:53] But he comes across as kind of creepy to us, to outsiders. Is that fair, Jen?

Guest 2 [00:45:58] Yeah. And I would especially say when he talks, like he's already creepy looking, but then when he talks and the way he talks and articulates his words and like the sound of the words, the monotone. Yeah, it's, there's just something about it that like even for us on the outside, at least for me, I get the same reaction. Like, like I just, like it just feels wrong and not, okay, I don't know, creepy in some way. I don't know how else to say it, but same kind of physical reaction.

Elissa Wall [00:46:33] You get it. Yeah, but that's just to kind of give listeners this, this idea of, you know, a 14 year old girl and this, this, this man. And he has all authority in my life really. Even though he wasn't the prophet at this point in time, he was the acting prophet and that was just the truth of what was happening.

Elissa Wall [00:46:52] I, I sat there and I was already so broken. I was emotionally kind of, I was just right on that edge where I had very little left to, to give to the situation. And I just poured my heart out to him and I explained where I was coming from, and I was crying, and he handed me a box of tissues. And the more that I talked, the more I could just feel the judgment that was emanating off of him. And he was so displeased with the way that I was speaking and talking. And the fact that he kept bringing up was, do you really think you know better than the Prophet?

Elissa Wall [00:47:31] And it was this layers and layers of shame of trying to get me to question even why I was there. You know, it was this. This feeling of, how dare you even be here? And for whatever reason, I still had enough left in me that I just said, I need to hear it from the Prophet. I just need to. And if the Prophet tells me to do this, I will do it, but I need to hear it from him.

Elissa Wall [00:47:55] And out of frustration, you could tell, looking back now, I can tell Warren was very frustrated with the circumstances. I'm sure he assumed that he would come in and it solved the issue and everything would go on. But I was adamant and I was not leaving until then. So he finally granted me to go see him.

John Dehlin [00:48:11] Rulon.

Elissa Wall [00:48:12] Rulon. And he brought me down the hallway to the lunchroom in Rulon's home. And I was familiar with Rulon's home because I had had the opportunity to spend some time in there with my sisters who were married to Rulon. So I knew kind of the layout of the area and it wasn't unfamiliar to me, which probably is why I was able to hold myself together enough, is because most people of the FLDS had never even enter Roland's home, let alone been able to be there at all. But I had actually shared meals with the family as a guest of my sisters.

Elissa Wall [00:48:45] Roland's sitting at the front of this table, and all of his wife's and his family are there and they're eating lunch, and he's shaking from old age and he's trying to eat. And Warren brings me over to him and alerts me, alerts ruined, too, that I need to talk to him.

Elissa Wall [00:49:06] And I remember this feeling. And I remember one day I saw this picture of this. This painting, this illustration, and it shows Christ. And he's sitting and there's a child at his knee, and he's talking to the child. And I know that the picture is. Is meant to be this representation of Christ nurturing the child, but that's really how it felt to me as I was sitting at the knee of God.

Elissa Wall [00:49:34] And that illustration often was something that I was able to tie to try to explain what this experience was. Like, for me. And all I could do was just tearfully try and explain. And here you have a man who's hard of hearing and a child who's at his knee at the lunch table begging to not be married, and if nothing else, to please not be married to the man that they told me I was supposed to be married to.

Elissa Wall [00:50:03] And he got this really confused look on his face, and he kind of looks up at Warren, and Warren just jumps in and proceeds to talk over me and explain to Rulon why I was there. You know, she doesn't believe that your word and your direction is true. And I don't remember all the details of everything he said, but what it made me feel like was that it was completely misrepresenting why I was there. I was there because I wanted to do the prophet's will. I was just wondering if we could wait two years before I had to do this, or if we could please ask the Lord if I can marry somebody else.

Elissa Wall [00:50:39] And you could tell. Brolin got a little bit, like, not frustrated, but it was like, okay. And he ultimately turned back down to me, and he patted my hand, and I remember even looking at him, and he had food coming out of one side of his mouth, and he's still in the middle of chewing his lunch, and he just says, follow your heart, sweetie. Follow your heart. And that was it.

Elissa Wall [00:51:05] And in that moment, it was like the weight of the world came off of my shoulders, and I was elated. There was this openness and this peace that just flooded over my. My whole entire being, and all of the struggle and all of the pain because my heart was telling me this was not true for me.

Elissa Wall [00:51:26] And his words of follow your heart was exactly what I needed. And I believed that was God speaking to me, that I was in the right, that I. That this was right for me. And my tears dried up, and there was this lightness and this innocence that just came over me where I just wanted to skip down the hall.

Elissa Wall [00:51:48] And I thanked the prophet and I shook his hand. And I just felt so absolutely blessed and grateful that I had had an audience with God and that God was listening. And I felt like my prayers were answered.

Elissa Wall [00:52:04] I get up and we're walking down the hall, and Warren asked me, okay, what are you going to do? And I just started to blubber on about, I know the Lord has answered my prayers. And the. The prophet told me to follow my heart. And my f. My heart is telling me that this isn't right for me right now, that I. It's okay for me to wait until I'm older to get married. And he looks at me and he stops and he tells me my heart is in the wrong place. And just goes on to. To explain that this is going to happen. And if I want a place in my community, if I want to go home to my mother and to Fred's home, then I was going to get married.

Elissa Wall [00:52:43] And it made me feel as though if I did not get married, then I was not welcome in my church, I was not welcome in my community, and that I would become an apostate just like my other family.

Elissa Wall [00:52:59] And a lot of the words in the way that he explained it, sometimes my memory doesn't remember those. But the feeling was so absolutely crushing. And I walked away from that meeting absolutely deflated because I realized that there was nothing I could do. And even though for me it was very confusing because I didn't understand why there was a confliction in the message. But that's where Warren spun it, as though, this is your problem. Your heart is wrong. You are not enough. If you were, your heart would absolutely be telling you, this is the Lord's will.

Elissa Wall [00:53:36] And so I went home, and my mother, I remember her gathering me up because I was just a wreck. I was completely broken. And she kept telling me, you know, there's. There's. This is, you know, it's okay for us to do what we're told. It's all going to work out. Maybe there's more to this than we're being than we see right now. You know, it's this whole concept of faith. You have faith for sacrificing the moment and what feels good right now for faith, that it's going to ultimately pay off later and you're going to have a better salvation.

Elissa Wall [00:54:19] So she, with my older sister, spent the whole night that night, and they crafted the most beautiful handmade wedding dress. And I just sat and watched this process throughout the night as they put together this beautiful dress. Because before this, I had refused to make a dress, even though I'd been pushed multiple times to make myself a wedding dress. I refused because I wasn't gonna get married. I was adamant I was not going to be married.

Elissa Wall [00:54:46] But to watch that and to see the care and the love that they crafted into every single stitch of this dress in their way of trying to hand off to me anything that they had to give me the strength to just do what I was told.

Elissa Wall [00:55:04] And the next morning, I'm standing in this mirror, and I have the dress on, and my hair is Being done up beautifully. And I remember just looking there and the thought go through my head of this is what death looks like.

Elissa Wall [00:55:22] And realizing that that's what I wanted is I wanted to die. And I just became numb and just a shell of who I really was. And was loaded into a car with my soon to be husband and his family.

Elissa Wall [00:55:39] At this point, it showed me that my mother started to be separated from me because I think they saw that as a concern. So she was told to drive in a different car. And this was a unique time frame, too, because of all of the stuff that had been happening in the state of Utah around child marriages and underage marriages. Then they started to practice where they would drive, basically traffic girls and boys across state lines into Nevada. And they would marry them in Nevada because the laws and the age limits were less strict in Nevada than they were in Utah. And so by performing the marriages in Nevada, they would negate what was happening in Utah to try and combat child marriages.

Elissa Wall [00:56:30] And that became evident for me because they drove me and some of the other girls that were from Fred's home who were also going to be married there. I had been. There was another young girl who was from Fred's home, who was also very young, like myself, her name, Ruby. And we had had a lot of commonality in the days leading up to our marriage and that we both were really concerned about getting married.

Elissa Wall [00:57:00] I don't know that she had taken it quite as intensely as I had as far as resisting the marriage and saying, no, I don't want to be married. But I knew from our conversations in private that we were both really scared about getting married. And even that day in Caliente, Nevada, there was a hotel that was owned by. Actually, it was a little rundown motel that was owned by one of the brethren in the community.

Elissa Wall [00:57:30] Then we were sitting in this hotel room at the top of these stairs, and they had directed us to get married, to get ready for our wedding. And she's sitting there with me, and I'm looking in the mirror as she's trying to help me finish putting my hair together and doing up my dress and getting my shoes on and trying to help me, because I know that she could feel how desperately I didn't want this. And it was her way of trying to encourage me. There came this moment where she just looked at me and she just said, you know, we could run.

Elissa Wall [00:58:07] And there was this moment where there was this light inside of me where I'm like, could we run? And the question of, you know, what would happen. And then of course there was all of the programming that kicked in and all the reasons why we couldn't run and no, you know, I'm often asked, why didn't you go to the police? Why didn't you get on a bus and go away? Why didn't you do all these self preservation acts? And I often tell people I'm really glad that there is that option for a lot of the world where we have the option to say no, we had the option to go to the police, we have the option to run away.

Elissa Wall [00:58:45] But for me, none of those options were viable. No, I couldn't even go to my birth father. He wasn't even allowed to talk to me at this time. And I later found out that he hadn't been alerted to the fact that I was getting married until long after I had already been married.

Elissa Wall [00:59:01] So those options that I think a lot of people may be considering that I had, those did not exist for women inside of the flds. And so there wasn't a way for us to run, but to realize that even in that one statement that there was another person who was equally as afraid as I was, equally as desiring to not be married as I was.

Elissa Wall [00:59:31] But ultimately we were told that it's time we. It was time for us to go down and get married. And I was brought into this other hotel room that had been cleared out of its bed. And in the place of the bed was chairs. There was a few chairs in the front where Rulin and Warren and Fred were sitting. And then there was chairs where the audience was sitting.

Elissa Wall [00:59:55] And one of the things that a practice that had been done that had recently been changed in the FLDS is families were not invited to weddings. Sometimes even the girls parents were not invited to the weddings anymore. It was all done secretively. And this was one of them. I kept being told, you should be really grateful that your mother is being allowed to be here. But I didn't have any other family there aside from my mother.

Guest 2 [01:00:19] And

Elissa Wall [01:00:22] it was a very quiet, closed event that was happening. But we walked into this and I started to get this feeling where as numb as I was, there was something inside of me that was still aggravated and very much at attention. And my brain started to go on overdrive of what am I going to do? And I held on to this last shred of hope. And the last shred of hope I had at this point in time was in marriage covenants. There's this. There's this section where they say how long you're going to be married to someone, and that is for time and all eternity or for time itself.

Elissa Wall [01:01:00] And we had known that there were some people who had been married for time only because it meant that they were only married for this lifetime, but then in the afterlife they were going to be married to somebody else.

Elissa Wall [01:01:12] And I remember thinking, please just say time. All right, Lord, I'm going to do your will, but just let me be married for time only because I cannot imagine an eternity being married to Allen. I couldn't imagine it. And I was just over and over and over in my head, please just say time. Please just say time. And it came to that pivotal point in the covenants and Warren, who was conducting the marriage ceremony under the direction of his father. Because at this point in time, it's very common for Warren to just speak for his father, you know, and it was always, I speak for my father and the same thing, you know, I'm here at the direction of my father.

Elissa Wall [01:01:54] I am just his feet and his voice and his, his body right now. But he came to that point and he said, time and all eternity. And my heart just fell and I started to cry. It was the last reaction. And I became that innocent, trembling, panicked 14 year old girl that I was.

Elissa Wall [01:02:19] I wasn't an FLDS girl in that moment. I wasn't an adult. I wasn't anyone that was at all prepared for what was unfolding in front of me. And I just started to sob and it was loud and it was annoying and I could tell everyone in the room was, was getting really uncomfortable from my sobbing. And Warren just kind of keeps going on with this, this wedding ceremony.

Elissa Wall [01:02:45] And it came to the point where it was time for me to say I do to consent to this covenant of marriage. And I could not bring myself to speak. And it was like this last defiant act of myself that if I don't consent to it, I don't have to do it.

Elissa Wall [01:03:06] And I just sat there and the silence in this room was tangible. You could cut it with a knife. I just sat there sobbing in silence. And Warren looks at me and I could see him out of the corner of my eye. But he starts over and he starts to say all of the covenants again.

Elissa Wall [01:03:29] And he gets to that point again and I don't speak again. And finally he asks my mother to step up next to me. And my mom steps next to me and she grabs my hand and she just squeezes with every ounce of her strength and just crushes my hand. And it communicated volumes to me.

Elissa Wall [01:03:52] My mother standing next to me, I could just feel her begging through my. Through my hand to please don't do this. Please just. Just obey. And I realized in that moment that her salvation was on the line and that social pressure and the family. But I realized my mother's salvation, my salvation, my sister's salvation, my family's salvation, Fred's salvation. The pressure of all of that came to a head for me. And I realized that it was bigger than just me, that nobody was going to stop it.

Elissa Wall [01:04:29] And I finally succumbed to that. And I said, okay. Warren finishes up the ceremony as quick as he can. It comes time for me to. To kiss Allen. And I couldn't even. The act of that, I couldn't do it. And I just reached over and got it over with as quickly as I could and just ran from the room and barricaded myself in this bathroom that was kind of adjacent to the area and just collapsed on the floor. And person after person came to the door and pounded on the door. You know, they have. They had a luncheon prepared for us for after the ceremony, and they brought each one of the girls over to the door and my mother over to the door.

Wedding Night and the Beginning of Abuse

Elissa Wall [01:05:14] Everyone was trying to coax me out of this bathroom, and I just couldn't come out of the bathroom. I. I don't know exactly why or what. I was completely in a survival mindset at that point, and I couldn't bring myself to even act. I was frozen in this. This experience of it. And finally I heard a gentleman's voice across the door. And it was one of the upstanding men of the community by the name of Wendell Nilsen.

Elissa Wall [01:05:44] And it was someone that my family had known well in the Salt Lake area. And he was often seen as a kind and encouraging and funny individual in the community, but very, very well respected. And Warren had kind of hand selected him as one of his.

Elissa Wall [01:06:06] One of his main helpers through this process of Warren taking over. And so he had been there at the same location, there to support Warren and to help the prophet. But he came to the door and he asked me to come out. And once again, my years and years and years of culturing and conditioning, I succumbed to that patriarchal power in my life because I couldn't refuse to not open the door for him. I opened the door and he gathered me up and he's, you know, started to tell faith promoting stories and talk about it. And he said something to me that would really create something inside of me that would take years to.

Elissa Wall [01:06:49] To come to fruition. And it showed me that despite everything that happens, I do believe that Spirit and that force that connects us all, that's bigger than just us individually. It speaks even in the most horrendous environments. And he told me one day, he's like, you know, sister Steed, because he called me Sister Steed at this point in time. And that was the crazy thing, is that my mother was a Steed, and now I was married into a Steed family. And it shows how convoluted all the family trees are within the flds.

Elissa Wall [01:07:24] But he said, one day you are going to sit and tell your story and thousands are going to listen. And I know from his perspective, it was this faith promoting. This is all going to work out, and you're going to be a shining example of how a righteous woman should be.

Elissa Wall [01:07:47] And that was the feeling that was given to me. But I often look back on that moment, and there's a part of me that wants to thank him for that moment, because Spirit was speaking and it was saying, keep going.

Elissa Wall [01:08:02] This does matter. At some point in this string of events, this matters. And it's going to come forward and it is going to inspire. And it didn't happen the way that I'm sure he thought it would. But I look at it now, and I value that moment because I've watched as in my journey that has been. What has happened is I've had the opportunity to share my story and. And have it impact thousands in that moment.

Elissa Wall [01:08:32] It was this pressure of, once again, you have to step outside of yourself and sacrifice yourself for the greater good. And that would become the theme of my life. As. As things went on, we were driven from this hotel room back to Fred's home in Short Creek in Hill Dell. And the whole family was there waiting for us. There was this welcoming party because three of Fred's daughters were married that day. And so there was a lot of people that were really happy that this had happened.

Elissa Wall [01:09:02] So they brought everyone out and everyone congratulated us and sang to us and took pictures. And, you know, I had these pictures of that first time, and you look at me in it, and I have a couple of them in the book. And I just seemed dazed and absolutely checked out from the experience of what's happening.

Elissa Wall [01:09:27] They had taken the bedroom that I had shared with my younger sisters, and that morning I had left that bedroom, and it had been my child. My. It had been a child solace place. But they had, under the direction of Fred, they had taken that room and cleaned it out. And that was now my wedding Chambers.

Elissa Wall [01:09:49] And the feeling of that, I now can articulate it. But in that moment, I felt so betrayed because I was so frustrated that everyone knew how hard this was for me. But everyone is, was around me, was, was doing this weird, like, oh, you're gonna be so happy. This is gonna be so good. And it just, it wasn't happening like that. So there was this deep sense of just frustration and betrayal with the people around me. But when I look at the reality of what that was, to go from a childhood bedroom to a married couple's bedroom in one day was really difficult for me.

Elissa Wall [01:10:32] From that point forward, my life as I knew it really changed because I didn't belong to the unmarried girls and I didn't belong to the married women. And so I was this married girl who was really confused and really lost and so, so sad.

Elissa Wall [01:10:50] I didn't really have anywhere to fit in my social groups in my community anymore. And it started this, this really intense process because I know that the man I was married to, he was really trying hard to do what he was told.

Elissa Wall [01:11:09] And he, the way that he describes it is that he was doing everything in his power to get me to like him and to love him. It was hard for me because every time I would engage with him, I would have that same feeling that I had gotten before. That intuition that every single person has given specifically women. When it comes to engaging with men, sometimes we have these instincts and these intuitions and when we experience ignore them, it usually comes with a lot of pain and a lot of struggle.

Elissa Wall [01:11:43] And that kept coming up for me over and over. We were, we were directed in hopes of trying to get us to fall in love with each other. Fred sent all of these newly married couples on this, this honeymoon and it was this, this, this road trip that we all took in different places. And in my book, I really detail a lot of this time frame to try and give people a chance to see what like.

John Dehlin [01:12:10] So it sounds like it wasn't like you have the traditional wedding night, the night you're married and you're now together. It sounds like maybe on some level they knew it wasn't right to be marrying a 14 year old and they felt like they needed to give every. You and him time to settle. Is that. And I'm not trying to pry, I'm

Elissa Wall [01:12:30] just, I think that's a very good way to summarize it because that's very much what it was. And through that process, I had the pressure of the other couples as they were, they were showing different kinds of affection towards one another. And they were, they would kiss and they would talk and I was so adamant, it was so bad that we were sitting in the same car and I was on one side of the car and Alan was on the other. And every time he would try to get me to engage, I was just blatantly, almost to a point of rudeness, do not touch me.

Elissa Wall [01:13:00] I, you know, I was very adamant and I was so very, very clear on how I felt around it to such a point that even some of the other, the men who my sisters, my stepsisters had been married to, you know, they would come to me and they'd say, you know, you could be a little kinder, you could try a little harder. And so I was getting this intense social pressure from the people around me to keep, to go against my inner gut intuition and what it was telling me and more So I was so naive, so completely naive. And I explain it like this, you know, I was a 14 year old girl, but because of the culture of the flds, there is no education, there's no anatomy education, there is no sexual education, there is no education on what happens inside of the bedrooms to such a point that for a lot of the mothers, they are directed to not tell the girls about what's going to happen because the way that it's explained, explained is the husband is going to educate the woman on those matters.

Elissa Wall [01:14:07] And even though I didn't have all this education, there was something about it that I just couldn't imagine. And then it started to get to where the man that I was married to started to make these advances and approach me. And at night when we would be sleeping, I'd wake up and he would be touching me. And it was just so difficult for me because it was, it was like consistently being molested without knowing what was happening, but had this really weird, bizarre. Because that's what was supposed to be happening to me. And everyone was telling me this is what's supposed to be happening, even though I had no idea what it was. And after.

John Dehlin [01:14:45] Were you his first wife?

Elissa Wall [01:14:46] I was.

John Dehlin [01:14:47] And it almost sounds like the community was grooming you.

Elissa Wall [01:14:49] Oh, absolutely.

John Dehlin [01:14:50] Abused and molested, basically.

Elissa Wall [01:14:52] Of course it was absolutely. There was grooming. I look at it now and when you call a spade a spade, and that's really what was happening and why it's so important to highlight that part of the story is because grooming happens on very conscious levels and very subconscious levels. And it's not just, it doesn't just happen inside of the flds. We see it happen in the Mormon Church. We see it happen in other fundamentalist groups of this intense grooming that happens to the females to get them to do what they're supposed to do.

Elissa Wall [01:15:25] And for me, in this, okay, I was forced to be married, but now I was being forced in so many ways to engage in these behaviors that I didn't conceive and understand what was happening to me or what was going on, because I really did not have an education around it. I didn't know that you had to have sex to have babies. I thought it just was what God did to you after you were married. It was that level of naivety that was happening until finally this. This one night. Then we're sitting. I'm sitting with Alan, and we're outside, and we're looking at the stars.

Elissa Wall [01:16:00] And I am really trying at this point, I'm trying to listen to everyone's advice, and that is just. Just hold faith and do what you're told to do, and ultimately, you're gonna love this person. And I was. I wanted it to work. I didn't want to be in this position. I was where I felt so absolutely alone because I had nowhere to go that I felt like anyone understood what was happening and why I felt the way that I did, because it was very difficult for people to understand it. Even as I watched some of the other couples that had been married, I watched them kind of move on and move into this, like, cutesy little happy love that they were doing.

Elissa Wall [01:16:40] And. And there was a part of me that wanted it. I wanted to feel what that felt like, too, to be in love. And I wanted to feel at peace with what was. What had happened to me. And so I kept praying and I kept doing everything that I was told to do to try and. And just be okay with what was already. I couldn't stop it. So I needed to change whatever I needed to change in myself. I wanted to change desperately so that I didn't have to be in this perpetual hell that I felt within myself. But I'm sitting there with. With Alan, and it's.

Elissa Wall [01:17:16] It's a peaceful moment, finally between us, because I was not quiet about explaining to him how I felt about the situation. And I turn and I look, and he was exposing himself to me. And for me, I was still a child. I had never encountered anything like that. Nothing had prepared me for that. And it was so jolting and so abrasive to everything about me that the only response I could have was, I yelped. And I Just jumped up and I ran and I ran as fast as I could, as hard as I could to my mother's room. And bizarrely, that was right next door to my room, who I shared with my husband.

Elissa Wall [01:17:56] And I burrowed myself into my mom's bed, covered myself up, and just started to cry. What I look at now is that that was my response to this trauma that was happening. I was still human, and my body and my mind and my consciousness was still responding to these things were happening. And they were. For me, that was abuse that was happening to me. That was traumatic experiences that were happening, and that's the response that was going on inside of me. But my mother came in and she was really what happened. And I couldn't tell her because I didn't know how to articulate what was happening.

Elissa Wall [01:18:36] It just felt so wrong all the way around. And ultimately, Alan came to the door. I knocked on the door and just, you know, you know, Elissa let me in. And I was adamant, no, I'm never going to go. No. Like, I don't. I don't want this. I was very adamant that I did not want that interaction, any kind of interaction. I didn't want to kiss him, I didn't want to hug him, and I definitely, at this point in time, didn't even want to be in the same room as him because I didn't know what was going to happen. And for me, the act of seeing another man's body, especially his private parts, was really jolting because they were snakes and we weren't supposed to do that kind of stuff.

Elissa Wall [01:19:15] And it would take a couple of days for me to finally give in to the pressure and go back into my bedroom. And when I did finally go back in, Alan made it very, very clear that it was time for me to.

Elissa Wall [01:19:28] To follow through with my marriage duties, that I was going to be a wife under every circumstance. And I could feel a shift in him where there had been a part of him where he was quite patient with me and he is quite careful of how much he pushed me into different things. But that all stopped. And it was very, very much, no. I am your priesthood head.

Elissa Wall [01:19:50] You belong to me and you will do what I say. And the climate changed completely, and I really didn't know how to handle it. And I really became a scared, trembling child. And I was like, please don't do this to me, as he started to explain to me what he was going to do. And he articulated it quite in detail of what was going to happen. And this was things that I was hearing for the very first time and I was being told, this is what's going to happen to you right now.

Elissa Wall [01:20:20] And I'm a child and I didn't have any. I didn't have any way of how to respond in the circumstances. And he proceeds to do exactly what he told me. And it was so, so hard that even still, when I talk about it sometimes to bring myself back to that moment, there's that feeling of what it felt like to be in the body, of this happening. And he starts to undress me and all the while he's talking to me about what's going to happen. And it was just one more layer of this horrible event that's unfolding in front of me and there's nothing I can do to stop it.

Elissa Wall [01:20:55] My mother is literally just a. There's only a wall that separates us. And in my mind, at this moment, I just wanted to go back to my mother's bed. I just wanted to go and crawl in her bed, put the COVID covers over my head and have this end.

Elissa Wall [01:21:12] But he lays me on the bed and I just freeze. I didn't have any response left. I didn't know what to say. I was just begging him to please don't do this. And it happens. And the very first time.

Elissa Wall [01:21:29] I know a lot of people talk about how when a woman very first experiences any kind of sexual engagement, it's quite a painful process. But for me, it was viscerally painful. It was one of the most painful things I had ever experienced in my life. And so my body is experiencing this intense pain and I almost started to just completely disassociate because I didn't know how to. I didn't know how to deal with what was going on.

Elissa Wall [01:21:59] And finally when it was over, I just laid there and I didn't know what to do. On one hand, my mind was numb and blank, and on the other hand, what was happening to my body, you know, I'm. I'm bleeding at this point in time and all of the things that were going on and I. And Alan just rolls over and goes to sleep and I get up from this bedroom and I walk into this bathroom and I just. I sit there in absolute, just numb reaction.

Elissa Wall [01:22:34] And at that point, it was the first time in my life where I wondered would it be better to just take my own life because I couldn't do this. I didn't understand what was going on and I couldn't imagine it happening again because what he had told me is get used to this because this is going to happen often.

Elissa Wall [01:22:59] And I couldn't imagine it happening ever again, let alone all the time. And so I did. I took a bottle of painkiller that was there, and I just downed the whole thing because I was like, there is something has to. You know, something. I can't do this. And even though for the people of the flds, the act of suicide is like the. It's right up there with murder and adultery, because to take your own life to escape your experience that God has directed you to be having is the worst sin. And it is an instantaneous ticket to hell.

Elissa Wall [01:23:38] But for me, that it was okay. And as the night went on and I'm sitting there and I'm trying to make sense of everything that happened, all of that patterning and that culturing started to kick in, and I was like, I can't do that. I'm not going to. I'm not going to go to hell. I can't. And so I sat there and I purged and purged for hours, trying to get it out, trying to get it out.

Elissa Wall [01:24:02] Because I realized for me, I didn't want to die, really. And I just wanted this. What was going on for me to end, to stop. And the next day, or I can't remember it was exactly the next day, but I had a conversation with my mom shortly after it happened, because she could tell that I was. Something was not right. And she had brought me aside and just kind of trying to check in on me and see how she. See how I was. And I started to kind of talk to her about it. And I was like, mom, can you tell me more of what's going on?

Elissa Wall [01:24:39] And she immediately froze up. And she's like, we don't talk about that. Alan's going to teach you about that. And so once again, there was a moment where I could have been given more information, but was kept in the dark and once again directed. You know, only he can teach you. Only he can do it.

Elissa Wall [01:24:58] And it created more separation between my mother and I. Ultimately, I had nowhere else to go. I was told that I couldn't spend time in my mother's room. And I had gotten to a point with it where I just surrendered to the reality that this wasn't going to change. I wasn't willing to take my own life, and so therefore, I had to make it work. And I created this delusion inside of my head. And I went through a season where I was like, this is going to work. And I did everything in my power to pretend and that was the era of pretending. And I tried so hard to be the wife that I was supposed to be, to submit when I was supposed to submit.

Elissa Wall [01:25:47] And as this started to happen more and more, you know, it wasn't until a few months after there was marital relations happening. And marital relations inside of the FLDS is how they refer to sex. They don't have words like sex or rape or abuse of that nature. That's not really talked about in those terms. You know, anything sex related is referred to as marital relations.

Elissa Wall [01:26:14] But I finally had a midwife in the community who gathered me up, and I. I'm pretty sure she could tell that I was really confused, but she was the first person to ever explain to me the process of. Of having babies, of even my own anatomy. Like, the first person that ever explained to me what a period was and what I was, what was supposed to be happening and how it was going to happen and how I was going to. It was this overwhelming amount of information where I was. And for me, what it did is. It. It made me really question myself, because I had been holding onto this idea that somehow what Alan was doing to me at the time was wrong.

Elissa Wall [01:26:56] And ultimately he was gonna be told to stop, but to be told instead that, no, this is actually what you're supposed to do. And just. Just that to have this midwife educate me, but only educate me in the terms of preparing me for when I was going to have children and to not hear it from my own mother.

Elissa Wall [01:27:19] But over time, this climate that I had within myself of trying to make it work, trying to be the submissive wife, it just. Especially after the very first time that I engaged with sex actually was the first time that I ever went back to Warren. Just recently, after I had been abused the first time then I was so convinced that it was wrong. And this was before the midwife had talked to me.

Elissa Wall [01:27:47] But I was like, okay, if I go and tell Warren what's happening, he's going to tell this. This needs to stop. And this meeting with Warren was really important because this is what. This is. What ultimately led to. The correlation that would convict Warren later on is that he was very aware of the details of what was happening within the arranged marriage that he had forced.

Reporting the Abuse and Being Silenced

Elissa Wall [01:28:11] But I went to Warren and I described in detail what had happened, the events leading up to what had happened, and then the actual act of what had happened. And I had gone there without Alan. And that was my first transgression, in Warren's perspective, is you don't show up in Warren's office without your husband.

Elissa Wall [01:28:31] But I was there by myself and I was requesting a release. I was asking for this to end. And when he. He listened and he heard it all, and he got more and more agitated towards me until finally he stopped me in what I was saying, and he just said, you are in the wrong. You go home and you submit yourself, mind, body and soul. And he referenced that book, Enlightened Truth, that he had published of what a woman should and shouldn't do. And the book is, as. Goes into great detail of what the. What it means to submit as a woman. You're. What it means to submit your mind, body and soul to a man.

Elissa Wall [01:29:09] And so he pulled the book out and he gave it to me, and he told me to go home and read it every single day and to follow the scripture fervently. So not only had I finally told someone what was happening, I had told the one force and power in my life that could have done something about it. And instead of doing anything about it, he sent me back and told me to act as though I was the property that I was to the man that they had married me to.

Elissa Wall [01:29:42] That is what had kind of triggered this point where I went into this space of just trying to make it work, trying so hard to be the submissive wife. And I did. I went through several months of that, of, yes, my. My response was, yes, yes, sir, yes, yes, husband, yes, Alan, whatever. Whatever I'm supposed to do. And I started to become very delusioned with this idea of what my life would look like as a submissive wife. You know, I would try and conjure up these images of what it would feel like to be a mother, what it would feel like to. To love Alan.

Elissa Wall [01:30:17] And I was constantly programming myself of what this would be like because that's all I wanted. You know, I wasn't going to be let out. I wasn't going to be. None of it was going to be stopped. So therefore, I just had to make peace with it and find my.

Elissa Wall [01:30:36] Find my own way through, through the process of it. But then the abuse started to get really bad really quickly. And it. It. Knowing what I know now as a woman, there was a lot of things that were happening to me during that time frame that I don't think any woman should have to go through. But also, especially if you are the wife of someone, I know that there's a lot of people that when they experience abuse, it's really easy for them to replicate that abuse to other people. And I looked back on in my effort to try and understand what was happening and where my cousin was coming from, I've wondered, you know, was there a pattern of abuse that then was just being dealt out?

Elissa Wall [01:31:28] Because it was. It was this process of. Of psychological abuse and sexual abuse and physical abuse where this event would happen, where it would. You know, he would. He'd make me watch him as he masturbated. And from the perspective of the flds, that's not something people did, and people knew it. And so this would happen. And then he would reprimand me for being such a distraction to him that would make his body respond that way. It was my fault that this was happening to his body. And if I would just be more submissive, then this wouldn't happen. And it was this really weird time of all these different layers of.

Elissa Wall [01:32:11] I was never the good one. It was layers and layers and layers of shame. And so I started to just find any coping mechanism I could possibly find of when I knew that when it was nighttime, this is what was going to happen. And then I became pregnant for the first time, and I was.

John Dehlin [01:32:35] How old were you?

Elissa Wall [01:32:36] I was just. I had just turned 15. Yep. I had just turned 15 the very first time that I found out that I was pregnant. And at first I was really scared

Guest 2 [01:32:49] and

Elissa Wall [01:32:52] wondered what this meant. It also meant that I was going to be Alan's wife forever, if I was going to have his children. And ultimately I had a miscarriage. And because of some of the abuse that was happening, I look at it now and I can imagine my body was really trying to respond to what was going on. I also later found out that I have a unique aspect medical condition where I have negative blood, and it creates a problem in.

Elissa Wall [01:33:28] When the partner has positive blood and the. The mother has negative blood. Then there's. There's measures that the medical community takes now to try and prevent some of that from happening. That didn't. That wasn't a part of it because I hadn't told anyone yet that I was expecting. And when I lost the first child, then the layers of shame and absolute depression that I fell into because I, once again, was.

Elissa Wall [01:34:00] Was the problem. And it was my fault that I couldn't carry the child. It was because I was not a worthy woman. I was not worthy to be a mother. And the years that would follow and to kind of encapsulate the relationship, because this was also during a really pivotal point in the church. But the years that would. That would follow, there was time after time that I would.

Elissa Wall [01:34:27] That little voice. And that spirit inside of me would rise back up and say, something is not right. And I would once again go back to Warren, or I'd go back to Fred, and I would try and explain what was going on and that this felt wrong. This. This something was not right. And constantly, once again, this. You are the problem, Elissa. You are the not submissive one. You are the one who needs to go back and pray and repent.

Elissa Wall [01:34:55] And even though there was multiple miscarriages throughout that experience, it always layered the same thing. That I was not worthy and I was not enough. No matter what I did to sacrifice, no matter how worthy I tried to become, I was not enough. And that was a theme that would take me years. To untangle as a woman is to untangle myself from someone else's perspective of not enoughness. To.

Elissa Wall [01:35:26] To find my own enoughness and to realize that even through the whole journey of it, then that spirit and that. That enoughness inside of me was really trying to. To be the one to communicate.

John Dehlin [01:35:40] That has a. When Jen mentioned thought stopping earlier, there's another term for what you just described, which is called blame reversal.

Elissa Wall [01:35:48] Yes.

John Dehlin [01:35:49] When things are going great, the high demand religion takes credit. And. And when things don't go right, then it's always pushed back on the members. They're the reason why things aren't going.

Elissa Wall [01:36:01] Yes, well, yeah, it was very much that way. The blame reversal was happening on every level of my. My world. But for me, I was in my. I was in my own little hell. That's the best way to explain it. But as a large. The community as a whole was also going through a major transition and hell

John Dehlin [01:36:22] of its own because Rulon would have died within this. I mean, either close to this time period or at this time period. Yes, Rulon would have died. Do I have the time right?

Elissa Wall [01:36:32] Yeah, definitely. About a year and a half after I was married for the first time. Married. Then Rulon passed away.

John Dehlin [01:36:38] And the Olympics would have happened.

Elissa Wall [01:36:40] Yeah, the Olympics. So that's the thing, is the Olympics came and everyone waited and waited. We waited for the end of the world. And even for me, I was a married woman at this point. And I was convinced that I was not going to be lifted up because I was being told that I was not worthy, that I was not a righteous enough wife. The Olympics came and went and nothing happened.

Elissa Wall [01:37:03] And there was. There was this. This feeling of like, oh, now what? But this is where Warren really stepped in with his narrative, and that is the Lord is granting you more time. There is a major test that is coming, and he's going to test his people. And it was this. It's coming, it's coming, this test is coming, this test is coming. And this was just his gift. He's gifting you with more time. So the people then were like, oh, we need to fervently work harder. We need to be more pure. We need to be more righteous, more faithful, because the Olympics happened and no destructions.

Elissa Wall [01:37:39] And so why this was important is because 2002, winter of 2002, the Olympics happen, and Rulin Jeffs dies in the fall of 2002. And this was not supposed to happen. We had long been subscribing to the narrative that Rulin Jeffs would be redeemed and would be renewed. And what that meant was that for the people of the flds, that right in front of our eyes, what Roland was going to become a young man again, and that he was going to come. As soon as the people were faithful enough and righteous enough, then this process was going to happen, and he was going to come back and lead the people into Zion and father children with all of his wives.

Elissa Wall [01:38:27] And so we believed in this. We would sing songs that were written around the prophet's renewal. And so much of this fervency around, you know, renew the prophet, the prophet will be renewed we will redeem Zion the time is short the time is short.

Rulon Jeffs Dies and Warren Takes Control

Elissa Wall [01:38:46] Well, on that fateful day in September when we were told that Roland had died, I can't explain in words what that day felt like because it was so devastating. Of course, immediately it was the people's problem. As we talk about this blame reversal.

John Dehlin [01:39:14] And people weren't righteous enough.

Elissa Wall [01:39:16] Yeah, this is the test. So the narrative that had been being told about a test coming, this was the test. And at first, it was just kind of like this feeling of out of body. Almost all these events are happening. And I remember even to the point where all the people are gathering into the Short Creek area from Canada and all of the places and they are coming to this funeral and going into the church house and being dressed up, and we are all so, so sad because we didn't know what was going to happen. We had no idea what the future looked like at this point.

Elissa Wall [01:39:56] And I remember seeing the casket and going through the viewing and looking at it and truly expecting Roland to sit up at any point in time and be renewed. As long as we were righteous enough, that was what was going to happen.

Elissa Wall [01:40:11] Even to the point that when they went to close the casket, there was a part of Me that was just panicking because I'm like, no, if they close this and he's put into the ground, how is he going to get out? Like, that's how illogical the environment really was with everything. And I know from talking to a lot of people around this time frame, there were people that weren't quite that delusional about it. They were really like, okay, now what's going to happen? Because they were a lot more logical about the reality that people die. And I hear that a lot now, that there were people that were far more skeptical at that time than they were willing to speak.

Elissa Wall [01:40:48] But therein is that when good people do nothing, terrible things happen. And at this time frame, you know, I do wonder what would have happened if the people of the flds, some of these questioners, would have been able to rise up in an effective way and say, slow down, wait a second here.

Elissa Wall [01:41:09] Because the events that would unfold post Rulon's passing were very strategically crafted by Warren. And looking back now, I see how he knew exactly what was happening. And there had been a part of him that had been crafting it, all the way down to brainwashing Rulin's wife's that would ultimately marry Warren.

Elissa Wall [01:41:33] And after a couple of weeks of Rulon passing, there was one pivotal meeting where the community had come together. And Warren invited or called up one of Rulon's wife's, Naomi. And this was really kind of important because women were not called to the pulpit.

Elissa Wall [01:41:54] I had very little memories of women ever being asked to speak in church. And so to have one of Rulon's wives get up there, it was kind of a new thing. But she got up there with a message that if we really believed in Rulon and we really loved our prophet, we would realize that Warren was the next prophet. He was the renewed version of ruling. And so it was this mashup of ideas and the years and years and years that Warren had been saying, I speak for my father, I am my father, all came to. To convergence in this moment where ruling is still with us.

Elissa Wall [01:42:40] And it started with Warren saying, I feel my father, he's right here with us. He is inside of me. And that's really how Warren clinched that point of power, was he himself had been saying it for a long time, but then he used other people that were very close to ruling to bring them in, to convince the people that it happened different than we thought it would. But ultimately, Warren was the. Was the renewed version of his father. So therefore, all the loyalty and all of the faithfulness that the people had in Rulin should immediately be transferred to Warren because he was his father. Reincarnate. Bizarre. I know. I look back now, I'm like, how did we fall for this? But Warren was the renewal.

John Dehlin [01:43:30] Just like, this is almost. This is like, this is stranger than fiction.

Elissa Wall [01:43:35] It really is its own stranger than fiction.

John Dehlin [01:43:38] It's like a Twilight Zone kind of thing. And I'm thinking now, I'm sorry, Jen, I know you have a million thoughts, but I'm thinking now about, like, every once in a while I'll run into a post Mormon that's like. Like, how can. How can smart Mormons still believe? I'm like, you don't. You have no idea what smart people can believe. Because what you're talking. The level of devotion and the resilience of belief that you're talking about, mainstream Mormons have no idea.

Elissa Wall [01:44:06] Oh, yes.

John Dehlin [01:44:07] What people are capable of believing.

Elissa Wall [01:44:09] Well, that's what I tell people. Resilience is an interesting thing because it can happen for good and it can happen for evil and in the same person. I'm an example of that. Like, my belief resilience in the face of all of these things that were happening in my life was incredible. I mean, lucky for me, ultimately, I was able to transfer some of that resiliency into better ways of my life. But at the time, because you're right, like the ability for people to look outside of logic.

Elissa Wall [01:44:38] But then also what happened during this time frame is as Warren started to very adamantly and publicly deal with people that had any question whatsoever. And this. We entered into an era where we really had no idea what was going to come over the pulpit. You know, there was one event one day where Warren came, and this was at a point where there was a lot of question of who was a believer and who wasn't.

Elissa Wall [01:45:05] And I later hear stories of there had been a priesthood meeting earlier that week or that day where there, Warren had directed guards to stand at the doors of the church house. And there was a question that was asked every single man that came in and what their answer was decided whether they could make. They could go into this priesthood meeting. And the question was, do you believe in Warren as our prophet?

Elissa Wall [01:45:31] And if someone did not say yes, they were not allowed entry into the priesthood meeting. And priesthood meeting is a meeting for just men inside of the Mormon religion. And they were. They were kept notes. So all of the people who did not immediately absolutely say, yes, I believe in Warren as the new, you know, the prophet now were dealt with and A couple of meetings after that, then Warren stood up and publicly and viciously excommunicated multiple men all at the same time, and explained that they were, you know, they were being led astray, that they had apostatized, their testimonies had been.

Elissa Wall [01:46:21] Their testimonies had been broken and that they were no longer. They were no longer members of the community and their families were taken away from them. It was so devastating because that was this moment where it radically changed the dynamic of the town. And if you look back on it now, it was anyone who had any question as to the power and authority of men of Warren. And not just that, it was also strategically removing individuals who had influence or respect within the community. So for instance, it was men who had been. Who were much older than Warren, who had large polygamous families, but who were key individuals in establishing the community of Short Creek.

Elissa Wall [01:47:01] They had built it from the ground up and they had given and supported people within the community. And Warren took a community that at one point had a lot of communal attributes. There was a lot of joy that happened within the community.

Elissa Wall [01:47:18] You know, when I very first started to visit the Short Creek area as a child, we would have community gatherings. There would be conference every year. And the people from all over Canada and United States that were. They would come and they would converge in the Short Creek area. And we would have this weekend of conference where there was work projects that all the community would come together and build more of the Short Creek area, build homes. You know, there's this famous video of the people of the flds.

Guest 2 [01:47:49] The.

Elissa Wall [01:47:49] They built a house in a day. And this is one of those conference weekends where every, every person came together with supplies and skill sets to be able to build this house in a day. It's phenomenal when you look at what the people were capable of and how they took care of their own and they took care of their community and they were incredibly self reliant. But then there was also social gatherings such as dances and harvest festival and all of these things that were so much a part of the culture of the flds. And over time, Warren had very slowly taken those away completely.

Elissa Wall [01:48:28] He had stopped dances several years before Roland's passing because that was his way of saying it was. That was fraternizing. Girls and boys were fraternizing. And so the dances were stopped and then any other social events were slowly stopped. Even all the way to the point where there was. There was this rich history within the community where we celebrated the 24th of July Pioneer Day in Utah and it was a really important day for the people of the community because it was a way for us to celebrate our heritage of pioneers. And that we had come. We had all come from a long line of pioneers.

Elissa Wall [01:49:07] And this was often celebrated with a parade through town. That was incredible. But particularly the last couple of years before Warren ended the parade ended all social gatherings was. There was these dancing girls. And the girls would. From all over in the community would come together and they would learn these dances of different kinds. And then they would go through the parade. And that was deemed as evil because that was showing off the bodies of women. That was showing off.

Elissa Wall [01:49:39] This joy that was actually a distraction. And he saw all of those social gatherings and the different ways that the community would come together as a distraction from fervent prayer and devotion to the will of the prophet. And so by being able to slowly weed out these things that were traditions and they were very much a part of generations of the community. It wasn't just the single generation. This. This had been a part of the community since its inception in the Short Creek area. And something that the people really looked forward to to such a point where by the time Warren had completely taken over for most people, they were experiencing such an intense fear.

Elissa Wall [01:50:22] And there was no. There was really no joy. There was really no. Nothing to look forward to other than this ominous. The end of the world is coming. That's I have to sacrifice and pray and give and give more and give more. And this also started a timeframe where Warren started to. To tell families, you know, if you are righteous, you will. You will donate more. Every. Every priesthood head, have a thousand dollars by the end of this weekend.

Elissa Wall [01:50:49] And families would do everything in their power to follow those directives. After Warren finally clinched the power and was publicly removing any dissension whatsoever. And we saw. We saw lots of shedding of people, you know, mostly men, but some women were excommunicated and kicked out. And families were just devastated. The experience that I had experienced a few years earlier of having my family taken away was now commonly shared by a lot of people in the community. And some of the women were married to Warren himself. Some of the women were married to other men. But there was this reshuffling within it. But it was evidence to us that we, the women and children were property of the church.

Elissa Wall [01:51:37] And that was another shift that Warren really put into permanency. Is prior to Warren taking over, there was this idea that a man was the king of his family. He was the head of the household, he was the priesthood Head Warren changed it to where it was.

Elissa Wall [01:51:57] The women and the children belong to the priesthood. They belong to the church, and they are just put under the guidance and the caretaking of this man. And why that's so important is because that was the tool he used to consistently be reshuffling the families. And it started an era of the FLDS families where you could have a woman that was remarried four to five times because she would be told her husband was no longer worthy. She'd be remarried and be married to that man until that man, for some unforeseeable reason, Warren decided he was no longer worthy, and then she would be remarried to another one.

Elissa Wall [01:52:35] And so we also saw this dynamic where there was a lot of children during that time frame who were born that really have no idea who their biological father is. And the reshuffling happened to where some of the trauma that came from. All that is there was a generation of youth and children who were so lost and confused of the structure of family and not really having a father figure and the layers of pain and trauma. It was like its own kind of.

Elissa Wall [01:53:07] It was its own kind of trauma meal that was happening to the community as a whole. But what it was consistently doing is it was putting people in a state of survival and a state of fight or flight to such a point that there was no capacity to question.

Elissa Wall [01:53:26] And that was really how Warren solidified his powers. He got people into a place where there wasn't even the capacity to question. And then you had the layers and layers and layers of religious indoctrination that was constantly backing that up and backing that up.

Elissa Wall [01:53:41] Warren had also started to take his father's wife, his father's wife's, as his own wife's. And my sisters had been married to Rulin. And so after Warren started to take over and marry those wives, my one sister in particular, Rebecca, I had been very, very close to her throughout my life and gotten quite a bit closer to her after I had been married.

Elissa Wall [01:54:06] And she was one of the few people that I saw as a friend, and we had a lot of shared experiences together. So I got a front row seat on her experience of losing her husband, Roland, and then the pressure that she started to be under to remarry

John Dehlin [01:54:27] that

Elissa Wall [01:54:27] would ultimately lead her to escape. And she has her own beautiful story of her journey in that process. But for me, the day that she left the FLDS was such a tragic, difficult day because I was losing my best friend and the only person who had any way to help me and shelter me through the experience that I was having with this arranged marriage and forced marriage that I was in and this continual years of abuse that was happening. But I really felt for her soul because that act of her leaving was an immediate damnation.

Elissa Wall [01:55:09] It also created a lot of really negative ripples in my life and my mother's life because we were taken aside after she had left, because she had refused to get remarried. That was part of it. She was not going to be remarried. And that was her only act of being able to save herself was to leave.

Elissa Wall [01:55:29] And you didn't hear a lot of stories of women at that point in time leaving by themselves. But after her leaving, my mother and I were put on the hot seat because they felt like that we had contributed to. And in a lot of ways I had inadvertently and unconsciously contributed into what would ultimately be the tools that she needed to be able to leave. I'm so grateful for that now. But at the time I saw that as a form of betrayal because.

Elissa Wall [01:55:56] And it was so painful, it was so hard to once again see another one of my family members who I would no longer ever be able to talk to. At this point in time, all of my mother's sons had left the church and all of them were apostates. And we weren't. We didn't get to talk to them, we didn't get to take care of them, even to a point where she had her youngest son.

Elissa Wall [01:56:22] He was such a child. But at the age of 13, I believe he too was deemed unworthy. And ultimately she was told she couldn't, he couldn't be in her life anymore. And she completely abandoned her 13 year old son. For a short period of time he had stayed with my father, but ultimately he just kind of shuffled around.

Elissa Wall [01:56:44] And by the time that Roland had passed away and all of this, I had become a bit of his mother. And I was going against the grain of what we were told to do by not fraternizing with apostates. And I was doing the best I could to take care of him in the best way that I knew how.

Elissa Wall [01:57:00] And he had been placed in the care and keeping of another couple who were trying to get back into the good graces of the church. And so it was this really weird dynamic within my own family, but just this continual splintering of the people that I loved the very most. But in that splintering process, it was constantly confirming and reaffirming to me that I had to sacrifice for my salvation. And as I watched my mother, you know, she endured some of the most horrific pain that a mother could endure.

Elissa Wall [01:57:35] I can imagine it from her perspective now, and I cannot even comprehend what it must have been like to. To abandon your motherly instincts and motherly duties so completely and watch it unfold in front of her. And her way of dealing with it was she would just become more fervent, more prayerful, and she would fast for months on end to try and change what was happening within her life and her children's life. And for me, I tried to follow in her footsteps of being submissive and

Guest 2 [01:58:12] being

Elissa Wall [01:58:14] righteous in the very best way that we knew how to as women within the flds. With everything changing the way that it was within the church and the community of the Short Creek area, you know, men were being kicked out, families reorganized. It was chaos, really. That's. It was a constant state of absolute chaos. And still we had Warren consistently talking of the end of the world. But then he started to talk about redeeming Zion and that people were going to be called to redeem Zion. And what most of the community had no idea of is that Warren had secretly started to establish another compound in Texas, in El Dorado, Texas.

Elissa Wall [01:59:01] He had started to create this secret compound. And during this time frame, things got really secretive and bizarre within the flds. One of the things that Warren had done to further push the people was he had stopped marriages and he had stopped meetings. And the reason that he had given is because the people were so unrighteous and evil that the Lord was no longer going to gift them with these things.

Elissa Wall [01:59:34] What we didn't realize is that was his way of starting this narrative that Short Creek was damned and the only redeemable people was whomever Warren himself handpicked to go redeem Zion in El Dorado. In El Dorado. I mean, we didn't know El Dorado is called El Dorado, whatever they Texas in Texas, El Dorado.

Elissa Wall [01:59:54] So that's kind of a zoomed out perspective of what was happening at that time frame. But for the people in. We would have this situation where a family would just poof overnight. We started to call them poofers because we had no idea of what was really happening. And what we knew is that the meetings that we were having, Warren wasn't actually showing up to these meetings, but he was pre recording or he was calling over the phone. And they were usually just intense doom and gloom. Like you would walk away from church and there would be no feeling of.

Elissa Wall [02:00:34] There would be nothing that would make you feel good. You would just feel absolutely horrible. Like somehow you were the reason all of these things were happening. And it was always very intense. And for me, in my own personal life, I started to really unravel during this time because I couldn't keep pretending that I wanted to be married.

Elissa Wall [02:00:58] You know, I'm turning 16 at this. 16 and into my 17th year, I'd had multiple miscarriages. And the same thing was always I was the problem, I was not good enough, I was not righteous enough. And I had gone to Warren multiple times, always begging for a release, always asking. I've done the very best I could, I understand that I'm not righteous enough. Please just give me a release which is in essence a divorce. It's the only way to be separated from any kind of a marriage is the prophet has to sanction it and has to direct that it to happen every single time. I would be directed to go back and try harder, be more submissive, do more, pray more, sacrifice more.

Elissa Wall [02:01:47] And with Warren starting to disappear, he was a lot less present in our community. So that I couldn't go on, I couldn't talk to him as much at this time frame and try and get him to help me with what was going on. But leading up to this, on several occasions I had very detailed and clearly communicated to Warren what was happening and that the layers of abuse that were happening, both physical and sexual, were I was not in agreement with and I didn't feel like it was, it was right that was happening.

Elissa Wall [02:02:24] And I really started to real to realize that if I was going to take care of myself, it was going to be up to me. I got multiple jobs from within the community. We weren't allowed to get jobs outside of the community because women, it was frowned upon for women to work in general.

Elissa Wall [02:02:43] But then for women to get any kind of a job outside of the community was an absolute no, no. And because the community of Short Creek at this time was pretty self reliant. They had schools, they had private schools. Because Warren had shut down the public schools at this point Shortly before the 2002, excuse me, shortly before the turn of the millennia year 2000, Warren had gotten up one day and he had told all the people to remove their kids from public school. And overnight the public schools that were in the Short Creek area had been filled to the brim with kids and no one showed up.

Elissa Wall [02:03:21] And what he did in turn is he instructed all of the people to start private schools. But if you zoom out and you look at it, it was Warren's tool of being able to remove any outside influence in the children's life because as he did with Alta Academy, he then distributed to all of the private schools the curriculum, the tapes and the programs that he wanted the kids to listen to. And surprise, surprise, all of them were Warrens work. They were all his recordings and his revelations and descriptions of the scriptures.

John Dehlin [02:04:01] Songs about him, right?

Elissa Wall [02:04:02] Oh, it was always about him. And I realized that clearly now at the time when this is all happening, we didn't see it that way, but it was always about him. So for the people of the FLDS at this pivotal point, it's 2003 then Warren was not in the community very much. There was so much chaos of what was happening, but everyone was just overmaxed with stress and concern about the end of the world come coming. But then also all of these people kind of disappearing in the community. You know, a husband would be called to leave on a mission and just overnight would be gone for months on end and his family would not be told what was happening.

Elissa Wall [02:04:45] He wouldn't call in, he wouldn't talk to them. And you hear some of the stories of what people were going through inside the community. And it's tragic, it's so sad to see what was happening to the people that were fervent believers. But it was constantly pushing people to the edge, pushing people to the edge, seeing if people were going to break, how far they were willing to go to do what they were told to do. And within my own life, I started to separate myself as much as I could from my husband. I had had this time frame where I realized that I just couldn't.

Elissa Wall [02:05:26] I couldn't keep doing what I was doing. And my sister, who was married in Canada at one time was down for a visit and she had just recently had a young child. And I really was not well. I wasn't physically well, I wasn't emotionally well. I was pregnant at the time. Although I hadn't told anyone because I had stopped telling Allen or anyone that I was expecting, because I knew that if I lost would mean far more pain and struggle because I was once again going to be unworthy. So I always kind of just waited to see what was going to happen.

Elissa Wall [02:06:05] But she invited me to come and see her. She's like, come up back up with me into in Canada and come stay with me. And this was kind of during a time where the split that was happening in the Canadian community was really becoming evident. And you were seeing families kind of separate based on their allegiance and where, you know, did you believe in Warren or did you believe in Winston, you know, that kind of thing that was happening. And she had surprisingly gotten an opportunity to go and see Warren. And I had already requested to Alan that I wanted to go up and spend time with her.

Elissa Wall [02:06:41] But he's like, nope, you don't get to go. No, you're not leaving. You're not leaving me. You're gonna stay here and you're going to continue to do your wifely duties. And so I kind of went over his head and I went in with my sister to see Warren and just asked him if I could go up and spend time with my sister, because I told him that I needed some time away to sort some things out for myself. And surprisingly, Warren said okay. He was reluctant about it, but he had said okay. And for me, this was. There's a really. This was a relief that I had been praying for for quite some time.

Elissa Wall [02:07:18] The ability to go and get away from the Short Creek area and get away from this marriage that I was trapped in. And I got the chance to go up and spend some time in Canada with my sister. Sisters, because I had two sisters that were married up there to two members.

Leaving the Community and Finding a Way Out

Elissa Wall [02:07:38] And during that time, then that's when I had a stillbirth because. And that was a very difficult time because I was not supposed to be in Canada, and I hadn't alerted Alan to the fact that I was expecting. And so to have this very, very difficult thing happen, it was very scary to have it go the way that it was.

Elissa Wall [02:08:03] And there was a point in it where I didn't know that I was gonna live. And I wasn't sad about it. When my body was going through that process of what happens when a woman is spontaneously miscarrying or a stillbirth is happening. It's still the same process. There's still all of the labor and. And the pain and the struggle that comes with it.

Elissa Wall [02:08:27] And there was a point where I wondered if I was gonna die. And I wondered if this was finally that thing that was going to take me. But also just this intense grief, because once again, this was proof that I was a bad woman, I was a bad wife, and I was not worthy. I wasn't even worthy to carry a child. And I realized in that moment I wasn't going to go back. After I came out of it and I started to get strong again after that very near life, near death experience of that event happening. Then I just determined I was not going to go back and was not afraid to tell people that. I told Allen that, and I ultimately told my Mother that. And I told Fred that.

John Dehlin [02:09:21] And

Elissa Wall [02:09:23] then they sent Alan to Canada to pick me up. And once again, you saw that. I saw that social pressure happen in my family because with Alan coming and me once again going into this. Nope, don't touch me. Don't even.

Elissa Wall [02:09:39] And him promising it's going to be different, he's repented and he's not going to treat me the same way that it was. And there was all these promises that were being had about how it was going to be different. And ultimately it became very clear to me that if I did not go back, the family that I was staying with, which was my sister's family, who had chosen to stay on the side of the split that was happening, of believing in Warren, that they were running, that I was risking their.

Elissa Wall [02:10:11] Their salvation, I was risking their status in the church. And it became very clear to me that, nope, I wasn't welcome there because I was too risky for them to try and. And keep this going. And so I ultimately left and went with Alan. And immediately it started up again. You know, I. I detail it quite a bit in, in my book of what that experience felt like to have had that moment of the light at the end of the tunnel, that maybe this was this I was going to be able to get away from it, but then to immediately just be doing sucked back into it.

Elissa Wall [02:10:39] And it just get worse because from that point forward, it. It got really physical because I was. I was older, I was a lot more personally strong in my convictions of protecting myself. And that was when I started to just do whatever was necessary to take care of myself. And as time went on, I got multiple jobs and started just be too busy because I realized that if I went home and I engaged in any kind of interaction with my husband, I knew what it would lead to. And I was no longer willing to be subject to that kind of abuse. Even though my mind at that time.

Elissa Wall [02:11:21] Time didn't have the language or the perspective to see it as abuse. I just knew how it made me feel. And I knew how painful it was and difficult it was and how much I didn't want it to such a point that I had started to sleep in my car. I would take my little truck that I had that I was given the opportunity to drive, and I would drive out into the wilderness and I would pack up my things and I would sleep in there. And I had figured out this really great way to protect myself because if I worked all day long and as long as I possibly could into the night, then I Could sneak into my house, gather a few things, go back into my car, go out into the desert and sleep, and then be able to.

Elissa Wall [02:12:06] To come back early in the morning after my husband was gone, off to work. And so I figured out this rhythm of how to physically take steps to protect myself from what was happening. After I had left Canada. And on our drive home, there was this.

Guest 2 [02:12:24] Even.

Elissa Wall [02:12:24] There was this episode where it had become very, very apparent to me that nothing had changed. I was still expected to be a submissive wife. And once again, immediately after just promising days before that things had changed, that he was going to respect when I didn't want to engage immediately it was this onslaught of sexual advances. And I. It just really solidified in my mind that I couldn't trust what he was saying. And I also was once again entrapped in what I thought I had gotten away from that.

John Dehlin [02:13:05] It would have been nice if Warren had given him another wife. That might have given you some relief.

Elissa Wall [02:13:10] Possibly, yes. But that was part of it also is that because I was not performing the way that I was supposed to be, it was making it where he wasn't worthy enough to get another way life. And so it was a reflection on him. And it wasn't just the way that he saw it. Everyone in our social circle of the community saw it that way because I was a representation of my husband. I was property of my husband, and therefore my actions were a representation of him.

John Dehlin [02:13:37] By the way, what I just said was awful because it would involve another woman being caught up in all this and that. I just can't believe I just said that.

Elissa Wall [02:13:45] Agreed, I can see, I appreciate that, but I can see because I've had a lot of people be like, well, maybe he could have just had a second wife. And that's an important point to make because this was the story of what happened to a lot of women. They were put in abusive situations, and their only salvation from that abuse came from another woman coming onto the scene. And then that cycle would just transfer to the next woman. And it's, it's, it's. I appreciate your sensitivity in saying what you said, but I think it's an important thing to actually talk about. Whereas that was the reality.

Elissa Wall [02:14:19] That wasn't just an insensitive thing to say. That was a reality. And I can't tell you how many times I thought the same thing where I'm like, oh my gosh, if I would. If he could just get someone else, then I can just go along my way and I'll. I'll be the. I'll be the shameful wife forever. And I'm okay with that as. As long as this just ends.

Elissa Wall [02:14:37] After returning from Canada, back into the community and all of the chaos and the shifts and the changes that were happening in the area, in the Short Creek area as well as Canada, you know, it put a lot of the community on edge and in my realization as well as more maturity because I was finally 16, I had an actual driver's license, even though I'd been driving and functioning as an adult since I was 14.

Elissa Wall [02:15:09] And then I started to get a lot more personal defiance. And that's where I started to do whatever I needed to to protect myself. Driving out into the desert to sleep, working and coping. It was all about coping. And I entered my season of any coping mechanism I could find to be able to deal with the reality that I still found myself in, but not just to within my marriage, but also within the community at large because things were getting really scary and really hard.

Elissa Wall [02:15:42] There also came a point where Fred disappeared one day. And that really affected my mother and my sisters that were still in Fred's home.

John Dehlin [02:15:50] Was your assigned dad?

Elissa Wall [02:15:52] Yeah, he was. He was my assigned dad. And he disappeared one day and no one knew, understood or why.

John Dehlin [02:15:58] He had like 20 wives in a household of a gazillion kids.

Elissa Wall [02:16:02] Yes, but there again, that was. We learned later that part of the reason for that was that Fred disappeared was because Warren was removing anyone out of the community that had any influence. He didn't kick Fred out, but he told Fred to go on another mission. And he brought him to an area in Colorado where he. Ultimately, that's where he passed away, was in Colorado, in a hospital.

Elissa Wall [02:16:25] But at the time when Fred just disappeared, it was very confusing to the people, but it was a way that the people no longer had anywhere to go besides Warren. And he was removing anyone out of the community that had any stewardship over the people that actually cared. Because he was constantly funneling people into this mindset where they were blindly obeying out of desperation.

Elissa Wall [02:16:52] And there was always one thing after another where whether it was, you know, there's a test and everyone needs to fast and pray. And no one really knew what this test was. To the next week. It was, the Lord is asking for any. The believers to donate their resources. And it was always asking for more money, more. More time, more fervency, more dedication. And it became really difficult for the people within the Short Creek area because there was just no clarity of what was going on

Guest 2 [02:17:26] at this time. Was Warren in Texas most of the time?

Elissa Wall [02:17:29] Yes.

Guest 2 [02:17:30] Okay.

Elissa Wall [02:17:31] We later found out that that's where he was a majority of his time was either between Texas or also. We're not 100% sure, but that was a similar time where South Dakota, the compound up in South Dakota that was also established by Warren at the time.

Elissa Wall [02:17:47] We don't know where he was bouncing. And if you read a lot of the journals and the diaries that came from the Texas raid at this time, he would refer to all of these compounds in these secret hiding places with numbers and he would talk about, you know, he went and he saw someone at R14 or he had quite a network of places to go.

Elissa Wall [02:18:07] And that became very evident as time went on. And he ended up running from the law because he had all of these resources. He had a multi million dollar church and he had millions of dollars at his. At his fingertips.

Elissa Wall [02:18:21] I also don't think Warren had any conversation true conception of money because he'd grown up in royalty. And as time went on, he had been able to garner enough loyalty and authority that he could command a million dollars overnight. Truly. And the businesses of the community would. Would offer it and the people would offer it.

Elissa Wall [02:18:44] And I once heard someone say, Warren does Warren. Someone from the FLDS that was talking about that, their experiences, because they had had a business inside and they had kind of seen how. But they said Warren didn't know the difference between $100,000 and $1 million because it was all the same to him.

Guest 2 [02:19:04] Yeah.

Elissa Wall [02:19:06] So it was definitely a difficult time for the people of the community because in a lot of ways people were starving. They were starving spiritually, they were starving socially. And he was constantly putting him in that state of survival because that I believe if you look at dictators and he had very much become a dictator at this point in time, then they use those tools to keep people in a state of control where it's easy to control them. And there was always this element of fear and concern because the end of the world was coming and you didn't know if you or your family was going to be taken away. You didn't know if you were going to be righteous enough. Were you going to get kicked out? Was something going to happen? And it only got worse.

John Dehlin [02:19:53] Worse.

Elissa Wall [02:19:53] Even after I ran away from it, it only got worse. That climate of fear and desperation only got much worse for people as time went on. So for me though, this was 2003 to end of 2003, 2004. And then I finally had just reached a point where I Realized that nothing was really going to change inside of my marriage. And things were really going awry with my mother and her family because now Fred was no longer in the picture. I became a really important part in their lives because I was providing for them. I worked multiple jobs, and instead of giving my money to my husband like I was supposed to, and I had been for many, many years, I was using the same resources and I was giving them to my mother to take care of her and my younger sister.

Elissa Wall [02:20:49] So I felt very responsible for them. And I believed that if anything were to happen to me, I wouldn't know what would happen to them. So it kind of reinvigorated my sense of purpose. And I started a season where I was very focused on taking care of my sisters and my mother.

Elissa Wall [02:21:07] And because Fred wasn't there, it kind of started this, this, this season where I was able to engage with my mother a lot more because Alan couldn't tell anyone. There was no one to really tell on me too, because Warren wasn't really in the picture very much and Fred wasn't in the picture very much.

Elissa Wall [02:21:29] And so I ended up being able at a season where I got away with a lot of stuff when it came to not being a submissive wife. And I distanced myself further and further and further from my husband.

Elissa Wall [02:21:43] There was one. The last time that I ever was abused by him. We had. I had gone with him because I was, you know, trying to have this shroud that I was still righteous enough. But we had gone up into this as area called Indian Box Canyon over in Short Creek area. And it's, it's away from the town a little bit.

Elissa Wall [02:22:05] And at first I was, you know, I wondered if it was going to go okay. But ultimately, throughout our discussions and these, these conversations that I was having with him, I aggravated him greatly. And he got incredibly physical with me and just forced himself on me. And this was happening and I was like, you promised you would never do this again to me. And it just angered him even more.

Elissa Wall [02:22:35] After it was all done and over, I. This fiery part of me rose up and I just looked him in the eye and I said, you will never touch me again. And I meant it. And there was a part of this resolve inside of me that I didn't know where it came from.

Elissa Wall [02:22:54] But it was like this, this fire inside of me that no matter how dormant it had become at different points in my journey, it was still very much there. And it was these embers that were glowing that at points rose up and came alive. And this was one of them. But from that last time then I had once again fallen pregnant.

Elissa Wall [02:23:20] And a couple of months later, I had been working my way to continue to distance myself. But one night I came back from work late and, and Alan's waiting for me and we shared a home and you know, I immediately just kind of was like, okay, I was accustomed to him being asleep by that point, but I came in and was very off putting, you know, but we hadn't really seen each other for quite a few, quite a few weeks and months. And I hadn't, I had done everything I could to never be in the same room as him, because that was my last resort.

Elissa Wall [02:24:00] This is where I had arrived at in this experience was it had gotten so bad. But it wasn't just the physical abuse. The amount of psychological, emotional gaslighting that would happen on an everyday basis where these things would happen, whether it was a physical altercation or I was getting hit or something of that nature. And then the very next day, as it was completely nothing happened like that. It was the worst form of gaslighting because nothing would happen. And we would go into these social settings with other people and I would be so off putting and frustrated at the way that I was being treated.

Elissa Wall [02:24:42] But then everyone else just saw this veneer of this really kind individual, you know, and he would, he would put on this face to the world and whether he was a kind person or not, it didn't matter the way that it showed up in my life, whether very much not that way. And maybe I just aggravated an alternate personality with him because that became a problem with a lot of the people is as they would be. The people in the Short Cook area that knew us would get really frustrated because they couldn't understand why I was so mean to Alan. They couldn't understand why I was so off putting and why I, I hated him at this point in time because they didn't ever see that side.

Elissa Wall [02:25:22] They didn't ever see what was happening behind closed doors. And when you put desperate people in desperate situations, terrible things happen. And that's what was very much my life was. I was desperate, my cousin was desperate, and we were desperate for other reasons. I was desperate to protect myself. I was desperate to, to not be experiencing all of this. And he was desperate to be what he believed was a husband, a father and a priesthood man at all costs.

Elissa Wall [02:26:00] And whatever it took for him to break me, to get to where I would submit, it seemed to be that was the approach that was, that was happening. So I'VE tried really hard in my life since to zoom out of, of the day to day experiences. And even to this day, there's so much of the time where I have to compassionately work myself through some of this stuff because the gaslighting that happened through those years was so intense that I would often question my own sanity of did that really happen? Like, there's a bruise, I have a black eye, did that happen? And then when people would ask, then it was, of course it's always this make up a story.

Elissa Wall [02:26:44] Because I didn't know what to do with what was actually happening to me when it came to the different layers of abuse. But that's where the psychological part, you know, I tell people often in abusive situations, and I think anyone that suffers, that has experienced domestic abuse will tell you the physical element of abuse is one thing. And it's sometimes a lot easier for us to experience that level of abuse and be able to logically work through it. It's the psychological and the emotional that is very challenging to work through.

Elissa Wall [02:27:20] And that's been the hardest thing throughout my life to, to look back and unsort some of that emotional abuse. Because in a state of trauma, the things that are said, those little seeds that are put into you during that time frame, you're very susceptible to them because you don't have a filter to be able to filter out someone's bullshit version of who you are. And so much of that time frame in my life was, it was constantly contributing to, you're not good enough, you're a terrible person, you're not going to heaven, you're not this never enough, never worthy.

Elissa Wall [02:28:01] And to this day, that's something that is going to forever be a lifelong sentence for me to get to unweave and to face and to be resilient to. Because it's the stories, and I speak it because I think so many women that I have had the opportunity to listen to their stories, when we detail the reality of what the.

Elissa Wall [02:28:27] The event that happened, whether it was sexual abuse or domestic abuse, the details and the experience of it sometimes are really easy to name, to talk about and to claim that shame as we feel. But what isn't easy to talk about is what it did to us on the inside and how it affects us for years to come after that. Because even though after the last time that ever I was ever sexually abused by Allen, I made a commitment to myself that he would never touch me. And that was something that I was willing to follow through with with my life every single Day. The years of abuse would touch me for years to come.

Elissa Wall [02:29:18] And the nightmares and the flashbacks and the panic attacks and all the things that would come from it, you know, that was just the beginning. Getting myself physically safe was one piece. And it's been a lifelong journey to get myself spiritually, emotionally, and subconsciously safe in within the broader context of the church. At the time, it was getting more and more chaotic because you started to see more people disappearing. We did start to hear clings that there was a Zion being built. We knew that somewhere there was a temple that was going to be built, and this meant that Zion was going to be redeemed.

Elissa Wall [02:30:05] And so it kind of became the light at the end of the tunnel for some people, because it was this idea that maybe the destructions are going to be a little bit differently. And that's what's happening, is that the destructions are still happening. Because anytime there was an event that would happen in the outside world, whether it was weather event, earthquake that happened somewhere in the world, or a mass shooting, or like, I remember 9 11, for the people that were in the church at the time during 9 11, that was confirmation. Oh, see, this is happening. This is how the wicked are destroyed. So Warren was using any event that would happen on the outside of the FLDS as confirmation as to his narrative that he was pushing and pursuing.

Elissa Wall [02:30:53] But what was also happening is that families were being. That children were being handpicked out of families and they were being taken down into Texas. We didn't know exactly where they were being taken, but once again, Warren was using the model that he had used all along, and that is to influence the youth, to take the youth out. And we hear these stories of what some of these families went through when they would have their children chosen to be taken down to Texas. And on one hand, there was this. This reverence for. That their children were so righteous that they were being chosen to. To go and redeem Zion.

Elissa Wall [02:31:31] But there was also this intense grief and sadness of losing their children. And as time goes on and we start to hear more stories of the people of the flds, I think we'll see this time frame and we'll. We'll see the stories come out of how this shaped the lives of so many people. It wasn't just the tragedy of Warren and what he did during this time. It was the generations that it would take to unweave and undo the trauma that came from this time period. For me personally, there was one day that I came home and Alan had been there sitting and we got into an argument, we got into a discussion about this was going to end.

Elissa Wall [02:32:22] And as he was saying to me, you know, this ends now. You are there no more of this because of the fervency that was happening in the church every single day, that you were not a righteous person. You were running the risk of not being called to Zion. You were running the risk.

Elissa Wall [02:32:38] And I can imagine for him every day that he didn't have the ability to command his wife and. And have obedience. It was. It was one mark against his worthiness. And it got into a very, very physical interaction. And I was adamant. There was no way that he was going to ever touch me again sexually. And I was willing to do whatever was necessary, even if that was to. To scratch, claw and get myself into a position to where he wasn't going to touch me. And ultimately, after a very physical altercation, I was able to run out of the. The home that we shared. And I just ran out with no shoes on and jumped in my car and just left.

Elissa Wall [02:33:23] This was a cold November day, and I remember the snow was just starting to fall in the area, and all the years of it had just come up for me, and I was so distraught. And I didn't know where to go because I started to feel once again, that what I assumed was a miscarriage. All of the same things. I'd kind of become accustomed to this feeling, and my body started to react to it. And I don't know if it was because of the physical. Physical abuse that had just recently happened, but I was full in the throes of it. And so I knew I couldn't go talk to my mother.

Elissa Wall [02:34:04] I knew I couldn't go up there, and I didn't know where to go. And so I went to the only place. See, every once in a while, the things come up that you don't expect. I went to the one and only place that I felt safe, which was the desert.

Elissa Wall [02:34:23] And I'm driving out and I realized that I had hit something or something had happened. And I had a flat tire. So I got out of my. My vehicle and I'm assessing the situation, and I'm going through this experience of my body expelling this pregnancy that I had. And it was. It was just so overwhelming and so much. I couldn't get all the pieces to change my tire. I didn't have a coat on. I didn't have what I needed. And I'm sitting there and I see these lights drive up, and I'm in the middle of the outskirts of the Short Creek area. And instantaneously, I was just immediately so panicked because I can't tell you how many times that I was picked up by the police of the Short Creek area and escorted home after they would find me out where I shouldn't have been.

Elissa Wall [02:35:17] I can't tell you how many times that people would see me and they would tell on me of, you know, I was seen here. And this is, you know, because one of the things that Warren had created is he created a climate of everyone, was constantly keeping track of everyone else. And part of this reward system was if you could tell on someone, if you could turn someone in for what they were doing that wasn't obedient, then somehow it would give you brownie points. It was a weird dynamic and climate that had started to happen within the people, and it only got worse as time went on.

Elissa Wall [02:35:49] So I was so panicked, and I immediately was not even concerned with the situation that I had just left from or what was going on for myself. I was just concerned about not getting caught again. And this. This gentleman gets out of the truck, and I kind of see him, because it's dark at this point in time, and he comes up and he's like, do you need some help? And I immediately was like, no, no, no, no, I'm good. I don't. I don't need any help. And, you know, he obviously saw that there was something very, very wrong, and he proceeded to help me change this tire.

Elissa Wall [02:36:22] Yeah, he told me to get in the truck and warm up, and he changed this tire. And this was one of those really important moments in all of it, because the. The man that had come, driven up that day was.

Elissa Wall [02:36:36] Would later become my escape partner and the father of my children that I would have later after leaving. But this moment was really important because he was able to assess that there was someone in need. And it was the first time that I had ever had anyone, especially another man, do anything to help me in a state of crisis from that meeting. Because at the time, I was working in a restaurant that was inside of the community called Mark Twain, and he would come often to the restaurant for lunch. We often served a lot of the men that were working in the community work projects and provided a lot of food for people that were working.

Elissa Wall [02:37:24] And I was a server and working a lot at this restaurant. And through that process of. Of connecting in that moment and the months that would follow, we started a friendship. And ultimately I started to realize that I cared about this person and they cared about me. And for me, the experience of having someone care about me and not want anything else from me, they didn't want anything, they didn't, he didn't force himself on me. It was just such a new experience in my relating with the, the men of the community.

Elissa Wall [02:38:09] And as we became more friends and we had shared experiences of our background, I learned a little bit more about him. But there was a question that would come up or he would ask me why I don't just leave. You know, if it was so bad and things were, were happening the way they were, why wouldn't I just leave?

Elissa Wall [02:38:27] And I didn't have an answer for that because I wanted to. There was a part of me that really could imagine a life leaving and starting over somewhere, even if, even if it meant that I was damned to hell. But what really kept me there was my mother and my sisters and I couldn't leave them. And we would get into some disagreements about, you know, he was ready to leave and he believed that he loved me and wanted me to just be able to, just to leave and get out of it. And I can imagine it was very difficult for him. But I just wasn't in a place where I was emotionally or subconsciously able or ready to be able to leave.

Elissa Wall [02:39:12] And for me I was always, what's going to happen to my mother and my sisters if I do that? It all kind of came to a head because I had been more and more getting further and further distanced from the man that I was married to in the priesthood. And I was, I was having a friendship and we started to kind of fall in love with this other man.

Elissa Wall [02:39:39] And that was such a. No, no, it was the absolute impediment of this most terrible sins according to everyone else. But for me it was just survival. And it's hard for me to look at that time and say, you know, that was what I saw as a way out because I wasn't seeing as that I was trying to do the very best with what I had in this situation.

Elissa Wall [02:40:04] And I'm 17 years old and I invite people to remember what they were like at 17, what the things they wanted and the things that were important to them. And for me, I had been married for three plus years, I'd had multiple miscarriages, I had gone through some of the worst abuse that people should go through.

Elissa Wall [02:40:31] And I just wanted to be safe. That was my goal as a 17 year old. I wanted to feel like what it felt to be safe. And that was a foreign concept for me. The last time I Ever saw Allen and heard from Warren was this one day, after months had gone by of not seeing Alan, not checking in. Because that was the thing is you always checked in with your priesthood head every day and every night you checked in. And I wasn't doing that.

Elissa Wall [02:41:07] But my mother had reached out to me and she had come over to see me. And I hadn't been able to see them for quite a little while because of all of the changes that were happening within the church and the community. And she just alerted me that, you know, I was being called into a meeting and she didn't know what it was about. And she hoped that it would. That it would go well and that she loved me. And she hoped that I knew that, that. That I was loved. And it was so good in that moment to get a chance to see my mother.

Elissa Wall [02:41:36] And I was so happy too, because I wasn't allowed to go up to her place anymore. And they had walled in the Fred's home and made it its own kind of compound where there was gates and you had. There was cameras and you had to be given entrance into these places. So I hadn't had the opportunity to engage with my mother and my sisters nearly as much as I was accustomed to, even though I. I was doing everything I could to make sure that they had the financial resources to take care of themselves.

Elissa Wall [02:42:04] And later that day I was. I found myself sitting in a room with the acting bishop at the time who was put there by Warren. And Alan was in the room as well and over the phone. Then Warren was put on the line and Alan proceeded to go into great detail of why he saw me as an adulterous woman and that I was fraternizing with apostates, that I had started a relationship and a friendship with another man and go into all of the. The detail of my transgressions, of how I wasn't a submissive wife and all the things that I had done wrong and the ways that I had lost my testimony.

Elissa Wall [02:42:45] And from his perspective, everything that he saw as wrong. And I just kind of sat there the whole time and listened. It wasn't things. These weren't new things. These are things that I had been hearing for years of the same narrative of not enoughness, not worthy and never going to be worthy and going to hell and taking the people I love with me.

Elissa Wall [02:43:11] And finally Warren, referring to me over the phone, just asked if these were true. And I didn't really respond. I mean, what do you say to some of that? And he took my silence as affirmation and proceeded to tell me that I was an adulterous woman, that I had committed a cardinal sin and finally, ever so finally gave me what I had been asking for for years. And he released me from the marriage.

Elissa Wall [02:43:44] But the way that he did this release was. It was, I'm so. You're so unworthy that you don't even be. Get to be married anymore. And for me, listening to all of it, I was a little bit numb to it until this pivotal point in all of it where even though I was. I was sad and I was crying, and I didn't know what this meant for my life and for me.

Elissa Wall [02:44:08] Warren referred to Alan in this, and he said to him, a job well done. You are a worthy priesthood man. And there was this moment, you know. You know, hear these stories of this. The jolt that happens, and something just snaps inside of us and we see red.

Elissa Wall [02:44:32] And immediately I was just so infuriated, and I was so angry and so sad because I could not conceive a God that would see that as a job well done. It was so confusing to me.

John Dehlin [02:44:50] He was your abuser, he was your rapist. Right.

Elissa Wall [02:44:52] For years, I couldn't understand. Warren knew what was going on. He knew how I felt because I had told him so many times, and I had been so vulnerable and honest with my feelings and how I felt about it, and to just have it backfire like that. And there was this moment where I'm like, this is not a God that I want to be in heaven with. If this is what is considered righteous and if this is what is a job well done, there is no hell that is worse than this one.

Elissa Wall [02:45:26] And that was this final piece of that gave me the push I needed to leave. And I was told that I was going to be a single angel. And the only way that I was. Warren went on to explain that for adultery, it's a cardinal sin and that the only salvation for cardinal sins is blood atonement.

Elissa Wall [02:45:50] And for the people in the flds, we knew we weren't. I didn't hear stories of it being practiced, but. But anyone that's familiar with the concept of it, it was talked about as this. This ritual that would take place within temples where when someone had sinned so greatly that the only form of repentance was this act of taking their own life in a ceremonial setting in exchange for their sin. And it was made very clear to me that I was damned, and that was my only salvation. I was a single angel, and I was being moved back into my father's home. My biological dad, who had all of these years been working so hard to find to keep showing his repentance, and he had been allowed to move into the Short Creek area and continue to just give his money and give his

John Dehlin [02:46:50] time and give my dad remain faithful.

Elissa Wall [02:46:52] He remained faithful after all that, after all of that, for years. He remained faithful. And it shows. You talk about the resilience of a belief, and he had that resilience in the face of all of this adversity. He had this. This resilience in his belief system as to why he was still there and why he still subscribed to Warren and just.

John Dehlin [02:47:15] He's living in Salt Lake. He has his three. He has his wives and children taken away from him. One wife stays with them and he moves back closer to Hilldale. Hilldale, yeah.

Elissa Wall [02:47:28] To the Short Creek area, to Short Creek area.

John Dehlin [02:47:30] To just like, wait to be redeemed by Warren.

Elissa Wall [02:47:33] Definitely. But that became a narrative for so many men that had their families taken away is. They were like dogs on a chain, meaning they got the scraps of whatever and they. When they. When they said do, then they did whatever it took for them to show their repentance, to work their way back into the good graces.

Elissa Wall [02:47:52] But for. For this particular thing, after all of this time of him not being my. My father and all of the years of the story of he's. He's not a priesthood man, I was put under his care and the bishop loaded me up. I, at this point, was so emotional. And I remember walking away and Allen walks out, and he didn't even say anything, didn't even pay attention to me. I was the dirt that he had always believed I was at that point, and I was treated as such. And I was so utterly demoted and worthless in the eyes of the church leaders at this point in time.

Elissa Wall [02:48:38] And I had just kind of given up on it. But he. The bursa drove me to my dad's house and dropped me off. And it was so hard because there was this moment where my dad answered his door and he saw me there and he didn't ask questions. He saw that I was really emotional. And the bishop said to him, elise, is going to be under your care. And he just took it in stride and he welcomed me in.

Elissa Wall [02:49:05] And I haven't yet had a chance to really talk to my dad about that because it's still so raw for us both in a lot of ways.

John Dehlin [02:49:12] But today, as of today, you still haven't talked to your dad about that moment.

Elissa Wall [02:49:16] Not in very Good detail and just understood where he was coming from at that time. But they immediately put me in a room and just took it in stride, him and his wife, first wife. And there was a part of me that was very comforted by it. And I sat there and I imagined for a good hour after everybody else had gone to bed of what my life would look like if I stayed with Alan. No, just stayed there in the flds, stayed in my community, because I knew my options at this point in time were I leave or I stay. And I imagined what my life was like if I stayed.

Elissa Wall [02:49:56] And if I could draw from all the examples of the people that had been reprimanded as severely as I had just now. I was pretty sure it was going to be absolute hell because I would have zero social support. I would be used as example after an example forever after of what not to do. And it would be this constant shame wave after shame wave after shame wave. And even though I didn't have language to see it as shame, I knew that it would. I would be this. I would be held up as a. An example of what a single angel, what the realities of a single angel were.

Elissa Wall [02:50:30] And I finally just. Enough was enough. And I called the man who I had had a relationship with and friendship with, and I said, okay, it's time to go. And we packed up. I packed up the little things that I could and left.

Elissa Wall [02:50:51] And I'll never forget that feeling of looking in the mirror as I'm sitting in the passenger seat, really not fully absorbing everything that had happened and driving away from Short Creek and seeing the lights as we drive onto the highway further and further away, seeing those lights get dimmer and dimmer and dimmer and having this very intense feeling of uncertainty grip me because we had. I had no idea what I was driving into. I didn't know where we were going. We didn't know what we would be doing. We didn't know how our lives would go.

Elissa Wall [02:51:29] But I was lucky enough to know that some of my other siblings who had left, that they had figured it out. They hadn't been murdered or raped or all the horrible things, even though that's what had been happening to me.

Elissa Wall [02:51:48] It was sanctioned by the church. What had happened to me was sanctioned by the church. So it wasn't wrong, but that happening to somebody else was wrong on the outside. It was an example of what could happen. And that was part of why I struggled so much with that a job well done statement is it felt absolute hypocrisy. And even that version of me, that 18 year old version of me, in that moment that felt that and experienced that, I knew, I knew it was wrong all the way to my core. And that spark inside of me started to once again come alive. Because I believe that's where my voice started to say, you are not what they say.

Elissa Wall [02:52:41] And it took years for that to come into conscious reality for me. But in that moment, that's kind of when that first act of claiming myself began. In the months that would follow, as we began to adapt into the outside world, it was new. And I often refer to the people that have left the flds, especially in the early days, we were like domestic refugees.

Elissa Wall [02:53:12] We were coming in from a completely different world. We had different language, even though we all spoke English, the words meant different things. I had different perspective of how everything worked. And so many things were new and scary and intense. And I'll never forget the first time that I ever had a face to face interaction with this beautiful and amazingly kind black woman.

Elissa Wall [02:53:40] I was in a situation where we really needed. I needed some help and some support. And this was the person that was behind the desk that was doing some of the work that I needed to get some help with.

John Dehlin [02:53:54] What had you been taught about black people or had you been taught about that?

Elissa Wall [02:53:58] Absolutely. Warren was an extreme racist and he was not quiet about the way that he would teach that to the people. We had long elaborate stories of why black people were or any colored race, why they were colored the way they were. And that was the mark of Cain or the mark of all of their ancestry and what had happened to make them that way. But more so, they were seen as subpar.

Elissa Wall [02:54:27] And even though I never saw them as bad people, when you have that kind of programming your whole life, you really don't know what to do. And I remember this experience of seeing her and knowing that I needed to approach her and I needed some help and I didn't know how to. And I really didn't know what to expect.

Elissa Wall [02:54:48] But the experience, and this is where realizing the power of kindness, because I still tear up when I remember this because she was so kind and so warm and inviting and it was at a point where I desperately needed some compassion because I was so afraid in this new world, trying so hard to adapt and to have a stranger who didn't know me treat me better than most of my own family and the people that I had known in my community was really, it was, it was very jolting because that's what started to make me question like okay. That was completely different than what I had told it would be like.

Elissa Wall [02:55:33] And she made me feel more human in that moment than most people had for. Through my entire life. And that was a chink in this. This illusion that started to come apart at that point in time.

John Dehlin [02:55:52] I just have to note there's an irony that you've mentioned at least two big chinks. One was when you went to Bear Lake and saw that happy non FLDS family. And then this one with the first woman of color you'd ever met. You mentioned working at a restaurant called Mark Twain. Mark Twain is famous for this quote. Do you know the quote?

Elissa Wall [02:56:12] I don't know if I do.

John Dehlin [02:56:13] Yeah. He said, travel is fatal to prejudice. And what he means is when you get outside your home territory and go and meet other groups of people, that's when you realize they're. They're just as good or better than you. So it was Mark Twain that kind of shared that quote, and you were

Elissa Wall [02:56:33] living it basically in its way. Absolutely, I was. I appreciate you sharing that quote because I haven't heard it quite like that. But it is the irony of all of the layers of the story. Sometimes it's. It is. Is weirder than fiction, but it's incredibly interesting story. Even sometimes when I hear myself say it, I'm like, that was my life.

Guest 2 [02:56:54] Wow.

John Dehlin [02:56:55] And was this the first black woman you'd ever talked to in.

Elissa Wall [02:56:58] In detail? Yes, it was. We had, you know, you see him and even though I never understood, but I. I didn't really even. I didn't know them or talk to them a lot.

John Dehlin [02:57:10] But also, there were no black FLDS members.

Guest 2 [02:57:14] No.

John Dehlin [02:57:14] There was no one of color in 20,000 people.

Elissa Wall [02:57:17] No, there was not one.

John Dehlin [02:57:18] Nor Hispanic.

Elissa Wall [02:57:19] No.

John Dehlin [02:57:20] No.

Elissa Wall [02:57:20] There was no other races but whites.

John Dehlin [02:57:23] Not even Hispanic people.

Elissa Wall [02:57:25] Kind of take that back. There was. There was one particular family that. That had some indigenous native blood in their background. And there was always a story spun as to why they were. But that was the only people of any particular race other than the pure white people as they were. You know, that was God's pure people.

Elissa Wall [02:57:49] And once again, Warren, taking the notes from other dictators, if you can create this idea that you are better than someone else based on skin color, it gave him power in some way. And for a lot of people that have left the flds, that's something that we have to transcend. End is the innate racism that was built into us without our knowing, without our conscious understanding, because we didn't have any other reference point to go with. But it's also one of those really incredible experiences because once you can confront that and you can assess it and say, no, actually, I don't believe that. I don't believe they're.

Elissa Wall [02:58:26] They're less. They're just like me. It's a really powerful experience to then be able to continue to unweave that dogma. And that came with the way we were cultured.

John Dehlin [02:58:40] It's beautiful.

Elissa Wall [02:58:42] Keep going.

John Dehlin [02:58:43] Yeah.

Elissa Wall [02:58:45] Because sometimes you're so quiet. I'm, like, the only one over here talking.

John Dehlin [02:58:48] We could have a million questions.

Guest 2 [02:58:50] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:58:50] A million things we could say. But this is so good. We just. You're. And you're a great storyteller.

Elissa Wall [02:58:56] Well, thank you. There's great power in telling the story, and that's where I'm at in my life, is the opportunity to come and tell this story.

Guest 2 [02:59:05] On.

Elissa Wall [02:59:05] This is new for me because most of my storytelling has, you know, it was written in the book, but even that, you have to condense it because a reader wants to be able to finish the story. And even in my appearances, such as, like, Oprah and all of the other things that would happen, it was never a platform to really go into the dead depth of the story. And to do that today is really profound for me because I get to weave it all together for myself, because really, that's part of what this experience is for me, is I'm claiming it for myself and reclaiming my story, reclaiming the journey that I've walked in hopes that by sharing it with the listeners, as well as propelling me forward into continuing to share the story.

Elissa Wall [02:59:53] Because even what we've talked about, this point. Point, it's. It's been shared on. On some level, it's been told. And as we move into the next part of this. This journey together, it's areas that I haven't spoken of what life was really like in. In trying to adapt into the world. And that's really where we were. I. I started out with my. My firstborn son at this point, and immediately all the shame voices came up.

John Dehlin [03:00:22] Up.

Elissa Wall [03:00:22] You know, it was. Don't get too excited because you know, this is not going to last. You're. You. All those same voices. Even though I had removed myself from the environment of the FLDS and all of that, I hadn't removed my psychological. I was still entrapped with the psychological shackles that were the belief system that I was coming from. And part of my coping mechanism to this point was to just. Out of sight, out of mind. I didn't talk about what my life had been like. I didn't talk to anyone about the abuse that had been happening. I had. After I left, I had the opportunity to reconnect with my sister Rebecca and some of my other family members who had been out for a little while and to see their.

Elissa Wall [03:01:08] Their journey and to see where they were. My. My sister had a new and a young boy and her, and. And her husband at the time. They were. They were working and they were thriving in the best way that they knew how. And it brought me a sense of hope.

John Dehlin [03:01:22] Where were they?

Elissa Wall [03:01:23] They. They lived in Coos Bay, Oregon at the time that I left. And so I left later in the year in the fall and the first Christmas that I ever.

John Dehlin [03:01:34] What year?

Elissa Wall [03:01:35] This was 2004.

John Dehlin [03:01:37] Okay.

Elissa Wall [03:01:38] Yep, 2004. Christmas. Then I got an opportunity to go up to Coos Bay where my sister and my two of my brothers were living. Actually three of my brothers were living at the time and experienced Christmas for the first time. What does that mean? Because we don't. We didn't celebrate any of those things in the flds. No Christmas, no Christmas, no Easter. They celebrate more of it as. That's when they usually do their conferences right around Easter.

Elissa Wall [03:02:09] They don't celebrate a lot of traditional holidays. And the only one that they really paid any kind of reference to was the fourth of July. But that was more of just the Lord is blessing us that we live in such a free country because that allows us the freedom of religion. And the only reason why this was the weird part, the only reason why America existed was for the Lord to have his people here. You know, that's how narcissistic the whole situation was.

Guest 2 [03:02:39] Yep.

John Dehlin [03:02:39] So they could, like America was created so that polygamy could thrive.

Elissa Wall [03:02:42] Yes.

John Dehlin [03:02:43] It's also weird that the two ultimate Christian holidays were not celebrated in a supposedly Christian church that bears the name of Jesus Christ. But if it was all about Warren, even Jesus was a threat. For Warren, even Jesus might be a threat.

Elissa Wall [03:03:04] Well, and they also would say things like that those, those holidays were a perversion of Christ. That was the. The evil world perverting the story of Christ and what he was here to do. I'm not all. I'm not sure all the reasons why they didn't observe those holidays at all. But even the story of Christ, that wasn't so much present. It was the story of Joseph that was the ever present story was Joseph. And he was, you know, the. The Holy Ghost in all of it. You know, because you had the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost and the way we were told is Joseph Smith was that Holy Ghost in that, that trinity of weirdness.

Elissa Wall [03:03:51] But that first Christmas, getting the experience of what the rest of the world was accustomed to, to feeling of family coming together. And even though I was removed from the day to day chaos and the struggle of what life had been like in the flds and physically I was safe, my body was going through intense post traumatic stress and it was very difficult for me to create connection with people. It was very hard for me to talk to strangers or to be able to, to function really in the outside world because. And I didn't, I didn't have language and I didn't know what was really going on.

Elissa Wall [03:04:34] I hadn't sought therapy at this point in time because that's done. We were still in survival. We were just trying to survive and adapt. But after getting to sit with my sister and I remember decorating my very first Christmas tree and the experience of putting the lights on the tree and even though we were, we there had very little because they were struggling to survive and we were, they were working in minimum wage jobs and doing the very best they could to, to start their lives over.

Elissa Wall [03:05:07] Just the experience of being able to do what everybody else was doing and feel normal, that was the gift that that moment gave me, was what it felt like to belong to the larger scape of the world. Because we were experiencing this shared holiday of Christmas and what it meant and it was cozy and it was beautiful and people were coming together and there was gift giving and it was this experience that I hadn't had in my childhood for a very long, long time.

Elissa Wall [03:05:44] And I will always remember that first Christmas because it was the first time that I realized I had done the right thing for myself. Even though at this point I'm expecting my, my son and I'm getting further along in my pregnancy and I'm realizing that I'm going to probably keep this, this child.

Elissa Wall [03:06:08] And now I had the purpose of him. I didn't know it was a him yet, but I knew that whatever this, this child that I was had in my womb at this moment, that they deserved more and that I had to keep, I had to stay alive and I had to keep going because I had a purpose, you know, inside of the flds, I had a purpose and it was my younger sisters and my mother. And after leaving the flds, my purpose then was my child.

Elissa Wall [03:06:41] And also I really was concerned for my mother and my sisters. And right around the same time that I was in Coos Bay, with my sister. Then my mother and younger sisters disappeared. And we had had some quiet, secret communications with my mother. And I still had been able to call her from time to time and just check on her and let her know that I was safe. And we all knew that her keeping tabs on us and us being able to keep tabs on her was definitely a no no. And there was concern whether they were. The home that she was living in was tapping the phone lines.

Elissa Wall [03:07:25] And this was all pre cell phones, like from. For most people, this was pre cell phones. And so there wasn't just a way to like get her a burner phone or talk about it like that. It was still very much. She had a landline. And whether it was being tapped or not, we. We don't really know exactly what had created it. But overnight she was gone.

Elissa Wall [03:07:46] And with my sister and I, we started to talk about it. You know, there was a lot of concern and my, My brothers were involved in these discussions of what are we going to do? Because this. We can't just do nothing. You know, there was a lot of concern around it. And I went and talked to the people that I could, all the way even to the bishop, calling the bishop and asking about him and getting told they are on the Lord's. They're doing the Lord's work, they're on a mission.

Elissa Wall [03:08:16] And I, I couldn't sit with that and neither could my sister. We couldn't just sit and do nothing about it. So around the, the next, the next year, I had my son in February. And it was such a.

John Dehlin [03:08:34] And just to be clear, this is a son with. With your second husband?

Elissa Wall [03:08:39] Yes.

John Dehlin [03:08:39] Not with your first?

Elissa Wall [03:08:40] Not with my first.

John Dehlin [03:08:41] So blood wise, you were able to have a. Because his blood type is different than.

Elissa Wall [03:08:46] Yes. But also I had sought medical care throughout this particular pregnancy, and they had immediately taken measurements to medically treat the problem that comes up for women that end up having negative blood. I'd gotten multiple infusions and shots to counterbalance. It's like an RH factor that happens in pregnancy. And it was also an important thing for me because I get emotional talking about it. But I'll always remember the beautiful doctor who had helped me when I was pregnant with my son, because she was the first person that helped me to realize that what had happened with all of those past miscarriages could possibly have been other than me being an evil, horrible individual.

Elissa Wall [03:09:34] And it opened up a whole different part of it because it was like, actually there's something about your body that was Making this happen. And that's where we took extra precautions and extra measures to make sure that my body didn't spontaneously abort this pregnancy because we were able to. I was able to get the help that I needed and I probably should have had in all of the other. All the other pregnancies that I had had to that point.

John Dehlin [03:10:02] How did you unlearn that you were wicked and that was the reason why all the babies had passed away.

Elissa Wall [03:10:07] Yeah, it was the first chink in the same thing. This illusion that had been. Had been pushed on me about it being I'm the problem. Two, there was more to the story than that. That's where more information can really bring a lot more compassion because it started to help me get a little bit more compassionate with myself and that unlearning that I had to do around the things that I had been taught and forced to believe for so long about myself and about my journey.

John Dehlin [03:10:40] Do you have an idea how many total pregnancies you lost?

Elissa Wall [03:10:44] About five. And it's. It's a. But I had four miscarriages and a stillbirth. And I know that there's later on with it that became a point of like huge, like, oh, she's lying. Because in the process of trial when all of those details and those nuances are being used as, as ways, you know, there was so much during that time that I was trying to figure out. And even the of going into the doctor was a huge learning experience for me. The act of filling out medical records and trying to go back and remember what was going on during different times.

Elissa Wall [03:11:22] I was just trying to give them enough medical history to help me. I wasn't trying to put into evidence something. But those were kind of the things that I would later learn were a huge issue because they weren't always factual. And as anyone who goes into any medical records, they just have you fill out some information and then it goes into your records. And it's not like you're constantly keeping track of exactly what you say. It's just trying to give them the best amount of information to help you.

Elissa Wall [03:11:52] But when you really put that in context, I was 18 years old. I had just given birth to my son, which was my sixth pregnancy. And I was a new mom in a brand new world. That was really scary.

Elissa Wall [03:12:10] And I had none of the network or family structure that we were accustomed to. I had my. My siblings that had. They had left. And we bonded together in this effort to try and help each other out. You know, my sister had come down when I had gone into labor with my son, and she had been the one, in fact, the only family member that had. Had been there for me through that process. And I will forever be so grateful to her for that. Because it was a very hard time of my life because I was completely shutting off the realities of everything that had happened to me.

Elissa Wall [03:12:54] And I still hadn't told people the levels of things that had happened and how severe it really had gone. Even though my sister knew some of the stuff that had happened, she didn't know in detail everything that happened. And the man that I was now with, it was really. How do you articulate layers and layers of abuse that you had experienced without it complicating your relationship?

Elissa Wall [03:13:18] And I'm a new mother, and I start in this process of severe postpartum depression because I didn't have my own mother, and we didn't know where they were because they were gone. And I felt all the layers of shame and guilt and everything starting to come up. And it got harder and harder and harder to ignore and to shut out what was. What was going on. And I started to recluse further and further, further into my shell because I didn't have the tools to help myself. And the depression and anxiety was getting so incredibly severe. And. And here I was. I was. I was trying to.

Elissa Wall [03:13:57] To raise my son. I was. I was trying to. To adapt into this world and figure out who I was and what I was and how we were going to survive and where we were going to live. And we were bouncing around as we were trying to navigate this new world. I'm trying to learn how to dress and learn how to. To be normal and not feel like a freak because you don't know anything. And, you know, you go into social settings and people reference movies and you have no idea what they're talking about or all of the social that people grow up with and the cultural references and the culture of American society, that was lost on me.

Elissa Wall [03:14:33] And we had to learn all of these things, sometimes in mass feeding and sometimes it was ever so slow of this, of this process. But. But for. For people that are assimilating that come from these kind of secular, very secluded religious sects, it's a process, and everybody's experience is vastly different, but there's some common threads, and that is, everyone needs to learn how to survive, and most of us are uneducated, and we don't have a lot of tools on how to survive, have very little concept of money and. And how to manage it, how to work for it and be paid for it, because a lot of people, they have incredible work ethic, but the skill sets were all in construction for the men.

Elissa Wall [03:15:24] And then how do you correlate that into making a living? And so for. For me, I was just trying to adapt as quickly as I could, but also to do everything I could to not feel like I was broken, but on the inside, I was absolutely broken.

Elissa Wall [03:15:47] For the people of the flds, the little that we did hear of what was going on, we realized it was getting crazier and crazier. We would hear stories of some of the things that Warren was asking the people to do.

Elissa Wall [03:16:02] We started to learn more and more of what was happening in El Dorado, in the compound in Texas. And there was a lot of concern of what was happening and how far and crazy it was getting. We knew that there was a lot of people that were being moved down there. We knew that so many resources and so much money was being funneled out of the Short Creek area and just poured into all of these other spaces. But as time went on with my mother and my sisters, it became very apparent that something had to be done. And my sister and brother, they filed a missing persons report on my mother and sisters.

Elissa Wall [03:16:44] Shortly after my son was born. Then Fred Jessup passed away. And my sister had filed this. This missing persons report and had started to try to see what we could do to get other people involved, potentially authorities involved, to just find them and to do it well, well check up on them and make sure they were well.

Elissa Wall [03:17:04] And my mother reached out one day and let us know, just out of the blue, that she was going to be in town for Fred's funeral and that we were invited to come to Fred's funeral and see her. But it was also her way of trying to get us to clean up the missing persons report that was there.

Elissa Wall [03:17:27] I remember driving back into Short Creek and this was the first time I had been back since I had left. And the feeling of it was it took everything I had to stay calm because this. The PTSD that was coming up, driving back into Short Creek was so massive, and I. I can't. It's so many times I would. It took everything I had to stave off a panic attack and even having more than one, because I only wanted to go in there, and I wanted the opportunity to just see my mom. I wanted her to meet my son, and I wanted her to know that I was okay, and I wanted to know she was okay.

Elissa Wall [03:18:06] And I was very hopeful that we were going to get to see my young sisters from this and from that. I wanted them to know that I was okay. And. My mom had. We, we did get a chance to see her. And even at the park, it was so fascinating because at the time there was this park in the middle of Short Creek called Cottonwood Park. And it's very iconic because there is these giant, beautiful old growth cottonwoods that are huge, some of the biggest cottonwood trees you'll ever encounter. And for so much of the history of the Short Creek Creek area, it's a really important area because that's where people would gather for all kinds of community events.

Elissa Wall [03:18:55] And that's where she had invited us to come and see her. And so I did. I got the chance to go to this, this place of my childhood and see my mom and, and hug her and just, just hold on to her and introduce my son to her. And I remember she was so much. My loving, kind mother, but she was very adamant with her message, and that is, if you love me, you will not fight the priesthood.

Elissa Wall [03:19:29] And just expanding on this rhetoric of what it means for a mother's children to apostatize, but then also to try and do anything to stop the priesthood, the work of the Lord. And just making it very clear to me that if I was going to continue, she was, she was happy that I was okay, and she was very happy that I was out of my. The. I was out of the relationship with Alan and I was no longer going through what I was going through with that.

Elissa Wall [03:19:57] And she was really happy for me that I was a mother now. And she invited me and encouraged me to just focus on my new life and forget about everything that had happened and just go be well. And there was a part of me that, that just wanted to do just that, to just go be well. And I wanted still to just be a good child. And I remember even just saying at the time, you know, mom, I'm not, I'm not gonna fight the priesthood. I love you. I want, I want you to be. I want you to go to heaven. I want you to have a salvation. And I want the girls to be okay. Just, just don't let them get married. Don't, don't let this happen to them.

John Dehlin [03:20:36] And

Elissa Wall [03:20:39] she invited us to come to Fred's funeral because my sister was very adamant that, mom, how are you going to stop this from happening to the girls? Because that was the whole point. She wanted, she wanted Rebecca to close out the missing persons report that had been filed, and she wanted them to just, just Let us. Let. Let that die so that they. We just knew that they were okay. But we needed proof.

Elissa Wall [03:21:07] And so mom invited us to Fred's funeral to. To show proof that things had changed. When my sister and I go to go into Fred's funeral, the man at the door, and his name was Willie Jessup, of all people, who he was, he was known as kind of the henchman of the flds. He did all the dirty work for Warren. And we saw that a lot later on, as time went on, but he just completely stopped us from going in. And we explained to that, to them that the. The bishop had told us that we could come into this funeral. But see, that is a practice of more of the abuse that happens with the fldss.

Elissa Wall [03:21:53] When someone leaves, they don't even get to go and attend the funerals of their loved ones that are still in the flds. And it's this immediate separation that happens, and there's nothing you can do to. To change that.

Elissa Wall [03:22:10] But it was the proof that my sister was pointing out that nothing had changed. And when we later talked to my mom then she's like, you know, there must have been a mistake. And I remember we waited outside the church house the entire funeral and a couple of hours long.

Elissa Wall [03:22:28] And then there's a point where the church house in Short Creek is within walking distance of the graveyard. And usually what was traditional was people would leave the church house after the funeral and everyone would walk to the graveside where they would do the burial. And that was just kind of part of the tradition of funerals and burying our loved ones. So we waited until they were walking up to the graveyard. And the experience of walking alongside all of these people, all these women in dresses, and knowing so viscerally that we were.

Elissa Wall [03:23:10] We were so treated as apostates. No one would look us in the eye, no one would say hello. And we were. There was this great bubble around my sister and I because we were walking with everyone to the graveside, but no one was engaging with us whatsoever. And it was very bizarre to be in our community, with our people, but be so not in it, not even be acknowledged as there that experience. Go ahead.

John Dehlin [03:23:37] And just to be clear, this is from their perspective, this is your own dad.

Guest 2 [03:23:41] Yes.

Elissa Wall [03:23:42] Yes.

John Dehlin [03:23:42] You're being kept from the funeral of. From their perspective, your own dad.

Elissa Wall [03:23:46] Yes. That had been assigned.

John Dehlin [03:23:48] Being shunned so severely. Dad's funeral. So you're. But from their perspective, your dad died because he was reassigned as your dad, and then they're shunning you at your

Elissa Wall [03:24:00] own dad's funeral and severely shunning us. But I remember just thinking, hold your head high, hold your shoulders high, and just keep on walking, keep on being, because you're here to be an example. And, you know, looking at people that I had known my whole entire life through there and through the. The flds and not even being acknowledged was very disconcerting, and in its own way, its own kind of trauma. But from that event, really, it was the final piece that was needed to.

Elissa Wall [03:24:35] To help me realize that something had to be done. And even though my mother had begged me and made me promise that I would never stand up against the priesthood, I started to really question what we were going to do, and finally came to a place where I realized that I had to do something.

Elissa Wall [03:24:58] I didn't know what that meant, and I had no idea what would happen from that day forward. But I'll never forget the day that I finally made the phone call to an individual who had been trying to reach out to me. His name was Roger Houle, and he was an attorney in the Salt Lake area that had been privately hired by an ex FLDS member by the name of Dan Fisher. And Dan Fisher had left the church many years before, and he had been a huge tool of trying to support and help people that were leaving, particularly during the season of what was called the Lost Boys.

Elissa Wall [03:25:34] And it was a time where a lot of young boys were being kicked out of the FLDS and sent, you know, to just fend for themselves. And Dan Fisher was collecting these boys, putting them through school, trying to help them find jobs, and was a huge benefactor in helping so many people be able to come out of the FLDS and adapt into the outside world.

Elissa Wall [03:25:56] But one of the things that had become kind of a focus for not just Dan Fisher and Roger Hull, but also the investigators in the state of Utah. You know, the. The name just escaped me.

John Dehlin [03:26:15] The.

Elissa Wall [03:26:16] The head prosecuting attorney.

John Dehlin [03:26:18] Attorney general.

Elissa Wall [03:26:19] Thank you. The attorney general of Utah at the time was starting to talk about, you know, there was some things that needed to be. Be investigated. They were concerned about what they were hearing was happening in the flds.

Elissa Wall [03:26:29] And I realized that I had this concern that if I didn't tell my story, that I would be subpoenaed to tell my story. And so my act of calling this attorney, because he had been reaching out. He had been reaching out to the man that I was with and just asking if they could talk to me. They had heard some things, and they wanted to know, but they wanted to know My story. And I remember finally just being brave and just calling him up and saying, you know, I remember hearing this man answer and asking, you know, is this Roger Houle? And I was like, yes, this is Elissa Wall.

Elissa Wall [03:27:12] And if you want to talk to me, if you want to hear my story, then talk to me. I. I hear from his side of it now. But that, that, that meeting, even though it was over the phone, would change everything for me because Roger Hull became my personal attorney, and he was such an important person in the events that would unfold in me being able to come forward and tell my story.

John Dehlin [03:27:38] And I'm, like, on the edge of my seat, excited to hear what goes next. But we're probably at a point where we should. Where we should wrap this segment down so that we can start the next one. So it's going to be a bit of a cliffhanger because while this episode's ending, we're going to start right back up soon and tell the next part of the story. So we've made it through to your escaping and having the resolution to. To do something about it. And so that concludes this part of these two parts. And.

John Dehlin [03:28:16] And we're just all so excited to hear what comes next, which is. I mean, there's two major parts. It's how you. How you engaged in the fight to bring Warren Jeffs to justice and to transform the FLDS community.

John Dehlin [03:28:31] And that's going to be its own journey. Who knows how. How many hours that's going to be? And then there's still, like, life after being the hero, which has its own.

Elissa Wall [03:28:42] Yes, it does.

John Dehlin [03:28:43] Has its own set of stories. And what you're doing now. So, like, what, we're six, six, seven hours in, and we've only just begun. How weird is that, Jen? Or how normal is that?

Guest 2 [03:28:55] I know. And normal. I was gonna say normal, but not. But not. We still have a lot to come.

John Dehlin [03:29:01] Yeah. Like, Elissa, what an amazing story so far. Like, you've shared so much. Not only so raw and vulnerable, but just so incredibly thoughtful and wise. Like, I liked what you were saying. I think it was at a break, but, like, distance from the story allows you to tell it in ways you maybe couldn't have told it five or 10 or 15 years ago. So this is so moving. And I'm seeing so many connections with Mormonism.

Elissa Wall [03:29:32] Yeah, me too.

John Dehlin [03:29:33] Just a million connections with orthodox, more, you know, normal, traditional lds, Mormonism. So I know my. Our viewers and listeners are feeling the same way.

Elissa Wall [03:29:45] Well, thank you. I'm. I look forward to getting to share the next chapter of the story and and invite all of the listeners to come back because you know that that's one thing chapter of it and it has all of its own. It has its depth and its richness and it's and its tragedy with it. But what we can talk about as in our in our next episode, that's where the real human journey began. And I'm excited to get to share that.

John Dehlin [03:30:15] Yeah. So come right back for part depending on how we chop this up, part two or part three of our amazing epic interview with Elissa Wall and her amazing book show that book, Stolen Innocence.

Elissa Wall [03:30:29] Yes, Stolen Innocence. This this is the kind of details some of what we've covered over these, these episodes this episode or episodes. And we've kind of come to a point in it where now we'll, we'll go into detail with with more of it and then hopefully talk about what happened after the book was published.

John Dehlin [03:30:53] So thanks everyone for tuning in to Mormon Stories and stay tuned for the next part of this interview. Thanks, everybody. Thanks, Jen.

Guest 2 [03:31:01] Thank you. Thanks, everybody.

Coming Forward and Working With Investigators

Part 3 of 3 · Ep. 1654

John Dehlin [00:00:00] Hello, everyone, and welcome back to this epic episode or series on Mormon Stories podcast. We are interviewing Elissa Wall, the woman who is sort of attributed as being one the main person that helped bring Warren Jeffs to prison. And she has written an amazing New York Times bestselling book. And the book is called Stolen Innocence. And we are now like seven hours into an epic interview. It's like 8 o', clock, 9 o' clock at night here. This is going to be the longest single interview I've ever done in a single day because I think my record's like seven or eight hours. And we're going to break that tonight. So we're pushing through.

Elissa Wall [00:00:47] Well, that's good.

John Dehlin [00:00:48] It doesn't mess around.

Elissa Wall [00:00:49] No, I have a long history of breaking norms.

John Dehlin [00:00:54] And we're here with Jen, of course. Hey, Jen.

Elissa Wall [00:00:56] Hey.

Guest 3 [00:00:56] Hi, everybody.

John Dehlin [00:00:57] Thanks for joining us.

Guest 3 [00:00:58] Yep.

John Dehlin [00:00:59] So if you haven't already listened to Elissa's first six or seven hours, we covered a brief history of the FLDS Church, talked about Joseph Smith and his polygamy and when the FLDS Church or the work broke off from the mainstream Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. We talked about its history in Short Creek, including the 1952 Short Creek raids and the aftermath and what that did. And then we talked about all the way, you know, the evolution of the FLDS church into the ruling Jeffs and then Warren Jeffs eras. And then, of course, we went into depth on Elissa's upbringing in the FLDS church with three moms and 20, whatever, 24.

John Dehlin [00:01:43] 24 siblings. And how her dad was on the receiving end of having all his wives reassigned by Warren Jeffs to other men, even though the first wife stayed with your dad. And how you were eventually relocated from Salt Lake City back down to Hilldale, and then your experiences there, being told at age 14, you're going to marry your first cousin.

John Dehlin [00:02:08] And I, I was writing in the notes, by the time you were 18, you had six pregnancies. Five or six pregnancies, including one stillbirth and several miscarriages. You had been basically married twice, sexually assaulted countless times, and somehow you were able to break free to leave the FLDS church. But then you dealt with incredible depression and anxiety, but you had your first actual birth of your first son or first child with the man who you escaped the FLDS church with.

John Dehlin [00:02:47] And last time we left, you had decided that you needed to do something because your mom and sisters had disappeared, gone into hiding. You had filed a missing persons report. And you are, are saying it's time for you to speak up, because this madness, this Warren Jeff's FLDS madness has to end. And by this point, Warren Jeffs had built a whole new burgeoning city in El Dorado, as they pronounce it, Texas. He's building a temple there, but he's got properties all over the country, and he's generating sometimes hundreds of thousands, if not millions of dollars a week from his followers and just spending it. Who knows how.

John Dehlin [00:03:34] He's on the run. And this is when you reach out. Remind us who it was that you reached out to as your first effort to try and speak up, because this next segment of the interview is going to be how Elissa helps bring down Warren Jeffs, right?

Elissa Wall [00:03:52] Yes, it is. I'm really excited to be here, continuing to tell my story and telling it in such detail and depth, because I'm. I've not had that opportunity, and most of the world has never heard it from my.

Elissa Wall [00:04:08] My voice and myself. You know, I did write a book about it, and it details some of it, but the ability to just talk about it and the emotions that come up through the process of it is really incredible. So I thank all of the listeners for continuing to ride this out with us. And hopefully, as we continue this next segment of the story and the journey that I invite all of the listeners to, to once again find the common threads in our own life. Because this is where we get to really talk about what resilience looks like and how to stand up for what we believe is right, even when it doesn't feel like that.

Elissa Wall [00:04:48] It's what we should be doing. And everything about our culture or the way we were brainwashed tells us not to. But I really hope that by sharing this story and continuing to talk about my life, it will remind people of our humanity and keep creating some good in the world.

John Dehlin [00:05:06] Love it. Well, let's jump in.

Elissa Wall [00:05:09] Let's jump into this ride. As we had left off in our last episode, I was describing what it was like to reach out for the first time to a man by the name of Roger Houle, who was a private attorney in the Salt Lake area. And he had become known because he was really helping a movement of boys, boys who had been kicked out of the flds who they were stepping forward and tell and sharing their own stories of what that process of being shunned by the community and what was happening with it. But then also there was this. This concern about all the ways that Warren Jeffs and the Church of the FLDS were using the people financially. They were using them Spiritually and physically.

Guest 3 [00:05:57] Physically.

Elissa Wall [00:05:58] And these boys had stories of what their labor camps had. Labor camps had felt like all the years of child labor that had been being used. And Roger Hull was working directly with an ex FLDS gentleman by the name of Dan Fisher, who is well known because he was the founder of Ultra Dent, which is a dental product company here in the Salt Lake area.

Elissa Wall [00:06:24] Dan Fisher was really important at this time in the story because there were very few people who were working hard to help people that were leaving the flds. And he was such a huge support for a lot of people who were escaping the Short Creek, but also just the religion at whole. He was helping them to get emergency services as well as really promoting education, because for most people that were leaving, they were coming out of their experience in the FLDS with very little education, traditional education. A lot of them had amazing work ethic. But learning how to apply work ethic into the outside world is a challenge.

Elissa Wall [00:07:10] My phone call to Roger Hull was really important because his approach in helping me was what allowed for me to feel comfortable enough to start to come forward. That phone call led to a meeting which led to a suggestion that maybe it's time to talk to authorities.

Elissa Wall [00:07:36] And Roger was really important in his ability to help arrange some of these meetings that would lead to me sitting and telling my story in depth in the best way that I knew how at the time to investigators.

John Dehlin [00:07:51] I imagine they were trying to get Warren Jeffs in different ways before you ever spoke out. But I guess it's probably complex because you. You have to be thoughtful and careful about nabbing him in a way to where it's gonna be successful versus he just gets off. And so I imagine they. Whoever, whoever the authorities were trying to nab Warren Jeffs, I imagine they were considering lots of different ways, and maybe they had just not found a good way yet. Do you know anything about the attempts to nab him prior to you speaking out at all?

Elissa Wall [00:08:30] Yes, I had heard. We. We had heard a lot of ways that they had tried even many years before Warren really himself had taken over. There were people and different, even women themselves that had come out to try and get authorities to do something about what was going on. And there were people that would. That had left the FLDS that were trying to stop some of the ways that the church was physically taking property from people in their profitable. Their UEP trust that they had, that owned all the property. So there was all kinds of dominoes that were already laid out for, from a lot of people along the way. For years that had been trying to stop the insanity of the flds.

John Dehlin [00:09:15] Wonder why they weren't able to ever nab him before you.

Elissa Wall [00:09:18] It's a complex thing, just as you said, because to truly be able to do that, you have to have a victim that is strong enough and capable enough to actually come forward. And even though I wouldn't say that that's what I thought I was. I had a very passionate purpose, and I had something outside of myself that was so important to me, that drove me to keep going, even through that process when it was so difficult and so hard. But for most of. For Warren, he was really good about keeping anyone that was victimized by him or that could come forward and press charges of any nature. He had a long history of sedating any efforts that were made to stop what was happening through what?

John Dehlin [00:10:01] Fear, Intimidation.

Elissa Wall [00:10:02] Fear, intimidation. There was a story of a woman who, before my. Before I testified, she had come out. She had been in an arranged marriage as well. And she had come and she'd spoken to Arizona authorities, and that was an example of what not to do, because somehow her story was leaked to the press. And the attorney's office, the attorney General's office that was handling her case, they learned a lot that how the intimidation works, because ultimately, this woman, she had her kids kidnapped, and she had so much family pressure that ultimately she stepped away from.

Elissa Wall [00:10:44] From testifying and pursuing these charges because it completely tore her life apart. And that was a kind of an example of what would happen when authorities did not handle it very, very carefully. And even for myself, when I heard of her story and what had happened, I became quite fearful because I knew that people knew about my story, and I knew that there were people talking about it, even in. Within the ex FLDS community of a few people. And I was really concerned that ultimately I was going to be forced to tell my story. And I didn't want to end up in that situation, especially because I had a young son at this point.

Elissa Wall [00:11:25] So there was a lot of things that motivated the perfect series of events that allowed for it to get to where it was, and it did. It started with communicating with Roger Hull and bringing him on as my attorney, because one of the things that we realized is that for someone to successfully be able to testify, they needed to have personal representation.

Elissa Wall [00:11:48] And usually for victims that are testifying in court, they don't have that person that's protecting them. And that is why Roger Hull was such an important individual in my journey. He was there to protect me. He also had a Lot of ambitions to change and to help in bringing down Warren Jeffs, but also change what was going on. And in the time that I've known Roger, he's one of those unsung heroes for the story of the FLDS and Short Creek because he has helped countless mothers and fathers be able to get their children back. He has helped people in big ways and small ways, but he has been one of those individuals that is not affiliated with the flds but has been absolutely essential to so many people's lives s that have left the FLDS as they've started to kind of pull their life back together, bring their families back together. And not only did he do that for me, but he's done that for countless amount of other people.

John Dehlin [00:12:51] I can't imagine he's made a lot of money doing this.

Elissa Wall [00:12:54] No, he hasn't. And we. We.

John Dehlin [00:12:56] Your clients don't have a ton of money.

Elissa Wall [00:12:58] No, they don't. And he's done so much incredible pro bono work with it because he had a heart for it. And I think that. I think that was something that was so unique about even meeting Roger is I had an idea of law enforcement and attorneys, the justice system. And I didn't realize how even in that time, in beginning to talk with Roger, that it was still so heavily influenced by the dogma of my culture of where I'd come from. And my skepticism towards police and law enforcement was very much influenced by the crap that was told to us about it while in the flds and how having him by my side to navigate that process was absolutely essential to the outcome that we have arrived at.

Elissa Wall [00:13:48] So it's. You know, we talk about influential people, and Roger was one of the most influential people in my journey and my story with it. And to now be in a place where he's still my attorney and we're still really good friends. And to just look at what it means when good humans do things for the right reasons and the amount of change and lives that they can touch in those acts of service.

John Dehlin [00:14:15] Beautiful. Shout out to you, Roger.

Elissa Wall [00:14:17] Yes. Shout out to you, Roger. Thank you for everything that you've done in my life and a lot of other people's lives. But it was really important because Roger was started to help me formulate how we could actually be successful in this. Because even before I spoke with authorities about what happened, my question was, is how does it even work? And what do we do about this? Like, we. How do we stop Warren? How do I save my sisters? What do I need to do? And helping Educate me on the process of the difference even between a criminal court and a civil court, because he's a civil attorney, and we had to reach out to criminal attorneys that could help with that.

Elissa Wall [00:14:59] And that's where he arranged my first meeting with Washington county prosecutors. And Brock Belknap. And Brock Belknap would be another one of those absolutely incredible humans who walked alongside me but did things for the right reasons. And each one of these people along the way for me, showed me that all the things that I was told about what people on the outside of the world were like was false. Because I had more examples of what good humans looked like in people outside of the FLDS than I did of people inside of the flds. And it was that black and white moment for me where I realized I had to determine for myself what it meant to be a good human.

John Dehlin [00:15:49] That's the theme I relate to, is people on the inside who actually are monsters. Telling you that the people on the outside are monsters when they can actually be amazing people. Yes, I relate to that.

Guest 3 [00:16:01] Mm.

Elissa Wall [00:16:01] I think a lot of people relate to that. Even in. Not even in extreme religions, in just day to day life, or even in mainstream Mormonism.

John Dehlin [00:16:09] Just abusive relationships.

Elissa Wall [00:16:10] Just abusive relationships.

John Dehlin [00:16:11] Narcissistic relationships, definitely.

Elissa Wall [00:16:15] When I very first sat down with Washington county and the team there, I remember sitting outside, we were invited to come to this restaurant, and we were just going to meet for the first time. And I sat outside this restaurant for a long while and really considered what I was doing, which restaurant it was. It was an Italian restaurant in St. George.

John Dehlin [00:16:38] Okay.

Elissa Wall [00:16:39] And I don't believe it's still there. I could be wrong, but sitting there and I could see them through the window. And, you know, I had my. My partner at the time, the father of my child, and he was there supporting and kind of pushing me to follow through.

Elissa Wall [00:16:58] But what was happening on the inside was I was having to face so many things. I hadn't owned my story yet. And that was the true essence of what I was afraid of, is I didn't know what I would find when I faced and told my own story. I didn't know what I would find in myself. I didn't know what I would find in the truth. And quite honestly, I still hadn't detangled it enough to realize the depth of what had happened.

Elissa Wall [00:17:30] And I look back now on those moments and I see how I was still operating from so much of the shame and the shadow of my past, because I didn't have another way. I hadn't figured out how to even address it, let alone get healthy tools. I had never seen a therapist yet. And there was all these things that I hadn't done to start to help myself through that healing journey.

Elissa Wall [00:17:56] But for me, the most challenging thing about that moment was to close my eyes and remember the last time I had seen my mother and the commitment that I had made to her in that moment that I would not fight the priesthood.

Elissa Wall [00:18:13] And I had to wrestle with myself in this internal fight and dialogue that was going on of, you know, I'm not fighting the priesthood. I'm stopping something terrible from happening to my sisters. Because that was always my ambition is like we have. I have to do something to protect my sisters.

Elissa Wall [00:18:31] And knowing that Warren had so much control over my. What had happened to me. And I realized that. And even innately at that time, I knew Warren was not a good person, Even though everything about my. My lifestyle up to that point had told me otherwise. You know, he was the connection to God. I really firmly believed at that point in time there was something wrong with that narrative. Although I didn't have the language and the ability to narrate for myself what was wrong. It was that internal, instinctual feeling that we all have. And finally, in that act of courage, because I look at my life and I see these very poignant moments where the sheer act of just bravery and courage is a little different because as courage is described, you know, Brene Brown talks about it, as courage is speaking our truth.

Elissa Wall [00:19:23] My act of courage would come later on. And in that moment, it was sheer, absolute bravery to step out of that vehicle, walk into that restaurant and introduce myself and begin the process of what it would mean not knowing anything about what the future would hold.

Elissa Wall [00:19:40] That meeting led to me later going to the Child justice center in the St. George area and sitting down with some specialized investigators and just sharing my story. And at the time when I'm sharing my story for the first time, I didn't know really what abuse or some of these things or how to even articulate it. But also for myself, I hadn't really addressed it in me. And there was still so much of that gaslighting that was happening. So I'm telling a glazed over version of everything that had happened. And I'm trying to just give just enough details that they'll help me do something about it.

Elissa Wall [00:20:28] But this was the first time that someone had ever heard my story. And I remember the woman who was conducting the initial interview, she just had tears coming down her eyes, her face, and she looked at me and said, do you realize what happened to you was wrong?

Elissa Wall [00:20:52] It was the first time someone believed me, believed that internal voice inside of me that said, this is wrong. And that was such an important moment in my journey to feel validated in that process of telling my story. And of course, it sent me on this, this storm of collapse because it, it was, it opened the door for the flashbacks and the ptsd. And this team of investigators that Washington county had pulled together were so careful and compassionate in the months that would follow, as they did their job so incredibly well in being able to sort out the facts and the details and ultimately pull enough of it together along with my story to press charges.

Elissa Wall [00:21:50] And this was a really important time in history, specifically Utah history, because Utah had a long, dirty history of not prosecuting crimes that had any kind of religious entanglement. And this was every level of religious entanglement because you had a religious leader who was acting in the context of religion but had done some serious crimes.

Elissa Wall [00:22:21] So for Washington county to be as brave as they were, to put even their own careers on the line, to follow through and bring this forward, was very landmark in this history of Utah and the justice system.

John Dehlin [00:22:39] And the way I understand it is that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints just wants to pretend that polygamy doesn't exist and the fundamentalists don't exist. They certainly want to distance themselves from the FLDS people because they're embarrassing, but they prefer just them to be invisible because then you're not getting statewide or national news that people have a hard time differentiating from, from the traditional DS Church. But that's problematic because you share the same founder and Warren did very little that Joseph Smith didn't do. So for the, for the LDS Church to claim such detachment from, from the FLDS is. It's kind of disingenuous, honestly. But. But that's the way they've dealt with it forever, is just to pretend like they don't exist, which means to turn their face away from crimes and from harm that's being caused to so many people because they don't want to bring up the negative news.

Elissa Wall [00:23:48] I would agree with you on that. And I'm not sure that I. I don't want to be as ambitious and claim that the Mormon Church had control over the justice system, but I think that anywhere, especially at that point in, In America, to successfully prosecute people that were in any kind of a religious context was really sticky and really difficult because in America, we have this, you know, freedom of Religion. And we're getting better about being able to articulate in our society what what freedom of religion means and what constitutes as removing the freedom of someone else. And really that's what it was is Warren practicing his religion doesn't give him the rights to remove the freedom and the safety of other people.

Elissa Wall [00:24:36] And that was very much what. What had happened. So for the time frame of how things were happening in Utah, what was happening more on a national level, but then realizing that for a long time there was this history of law enforcement coming to try and stop what was happening in the flds, whether it was for polygamy or not, but not being successful in it. So there was. All the cards were kind of stacked against us. The one difference was I was not a polygamous wife.

Elissa Wall [00:25:10] I was an underage. I was a child that had been forced to marry a, an ancestral. Forced into an ancestral marriage. And it didn't have the polygamy veil over it. And so it had nothing to do with polygamy, which was hopefully the focus was we would just focus on the crime, the child abuse that was happening and not try and pull in all of the same things, religious freedom and polygamy and, and persecution and layers and layers and layers that had been successful tools in the past.

John Dehlin [00:25:45] You know, I, I've had some viewers and listeners write to me about this and I've had to work on changing my mindset. There's no such thing as a 14 year old bride. Right. A 14 year old wife. They're not wives when they're underage. They're victims of rape and abuse. And we forget that. We, we. The term 14 year old wife, that doesn't. There's no such thing. Am I right?

Elissa Wall [00:26:13] Absolutely. It should not exist.

John Dehlin [00:26:14] Yeah.

Elissa Wall [00:26:15] And it took me a long time to get to that same place because as being it and being told, you know, the having that, that label put on me over and over, I'm the wife and the wife. And even what it meant to be a wife, it meant that you were a chattel of someone else, not anything of your own person at that point.

Filing Charges Under Witness Protection

Elissa Wall [00:26:34] So as the. As Washington county pressed charges, it was a really big deal because they decided to press the charges in a pseudonym and it came as Jane Doe. And that was really important because one of the things that was always a concern was learning from history of what had happened to other victims who had tried to come forward and tell their story and how it had painfully affected their lives. But then also it was a real concern of our physical safety because One of the things that Warren really was adamant about is asking the people, would you put yourself in line to protect the prophet?

Elissa Wall [00:27:17] Meaning, would you sacrifice yourself for the safety of the prophet and then take it to the next level, and would you sacrifice another life to protect the prophet? And there was serious concern of what could physically happen to me and my family if people. When people found out who I was, which led to the decision to. To truly go into a form of witness protection and to take measures to protect ourselves through that investigation process, knowing that hopefully, ultimately, Warren would be.

Elissa Wall [00:27:51] The charges would be pressed and he would be caught, and there would be a process where he would be put on trial for the claims that I was speaking to.

John Dehlin [00:28:03] Yeah. And this is whether it's the, you know, someone, if not Joseph Smith, you know, directing the assassination attempt on Governor Lilburn Boggs of Missouri, whether it's the Day Nights group that formed as sort of a vigilante justice group, whether it's Porter Rockwell, who is kind of Joseph Smith's assassin, which. Whether it's, you know, the Mountain Meadows Massacre, his teachings of blood atonement with Brigham Young, all the way to the kind of. The stories we learned from the recent under the Banner of Heaven series where. Where faithful, devout, fundamentalist offshoots read first Nephi and the story about Laban and. And how Nephi cut off Laban's head, and they interpret that as feeling like violence is justifiable.

John Dehlin [00:28:57] There's this idea that it's better that one man or woman perish than the nation dwindle in unbelief. And so there's this whole shadow history within both regular Mormonism and fundamentalist Mormonism of violence. So those weren't unreasonable fears. And that's a dark side of Mormonism that a lot of people don't know about when they just look at the smiley missionaries that are knocking on their door.

Elissa Wall [00:29:22] Oh, definitely. I would agree with you completely. I didn't realize the depth of the concern that we should have. The people around me were far more concerned about it than I was, because I think they saw all those shadows and the concerns that would come from it. And even the process for me, of that moment that I realized, okay, this is happening.

Elissa Wall [00:29:48] We have to consider going into hiding during this process. That was really hard for me. It was very difficult for me to consider leaving again, the small group of family that I had pulled together in my social circle and not being able to tell any of them what I was doing, because we couldn't. We couldn't talk about what was happening, because we didn't really know if. Even though our best friends were still from the FLDS and they had left before this around the same time we had. We didn't know their. Where their loyalty lied. We. We didn't know what they would do if they found out that I was trying to do this. And so the process of. Of driving out of Southern Utah knowing that I didn't know if I would ever return.

John Dehlin [00:30:34] I didn't know Federal witness protection, there was.

Elissa Wall [00:30:37] There was support on all levels of government in this process. And it's. I. You have to be careful in talking about it, but what it meant is it was completely starting over. It was changing names, it was completely starting a new, fresh identity, but also being in a form of hiding. You know, moving from hotel rooms to apartments to moving around to try and keep our location very quiet and not known to anyone.

Elissa Wall [00:31:11] That also gave me a unique paradigm where on one level, I was given the ability to be someone completely new with this new identity that was given to me. And it started to create this really interesting dynamic inside of my psyche that whenever PTSD or something would come up, I would be like, okay, that's Elise's problem.

Elissa Wall [00:31:36] And this new person that I was being while in witness protection, she was who I was now. And it kind of created this sense of disassociation. And I realized that that was a coping mechanism. That was a. That was a way of numbing in my journey of being able to create these two separate people.

John Dehlin [00:31:58] And you're able to physically disassociate.

Elissa Wall [00:32:01] Absolutely. And it just.

John Dehlin [00:32:03] Psychologically, but almost physically.

Elissa Wall [00:32:05] Almost physically disassociate. And there was an essence of freedom, of realizing, wow, I could really walk away from my past completely. Like, once this is all over and said and done, I could walk away and. And become someone totally new. And I remember fantasizing about it, of what it would look like to move away from Utah altogether and start over completely with my family and myself and. And never have to look back. Would, you know, could I do it? Would it be better to do it that way? And this process of disassociating psychologically and physically, it also started to create some unhealthy aspects, because instead of dealing with some of the stuff as they would come up, it was just shoving it off, too. That's Elise's problem. That's. That's her problem.

John Dehlin [00:32:55] Avoidance.

Elissa Wall [00:32:56] Avoidance, definitely. And when I talk about resilience now, I often am seen as, wow, you've been so resilient to your experience. And one of the things that I want listeners to be able to take from this is resilience is a journey, and sometimes it's dirty and it's messy, and it doesn't feel like resilience at all. It actually shows up as numbing and disassociation. It shows up as panic attacks and all the layers that come with it in that process. And I was an. That was an experience of it for me.

Elissa Wall [00:33:32] But through this process, we had a lot of support. You know, even though I got married in witness protection, I'm. I started out with my second child through this investigation process and the witness protection that would. Would happen from it. And my life was very closed. I. I had people that knew where we were and a few people that communicated with us and worked really hard to. To help us through that process.

Elissa Wall [00:34:00] But I didn't have contact with a lot of other people, and that was really hard because I also started to feel very much alone because it was difficult to be working with a group of people that they were compassionate and they were trying to help the process, but they still had no reference to. To be able to say, okay, we get you. And the empathy was there. I just didn't know how to assimilate the empathy that was being shown to me.

John Dehlin [00:34:35] And you were super lonely, cut off from whatever remaining family you had.

Elissa Wall [00:34:40] Definitely. And this compounded with all of the struggles that I was already having with mental health. I was still really struggling with how to address my past, and I did not have healthy tools yet at this point, even though I did start to go into therapy and begin to kind of unwind and untangle some of that. That's a long, difficult process, but more so to constantly be in a position to where I'm talking about my past and I'm talking about it in a context where people have my magnifying glass and they're trying to pull out every tiny little detail and, you know, back it up.

Elissa Wall [00:35:19] And it started this dynamic where I started to get kind of afraid to talk about it because I didn't know what can of worms that was going to open up. And I knew what I had already said, and I knew what they were focusing on in their investigation and what they were using to back up their. Their charges that they had pressed.

Elissa Wall [00:35:40] But also after it was publicly announced that Warren was being charged and there was an active warrant out for his arrest, it took a couple of months, but ultimately he was put on America's Most Wanted list. And that was really important because I believe that's what led to his ultimate arrest was that he was well known. And when you look at the story of how he was arrested, and we can kind of go into that a little bit, but also at the same time, I had made the decision to file in civil court as well, because there was the clear understanding that we didn't know how successful it was going to be in the criminal court.

Elissa Wall [00:36:24] I didn't know what it meant, and I was not going to leave any stone unturned. Working with Roger Hull, he became my representation as I filed a lawsuit against Warren Jeffs, the FLDS church, several other individuals, and as well as the uep, which was the financial arm of the FLDS for many, many years.

Elissa Wall [00:36:49] That civil case would become really important as time went on. But at the time, for me, it was not motivated in what can. It was motivated and what can we do? And how do we really make this worth it? Because the sacrifices that I was, that I was doing in my life to, to see something change for the people that I loved at home in Short Creek area, I really. It needed to matter.

Elissa Wall [00:37:16] So we had two of these cases going. There was a criminal case happening as well as there was a civil case simultaneously going on in the different courts.

John Dehlin [00:37:23] And if I, if I understand it right, a criminal case would be something like, you know, a rape charge or a, you know, forcing a minor to be raped charge, which is criminal. A civil case is like suing for damages for harm caused. And if I'm remembering the OJ Simpson verdict, the criminal case failed, but, but the civil case actually went out. So there's a scenario where your criminal case can, can, can be invalidated, but you can still collect damages and in that way get at least some sort of guilty verdict. Even if, even if one of the two cases fails. Is that what you mean by leaving no stone unturned?

Elissa Wall [00:38:09] Absolutely. That's. That what that was the approach, that was the hope, is that if one failed, then maybe we can create some difference with the other. And it was also realizing that we needed to start this process of at least valid, validating the stories that were being told, because I was just one of many stories of women that were coming out and talking about what had happened to them and the abuses that were going on and men and women that were trying to use their experiences to reach in and make some change.

Elissa Wall [00:38:41] So for me, that was the whole goal was whatever it took to create some change and to validate these stories that had been being told for years. On that fateful day that Warren was caught on My side of the experience, it was really, really early in the morning, and we were staying in this hotel room, myself and my young son and my husband. Now, at this time, because we had been married in a ceremony while we were in witness protection, and the only people in attendance was investigators and attorneys.

Elissa Wall [00:39:19] But I was really grateful because at that point in my life, it was. They were important people, and they were people that were helping me to stand up for. For my truth.

John Dehlin [00:39:27] Do you have any way to remember how long it was between that first Italian restaurant engagement with the law enforcement officials and when he was actually abducted? Was it a matter of months? Was it a matter of years? Or is that. Is it. Is it. Can I even ask that?

Elissa Wall [00:39:43] Yeah, definitely. So it would have been about a year later.

John Dehlin [00:39:46] Okay, so the year that you met in the Italian restaurant was 2005.

Elissa Wall [00:39:51] Five was 2005. And then I was in prelim, the preliminary hearing at the end, in November of 2006, which meant that he had

John Dehlin [00:40:05] been caught in 2006. Okay. Wow. Yeah. So you were saying what that was like to hear that he was caught.

Elissa Wall [00:40:13] Definitely. Well, and the events leading up to. I think there was always this hope, especially after the year that we had dedicated to the investigation and the year that it had taken to lead us to this point. But the phone rang, and it was Brock Belknap. And he told me, you know, Warren's been caught.

Elissa Wall [00:40:35] And it all hit me. You know, I. I was like, I thought this year had been kind of. Had been very hard and difficult, but the reality of what was to come was what kind of hit me. We turned on the news, and sure enough, there was these. There was news article after news article of articles, as well as news agencies from all over the place that were highlighting that America's Most Wanted, Warren Jeffs, had been caught. And it was detailing the story of how he had been got, how he'd been caught. You know, Warren had been on the run, and he had unlimited amount of cash at his.

Elissa Wall [00:41:18] At his disposal. And we would later find out that he was kind of on the lam just going and enjoying his life. He would tell the people that he was going out to experience the wickedness of the world, but he was going to Disneyland.

John Dehlin [00:41:31] And was he going to strip clubs and stuff?

Elissa Wall [00:41:33] Yeah, strip clubs. He was going to Mardi Gras and engaging in all these worldly things as dressed as a. Just a gentile. But the way he was framing that to all the people is he was going there to witness the wickedness and to witness how horrible the world had become so that he could relay that to the Lord.

John Dehlin [00:41:55] Because the Lord can't see it.

Elissa Wall [00:41:56] Yeah, exactly. And it would expedite the destruction of the world if Warren could witness it. But in that process, then he was traveling a lot, and he had a lot of different compounds all over the Dakotas. He had compounds all throughout Colorado, a lot of places that we still haven't been able to figure out where these were. But he had unlimited resources, unlimited people that were willing to shelter and protect him. And so the fact that he was caught was just this fascinating, miraculous event, because he was. They were driving from Las Vegas, and you hear the story of the police officer and the reasons why he had pulled over the.

Elissa Wall [00:42:38] The vehicle. And ultimately, after pulling over the vehicle and seeing how, you know, the police officer used all of his training to assess that something wasn't quite right, and ultimately was able to get the passengers in the vehicle, out of the vehicle and start questioning them separately as to who they were, where they were going, and getting a lot of convoluted details and ideas. And. And Warren, when he had been asked to show identification, had offered a receipt for an eyeglasses, I believe, was eyeglasses that he had gone to where it had said he was someone different than, but he didn't actually give any identification.

Elissa Wall [00:43:23] And through that, that traffic stop, the police officer was able to realize that this was. This was Warren. Jess, were they speeding? I can't remember if they were speeding or if it was just swerving. Something had triggered the alert of the police officer. I'd had to go back in and see what had created the initial.

John Dehlin [00:43:40] It was a routine traffic stop.

Elissa Wall [00:43:41] A routine traffic stop.

John Dehlin [00:43:42] Warren Jeffs gives the guy a receipt as his form of identification.

Elissa Wall [00:43:46] Identification.

John Dehlin [00:43:47] That's not sketchy.

Elissa Wall [00:43:48] No, it's not sketchy. But ultimately, after searching the vehicle, they found wigs. They found tons of cash on hand in the vehicle, and all of that was confiscated. And Warren was arrested.

John Dehlin [00:44:04] And what state was that that was in?

Elissa Wall [00:44:05] He was arrested in Nevada and then extradited to Utah for his crime, for what he was being accused of here in Utah. But that. That moment for me, from what I was experiencing, was huge because there was a part of me that was realizing this was going to happen, and, oh, my goodness, what did I get myself into? But then realizing, okay, we, we've got him. We. We've at least stopped him from being in hiding. What we would later find out is this was such a pivotal, important moment, because for the women and children that were on the Compound in Texas. Warren was returning back to the Texas compound because he was going to initiate a whole series of new ordinances and this is.

Elissa Wall [00:44:57] Was going to be more detailed on. What we would later all find out was he was already doing to women and young girls on the compound when it came to sex abuse and ritualistic sex abuse that was happening.

Elissa Wall [00:45:15] And I wouldn't find out until years later, but Warren getting caught at that pivotal moment that he did, truly did, it changed the trajectories of thousands of people's life within the flds.

John Dehlin [00:45:28] Were these the heavenly. Were they called Heavenly sessions?

Elissa Wall [00:45:31] They were called heavenly sessions.

John Dehlin [00:45:32] And that's where he would abuse. That's where we have recordings and we. I don't want to jump ahead, but we have recordings of him abusing children in a bed in the temple with other people standing around.

Elissa Wall [00:45:43] Yes.

John Dehlin [00:45:44] And so you're saying he was going to go back and start doing that? To a large degree, yes. And when he got stopped prevented him from being able to sort of wreak a lot more havoc than he had up to that point.

Elissa Wall [00:46:00] Definitely. And we found out later from a lot of his journals and the people that were around him because Warren was so narcissistic leading up to his capture that he was having people detail every thing about his life. His sleeping patterns, his eating patterns. And he would have these, these events where in his sleep he would have the seizure like event that would happen and then he would just start channeling the Lord's word as he said it. So he always had someone that was awake and alert at his bedside preparing to hear anything that came from his mouth. And some of it was absolute craziness that was coming out of his mouth.

Warren Jeffs Captured and Put on Trial

Elissa Wall [00:46:41] And he was claiming he was in this revelation state, whether it was dream state or just absolute insanity, no one really knows. But a lot of the stuff that came from that is really dark and terrifying as to what he was planning to do with the people of the flds. And it was not good for them. For the people in Short Creek as well as the people in Texas.

John Dehlin [00:47:04] It was covered in a documentary that you mentioned during the break. There's a. In addition to Keep Sweet.

Elissa Wall [00:47:09] Yes.

John Dehlin [00:47:10] There's another documentary that you mentioned.

Elissa Wall [00:47:13] There is. It's a. It's one that recently came out this year too. It's called Preaching Evil.

John Dehlin [00:47:17] Okay.

Elissa Wall [00:47:18] And it details a lot more of the. From the women's perspective of what that experience was like living in the clutches of Warren and being a part of some of that abuse that was, that was happening on the Texas compound. But even for the people of Short Creek, it had kind of been become known leading up to Warren's capture that the Lord had abandoned Short Creek and that everybody that had been left at Short Creek, they were not considered worthy of.

Elissa Wall [00:47:45] And the only way they were going to be considered worthy is they had to keep giving. And Warren drained the people of the Short Creek area, drained them financially, emotionally, spiritually, and just absolutely took advantage of them as he was building these other compounds and he was living extravagant lifestyles. So the people that were still in the Short Creek area, they were living under this. This shadow of shame because they were not chosen ones and that they just had to keep giving more and they had to be more fervent. And the lifestyles of the people that were living in Short Creek and the lifestyles of the people that were living in the.

Elissa Wall [00:48:26] The compound in. In Colorado or in Texas, they all had different things that were happening. And Warren was just sitting there, pulling the strings like a puppet master. I don't think Warren thought he was going to be caught. I don't think anyone thought he was going to be caught, really. And when he was, began this incredible journey for myself, but also for the story of the flds, because having him caught was the first step in showing the people of the FLDS that they were not caught. Not even the prophet was above the law. And that was a really important next stop in creating change within the FLDS and people from the FLDS was that no one is above the law and religious freedom or not.

Elissa Wall [00:49:25] Being able to stand in that courtroom later and testify and have the justice system do its work was really important in being able to help other people come forward. And it was this catalyst that started the domino effect. I tell people I didn't take down Warren Jeffs by myself. There was an entire line of people before me, an entire line of people. I just happened to be that one domino that needed to tip up the scales to start that domino effect of change and shift. And that gave us the ability to be where we are today.

Elissa Wall [00:50:06] After Warren was caught, then there was a preliminary hearing. You know, the. The Utah justice system has its process, and that was initiated. And in that preliminary hearing, it gave the court an opportunity to hear my story and to hear the.

Elissa Wall [00:50:22] The validity of the charges that Washington county was pressing. That was a really pivotal point for me because I realized that was going to be the first time that I ever faced Warren.

John Dehlin [00:50:33] So you had to come out of hiding at that point?

Elissa Wall [00:50:35] Yes, temporarily. They. We were still existing in hiding, but we came to test. I came to St. George to testify.

John Dehlin [00:50:46] Is that when your community would have first found out that you were the one who would. You were the accuser?

Elissa Wall [00:50:52] Yes, that was when I was going to claim Jane Doe. And who was behind Jane Doe was that preliminary hearing. And I realized that that was going to be when everyone knew, because in the.

John Dehlin [00:51:06] In the Keep Sweet documentary, you see all these dudes hanging out, all these fundamentalist dudes hanging outside the courtroom and.

Guest 3 [00:51:14] Well, and all the families across the street. Yeah, like, they. There was, like, families. Many families across the street that would just kind of be there.

Elissa Wall [00:51:23] The intimidation.

John Dehlin [00:51:25] I mean, I would have wanted to wear a bulletproof vest. Like, I would have just been terrified to walk through all those people. Like, it's her. It's. It's.

Elissa Wall [00:51:36] It was. And they took steps to make sure I didn't walk through those people. I was brought into the courthouse from a back entrance. They were really careful to make sure I was well protected. I was brought in in vis vehicles that were unmarked. No one knew where we were going and how we were getting there. Like, they went above and beyond to make sure our safety was taken into account.

John Dehlin [00:51:57] And still would be terrifying.

Elissa Wall [00:51:58] Oh, it still was. It was very intimidating. I think that was the biggest thing was as we were getting closer to it, you know, And I tell people I was pregnant. I was big and pregnant, and I was very lonely because I didn't even have my sisters at this point in time, my older sister, because of the situation I was in with being in witness protection and being secluded from everything else, because we were so focused on what it was going to take to. To be able to pull this off, to. To be able to successfully prosecute someone like Warren Jeffs that had millions of dollars at his disposal, and he had unlimited amount of people that would do absolutely anything to show their loyalty to him.

Elissa Wall [00:52:42] But ultimately, there was. There was that pivotal day where it all came together. And I remember walking up to the witness stand for the first time, and even though it had been months of preparation on every level, I knew the process that was going to be expected of me. I knew what it was going to be like to be in a courtroom on some level, but the actual experience of being in that and. And feeling what it feels like to have all eyes on you and to. To step up on there and to sit down into that chair and to realize it was up to me.

Elissa Wall [00:53:20] I had to choose. And I remember looking at Warren as he came in, and her eyes locked. And old versions of Elissa would have shriveled under his gaze. And this moment of facing Warren Jess for the first time as the free woman that I was, was so important, because I looked him in the eye, and I would not break my gaze.

Elissa Wall [00:53:53] Whereas I'm sure he was accustomed to women lowering their gaze and diminishing themselves under such a gaze as he was giving me. But he just glared at me, and I held that gaze. And inside of me was this fight for me the first time. Because even leading up to this moment, it wasn't a fight for Elissa. It was a fight for my family. It was a fight for my sisters. I was doing this for other people because I didn't yet know that in. In parts of it, I was also doing it for me. But that was the. That was the way that I was able to tell my brain that it was okay to tell my truth, because it wasn't about me.

Elissa Wall [00:54:30] It was about somebody else. I was. I was protecting and fighting for other people that I cared about. But this moment was. It was. I had to choose, and I had to claim it, and I had to be strong enough to. To face it.

Elissa Wall [00:54:43] And it felt like an eternity locking eyes with him in this moment. And ultimately, he shook his head and he looked down, and this feeling just washed over me of realization that I was free.

Guest 3 [00:55:01] I.

Elissa Wall [00:55:03] This man no longer controlled me. Yes, it would take years of therapy and work for me to detangle myself from the mindset of the FLDS and all of the trauma that would happen. But in that moment, Warren Jess, the man, not the prophet, the man, no longer controlled me, and I was no longer his subject.

Elissa Wall [00:55:26] And that was huge for me and was the first step in me claiming my own personal power in this. This. This journey and process. The preliminary hearing was. Was difficult. It was an. It was a lot more emotional than I thought it would be for myself and to have all eyes on me as I'm telling some of those. Those details. And mind you, in those kind of settings, they're really, really careful of the depth of evidence that they offer, because for the prosecutors, they had to back up everything. And it's so easy in the courtroom to be telling of the. Of an experience and to say, this is what I felt like.

Elissa Wall [00:56:06] And there's this immediate objection, and it's hearsay. Well, the problem with a lot of what happened within the FLDS is there's not a lot of tangible evidence to what happened. And a lot of the people that could have potentially given tangible evidence of. Of what had happened and been able to back up My claims of, of being abused and being raped and how Warren was an accomplice to that. It was all based on testimony and the, the little bit of facts and details that they could back it up with. And some of that testimony was my other sisters. I had two sisters that also joined me in the ranks in Warren's trial for testifying against him of their own journey, but then also what they were witnessing and experiencing in, in my journey and a lot of other people stepped forward to, to testify in Warren's trial.

John Dehlin [00:57:01] Tell me if I'm hitting. Tell us what the main things that. Critical things that needed to be proved. Yeah, I imagine it would have been that Warren, Warren directed the marriage or performed the marriage and that you actually were married to this guy and that you had sex at some point and it consummated the marriage at, at the age of 14 or 15. Are those the things that needed to be proven or were there other things that needed to be.

Elissa Wall [00:57:30] Absolutely, those were definitely points that need to be proven. But also it needed to be proven that he had operated from his capacity as a clergyman or a religious leader. And how he had abused that, that authority, because it's part of being part of coerced is someone needs to abuse their position of authority. And that was a big thing that had to kind of be shown is how he was abusing his authority not only as a religious figure, but also how he had used his authority to force me to be married in an arranged marriage that I had been adamant against. But then how that he used his same authority to keep me in that abusive relationship.

Elissa Wall [00:58:11] And so he knew not only of the first rape, but of many rapes that would happen later on, which is why he was being prosecuted for accomplice to rape was because of the position that he had held as an accomplice to that. Knowing that for the, the culture of the flds, a woman is only married to a man with the intention that they are will consummate the marriage and they will have children. And even though I had no living children from that relationship, there was still enough proof and testimony to show how the consummation had absolutely happened, the rapes had happened. Even though so much of the question was is, you know, was it really rape or was it just a young girl having consensual relations? And after the preliminary hearing and a

John Dehlin [00:59:03] 14 year old can't have consensual relations with an 18 year old, as far

Elissa Wall [00:59:06] as I understand at the time, it was arguable whether it can. I believe since then that's been part of the, the positive that has happened from Warren's. From the. My testimony is that age limit has been raised in different states because of that showing that no, a 14 year old cannot consent to merit to marriage and sexual relations. They just can't.

John Dehlin [00:59:31] But at the time that was in question.

Elissa Wall [00:59:32] It was in question. There was a lot of things in question at the time because I guess

John Dehlin [00:59:36] the defense could say, number one, Warren had nothing to do with it. Yes, that was definitely just teens or local leaders misbehaving, but that Warren wasn't involved. Or they could say, well, they never actually had sex and where's the proof? And now I'm, you know, when I'm thinking about things like excommunication, the LDS Church. The LDS Church always wants to say it's a local matter. It's a local matter. And it's starting to become clear to me why a corporate church would always want the bishop or the local stake president to be the fall person. It's so there's no liability for the corporation.

Elissa Wall [01:00:16] Definitely.

John Dehlin [01:00:17] And so it seems like that's what was going on in spades with you.

Elissa Wall [01:00:20] Oh, absolutely. That was, that was a big part of what was going on with it. But for after the preliminary hearing, there was, it was found that there was enough evidence to go ahead and keep the charges. And even at the time, the defense was really trying. That was the goal with the preliminary hearing, is just to get it thrown out completely and to allow Warren to go back and to prove, okay, there was, there was no crime. This is all made up. And, and here's why. But the court found, no, there's enough evidence that we're going to go ahead and have a trial.

Elissa Wall [01:00:56] And then it would be months later before Warren, it would almost be a year later actually before Warren was put on trial in a full trial. Because there's all the process that happens. Discovery, discovery. I mean, I can't tell you the hours that I was put in the most intense.

Elissa Wall [01:01:19] Situations where the. I was being asked. Depositions, you know, depositions that were happening from this. And what people don't understand is it's one thing to stand up and stand for crimes that have happened, but that process of the justice system is so brutal and so intense, especially for victims because I was now two years into consistently having every day of my life somehow involving my past. And there was no option for me to really begin to move on because it was. Everything about my life was very present to what had happened to me before. And so it was creating this Dynamic where it was constantly retraumatizing.

Elissa Wall [01:02:04] And even though I don't think that was the intention of everyone, it was just part of the sacrifice that I had to make in this. This process of coming forward and telling my story and testifying was the sack of the personal sacrifice. And it took me a long time to realize the cost of that choice.

Elissa Wall [01:02:26] And I know that it's easy for people even when they read my book. You know, I talk about the victories, but I don't talk a lot about the struggles to get there and the cost and the cost that it was. And it's even to this day where sometimes I look back on that and the cost to myself. But my children, because imagine, you know, I'm a. I'm a new mother again. I'm with my second child. And you have a young mom who is secluded from her support group. Because I didn't really have a support group at this time because we were still in witness protection and I don't know how to parent very well.

Elissa Wall [01:03:04] I'm so overmaxed with PTSD and the struggles of what was happening for myself. But then you layer on that every single day my life was somehow involved in what was coming up. And this was warned trial. I knew this was coming. And preparing for this, what it would mean for me personally, what it would mean for my community, and what it would mean for the world at large. And honestly, even leading up to trial, we really didn't know how successful we were going to be.

John Dehlin [01:03:34] There's this horrific set of statistics that I've heard and we've talked about previously on Mormon Stories that something like one out of a hundred victims report rape. Only one out of 100 because of all the shame, the difficulty, the trauma, the risk. Only 1 out of 100 rape. Rape victims report the rape. And of. And of the, you know, of those who actually report it, only 1 out of 100 reported rapes lead to a successful conviction.

Elissa Wall [01:04:10] Yes.

John Dehlin [01:04:11] So it. It, you know, most just never bother because even if you do do it, you go through hell. Doubly go through hell. And then you've got a 1 in 100 chance of being successful. So it led to this whole horrible statement that I remember once. It said, like, rape is the best crime to commit.

Elissa Wall [01:04:30] It is because.

John Dehlin [01:04:31] Horrible because your chance of getting caught or convicted is so low. And it's the most sad, you know, so we've got this problem. And it all starts with victims just not being believed, because most just aren't believed.

Elissa Wall [01:04:43] They're not. And then not having the support system to then help them in that process. Because so much of rape is a testimony based experience. You know, the ones that are easier to prove are the ones that have DNA involved or they have physical evidence, evidence outside of it. But we live in a society and a justice system that really questions firsthand, first hand accounts, especially when it comes to rape. Because it's so easy for people to say, oh, it was consensual. And then it's just a matter of who said it better.

John Dehlin [01:05:18] Really, who had the better lawyers, who paid the better lawyers?

Elissa Wall [01:05:21] Yeah, who had the better lawyers?

John Dehlin [01:05:22] And clearly he could afford better lawyers. I mean, you had great lawyers, but I mean, he could afford the best, right?

Elissa Wall [01:05:29] Definitely. We saw that, that happen. And so when we came into the. When finally everything came together and Warren's trials happening, it was in the fall of 2007, I believe September 2007. And. Or maybe, maybe it was sooner than September, but coming to that, and I remember the very first day that the trial started and realizing, oh my goodness, we've made it to here. And knowing all the pieces were coming into place. They had the witnesses in line, the depositions had been done, the discovery had been done, and all the layers were there. And leading up to this also, Warren had been in prison in Washington county this whole time.

Elissa Wall [01:06:17] That was one of the things that had happened is he had been denied Bailey because he was a flight risk. And that was very important. And we considered that a huge win because when he was denied bail, it showed that, yeah, there was reason to be concerned what would happen if he was let out.

Elissa Wall [01:06:35] So to have the dynamic where for an entire year almost, Warren was not present in the people of the FLDS life, he was still very much controlling them from prison. But there was this unique event that happened during that timeframe where Warren, whether it was out of a moment of insanity or a moment of clarity, no one really knows, but he came forward and was talking to one of his brothers and some other of his wife's there. And he went on and there's a. There's a recording of it that people can actually go in and see. But he basically said that he was a false prophet and that he was not the prophet and he was never the prophet.

Elissa Wall [01:07:17] And he denounced his power and he went from the most righteous man to in his, in this moment of this jailhouse recording to he was the most evil man in this entire dispensation, once again, showing his narcissism of it was all about him. Even in this moment when he's declaring that he wasn't the prophet and he is not the prophet. It was just fascinating to experience that.

Elissa Wall [01:07:43] And I remember when this happened, thinking, oh my goodness, here is that important piece where if everyone sees this and hears this, people are going to realize that who he really is and he's not going to control people.

Elissa Wall [01:07:58] But there, again, there's the layers of culture and patterns and brainwashing that happen because immediately, even in the recording, you hear his, his brother saying, no, no, no, this is a test. This is a test. You're, you're testing us. And we're going, we're going to stay righteous.

Elissa Wall [01:08:18] Excuse me. And it was that realization, overwhelming realization that, you know, you can lead a horse to water, but you can't force it to drink because here is the prophet himself in these people's eyes, telling them he's wrong, he's not the prophet. He's not that he was false in everything that he'd done and people didn't believe it for a minute. I was baffled by it.

Elissa Wall [01:08:46] But it was just showing the level of insanity that he had cultivated within his followers, that they would really follow him to the edge of the cliff.

John Dehlin [01:08:56] I'm thinking of a couple examples, like when Joseph Smith, you know, when he finally got incarcerated and charged with treasure digging, there's this moment where he tells his father in law and his dad, I, I was faking it the whole time. You know, I, I was fooling everyone. I'll stop. I promise I'll stop. And that's in the record. You know, his father in law, you know, you know that that account is in the record. Doesn't matter. And also the fact that Joseph Smith, you know, never found any treasure. He took people on dozens of treasure digs, never once was there any treasure found. And people continue to believe in him when he was never able to produce any treasure. Or you fast forward to Nauvoo and

Guest 3 [01:09:41] yeah, with the same stone that he translated the Book of Mormon with, you know, that same stone that he could never find the treasure with.

John Dehlin [01:09:50] Yeah. Or that he was lying about the polygamy and that, you know, destroyed the printing press and he ends up in jail and it doesn't matter. And he was killed and it doesn't matter. Like belief is just religious belief is almost impenetrable versus for a certain group of devout followers. Doesn't matter. What.

Elissa Wall [01:10:11] See, this is, this is stuff I didn't even know. I didn't know this correlation. And you know, I'll be blunt. I haven't done A ton of in depth research on even Joseph Smith because after leaving it, it was like, ah, that was all I knew, that there was correlations. But learning more about it and hearing you talk about it, there was lot A, a lot more correlations between what Warren was doing and, and what Joseph Smith had done years and years and years before.

John Dehlin [01:10:38] Yeah, yeah, it's just believe I, I'm almost discouraged because, you know, you, you, you fight these battles to want to kind of make progress, not to bring the church down, but just to help people become awaken. And hearing how far Warren Jeffs took it and to this day still are still believing in him and following him, including members of your own family, it's just, just makes it profoundly sit with me how incredibly resilient religious beliefs are.

Elissa Wall [01:11:16] They are in a negative way. That's, that's the tough thing when we talk about resilience as it's an important positive part of people moving beyond their circumstances. There's also a dark side to resilience and it is just that it creates an impenetrable wall of beliefs. And there's no amount of logic, there's no amount of physical evidence because this video of Warren saying these things in prison, it was physical evidence and it was still. Oh, it was made up.

John Dehlin [01:11:47] I'm calling it, I'm coining the term toxic resilience.

Elissa Wall [01:11:49] Toxic resilience. There you go. That, that's, that's, that's giving me mine. I'll borrow that term from, from you. It happened here. Everyone in this moment, Toxic resilience was

John Dehlin [01:12:00] because people come to me all the time and go, John, what would it take? What would it take to bring the LDS church down? What if, what if the prophet himself said he, you know, said it wasn't true? We already know the answer.

Elissa Wall [01:12:10] Here it is.

John Dehlin [01:12:11] We literally already know the answer.

Elissa Wall [01:12:12] You would have some people who would, that would be what they needed. Because even later realizing that for some people that recording in prison was what was needed to help them make the change in their own life, it was the last brick in the wall that said, okay, I don't believe in this anymore. And I'm grateful for that because even though at the time it felt like it didn't matter and it was very deflating to realize, oh goodness, we, we have far more work than we can even conceive, it did matter to some people. And that demographic of people that needed that evidence, it, it was what was important.

Elissa Wall [01:12:49] And we're even seeing that now, even with the most recent Keep Sweet documentary is it was the first time really that all of the pieces of the Warren saga had kind of been pulled together from different parts and pieces that even people from the FLDS who'd been out for years, that was really important for them to have that documentary because it gave them enough information to clinch that they did the right thing for themselves, validating for them. And it's crazy at how long those invalidating voices survive after people had left the clutches of the FLDS religion.

John Dehlin [01:13:25] It's why Mormon stories still exists 1650 episodes in because Mormons, post Mormons, questioning Mormons, they all, even as less extreme as orthodox traditional Mormonism is from the fles, people still need continual validation that they've made the right decision. Yes, to stop believing or to leave it. They never tire of it, or at least they need it for years. And then a new crop needs it. And then a new crop needs it. But part of what you're saying is that the flip side is to the toxic resilience is that every little bit finds its audience of who needs the. The information or the discovery. So even if you're just throwing a few starfish back in the ocean, take heart, you're. You're helping a few starfish survive.

Elissa Wall [01:14:15] Yes. And for me, it's interesting you use that reference because I use that all the time. You know, even if all we do is help 10 people, that's. That's enough. If a lot. I know, but that. That was my. That was how I kept going was. It didn't matter the outcome as long as I could just help a couple of people and make a little bit of difference throughout Warren's trial, we would never quite comprehend until years later at the difference it did make because all of the things that the people were being told wasn't going to happen, you know, they were being told, nope.

Elissa Wall [01:14:51] Warren is the. The Lord. This is a test. And if you are fervent and you are prayerful and you continue to show yourself as worthy, the Lord is going to magically release Warren from prison. That the. The victims. What I was told later on is the amount of fasting and prayer that was done to beg the Lord to take care of me would. Was mind blowing. And I was very evident in people's prayers, but they wanted me to get hit by a bus or to have a heart attack or to. To die.

Elissa Wall [01:15:26] I often laugh about it now because I still to this day, living back in Short Creek, I get the experience of people coming in, you know. Are you Elissa? Yes. Yes, I am. And there's Always this moment of like, oh, why are they asking? And my favorite is like, I really hated you. I really prayed that you would be destroyed. I'm like, thank you.

Elissa Wall [01:15:48] Do you feel. Did you feel that way still? But that was. That was the level of the people that were in the flds. They really believed this was going to happen. And I think still to this day, there are fervent believers that truly believe, if they continue to be righteous enough, that Warren is going to be let out of prison. It's bizarre, but that's. That's the way that they hold on is these ideas and how Warren's control is still happening.

Elissa Wall [01:16:21] The approach that was taken in Warren's trial by the defense was this immediate attack, Attack, attack the victims. And as I would later learn from prosecutors, that's usually not a very successful approach, but it was definitely the approach they took.

John Dehlin [01:16:35] So they attacked you?

Elissa Wall [01:16:36] Oh, they attacked me. They attacked my. They attacked everything about my story, whether I was truthful. You know, I. I remember this. This point in it where the attorney, the defending attorney is like, the rape didn't happen. Trying to gaslight, once again, use the same tactics that Warren had used and the. The men of the FLDS had used along the way is. It's just to pretend it didn't happen. And I was just one person, and I was there to garner fame and money. Money. And that was the reason why the jury shouldn't believe me. It also, when it came time, you know, the prosecution put on their case, and they were amazing in their ability to help, help the witnesses that came forward. There was myself and my sisters. There was other people that came forward to collaborate and cooperate. My testimony as to how Warren was an accomplice to rape, I just have

John Dehlin [01:17:38] to say that's another reason why victims don't want to come forward, because they know that if they go to trial, they're going to get smeared mercilessly.

Elissa Wall [01:17:46] Oh, definitely.

John Dehlin [01:17:47] And that's, you know, you have to have to. You have to be willing to do that.

Elissa Wall [01:17:51] You have to have. I was told that many times you need to be willing to be smeared and dragged the mud as all kinds of horrible things and then lose and lose. And that's exactly what happened, was we were. We were dragged through the mud and. And even though I was prepared for it, I remember in the experience of it, when people would come onto the stand and they would testify in favor of Warren and they would try and prove why a rape doesn't happen, even to the point of they brought Alan himself onto the Witness stand. He testified at his own expense and fell on the sword, basically, for Warren.

John Dehlin [01:18:29] What'd he say?

Elissa Wall [01:18:30] And it was the most bizarre interview. Like, I remember sitting in the audience in the courtroom, and Allen is brought to the witness stand, and he's sitting down, but then he asks to stand.

John Dehlin [01:18:45] This is your first husband, your ex husband, your abuser?

Elissa Wall [01:18:48] Yes, my abuser. He stands through his testimony, and it was just very, very interesting the way. But hearing his side of it, whether it was truly his version or not, or whether it was one that he was just told to. To say, was very hard for me. It was what he claimed so difficult for me to. To sit through that testimony because he did not take responsibility or accountability for any of it. And then it was all consensual and that I was actually the abuser because I was so mean and I wanted it, and I would force myself on him or the experience. It was so hard for me to hear that version of it because I didn't realize how much of it still affected me.

Elissa Wall [01:19:32] Even seeing him. I put me into a panic attack because that was the first time I had seen Alan, too, in the journey of it. And there was so much of it that there was layers of post traumatic stress syndrome that were happening. But I was in an environment where I could not focus on myself because I. We had a job at hand. And even though the team that I had around me were trying really hard to be sensitive of what was going on, it was still very, very hard because I couldn't focus on my own experience of what was happening. I had to focus on what was needed from me.

John Dehlin [01:20:14] Did I. Did I testify that Warren had nothing to do with your relationship?

Elissa Wall [01:20:18] Yes, he did.

John Dehlin [01:20:19] And did he deny that Warren had married you?

Elissa Wall [01:20:22] I don't believe he denied that Warren had married me, but I believe that he. He just denied all the abuse across the board and to this day, still continues to deny any of the abuse. You know, from. From his version of the story.

Elissa Wall [01:20:35] In a way, he came across as this. Like, I was a victim too. You know, I was told to marry her. I was just doing what I was told. It's my fault that this happened instead of really clearly. Yes, I would agree that in some ways, Alan was also a victim of his environment.

Elissa Wall [01:20:58] But at the time when I'm hearing his side of the story and it's, you know, turning into this he said, she said. It was so hard for me because I remember clearly feeling inside of myself. Okay, I understand that. That we don't agree on what happened. And I'm not here to say we have to agree on what happened, but I know that inside of us, there's an innate belief and understanding of what's right and wrong for most people. There are people that we now know of that suffer from different mental disorders that they have that innately is not there.

Elissa Wall [01:21:28] But to. To look at Alan and to believe I know inside of him, what he did, he knew was wrong, and to just have no responsibility taken whatsoever for what had happened, but once again, to be invalidated with the experience of it because I had been so vulnerable and so honest in the best way that I knew that I could at that time, to try and explain what had happened and the impact that this had on me and to have that so viciously invalidated. I took that kind of personally. Even though everyone was like, okay, this is not a personal attack. This is. They're attacking the evidence.

Elissa Wall [01:22:11] I was walked all the way through it by everyone. It was still. I had my own personal journey with it that was very difficult to walk through and go through with it. And then we went into jury deliberations, and I had no idea what was going to happen. And it went on one day, and then it went on another day, and they're still deliberating.

John Dehlin [01:22:30] Did Warren testify?

Elissa Wall [01:22:31] Warren did not testify. No. He did not testify for himself. And to just not know. To not know what was going to happen and to just be on the edge of. Edge of my seat, really, because all of my. My life over the last two years was kind of coming to this point. I knew the personal sacrifices that I had made, but I also knew the sacrifices that the people like my sisters and other witnesses had. Had made to step forward and to. To join the ranks of me in standing up against Warren Jeffs and the control that he had of the s. Of lds.

John Dehlin [01:23:09] Did your mom testify?

Elissa Wall [01:23:11] She did not testify.

John Dehlin [01:23:12] Did you consider having her testify, or did your attorneys consider at this point she was still.

Elissa Wall [01:23:17] She had disappeared? No one really knew. I know that there had been a process of trying to see if we could find her, because that was part of it. I'm like, well, even if we could just find them and. And what we would later find out is for the people that were inside of the flds, it was a very tragic reality that anyone that had been connected to me or my family had been aggressively and incessantly grilled. And so many people were pressured to make up stories about me or to make up stories. Like, we hear these stories of these boys that were brought in that may have known me that were asked to claim that we had had sex before I had been married, and that was the reason that I was being forced to marry.

Elissa Wall [01:24:00] So the. The tampering that was being done on the evidence. I hear these stories now, but I had no idea what the people back inside the FLDS were going through, particularly my sisters and my mother, Everyone all the way to my employer himself, who had employed me in those last days that I was inside of the flds, you know, being dragged in and expected to come up with some sort of story as to why, how I was a horrible person, and I was lying about all of it.

Elissa Wall [01:24:31] Ultimately, that's not the people that they use. They didn't put my mother on the witness stand. They didn't bring any of my other family members, because I realized that no matter how devoted they were, my mother was unwilling to lie.

Elissa Wall [01:24:46] And that was very frustrating and ultimately got her in a lot of trouble. I would later find out from my. My sister is. Is that it caused her a lot of harm because she was unwilling to tell an untruth because she believed in her values. And even though she had grown up in the same environment, everyone else, where you just do what the prophet told you to do, that's one thing that I will always respect my mother for, is she still held true to her traditional values of being a truthful individual at all costs.

Elissa Wall [01:25:19] And whether she knows it or not, or whoever will, that means a lot to me that she was unwilling to go against her better her best self and stand up for the profit. And I look at that, and I choose to see that was her way of standing up for me. Even as small or as subtle as that was, that was still very important to me.

John Dehlin [01:25:44] Wow.

Elissa Wall [01:25:45] Yes, it was. After the jury had deliberated for quite some time, then they had a verdict. I remember gathering into the courtroom, and everyone's on edge. Everyone's waiting, you know. The closing arguments had been masterfully presented by Brock Belknap himself in bringing into. Bringing all together in this grand symphony of words and being able to show to the jury, despite everything that we've heard the defendants, the point still stands. This was someone who used coercion to force this to happen. They knew it was happening, and it was magnificent to watch that that process of the justice system kind of all come together. And ultimately, the jury found him guilty on two counts of accomplice to rape. And for me, if I bring myself back to that moment of a minor.

John Dehlin [01:26:49] Right.

Elissa Wall [01:26:49] Oh, yes, bring myself back to that moment of sitting in that chair. And hearing it, you know, the jury finds Warren Jess guilty. And that word hitting me like, wait, what did we hear this? And I had no response, but I just sat there frozen, and tears just started to come down just because there was a part of me that was like, what?

Guest 3 [01:27:19] This.

Elissa Wall [01:27:19] This we were. I couldn't believe it because so much had. Had happened leading up to this. But to. To realize that those people on that jury had been able to sort through all of the crap and the. That had been presented in that trial and be able to.

Elissa Wall [01:27:38] What I felt like was listen and validate what I had said and that not just me, but other women had said. And I felt. I felt the force of all of those voices, of the voiceless women who had never, ever been validated, who had never been listened to, who had never been able to. To tell their story.

Elissa Wall [01:28:03] And even my own children's grandmother, who had passed away when long before they were born, she herself had a story of trying to stand up for herself and tell her story of what was happening that was against her will and was abuse.

Elissa Wall [01:28:22] But that moment, that guilty verdict was that moment, not just for myself, but for so many women and voiceless people of the flds. As I. Even in this act of telling the story, it's always interesting to me at different points in my life as I take the time to sit out, sit down and reflect, there's always this very cathartic process of tears and emotion and.

Elissa Wall [01:28:53] And the realization of how much I'm still in process. I'm still becoming resilient to all of it. And it's not toxic resilience. It's actually healthy, messy, difficult resilience. But I feel myself as I'm talking about this, and I've talked about this trial multiple times, but to once again feel the weight of what that moment meant for me and for my overall purpose of, you know, standing up for the voiceless and. And hopefully making a change. Because I realized in that moment that Warren was found guilty. He hadn't yet been sentenced, and there was a whole process that would have to take place of. Of sentencing of Warren.

Elissa Wall [01:29:36] And ultimately he was. He was sentenced to 10 years to life, which meant on a good day, he would be put away for a decade, but there was the probability that he may be in prison for life. And that was huge, because not only had we been successful, and at the time of his sentencing, I really didn't conceive how that would ripple out, because it. Not only did it matter in the topic of the flds, but the series of catalysts that would happen within the state of Utah, laws were rewritten to reflect what a religious leader can. What kind of influence they can have in people's life with that, and what responsibility lies within it.

Elissa Wall [01:30:24] There would be. This would always forever be used as case study for anyone else in the future. That we're trying to do something similar as what we did. And that is hold people accountable for the way that they used religion to abuse people.

Elissa Wall [01:30:38] And to have that moment of victory was also this crushing realization that the people that I was trying to help the very most were probably the people that were hurt the very most by Warren's sentencing and the guilty verdict.

Elissa Wall [01:31:00] The first time that I Just. After Warren's was found guilty, I had an opportunity to speak to the press. Because throughout Warren's trial, it had become quite an international interest of people. And to have that experience of coming out. And there's this. I have a picture of it now, but there is this picture of. I'm standing, and it's just one woman standing there. And there's this half circle of cameras and reporters.

Elissa Wall [01:31:31] And I'm standing there claiming. Because up until this point in the trial, they hadn't had been able to publish any pictures of me. Because I was still under the protection of being anonymous to the outside world. The only people that could come into the courtroom were the only ones that really saw my face of it. So me coming out into the public and claiming that was a huge act of claiming it to the world.

Elissa Wall [01:32:03] And of course, it initiated a whole crazy firestorm of all kinds of media. And, you know, ultimately ended up on Good Morning America with Diane Sawyer. And having these experiences of people. You know, Diane herself came and sat down with me for lunch. Because I was really convinced I wasn't gonna go on any media. I wasn't gonna talk about my story. We had done what we were gonna do, and we were successful. End of story, story.

Elissa Wall [01:32:30] She really helped me to realize that someone was going to tell my story. And who did I want to tell my story. And for her, of course, she was motivated, because if they could get me to. To come and tell my story there, it was really important for their ratings. But I really appreciate Diane for the personal effort that she made because I think I like to look at it as she saw a young woman who could have easily become chewed up and spit out by the world of media and international sensation. You know, the sensation that had come from all of this as Warren's trial had been very publicly displayed on an international stage from that experience.

Elissa Wall [01:33:18] One of the things that I found the most unique about it was how much of the outside world not affiliated with the FLDS were incredibly skeptical of this story. It shocked me. It shocked me at how much of the world was like, no, this didn't happen. This is. You know, this was continuing the same narrative. This is just one woman who is looking for fame. And I was surprised at how much of the world they weren't even associated with the flds. But somehow that old narrative that you don't stand up against religion under any circumstance was really difficult for me.

John Dehlin [01:33:57] Or just that men can be awful and, yes, women lie and you can't trust a woman. You know, that. That's. We still got a long way to go.

Elissa Wall [01:34:07] We do have a long way to go.

John Dehlin [01:34:09] I know Jen wanted to.

Guest 3 [01:34:11] Yeah, well, I'm just thinking. I'm just sitting here. And it actually hit me earlier in part one of your story, when the first time you were talking about the first time he raped you and how it hit me. I actually. I wasn't on camera, but I actually had started bawling and had to stand up and leave for a second and come back into the room. Because it hit me in that moment that not only are you standing up for women, women live, women living now within the FLDS religion, but so many in our similar history.

Guest 3 [01:34:58] Hearing your story feels like a small redemption for Helen Kimball and all the other children taken into polygamy, sexually and emotionally abused by those in relig authority over them. And I just like. It was just like a. A crushing reality of what they actually went through.

Guest 3 [01:35:25] Hearing the story of that and then hearing this trial and him being convicted and the feeling that came to you that was touching to you about how this was a step in the right direction for the women within the FLDS religion. It also felt like a victory to those women in the past and even those ones in the future that might hear your story one day.

Guest 3 [01:36:01] So I just wanted to thank you for being that and that it was a lot of just making the next best choice and all those choices that you made to make that happen. So just thank you for that. Thank you for being.

Elissa Wall [01:36:21] I really appreciate you expressing that to me because I think it's. Even as I'm talking about it, it's really easy to kind of disassociate from the gravity of just that doing. By doing the next best thing, the profound change that someone from that true heart space, because I was really doing what my heart was telling me to do. And you're right, it was. I. I look at it now, and every, Every year that goes by, I am just humbled with gratitude that my next best choice and doing the very best that I could in it would be an act of standing up for myself.

Elissa Wall [01:37:01] All of the voiceless women from generations back and hopefully generations in the future. And where I sit in my life today is. It's very much that way. I am so lucky to get messages from people in the FA who have been from the flds, but also people not even affiliated with the FLDS that maybe they come from Mormonism or maybe they come from another extreme religion where they're able to say, thank you for your story because you protected me.

Elissa Wall [01:37:34] And to realize that. That there were so many young girls that were in the FLDS right around the time that I stood up and Warren was caught, that there, the reality was their future was going to be one of a different form of abuse. And to be a part of that force that changed the tides is. It's a great honor to me. And it's very humbling because as you said, I was just doing the very best I could with that moment. I didn't have this grand vision of how it was all going to turn out. And I'm really blessed to be able to be on this end of it.

Guest 3 [01:38:16] Definitely.

John Dehlin [01:38:20] Yeah. Thank you, Jen.

Elissa Wall [01:38:21] Yes.

Guest 3 [01:38:22] Also.

John Dehlin [01:38:23] Yeah. Thank you for. I, I. There are several members of my immediate family that have experienced assault or rape, and you defied the odds. And every time somebody is able to defy the odds, whether or not they get the verdict, I think you represent hundreds of thousands, if not millions of other women who weren't able. Who weren't in a position to be able to raise their voice or to try and obtain justice. So it's a miracle. It's kind of a miracle what you were able to do.

Elissa Wall [01:39:11] It really is a miracle of what we were able to do. And I say we, because there are so many people involved in making that. That such an important piece of it. And even still, that was still just the beginning of what would then take place from it. Because, you know, after Warren's trial, the, the, the guilty verdict, the sentencing, then there's a whole process that starts of. Of challenging it, and it went all the way up to the Utah Supreme Court and would ultimately be overturned.

Conviction, Appeal, and the Texas Compound Raid

John Dehlin [01:39:45] I was, I couldn't believe that when I read the description that this, this successful verdict was overturned, was overturned, appellate court.

Elissa Wall [01:39:53] It was, it was such an incredible. And we could, we can talk about it, but as we Go through this chronologically. That was. So he was convicted in 2007, and in 2010, that was overturned. And it was such an interesting time frame because even in the Supreme Court, the.

Elissa Wall [01:40:16] The decision that they handed down to overturn it was fascinating because the way it was written, it spoke directly to the victim. You know, this isn't done to try and say that the victim was not truthful or validated. This was done. The overturned case. The reason it was overturned was because they were trying to protect the integrity of jury instructions, and they felt like that there had been faulty jury instructions to the jury that had led to potentially creating this guilty con verdict, and then it was handed down to lower courts for them to just retry it.

Elissa Wall [01:40:53] For me, personally, you know, I'm jumping ahead because there was so much that had. That was happening prior to this. But in that moment, sitting in that. That courtroom and realizing that. That the appellate court had just overturned it, I had this moment where I had to decide because the shame voice in me wanted to say, see, everyone was right. You.

Elissa Wall [01:41:19] You are the problem. No one's going to believe you. There was that part of it where the experience for me was that, you know, the voices of shame and indoctrination wanted to rise up in that moment and prove why, once again, you know, that question of were we right to do what we did and to have the appellate court side in that. It was being overturned not because of evidence. It was being overturned because of instructions. And it was more important to give another opportunity to have more appropriate jury instructions than it was to upheld. Uphold the evidence, evidence that was presented in court. It was.

Elissa Wall [01:42:00] It was kind of a complicated decision that was. That was handed down, and it was even a complicated appeal. And the years that would follow after Warren's trial, it was. I was constantly involved in this process. You know, it's one thing people like, okay, you got a guilty verdict. He was sentenced to life. 10 to life. Well, there was a whole new. A whole nother process that came from that.

Elissa Wall [01:42:23] And sitting in that courtroom that day in 2010 when it was overturned, that was that moment where I had to decide what was this about? Because on one hand, we had. There was so much progress that had happened. And on the other hand, was I willing to go through this again?

Elissa Wall [01:42:44] Because that would have meant another trial. And I. I was. It was really up to me. Did I. Did I have it in me to go for a retrial? Or were we at that point going to do something different?

Elissa Wall [01:42:59] But backtracking to after Warren's trial and the experience that I was having of having the question of the outside world questioning this, you know, all the things that we see, you know, it's a woman claiming this. It's. This was prior to the MeToo movement. And so believing victims of of assault was not common.

Elissa Wall [01:43:21] It also led to this realization that I had to do more. And I still hadn't found my sisters. We still didn't know where my mother was. And for me, it was about saving my sisters, but I still hadn't been able to accomplish that. And even throughout Warren's trial, because so much of the time people ask me, you know, what was it that gave you the strength to do that? And really it was my. Why? Because I had this picture of my two younger sisters and it was on my bedside table and I had a copy of it also taped to the mirror. And I took them everywhere I went.

Elissa Wall [01:43:57] Even during witness protection, everywhere I went I had this picture. And I would look at this picture and it was everything I needed because this picture really showed me the joyful innocence of my sisters. And that was what I was fighting to protect.

Elissa Wall [01:44:15] Because I remember what it felt like to have that ripped away. And I realized that there was no way, as long as I was breathing, as long as there was the option, that I was willing to let that happen to them.

Elissa Wall [01:44:30] And so I realized pretty quickly that I had to do more. And I ultimately made the decision to write my book because there was all kinds of layers as to why I realized that we needed to keep talking about this. Because even though a lot of the evidence was shown in trial, there was really not an in depth understanding of what was happening in the larger scheme of the FLDS and through the process. Once again, miraculous process, because my process of writing my book was very different than what most people go through. I didn't go out and look for a publisher. They kind of came to me.

Elissa Wall [01:45:12] And my book was written in a very short period of time. And I went through this process of deeply immersing myself in the story of it. When I finally signed on and I started the process of writing my manuscript for my book, I had to basically shut myself in a hotel room and remove myself from my family and completely immerse myself in it because I couldn't do both worlds.

Elissa Wall [01:45:38] And I look at it and it shocks me at my ability to go back into the trauma. And at the time, I really didn't have the support that I should have had. I wasn't really in therapy very exclusively at that time. And what I didn't realize, is even that process as important as it was and as cathartic as it was going back and being able to articulate and detail my experiences, but then also try and create a scaffolding to help illustrate how it was even possible? Because I think that was one of the things that was brought up so much of the time in the larger scape of the world was, you know, how's this even possible?

Elissa Wall [01:46:19] How's it possible for one man to be able to have that much control over. Over someone? And we had to illustrate that. And I worked really hard in writing my book to be able to show that, to show the good, bad, and the ugly of story of the flds, fundamentalist Mormonism and all of the parts and pieces that had led up to it. And also at this. This pinnacle point, I had already. I had finally written my book in nine, 10 weeks.

John Dehlin [01:46:50] Wow.

Elissa Wall [01:46:50] It was a crazy experience for me of, of doing that. But I look at it, and it was the only way that I would have been able to. To do that is because I. I was so immersed in it. And the longer that I stayed immersed in it, the. The more I started to crumble, even though I wasn't showing that to the outside world because I. This. This ability for me to separate and compartmentalize was starting to get harder and harder because I was so immersed in everything that had happened to Elissa, and my alter ego was having a harder and harder time being able to detangle itself from it.

Elissa Wall [01:47:26] And so my coping mechanisms were starting to deteriorate. Then I was taking it a step further, and I was going to tell my whole story to that point to the world. And I'm 21 years old when I look at it, and I realize everything that had happened to this point. I was a mother of two children. I was a survivor of all different forms of abuse. Religious abuse, spiritual abuse, sexual abuse, physical abuse, emotional abuse. And trying to bring all of this in. Into what it meant to be a human and a woman and in a new world that I really had only been a part of for five years. I'd really only been out of the FLDS for almost five years by the time I was writing my book.

John Dehlin [01:48:18] And not able to live a normal life.

Elissa Wall [01:48:20] Absolutely not. Not not yet.

John Dehlin [01:48:22] Yeah.

Elissa Wall [01:48:23] I hadn't been able to live a normal life at that point. And I do look at the. The strength and the absolute sheer bravery that I had and the courage that I was demonstrating in my ability to speak my truth. But the same thing I was speaking my Truth from bigger than just me. It was for my family, it was for my sisters. It was for the. The countless voiceless women that had come from my lineage and my community, as well as a larger demographic. Because I realized, you know, I started to hear how the experience of the FLDS was not an anomaly. It was happening all over the place, especially from a lot of different fundamentalist Mormon backgrounds, of different layers of abuse.

Elissa Wall [01:49:15] And it became very important to continue to speak the truth, to speak my story, and to do whatever I could to lead up to it. Right around the time that my book was. Was getting ready to come out In April of 2008 was the Texas raid. I got a call from my sister who had created quite a relationship with the sheriff in the El Dorado area, Sheriff David Duran. And he had reached out to her because in his time with trying to

John Dehlin [01:49:52] create

Elissa Wall [01:49:54] a relationship with the people on the compound right there in his precinct, basically he had really tried to create relations with him, but he had reached out to her because they had recently had a call from a crisis center of a woman claiming to be on the compound and being actively abused.

Elissa Wall [01:50:13] This was a very sticky situation because they had no idea what to really do with it. And my sister was reaching out to me because they were wondering if myself and my sister were willing to come down and kind of help them navigate this. They needed a lot of cultural reference and a lot of ideas of how to understand the language that was being talked about. Because the woman who was making these calls to this crisis center was saying a lot of things that on the surface, you wouldn't necessarily identify as abuse. But for people that knew anything about the flds, it was. Was definitely a point of concern.

Elissa Wall [01:50:52] So right before the. The raid was in full force, then I flew down into Texas and met with authorities and started to try and give them some cultural reference. That first night that I was brought into Texas, then I was brought right onto the.

Elissa Wall [01:51:14] The scene of what they were doing. And by this point, they were in full force to the Texas raid. And what a lot of people don't realize is that the events leading up to this, the Texas raid, it didn't just happen that there was a crisis call. And then because the FLDS were the flds, then the in the investigation was immediately started. There was several events that were leading up to what ultimately was the judge's decision to remove the women and children from the compound. And in that process, the men that were in charge of the Texas compound had multiple opportunities to come forward and be truthful.

Elissa Wall [01:51:56] And honest with Texas authorities. And true to the example of Warren and many other leaders of the flds, they chose to lie. They chose to lie and to continue to try to pull the wool over the eyes of the investigators who were just trying to follow through on claims of child abuse.

Elissa Wall [01:52:20] And because of the unwillingness for the leaders of the Texas compound to be forthcoming and truthful, it really led to a dynamic where to really get to the bottom of what was happening, the judge ultimately issued all of the women and children to. To be taken off the compound, not having any comprehension of what that meant, because they were being told, okay, there's just a few dozen children here, and there's no underage girls here.

Elissa Wall [01:52:49] And when they started to investigate that further, they would find out, well, actually, there's a lot of girls here, and some of them may or may not be pregnant. And so there was this, like, underage girls, these underage girls. There was these series of events that were happening that led up to the top Texas raid. And a lot of it wasn't in the media because it. It hadn't happened. It didn't hit the media until it was this tragic. They're removing women and children who are.

Elissa Wall [01:53:18] Who are living their religious beliefs, and they're removing them. And this is a terrible. And it turned into a PR nightmare. And one of the things that started to happen was the FLDS kind of broke the norm and their mold of how they'd handled certain circumstances similar to this, and they started their own counter media effort, and people even all the way up to Oprah fell for this.

John Dehlin [01:53:45] Yeah, this was chronicled in Keep Sweet a little bit. So weird to see some of these women who literally were like, the midwives for the. These teenage births, then go on national television and say, there were no teenage births, dude. It's one of the most outrageous parts of Keep Sweet for me.

Guest 3 [01:54:03] Yeah, me too.

Elissa Wall [01:54:04] It really was. And you saw certain people stand up and promote that. The man who had been known as kind of the henchman of the flds, Willie Jessup, he was a huge promoter in this process, and he was the one that was organizing all of the media appearances. He was the one that was really pushing this narrative that. That the FLDS were the ones that were being abused.

Elissa Wall [01:54:29] He was still. He was still definitely a devout follower of Warren. But people like Willie and what they did was part of why it was so difficult for Texas to be able to follow through with. With all of the possible evidence that came from the Texas raid. But ultimately, my involvement in it, you Know, I'm brought down to Texas and immediately analyzed and realized the situation that was happening and realized that for the people of the FLDS, this was just like the 53 raid. And so I spent a lot of time trying to educate authorities on what that meant, you know, what the 53 raid was and how important it was for all of the agencies to handle this in the best of their ability to not make it about religious persecution.

Elissa Wall [01:55:25] But what started out as we're going to remove a few dozen children from this compound turned into 400 plus children. And there was nothing that could have prepared that area of Texas for what that would mean. And all of the measures that they tried to take, you know, I, I was the one that was trying to convince them to please don't separate the women and children, because the amount of trauma that would come from that separation, it would only validate what they had been told their whole life lives about persecution. And I fought so hard for them to keep the women and children together. And ultimately they did.

Elissa Wall [01:56:01] They. They decided to remove the women and children together when originally it was just the children, but then that would later backfire because the women were then doing what they were told and they were, they were in this process where Texas was trying to, to protect the children. And they were a. Trying to figure out who the children were.

Elissa Wall [01:56:21] Some of these children didn't have parents on the compound. And they were calling people that had been kicked away from, that had been seen as not righteous to be in Texas and to be in Zion. The FLDS were calling them to come and claim their children.

Elissa Wall [01:56:37] And it was this crazy series of events that was happening. And ultimately it real. They realized that there was more damage being done to the children and the evidence that was trying to be sorted out by having the women. So then we saw this, this painful point where they started to remove the women from the different stadiums and stuff like that, where they had tried really hard to keep them together originally. The integrity of being able to protect the children was more important.

Elissa Wall [01:57:08] It was this crazy experience for me because on one hand I'm watching history repeat itself and I'm caught in this place where I, I clearly understand where the people were coming from. And I can imagine what it must feel like for these women and children and what it must feel like for the people as a whole, because the difference between the 53 raid and the raid in Texas was in the 53 raid, the men stood up and they, they absolutely claimed their practice of polygamy. Where in the Texas raid, the men were nowhere to be seen when it was happening. The men went into the shadows.

Elissa Wall [01:57:51] They didn't come out and bid their families farewell. They didn't come out and claim these families. Because the difference was this wasn't about polygamy. And Texas authorities made that very, very clear. This was about child abuse and the concerns that they had for child abuse. And really, it was motivated by trying to find this woman who had originally initiated the crisis call.

Elissa Wall [01:58:14] Ultimately, they never found the particular woman. And there's a lot of question as to the validity of the original crisis call. But either way, whether people say that Texas should or shouldn't have been there, that was such an important thing because it uncovered the true disgusting, evil and horrible things that were happening. And that would have continued to happen had had it not been it not been stopped the way that it was. Because from that Texas raid, what happened for the people of the FLDS was really important in that it was seen as persecution. But what was more important is the evidence that was taken from the Texas compound and the firsthand recordings and evidence that Warren himself had had people capture of the crimes that he committed against children were essential.

Elissa Wall [01:59:15] And being able to convict him not only for his own crimes, but then also convict other men from the Texas compound that had also taken other underage brides.

John Dehlin [01:59:27] Basically, Warren was as in, like their equivalent of a celestial room with a bed in the equivalent of their celestial room of their temple, he was raping children with women around and recording it.

Elissa Wall [01:59:42] Yes. That's in essence what was happening. And if anyone takes time to hear these recordings, I don't care what walk of life you come from, It should concern anyone, because you hear a child's voice in these recordings as he's asking her to respond to him and his request.

Elissa Wall [02:00:07] And it is nauseating and disgusting. And even for me, in the. In the moment that the raid was happening, we didn't know these details when I was on that compound. And I'm sitting in this police car and I'm watching the women and children loaded onto these buses, and I'm in this own personal conflict of, oh, my goodness, I can't believe this is happening to the people that I love. And this has to happen because there's no way for us to. To get to the bottom of what's going on until we can sort this out and then to later actually go into the temple and to be a part of some of the first people that went into that Texas. That Texas temple.

John Dehlin [02:00:45] You went in.

Elissa Wall [02:00:46] I did. I went in. I was one of the first people that went in with Texas authorities. And to have that experience, it was the most disconcerting, almost out of body experience because I'm walking into this building that for my entire life and childhood I had been told would come at this very pivotal point of redeeming Zion.

Elissa Wall [02:01:08] And I had this, this feeling because Warren would talk about this, this, this practice of, of that would, that would happen in home economics or in different references, these practices that would be called upon women to perform in the temple of the ultimate act of submission.

Elissa Wall [02:01:28] And I wondered, it was never told and articulated exactly what that would look like by Warren himself. But there was a part of that point where I was there as a liaison between two worlds because I was xflds and I very clearly understood the background and the teachings and how we, it had all gotten to where it was. But I also understood where the Texas authorities were coming from. And to be this bridge between worlds and be trying to educate and help prevent unnecessary trauma to the people of the flds. I knew that something needed to be investigated further in that template.

Elissa Wall [02:02:04] And I remember telling the, the sheriff, Sheriff David, you really need to look for some of these things. Like I, I don't know exactly what's going to look like, but somewhere in there there is going to be an area where there, there may have been questionable things happening. And I can't tell you what those will look like. I can just tell you that you need to look for, for some of this. You also need to look for records. Somewhere in all of this there's going to be records that have been taken that, that may help in this process.

Elissa Wall [02:02:31] And ultimately they would end up finding those records in the, the basement of this temple. And the amount of effort and energy that went into breaking into the vault where all these records had been stored was crazy because they had built a fortress and they had, the people of the FLDS had built this fortress at the command of Warren Jeffs. But really what it was a fortress as of was his own terrible acts and crimes that he himself had committed and forced other people to commit. And really what came from all of the Texas raid and the evidence that came out was this really clear illustration that good people do terrible things, absolutely terrible things when they're disillusioned by belief because some of the men that were convicted in Texas later on and different things.

Elissa Wall [02:03:31] I remember looking back and remembering these individuals and trying to, to question how could they let that happen? How why did they do that? And it was the same thing. Good people do terrible things under the illusion and guise of religion.

John Dehlin [02:03:47] Yeah. There's a quote I heard once. Good people generally do good things. Bad people will generally do bad things. To get good people to do bad things, you need religion.

Elissa Wall [02:04:01] That is too. That is sadly, too true. And the. The experience of seeing the FLDS and what it became, because what it originally started. And we. In our first episode, we talked a lot about that, that it originally started with good people trying to do good things. Things and how that had been manipulated and perverted into where. Here we are in Texas on the compound, and some terrible things happened. And you hear the stories of people that lived on it. I sat with a woman yesterday, and she was telling me little bits of her experience of living on the Texas compound. And I had this moment of just realizing how important that time was, because you hear her story and you hear what they were going through, and it's absolute insanity.

Elissa Wall [02:04:52] The level of indoctrination and what the children on that compound, because she was one of those children that were called there, that had no parents there, but she was the children that were going to redeem Zion, and they were being upheld into this. But their lifestyle and what they were going through was absolutely terrible. The level of sleep deprivation that was happening to the children on this compound, the level of manipulation around their. Their food and their diet. What was right one day and what was wrong one day, there was this constant fluctuation of. Of where they're. The barometer of what they should and shouldn't be doing.

John Dehlin [02:05:29] But it was always the colors they could wear in their dresses.

Elissa Wall [02:05:32] The colors they could wear. One day it was this, and one day it was different. But really, if you look at what Warren was trying to do is he was creating a dynamic where nobody was their own person. Person. There was no. You didn't have your own thoughts. You didn't have your own likes. It was always about what you were told to do. You know, one day they could eat beans, and the next day beans were evil.

Elissa Wall [02:05:50] It was this bizarre series of events that were happening. But even for me, yesterday, being able to sit with this woman and hear her story, it reminded me of how important it was and how honored I was to have the ability to be a part of that process.

Elissa Wall [02:06:10] But then to now be where I'm at, where I can sit and hear these stories and just hold empathy and compassion and just. And feel what they. That process of what they're going through as they're trying to unwind themselves from all of it and figure out who they are today and to Watch that happen in action with the Texas raid. And to. Then even though I flew home and I wasn't nearly as involved in the trials that would.

John Dehlin [02:06:39] Would.

Elissa Wall [02:06:40] That would come. But I too was. Was a part of what. Of the. The group of all of the XFLes that were trying to help and support the. The Texas investigators and people to validate the claims and to validate a lot of the evidence volumes and terabytes after terabyte of evidence that Texas has gained through that. And quite honestly, people have only experienced the tip of the iceberg.

Guest 3 [02:07:11] Do you know if they ever found the little girl that was on the tape that you can hear her voice?

Elissa Wall [02:07:18] They did find that little girl. And I am not 100 sure what ultimately came from the girl. Marianne, one of the. The young girls that. Because she was ultimately taken into foster care for a period of time. But some of those young girls that were in some of those recordings and tapes, they were. They were never found. No one really knows what happened to them. And this is still some of the dark side of all of this, where we've made a lot of progress, but there's still a lot of the voiceless and the people that have been abused by Warren and his power that we haven't yet been able to reach.

Guest 3 [02:08:01] That's probably one of the most disturbing things I've ever heard in my life is the recording of the little girl in the temple. And she only says a few words, like, I think two words or something. Some very few. And the fear that you can, like, feel in your body by two words or however many. One, two to, I don't know, one, two, three words. Whatever she says in that recording, the fear that you can hear and feel from her is, like, heartbreaking.

Elissa Wall [02:08:42] Like, it.

Guest 3 [02:08:44] Like, I don't know, my whole being, like, reacted to it. And I just. I can't imagine what would have happened if he was allowed to go back to Texas.

Elissa Wall [02:08:59] I think we all wonder that. I mean, they're there. I'm so glad we don't know. We never have to question what would have happened.

Guest 3 [02:09:06] Yeah.

Elissa Wall [02:09:07] Because we know what would have been possible.

Guest 3 [02:09:08] Yeah.

Elissa Wall [02:09:09] And especially after we started to realize the depth of what Warren had already taken the people. And in the years since, as people have come forward and told their stories of what it was like to live in the Texas compound and how extreme it was getting, really, there was no level that Warren wouldn't have taken it. And it was always, you know, the end of the world was coming. And who knows, there. There may have been that Kool aid moment for the flds, and I'm so grateful that we were able to stop this train prior to that. Did we stop the abuse completely? No, there's still a lot of work that needs to be done because we're still seeing that Warren has a grip of control over still developing lead followers.

Elissa Wall [02:09:52] But you're absolutely correct in that we. We don't even want to imagine what would have happened had he not been caught, had it not been stopped in his tracks. And ultimately, it's. It's very well documented, but there was a couple, there was several men that were charged for what happened in Texas. But sadly, ultimately, the cases of the children were dismissed, and all of those children that they had removed and the concerns of. Of child abuse that were happening, it kind of went to nowhere.

Elissa Wall [02:10:28] And there was not a lot of traction that happened from that because it became such a PR nightmare. And it just became too much for Texas to really be able to focus that. They. They really just. It seemed like they just kind of focused on just the crimes that the men had committed, and that became the focal point instead of, what about all the children?

Elissa Wall [02:10:54] And there was a really difficult time frame where the children were sent back, and it was like, what are you doing? Why is this happening like this? Because there was this hope that all of these children might be saved from this. But then the decision to send them back back was so hard. And I can imagine for a lot of the caseworkers and the people that had been working with the children on this at this time was absolutely devastating because all of it became null and void very quickly. And that was where we got a chance to see where maybe the justice system didn't have it right that time.

Elissa Wall [02:11:31] And the decision of the judge to send those children back was difficult. And I'm sure there was a lot of reasons as to why, but it made it to where the progress was not had in being able to impact the children effectively.

Elissa Wall [02:11:46] But all of this happened, and the world watched as it unfolded. And it was right around the same time that my book was coming out. And so I got sucked into this. This. This whole narrative because my book was one of the first major books, not the first, but one of the first major books that. That came out that really started to highlight the history and the realities of the flds. And it was a very important time because we.

Elissa Wall [02:12:15] The world, was watching this unfold. And then to be able to have my book come out and for people to actually go and read the story and to be able to learn more Information was really fascinating and important timing with everything.

Elissa Wall [02:12:30] But for me, once again, I was immediately thrown into the spotlight where my story was very public and it was being referenced a lot because of everything that was. We were seeing unfold with Texas and what was being done. And even in the. In the time after, it was really important for different investigators. And I had an opportunity to talk to different people that were involved in some of the cases and investigations within the Texas saga, and just their appreciation for writing the book and for coming out and so publicly telling my story in the way that I did for me personally, even though there was so much that was happening that was really important to this, to creating change within the flds on a personal level, I was unwinding.

Elissa Wall [02:13:32] I was. I was coming undone. And I can look at it, and I can say this because this kind of brings us into the next chapter of my journey, because, you know, to this point, we've been able to. To show, you know, the. The rise and the fall of Warren and how my story and standing up led to his conviction and led to the world having a clearer idea of what was happening within the flds. And, you know, we're in the middle of the. The Texas raid and what's happening there, and to come to this. This place and all of it. It's about 2009, and I.

Elissa Wall [02:14:16] I hit a point where I couldn't disassociate anymore. My own struggles with PTSD and severe anxiety and depression were spiraling out of control for me. It was getting in. In the way of my relationship. It was making it very difficult for me to. To be a mother or what I thought was a good mother. But what I was doing is I was consistently re. Engaging with the story of trauma that was happening. And I was doing it because I was believing it was for the greater good. But it was one of those moments where we don't realize how that personal sacrifice comes at such great cost.

Elissa Wall [02:15:05] And ultimately, I started this journey, this personal journey, and it had nothing to do with the public. And it's not one that I've talked a lot about, because I think it's. It weaves in this story of mental health. And we still are in a society where it's very difficult to articulate struggles that we have around mental health, because even for me, as the woman I am today, so many people look at me as I'm telling my story, and even some of the listeners here, it may be really easy for people to look at it and say, wow, wow, she's got it all figured out. And even at the time, on a veneer level, I thought I did have it all figured out.

Elissa Wall [02:15:49] And what I had no idea of comprehending was that cost that I had paid all along to get me to this point, it came due and I started this intense personal journey of just collapse my marriage that I had it dissolved and my partner left.

Elissa Wall [02:16:15] And it was such a painful time for me because on one hand, the public saw this version of me and they saw me as this, this, this hero on, on one. On the other hand, in my own life, in my personal life, it was absolutely falling apart.

Elissa Wall [02:16:31] And there was nothing I could do to stop it because I couldn't stop panic attacks, I couldn't stop the nightmares. I couldn't. There was. I couldn't silence Elissa and all of the struggles that she had experienced to this date.

Elissa Wall [02:16:50] It became very, very hard because I could hardly function in the world around me. And I was still on this media tour where I was still promoting my book, and I was still being held up as an example, standing up and speaking your truth. But what the world didn't know is I was still trying to speak it for myself.

Elissa Wall [02:17:15] And this shattering started to happen and I had a nervous breakdown. And the realities of the fact that I no longer could ignore the journey of healing that was necessary for me to be able to, to heal from the realities of what I had been through at this time.

Elissa Wall [02:17:40] It started. And I look at my life now and I know we've articulated in great detail all the things that had happened to me and all the ways that it had been really important to the story of the flds and Boren and him being captured and, and being able to successfully convict him. And then even when in 2010, when his conviction was overturned, part of what led to choosing to not retry Warren was knowing that Texas now had all of this evidence, and I knew what some of that evidence was in Texas. And I knew that if we really were going to look out for what was the greatest, best thing that we could do at that time, it was to have him extradited to Texas.

Elissa Wall [02:18:31] And I ultimately made the decision that we weren't going to retry in Utah at that time and give Texas an opportunity to then try him for the crimes that he was being accused of in Texas. And that was a really important time for me because I.

Elissa Wall [02:18:50] I was going through my own personal journey with it, but still needing to pull myself enough together to make these. These decisions of how I was going to take those next steps and what that meant for me personally, what that meant for the people of the flds. And in the meantime, I still hadn't found my mother's. My mother and I still hadn't found my sisters.

Elissa Wall [02:19:12] And part of my reason, even for writing the book, was because I believed that somewhere, somehow, someone was going to run into my mother and my sisters.

John Dehlin [02:19:22] You mentioned to me in the break that you use pseudonyms for most of the people in the book. Do you want to talk about the decision regarding your mom and sisters?

Elissa Wall [02:19:32] Yes, I did. I chose to use a lot of pseudonyms in my book because I was trying to protect the people that I loved the most. Most of them were still in believers of the flds, but I still cared about them, and I didn't want to. I didn't want the. The whole entire world to look at them. And my decision to change their names in the book was, in essence, try and protect them. Except for my mother. I didn't choose to change her name, and I didn't choose to change the name of my two younger sisters because my reason for writing the book was the hope that somewhere, someone would come in contact with them and would be able to help me find them.

John Dehlin [02:20:14] Call it breadcrumbs.

Elissa Wall [02:20:15] Breadcrumbs, Absolutely. It was. It was me leaving breadcrumbs along the way to hopefully be able to ultimately save them or even to have contact with them, because even at this point, we didn't really know where they were. And even though I spent quite a bit of time trying to find them, private investigators and missing person reports, like, we had done all the work to try and to find them and to figure out where they were and if they were alive. But even at the point where I was, you know, the Texas raid was happening, I still didn't know where they were, and we still didn't know if they were even alive after.

Elissa Wall [02:21:00] After my collapse. And, you know, I look at it now, and I see this as one of the most important parts of my journey, because up to this point, I was like an evolved. And I was packed to the brim of a lot of crap. There was a lot of stuff that was inside of this. This vase that some of it was mine, some of it was trauma, some of it was. Was religious beliefs. A lot of it was weaved together with shame and guilt and layers and layers and layers of victim shaming that. That came from that journey and the process of having a nervous breakdown and in essence, losing your mind.

Elissa Wall [02:21:45] Because that. That was my experience was it was this absolute process of dissolving and, and losing myself in the trauma and the struggle of all of it and, and losing my relationship because the one, the one person who I believed saw me through all of it, even with all the trauma, even with all of the scars, had just, just left. And here I was alone in the world again.

Elissa Wall [02:22:15] And I didn't know how to function as a single mother in the world and what to do with it. And it was a very painful and difficult separation that happened between us. But ultimately it would set me on this journey of remaking myself from, from one piece at a time. And the process that happens when we go into this absolute shattering is that I didn't realize it until later was as I shattered and surrendered to this undoing that was happening to me, it forced me to face a lot of it. And I would start a nine year journey of what that really meant, what does it mean to, to heal ourselves from the inside out, to face what it.

Elissa Wall [02:23:09] The struggles to do, the intense internal work that it means so that you don't have that extreme anxiety that the flashbacks that may come up don't send you in a tailspin, or being able to look at yourself in the mirror and say, I'm a person. And you know, up to that point, even though I had stood up and I had claimed my story in a lot of ways, when I looked at myself in the mirror, it's sad to say that I still heard the voices of not enoughness, still heard the shame and the guilt that I was unworthy. And I didn't realize until this undoing that I was listening to them.

Elissa Wall [02:23:55] And I felt like a hypocrite in a lot of ways because I was talking to the world about worthiness and women and how listening to their stories was so important. But even for myself, I wasn't even listening to myself. And I was not holding my place in myself in a place of compassion.

Elissa Wall [02:24:16] And this is a part of the journey that I've really never told people because even until recently there's this idea that people like myself who come forward and we tell a story that we have to be this example of strength. And it's really easy for us to forget that true strength happens in little tiny moments. And sometimes those little tiny moments of strength happen when someone is at their very rock bottom. And I was in this place of absolutely the rock bottom them.

Elissa Wall [02:24:49] But I didn't know how to articulate that to the world or even show the world and a lot of the people that were really close to me the true level of what I was experiencing and going through. It was also really difficult for me to come to terms with the fact that I suffered from some mental health disorders and to really face what does it mean to have ptsd? What does it mean to have to go through trauma therapy and the process that is really messy and incredibly difficult.

Elissa Wall [02:25:25] And for me, the act of standing up against Warren Jeffs and standing up for the voiceless of the people of the FLDS was really important and it was absolutely necessary. But this journey that I was starting on, of standing up for myself and having to claim the shame, to claim it completely and say this happened and there was nothing that I could do anymore to disassociate myself from it. And all of my unhealthy coping mechanisms were falling apart and were starting to shatter.

Elissa Wall [02:26:07] It was very difficult for me to keep going. And I went through some very dark years of being incredibly suicidal and so depressed. Meanwhile, I'm still caught up in all of the stuff that's happening. Because even though Warren was convicted in 2008, it wouldn't be until 2016 that I was finally free of the last lawsuit that I was involved in. And so for eight years after Warren was convicted, I was still in. Involved in different court proceedings. You know, after my book came out, then there was a defamation lawsuit that was filed by Allen himself, claiming that all of this was false. And this process of having to fight that and constantly being in a position to where I had to defend my truth.

John Dehlin [02:27:03] Truth. Your ex husband sued you?

Elissa Wall [02:27:04] Yes.

John Dehlin [02:27:06] I was wondering if he was ever prosecuted.

Elissa Wall [02:27:08] He was ultimately, he was charged with rape. And that was a very interesting result of what came from that, because he ultimately pled out to that charge. And the charge was part of the plea agreement was the charge was brought down quite a bit in exchange for him pleading guilty. I think there was a lot of realization that he was seen as a victim of his environment. And there was. There was a question of whether it was really going to be successful in court. Not a lot of. There wasn't a ton of media attention around that time frame. And part of what ultimately came from that was in part of the plea agreement. That was also a time frame when Alan agreed to. He agreed to dismiss the defamation lawsuit that he had against me.

John Dehlin [02:28:02] So he. He pled after he had already initiated a defamation suit against you?

Elissa Wall [02:28:09] Yes. And so I was fighting that, you know, myself and my attorneys were fighting this defamation lawsuit that had been filed against me. And there was this onslaught of. From my. That I was experiencing as well as other people that had stood up in Warren's trial. This onslaught of repercussions that came from the flds. You know what? My one sister, she still had children that were part of the flds, and her ex husband was trying to take away her children. And it was this really painful process. But the price that everyone paid to see that through was mighty high in a lot of our personal lives.

Writing the Book and Reclaiming Her Story

Elissa Wall [02:28:54] For me particularly, there was this beautiful journey that started. And, you know, we may. We may decide to take a break here. I don't know, but it really was when my real journey of claiming and reclaiming myself happened.

Elissa Wall [02:29:13] I look at it like this, and when I wrote the book, one of the pivotal things is that the title of the book is Stolen in a Story Innocence. And for a long time, I didn't realize how difficult that was for me to.

Elissa Wall [02:29:27] To admit that something so precious to me is my innocence had been stolen from me. And what I didn't realize is that this dissolving that was happening, this crumbling in this. This crashing to the ground that was happening to me would be the beginning of. Of the real story for me. And that was what it means to reclaim my innocence.

Elissa Wall [02:29:53] And even though it was incredibly difficult in the years that would follow of being a single mother and trying to make my way in the world and being able to. To take on my own healing journey, because there was this. This point in all of it where I was in the midst of this very intense collapse, and I was so lost because so much of the.

Elissa Wall [02:30:20] My struggles were very, very much in my face. Like all of the things that people experience from ptsd, there was constant triggers that were throwing me into this. Into these flashbacks. And the nightmares were so intense, the. The panic attacks that were happening, and they would just kind of come out of nowhere like it was. It was the filter that I had been able to put up for so many years, for the years leading up to this was dissolving, and my ability to function was getting harder and harder.

Elissa Wall [02:30:55] There was this moment in all of it when I looked at my own children, and I realized not only was this about my sisters, but this was about my own children and the ability to show up in their lives and be their mother. And I knew that to do that, I then had to start on this journey of healing myself from the inside out. No matter how difficult or hard it was or still is at times, it was a very important process to go through. And I looked at it one day as I was at the library one time and going through this. This. This practice where If I was.

Elissa Wall [02:31:40] Was really struggling and I was in a triggered state doing something that would allow me to step outside of it. And part of it was, was taking myself and my kids to the library because then I could just dive into any topic that I wanted and. And not have to worry or think about what was going on for me personally. But I came in contact with this Japanese art form, and it's this.

Guest 3 [02:32:02] This.

Elissa Wall [02:32:03] I think it's pronounced Kinsun chi art, where they take broken vases or plates or bowls and they're put together with veins of gold. And seeing this art form and how beautiful it was, because they. In this book, they would show what it was before, and then they would show what it looked like after it was put back together, and it was so incredibly beautiful. And that kind of become. That became my own example of what I was going through, is I was going through my own process of becoming this art form.

Elissa Wall [02:32:42] And I look at it now and I'm like, okay, what was the veins of gold that were allowing me to stitch myself back together? And in this also was this magnificent process of. I got to choose the pieces of myself that I picked back up because it was all on the ground and it was. It was messy and it was painful.

Elissa Wall [02:33:05] But through that process and the years that have followed, as I've picked up one piece at a time, it's allowed me to actually leave on the ground the pieces that no longer serve me. The bullshit and the dogma and the shame, and to face it, to name it, to speak it, and choose to leave it has been a very profound part of my journey. And it's. It's a piece of it. Because I think it's really easy for people to. When we're hearing stories of great acts of courage, of speaking our truth, but then talking about terrible things, it's often talked to in a post tense experience.

Elissa Wall [02:33:47] And, you know, I went through hard things and. And this is what I did to. To get out of these hard things. But really where I find myself now is, yes, we went through really hard things, and I'm still in this process of creating my own beautiful art form, which is who I am today.

Elissa Wall [02:34:10] Do you guys have questions? I just realized I'm continuing to jabber on. I don't know what time it is. I don't know where we are in this process.

John Dehlin [02:34:18] So you want to take a break or.

Elissa Wall [02:34:19] No, I was just kind of asking where. Where. Where we want to be with all of it.

John Dehlin [02:34:25] I mean, yeah, I have some questions.

Elissa Wall [02:34:27] Go for it. Let's Ask some questions in this process. Let's enter a Q and a point in all of this, then we can, then we can pick it up from there.

John Dehlin [02:34:40] These, some of these are just curiosity questions. I'm curious, when witness protection ended for you, how long were you under witness protection?

Elissa Wall [02:34:48] It really, it was kind of a gradual process of re engaging, but really it was kind of my decision because after Warren was convicted and sentenced then I no longer was willing to not talk to my family. And even though there was concern about whether it was time or not, I just wanted to be able to, to see my family. But really what but clinched the ending of it was choosing to write the book and come out publicly because there was no purpose really for witness protection at that point in time, because I was, I was claiming it. And part of that strategy in my mind was, you know, well, if it's so publicly out there, the likelihood of, of something happening to me is less.

Elissa Wall [02:35:33] Right. And luckily for me, I still had, I still had a really good group of people that were still looking out for our best interest. You know, I had some, I had Roger Hole and a team of really great attorneys who were looking out for the interest. Because even after witness protection kind of ended, I still was involved in a lot of court related stuff. And so it was really important to also keep my life separate. You know, my name had been changed in that process. And so I was kind of gifted this reality of having two different identities and that partially led to this collapse because as I was kind of referencing, you know, in this process, then there was one half of me, there was Elissa, who, she carried all the trauma, she carried all the struggle and she carried all the pain.

Elissa Wall [02:36:24] And then this new person, they were free of all of this. And part of my collapse was as I was keeping these two so separate. And when they came in contact with each other, then there was this really incredible, difficult time of it. And I remember this pivotal moment in my healing journey where I'm speaking to a therapist and I'm talking about the voices in my head and the struggles that are going on and this conversation that's going on in my head with all of these different things and how to make sense of everything. And she's like, like brought it all into, into a point of peace for me.

Elissa Wall [02:37:07] And I've actually never spoken this, but she's, she stopped me and all of it as I'm, I'm having this, like, am I going crazy? What's happening to me? And she's like, of course you have multiple personalities of course you do.

Elissa Wall [02:37:21] No one person can carry all of this, but it's okay because they're all friends and they're all working together. And it was really important to me in this journey of my mental health to realize that for whatever process that was happening, for me, it was okay and to just keep on going through it.

Elissa Wall [02:37:41] So your original question. When did witness protection happen? I think there's always been elements of it, but being in hiding ended right around the time I wrote my book.

John Dehlin [02:37:52] So total years in witness protection?

Elissa Wall [02:37:54] About two and a half years.

John Dehlin [02:37:56] Okay. And they. They cover your expenses during that whole time?

Elissa Wall [02:38:00] Not completely, because it was a very unique combination of different agencies. It wasn't the traditional. You go into witness protection, the federal government takes over from there. It was kind of unique because there was a lot of different people involved in it. So, no, the. The government did not cover the expenses during that time frame.

John Dehlin [02:38:19] Did anything come of the civil suits? Were you ever able to reclaim damages or compensation from the trust?

Elissa Wall [02:38:27] Yes, actually, that. That's. As we continue on this journey of the. The different lawsuits. The one lawsuit that I had filed, the civil case that I had filed against Warren Jeffs in the church and the uep, it continued on. And it was quite a long saga of years of going back and forth in the court. There was at one point when the UEP was trying to get the case dissolved, because part of what had happened within the UEP is there had been this pivotal point where my case, along with a lot of the Lost Boys cases and different things like that, had been used as an example to the court as to why the trust should be taken over.

Elissa Wall [02:39:14] And ultimately, that was decision. It was removed from the control of Warren and it was put under the control of the state. But it was being managed by a third party, this man, Bruce Weissen. He would end up managing the UEP trust for several years. And he was not affiliated with the flds. In the years of him managing it, whether people look at it and say what he did was right or was wrong, it still. Still created a lot of struggle for the people inside of the FLDS community as well as the people who were leaving. But it was really essential, because to have that financial arm of Short Creek no longer under the control of Warren or the leadership of the FLDS was really an important stepping stone in where we see the Short Creek at now, because it was no longer a tool that could be used to kick people out.

Elissa Wall [02:40:10] A lot of the damage had already been done to this point. But to have the court Taking over and trying to create some sort of a change was really important. So for a period of time where we were pursuing the civil case, it was fascinating because I was.

Elissa Wall [02:40:28] The state had taken over the uep, but my civil case had already been in process. And so there was a long journey of basically fighting the state itself and trying to prove my claim of damages to the UEP.

Elissa Wall [02:40:46] Ultimately, in 2016, I was able to bring resolution to this and huge landmark moment for myself. We were able to come to a settlement and the settlement agreement was publicly announced and it was shown to everyone. I can't remember exactly the numbers, but. But ultimately what came from that settlement agreement was it opened the door for me to return home because one of the things that I settled for was property in the Short Creek area. For me, my driving force was I was ready for this to be over and whatever it took for me to, to finish this case out and to do it right.

Elissa Wall [02:41:23] Because so many people were, were just like, you know, why don't you just dismiss this case? But even in my civil lawsuit, that case was brought all the way up to the Supreme Court and a different result happened in that it radically changed civil cases in their ability to claim damages.

Elissa Wall [02:41:48] There's a pretty in depth. Decision that was handed down from the Supreme Court because at the time what was happening was they were trying to dismiss the case based, based on my claims and they had all their reasons for it. But what it did is it reinforced, at least in the civil court, that people can be held accountable for damages for things that are done even in the name of religion.

Elissa Wall [02:42:17] And you know, on my wall in my office then I have this plaque that has that, that decision that was handed down by the court because we're still just beginning to realize how important even that decision was to the civil world and how people complain damages in, in similar circumstances. And so I look at it as a very important step in creating a broader greater good from everything that came from that. But it also came a great cost in 2016. Then, you know, I'd been on this intense journey of, of healing and trying to bring pieces of myself back together. Meanwhile, I had been a single mother and I had been, you know, doing every kind of serving to salesman, to seamstress, to all different kinds of things.

Elissa Wall [02:43:10] I had been doing anything that I could to just survive in the world. And it was really difficult because on one hand people would look at me and they'd say, okay, you're a New York best time selling author. But I was struggling to put food on the table for my children.

John Dehlin [02:43:26] So national media attention, be on Oprah, being on Good Morning America, even having a New York Times best selling book does not translate into financial security.

Elissa Wall [02:43:35] Oh, absolutely not.

John Dehlin [02:43:37] Only the opposite.

Elissa Wall [02:43:38] Definitely the opposite. Well, and the little bit of finances that did come from writing the book, yes, all those things were really important. But part of it is too, is I hadn't created scaffolding in my own life of success, of financial awareness or success in general. And looking at my life and everything that unfolded, even though I was outside of the flds, there was so much of that that I still needed to figure out. And that process of trying to figure that out was really difficult because you make more mistakes than you have victories in all of it.

Elissa Wall [02:44:15] And, you know, by the time 2016 comes along, I had been divorced and single for a really long time. And one of the things that had happened during that time of those years is I'd really closed off to, to love, really. I had.

Elissa Wall [02:44:38] I was still working through some very intense issues that I had with my body. And I didn't, I didn't realize how the next season of my life would really turn into this, this, this. This journey of claiming who I was as, as Elissa, this beautifully imperfect, bruised and scarred individual.

Elissa Wall [02:45:02] Because even though I had spent so much of my. My time on the outside of the world standing up and, and speaking my truth and speaking my voice, it was not always for me. It was for other people. And it was motivated by people outside of myself. Instead of being able to motivate myself to speak it for me, me, I still had to work through my own journey of learning how to value myself, learning how to create worth within myself and, and learning how to be resilient to the layers and layers and layers of programming that had been instilled in me from a small child of what it meant to be a woman and the roles and responsibilities of a woman, and what it means to be successful in life and, and what it means to have spirituality and all of these things.

Elissa Wall [02:45:53] I had to take it piece by piece, topic by topic, and rebuild myself one piece at a time. And I choose to speak this today and to talk about this part of my journey because I think one of the things I've ran into is it's really easy for people that have read my book or recently seen the Netflix documentary to look at me and kind of put me on this pedestal of, wow, look what she has done. She's so amazing. And I'm trying to bring people back down to realize that I'M very, very human.

Elissa Wall [02:46:28] And even for me now I'm, I'm going through this, this new season of a spiritual revolution where I'm in this journey for myself of, of now coming forward and claiming the next part of my story, which is really an illustration of how do we reconcile things that happen to us because so much of my story was all of these things that had happened to me and learning to get through them and what it meant to escape and then also stand up and be a part of taking down Warren Jeffs. But no one wants to talk about that messy process of healing feeling there's not really space for what that looks like.

Elissa Wall [02:47:14] And I'm here to start a new conversation that says there is space for that process. There is space for what it means to become resilient and how ugly that can look from a day to day process and how there's moments where you do, you find yourself on the floor in fetal position, soft sobbing, and you find yourself waking up from the grips of a nightmare and you find yourself deep in depression. It doesn't change the fact that with every one of those experiences that I'm recently having in the last couple of months, it doesn't change how far I've come.

Elissa Wall [02:47:56] It doesn't. It doesn't change that I'm light years ahead of where I was as that 14 year old girl, girl, and the amount of growth that I've been able to see in myself, but also the amount of being able to be a voice of women, to be an example of what it means to stand up and own our truth, own our insecurities, be vulnerable to the experience of it, how profoundly important that is to the larger story of the human experience.

Elissa Wall [02:48:35] Because even though I'm talking about, and we're talking about it from this context of the similarities in Mormonism, there's so much about my story that is similar to so many people from around the globe. And I can't tell you how often I get a message from someone that says I didn't grow up exactly the way you did. But I want you to know I get you.

John Dehlin [02:48:56] You.

Elissa Wall [02:48:58] I've had something similar and thank you for being brave and courageous and there's times where I just feel so humbled because I get to have this experience of being on this end of it. And I tell people all the time that, you know, be careful of people that we look at as heroes because I, I did set out to, in a way, be a hero for my community and champion change.

Elissa Wall [02:49:32] What I really learned from this journey is what it means to be your own hero. To find myself as a 36 year old woman still in that process of being my own hero and what it means to save myself, to stand up for myself, not just vocally, but to stand up for myself in, to claim my healing journey and to know that I am better and bigger than these, these, these things that have happened to me and to find these threads of gratitude in the process of it and to realize that ultimately there is this, this silver lining in all of it. You know, after I had a chance to write the book and, and I was public speaking and I was at this one particular event that, that little breadcrumb that I had left along the way that said, you know, maybe someday someone's going to help us find my, my sisters and my mother is at this event.

Elissa Wall [02:50:31] And I had finished speaking and I was signing books and this, this woman is, is there and she's kind of off to the side. And she waited throughout the whole, the whole event and just sat there and I remember noticing her and wondering, you know, obviously she wants to talk to me and that's okay. But in talking with her, she told me, I think I know your mom and sisters.

Elissa Wall [02:50:57] And I had this moment of oh my goodness and this incredible woman who was so brave to step forward and, and bring that correlation and for me to have that moment where once again we were successful. She helped me to arrange, ultimately there's this meeting with my mother and sisters and they're still very much in the FLDS at this point. And it was very, it was a very difficult meeting because it was a surprise event. They had no idea we were coming. We happened to meet them in the waiting room of a doctor's office, office in the St. George area. And it was, hearing about it from their perspective, it was very traumatic because they were concerned that I was going to come in and that we were just going to take them away.

Elissa Wall [02:51:50] And what we didn't realize is that the amount of. I shouldn't have been surprised, but to realize the amount of lies and misinformation that the people of the FLDS that were still believers during the time of, of Warren's trial and, and being convicted after they were told so many things about myself and my sisters that were untrue, you know, what was motivating us to do what we were doing. But more so they were put in a position to where they were seen as evil because their family was, was doing all of these terrible things to the church and the relationship.

Elissa Wall [02:52:33] And so it had ingrained my mother and my two younger sisters in this belief they had. And this is years later, you know, when I had left the flds. And the last time that I saw my sisters, they were young, young children, and this surprise meeting with them, they were women at this point. But to find out that we had been successful, that they hadn't been married, and to have this moment that even though when I walked into this.

Elissa Wall [02:53:03] When I walked into this meeting, I had this. This idea and I had this vision that I was going to walk out and I was going to take them with me and I was going to save them, that didn't happen. Well, what did happen that day was we established contact and we were able to leave them with a phone number. And that was really important because as the years would go on, I did get the experience of being able to go and pick up my sister because she was ready to leave. And I did finally get the experience of being able to tenderly and compassionately walk with her and lead her through this process of leaving the flds.

Elissa Wall [02:53:41] And like so many other people that I had helped along the way and brought into my home as they made that important decision to leave, leave the FLDS and start their journey of adapting into the world, I got to do that with my sisters. And there was this point where all of it was worth it, because I really had. Not only had I had the opportunity to help the 10 people that I had originally hoped to set out to help, I had been able to now have this experience of having my sisters back.

Elissa Wall [02:54:13] My sister, and then a few years later, my other younger sister would follow suit and would make the choice to leave. Leave and to where we are today, where, you know, there. There are women who are free of it. One sister has two beautiful children, and the other is in the middle of real estate school. And so they're. They're taking their own lives on, and they've created a life that is free of the flds. Has it been a difficult process? Absolutely. Are we still in this. This journey of. Of helping each other detangle the events that have happened to us throughout our lives? But the one valuable thing is we're together and we. When we get the opportunity to do this.

John Dehlin [02:55:00] Wow. So you're. You know, I think a lot of people, a lot of listeners are going to relate because within traditional Mormonism, people have faith crises and even leave, but there's still family members that get left behind. And I think there's a mixed message. Some are never going to leave, but if you're Loving and patient and stay connected. Some might, yes. And you, You. You may be able to help some reclaim their life.

Elissa Wall [02:55:28] Definitely.

John Dehlin [02:55:29] So you're giving people hope that there might be hope for some of their family members.

Elissa Wall [02:55:34] I really do hope that that's what it brings, is it establishes more hope and conviction that as every person goes to their own crisis of faith and ultimately may choose to leave whatever religion that they may be a part of, there's also this important part that the healthier we become as individuals, the more we can actually help the people. Because even for me, in all those years that I was a champion for other women and I wasn't doing the internal work for myself, I was.

Elissa Wall [02:56:09] I was only partially being able to do that because I couldn't do for other people what I hadn't done for myself. And I looked at that journey because even within my own group of people that I was close to that were also xflds, you would see all of these dynamics where there was trauma bonding and this process of people coming together with shared experiences, but learning how to help each other rise up through those experiences into.

Elissa Wall [02:56:39] Into a season of how do we heal from it? How do we start over? How do we help each other out? And ultimately this led to this decision that I had in 2016 when I realized, okay, enough is enough. Like, we've been niching away at this one person at a time, trying to help people leave, one person at a time. We've done everything we can possibly do to. To criminally go after it, to civilly go after it. It. What do we. What needs to happen? And I realized that we needed. It had to be done from the inside out. And I made the decision to move back to Short Creek.

John Dehlin [02:57:16] Yeah, that was going to be. One of my questions is, of all the places in the world to move, why, number one, why would you go to Short Creek? And two, how could you ever be safe there?

Returning to Short Creek and Finding Community

Elissa Wall [02:57:26] Physically, there was definitely all the psychologically

John Dehlin [02:57:30] and physically, like I had to for the. The place I was excommunicated, I had to. Within two years, we had to move. Like, psychologically, there was no physical threat, but you've got the psychological residue and the fear of physical harm.

Elissa Wall [02:57:47] Definitely. Well, and there's this coping mechanism that is talked about in mental health where constantly putting ourselves in a state of chaos is a way that we disassociate from the things that happened. And I can definitely see how in different threads of it, it. I was, in a way, putting myself in a state of a little bit of chaos and that was one more mechanism that I was using to try and make sense of everything that had happened and, and to find my way through it. But really, in an essence for me, I look at the reasons that led up to why I was choosing to move back. And I remember all the way to, you know, what it felt like to sell my house here. Because before I moved back Short Creek, I had established a residence in Salt Lake and I had settled down in the Salt Lake area and I was just.

John Dehlin [02:58:38] Were the settlements like enough to never have to work again kind of thing?

Elissa Wall [02:58:41] No. No, definitely not.

John Dehlin [02:58:42] Okay.

Elissa Wall [02:58:43] No, not at all. Most of the settlement was simply land and property.

John Dehlin [02:58:48] Okay.

Elissa Wall [02:58:49] And that was part of the draw, was I needed to go and figure out what to do with it. But really, in an essence, to move back, back to Short Creek. Subconsciously. There was this voice in my head that, that knew there was still things that I needed to face. I had to face my own demons with it.

Elissa Wall [02:59:10] And there was also this really tenacious part of me that said, you know what? We are bigger than Warren Jeffs. All of us are. We. This is so much more than Warren and what he did to all of these people. And it started this, this journey for me of what does it look like to reclaim my community and to move back. I was reclaiming my own place in the community.

Elissa Wall [02:59:38] I was also reclaiming my story of my relationship with Short Creek. And at first, when I moved, very first moved back, it was so hard. That moment where I had all my belongings and I was. It was all packed in this moving truck and it was just me and my kids and I'm sitting next to them in this one seat and this, this one seat moving truck. And every physical possession that I have is with us. And I'm driving up to Short Creek and I have to pull off the side of the road because I'm having a panic attack. And I'm questioning everything up to my.

Elissa Wall [03:00:15] Up to this point. I'm like, what am I doing? Why am I doing this? What. What am I doing to myself? What am I doing to my kids? But this is that that spirit in all of us that connects us to something greater than ourselves really comes into to play. Because there was something pulling me forward and I couldn't describe it, I couldn't articulate it. But that knowing inside of me that I had heard clear back when I was a 14 year old girl, that at that time I didn't have the tools to listen to, that same knowing was activated within myself that I knew that this is where I was supposed to be, no matter how hard it was, no matter how ridiculous and illogical it seemed, because, trust me, there was a lot of people that was like, you're doing what?

Elissa Wall [03:01:07] Why? Why are you doing that? And of course, I would go on my. My stories, as you know, I'm doing it for this reason. I'm doing that for this reason. But really, in essence, what it was is I was following my heart.

Elissa Wall [03:01:17] And even though I didn't understand my heart very well, what would come from that act of moving back would be a very important piece of me being able to continue to heal myself, but be a part of where we are now, and that is to establish these years of healing the community of Short Creek.

Elissa Wall [03:01:37] When I came back in 2016, there was still quite a few people that were a part of the flds, that were still fervent believers of Warren Jeffs, that were living in the community. Community. There was also a lot of people who were starting to return home just like I was. They were moving back into Short Creek with the intentions to try and rebuild their families and rebuild their lives.

Elissa Wall [03:01:58] And that first Christmas, moving back to Hildale, I remember I had just recently moved into this house, and there was no heat in the house yet. And I sat there and I was with my kids and I was questioning what I was doing.

Elissa Wall [03:02:23] But I remember looking out at these mountains, and for the first time I saw the mountains instead of what had happened to me under the shadow of those mountains. Because so much of the trauma and the experiences that I had had had happened. And if you've ever been to the Short Creek area, there's these. There's these beautiful. It's. It's surrounded by this. This landscape that's just breathtaking.

Elissa Wall [03:02:53] And for the first time, I was able to have this experience of separating my environment from what had happened to me in that environment. And that was a really important tool because it helped me to start to realize and to ultimately fall absolutely in love with the environment of Shore Creek. And even though it was so difficult to move back and even though there was. There was a lot of social issues that came from it by keeping my head held high and my shoulders back and just showing up. And that's. That's really what this lesson for me was, is to keep showing up to the table.

Elissa Wall [03:03:29] Because, yes, it would have been easier to disappear into the. Into the shadows and to, you know, I did my. I did my best. I am going to go start my life over. But the value that has happened in my life from Being able to come back and confront it once again. Not just confront Warren, not just confront the flds, but to confront my own demons, to confront my own ideas of what I. My versions of the stories and, and to go all the way back to the epicenter of where it all had kind of started for myself self and to re create my relationship with it.

Elissa Wall [03:04:09] Because really that's what it was been about is recreating my relationship with my story, with my journey. No matter how perfect and imperfect it's been to create and reclaim my relationship with my myself, with my body, with my. My self image, with my worth, with my enoughness.

Elissa Wall [03:04:30] All of these pieces really came into physical form for me in this, this act of moving back into Short Creek. But I also had great intentions why moving back. I knew that if we were going to change it completely and fully, we had to change Short Creek. It couldn't just be left to figure itself out. And so there was this process of, you know, coming into the town and starting with. With it was right on the hills of the doj. The DOJ had recently successfully had an injunction on both of the cities for the. The way and the discrimination that the cities had been having towards their citizens.

Elissa Wall [03:05:17] It also led to an investigation and, and ultimately a lot of changes happened within the police force of the Short Creek area because of what they had done under the oath of being police officers. But really in an essence, they had just been a conduit of the will of the church itself. So there was a lot of things that were shifting and changing all at the same time. And to be able to come in at that very important time and to be a part of a force that changed the dynamic. In the following year after I moved back, we had our very first actual election.

Elissa Wall [03:05:59] Even though throughout the history of the towns there had been these elections that would happen for the cities. Everyone knew everyone showed up and voted for whoever they were told to vote for. And nobody ever ran an actual election in the cities. But to be a part of that process of changing it from the inside out. And ultimately in Hilda they had. They voted in. The citizens of the town voted in two female representatives, one of them the mayor and one of them the city council. And that was huge progress because you had women that were stepping into positions of influence and being respected and seen as people that could help promote change.

Elissa Wall [03:06:46] And so one piece at a time and it's kind of been articulated in different ways, different things. There was an in depth podcast that was done by a group. They came in at that Time, and they showed the resilience of the community. But for me, as someone who lives there now and has had the great gift of being able to watch it all unfold, being able to talk about it now and where I'm at in my next journey and something that we kind of talked about before, of what am I working on now? Now it's really being able to start. Start to tell the stories of what does the resilience within the community at the Short Creek look like?

Elissa Wall [03:07:27] Because even with the Netflix documentary coming out, a large portion of the story has not been told. And that is the. Then what? Even after Warren was convicted, there's a whole lot of things that have happened, and we get to now tell those stories and, and how they weave into the larger narrative of society as a whole. Is that a lot of noise going on?

John Dehlin [03:07:56] No, it's fine.

Elissa Wall [03:07:57] Oh.

John Dehlin [03:08:00] So, I mean, have you studied Joseph Campbell and the Hero's Journey?

Elissa Wall [03:08:05] I have not very well.

John Dehlin [03:08:07] So I just have to comment one thing. So there's this famous writer, scholar, academic named Joseph Campbell who studied, who studied myths and traditions of cultures all across the world. And he wrote a book called, I think, the Hero with a Thousand Faces. But he came up with kind of a concept called the. The Hero's Journey. And basically from all the myths that he studied in all these different civilizations, he came up with kind of a series of steps that are common to all these myths across all traditions. He calls it the Hero's Journey. Star wars was based on Joseph Campbell's work of the Hero's Journey.

John Dehlin [03:08:58] Luke Skywalker kind of represents the main hero or the main figure, but, you know, whether it's like Noah, like Jonah the Whale, you, you, you receive the call, you refuse the call, but then you eventually accept the call, and then you have to go fight. You have to go fight the demon.

John Dehlin [03:09:19] And, and there's more steps to that. But guess what? Guess what one of the final steps in the Hero's Journey is. Can you guess what are the final steps? I, I, I'm sure returning home.

Elissa Wall [03:09:32] Returning home. I, yeah, I didn't know this, but yes, that is, that is one of the final steps of the journey is returning home. And what do you do because you

John Dehlin [03:09:45] share with your community what you learned on your journey.

Elissa Wall [03:09:48] Yes. And that's where we find ourselves, is that process of sharing and being able to talk about that now of the incredible resilience of the people of the FLDS and the stories and the years that have followed since Warren was convicted. As we see families that have moved home, returned home and started to stitch their lives back together. Families that are starting to come back together, and the town radically changing. You know, for the first time, people own their homes.

Elissa Wall [03:10:23] And it was a part of a community that for so many years, nobody owned their homes. It was all owned by one trust that was managed and controlled by the church. And so, piece by piece, brick by brick, we've been able to build this incredible, resilient and beautiful community of Short Creek now. And, of course, there's so much work to be done still. We look around, and it's really easy to sometimes forget everything that is working and to only focus on a lot of what is not working within it. And there's all kinds of unique aspects. But, you know, where Short Creek is now is it's a beautiful place to visit. There's multiple Airbnbs and getaways in the area.

John Dehlin [03:11:10] So there's a vineyard, there's a.

Elissa Wall [03:11:12] There's a winery and a vineyard. A vineyard and a winery. My really good friend, I don't know the difference.

John Dehlin [03:11:18] Well, no, it's okay.

Elissa Wall [03:11:19] I'm just explaining the difference. It's a small, tiny vineyard, but this. This incredible win. It's, you know, Water Can Water Canyon Winery. They make the most incredible wine. There's a brewery in the middle of town. And this microbrewie brewery is not only the. The town's watering hole, but it's a place where people come together and they sing karaoke or they share a beer together.

Guest 3 [03:11:43] John, she just said your favorite word.

Elissa Wall [03:11:45] Oh, you sing karaoke. Oh, you got a little bit. That's awesome. Well, we have a future date coming down Short Crake and singing some karaoke at the brewery.

John Dehlin [03:11:58] All right, so here's the deal. We talked about this. So this is the dream. Here's the dream. Maybe it'll happen. Maybe Jen will make it happen. Maybe not, but retreat. So, like Mormon stories listeners, retreat, getaway. I've never been to Short Creek. I mean, I've driven through it once just recently, but I've never stopped, never seen any of it. Mormon stories. Retreat to Shore Creek. Stay there two or three days, you're there, show us around. We karaoke together. We visit a lot of the sites. We find a way to compensate you for. For being our guide. And we get all sorts of education and inspiration from a really cool weekend together. I mean, it may not happen, but. But you can put that out there, right?

Elissa Wall [03:12:48] I absolutely like it, and I would love to put it out there because it's kind of where I'M at now is like I'm continuing, continuing my work of advocacy of not just the abused, but also advocacy for what does resilience look like? How does it show up in a community? And how can we as a larger society, how can we continue to have more of it? And so I would love to invite people into the Short Creek area to come and see it for their themselves, because so much of what we hear around Short Creek and the FLDS is, is very much in the past.

Elissa Wall [03:13:23] You know, even though a lot of it is still happening, and this is the complex aspect of it is there are still fervent believers of the FLDS who adamantly believe in Warren Jess. And part of what we see happening now is, is Warren's son is starting to take over that position of leadership and power.

Elissa Wall [03:13:44] And it's very concerning because for the people that are still entrapped in the flds, even though they may not live in the Short Creek area, we. There's still a lot of people that have family members that are still caught in it. And we're, we're hearing all of these things that are happening. And so on one hand, it's still very relevant to continue to talk about Warren and to continue to talk about the terror of what happened in the flds because. Because it's still very possible the next generation of trauma could very easily be happening right now. But on the other hand, we see great resilience and we see a lot of heroes returning home and recreating the town from the ground up.

Elissa Wall [03:14:25] New businesses coming into the town, tourism happening. You know, never before in the last, until the last six or seven years, years have people been able to come into the town and visit. But there's this, this rich movement happening inside of the community where it's very welcoming. You know, I myself, I'm a host, an Airbnb host for people coming in and the experience. And most people that come in don't know who I am, but the experience of being able to invite strangers in and say, look at this beautiful place, and to realize Short Creek is not, not Warren Jess.

Elissa Wall [03:15:02] Short Creek is a lot of really incredible people who are rebuilding their lives and doing the very best they can to come together. And recently in this last July, July 4, it marked seven years that the community has come back together post Warren Jeffs and celebrated the Fourth of July. And I remember the very first, the very first celebration that the community came together. It was just a few stragglers of people that had returned home and they decided they wanted to put on this celebration. And this was a really important thing because for the Short Creek community, we hadn't had celebrations in a long time.

Elissa Wall [03:15:48] And there was this. This ominous feeling even still of just repressed joy and community that we weren't sure exactly how to combat. And there was some incredible individuals that stepped forward and were brave enough to say, hey, let's. Let's do a celebration. Let's do a party. And that was so important because what it started was this. This very important symbol of coming back together. And to then be a part of organizing it this year because I got a chance to. To be the parade director. For it to. To have things come full circle has been absolutely incredible. And to get to.

Elissa Wall [03:16:33] To be the director, the parade director and organize this, this experience and be a part of organizing this fourth of July celebration and to realize that in. In the early days of everyone coming together, it was a few hundred people. And this time, you know, 8, 000 people came together.

Elissa Wall [03:16:53] Walks of the world of reunion. And for a lot of people, of course, there was a lot of people that were there that are not. Were not affiliated with the history of the flds. But that's part of the change that we see happening inside of Short Creek is people have moved in that have no affiliation with it. And when you talk to a lot of people that come into the Short Creek area, you know, they're asked, what. What was your experience of it? And more times than not, what I hear is people say, you know, they're some of the kindest, most welcoming people they've ever met.

Elissa Wall [03:17:25] And so I do, I invite the world to look at Short Creek from a different lens and to realize that there's more to the story than even what Netflix was able to show or what my first book was illustrating. And, you know, brings me to where I'm at today, where I get to take my storytelling to the next level and start to find unique ways to show this next story to the world of where Short Creek is and what's happened post Warren Jeffs and what we still need to look out for and the lives that are still being damaged by Warren Jeffs and the FLDS belief systems and the work that is still needing to happen.

Elissa Wall [03:18:09] There's still organizations such as holding out help and cherish families that are consistently working on a daily basis to help people leave fundamentalist religious backgrounds, but then also start to rebuild their lives. I'm often asked when I'm talking about this, you know, people are like, well, how can we help? And for a Lot of where we are now. We're not physically removing mothers and children from the FLDS background as much as we were in the early days of, of trying to help people.

Elissa Wall [03:18:42] But what I tell people is go to these organizations because the work that they're doing to help the people that are rebuilding their lives is irreplaceable. And so if any of the listeners are asking, you know, what can I do to help, how can I be involved? This is, you know, powerful story. This is very interesting. Go to holdingout help.org and cherishfamilies.org and contribute to one what they're, they're doing because it's, it's vital and it's absolutely important to the people. And I, I hear all the time of the ways that they impact the people that are leaving the flds as well as people that are still inside of the flds.

John Dehlin [03:19:24] Yeah.

Elissa Wall [03:19:25] Because many people still believe, sadly, yes,

John Dehlin [03:19:28] even though Warren is like canceled marriages, he's canceled sex for all his followers, there's still thousands of people that even though he's in prison, won't be coming out. There's still thousands of people that are still following him. Definitely is that resilient.

Elissa Wall [03:19:46] And we've, we've talked about this toxic resilience and it, I still have all these, of these examples of being a little shocked at how resilient it really is.

John Dehlin [03:19:56] Your mom's still in it.

Elissa Wall [03:19:57] My mother is still in it. You know, I. Recently, a couple years ago, I, we sadly buried one of my, my brothers, an incredible individual who had taken his life. And you know, he was one of those young teenagers who was being sent to work camp. And in that process of being taken there, he decided to jump out of a window and run away way and start his life in the outside world. So he had his own journey of, of leaving the FLDS and starting and, and really this incredible journey. But he was an individual who loved to take things to the extreme. And he was an incredible. Extreme sportsman. And he did everything from snowboarding to four wheelers to ultimately his great dream was he was a wingsuiter. And a couple years ago he was in Switzerland and doing incredible wingsuit work. I know he was.

John Dehlin [03:21:09] That's where you jump out of a plane or off a mountain. Yes, you look, you look like a flying squirrel and you're flying through the

Elissa Wall [03:21:15] air and he was doing this very, very intense is called proximity flying, where they're flying very close to the ground. But somewhere in that process, he had an accident and it took his life. It was really hard. And it was so tragic because this was my second brother that we had buried of my mother's children.

Elissa Wall [03:21:41] And the first time when we had buried her son, she didn't. And she wasn't involved in any of the funeral or never really reached out to any of the kids during that process. And it was so difficult to. Anyone that's buried a sibling, especially unexpectedly, you know, it's. It's. It's a tough thing. And anyone that's lost someone unexpectedly, it's so hard to go through that process of grief and making, you know. You know, there's. There's the denial and the anger and all the levels of. And then surrendering to it and. And no matter how hard we try, we can't negate that, that cycle of grief that happens.

Elissa Wall [03:22:28] But when my brother passed away from this accident recently, my mother kind of showed up and we were all quite surprised because even though she's still very much a believer in it, to have the experience of getting to see her and her children come around and grieve.

Elissa Wall [03:22:52] The passing of our brother and her son was really important. And to see and to finally surrender to this. This realization that she's on her own journey and to let go of this need to prove her faith wrong was really challenging for me because for so many years I had held on to this idea that we were, you know, someday going to save my mother. And, you know, someday it was going to. I was going to have. Have this experience of being able to have my children know her and have her as a grandmother in. In our lives and to never get that experience.

Elissa Wall [03:23:41] And I had this. This pivotal point where I got the opportunity to sit down with my mother. And I hadn't seen her in years, but the events that had led up to this, this really important meeting of sitting down with my mother were very.

Elissa Wall [03:23:59] It was very difficult because I had had some things happen that made me really question life in general. But I was so raw and I was so vulnerable that when I sat down with my mother, I had this magical experience of all of the years of judgment that I had had towards her and the bitterness that I had experienced, because there. There was. I didn't just. Just come to peace with it one day. It was a process.

Elissa Wall [03:24:27] And I definitely went through that process of blame and trying to find someone to. To put the blame on of everything that had happened. And I can't tell you how many times I would have this conversation with my mother and I, and the version of what I would say to her changed over the years. You know, at first, it was this. This conversation of anger and how could you let this happen? Especially as I became a mother myself, it was this question of. Of why would you do this? And.

Elissa Wall [03:24:55] And as that changed, as I changed and the years went by of not knowing her and not seeing her, when it finally came to this important moment, when I'm getting the chance to talk to her, the only thing that was left was compassion and to realize how much of her experience was so far outside of her control and to. To have the grief and the sorrow of realizing that. That she, too, had gone through her own terrible story of what it was like to be a woman and a mother and a wife in the flds, and the things that she had been told to do and been forced to do, do in that process.

Elissa Wall [03:25:47] And by holding her in a space of compassion and just being able to just hear it brought so much clarity to me and a lot of peace. Realizing that she is. She's on her own journey. And no matter how. How much we may want it to be different for the people that are still believing in the flds, the only thing that we really can do is to keep standing up. Keep standing up for ourselves, keep standing up for.

Elissa Wall [03:26:18] For truth. And coming from a place of compassion, just as much as I tell the outside world, be kind to the people of the flds, those of us that are still in, particularly the Short Creek area, it's always this reminder to just be kind, to be compassionate. It's so much easier to judge, and it's so much easier to pretend that we assume what they're going through and what they're experiencing. The hard thing to do is to hold space and to hold compassion, because what you really want to do is you want to go up to them and shake them and be like, what are you doing?

Elissa Wall [03:26:56] But that's not. That's not helpful. And ever so slowly, we're seeing this shift start to happen. And I'm. I'm hopeful that as we continue to speak out about it, as we continue to rebuild the town of Short Creek and as we continue to heal our own lives, we can be models of what resilience looks like. And in this process of becoming resilient, as an individual as well as within my community, I really hope that it helps a lot of people and that same process for themselves.

Faith Transition and Reflections on the Journey

John Dehlin [03:27:36] Beautiful. Really quickly, Gerardo asked me to ask you about your faith transition. And I'll just make a comment that. Just an observation, because we've been talking all day. We're like we've been together for 12 hours, 12 hours or more.

Guest 3 [03:28:01] And well, yeah, I guess 13 and a half, but we went to lunch for an hour.

Elissa Wall [03:28:07] Now I look at it, I'm like, yes, yes, you're welcome. You guys, you all, all you listeners and everyone, you're getting a front row seat to an experience. But it is, it's a process. And for all of you that have stuck with us through these episodes, Episodes, you're welcome. Because this is, this is about you too. Because I, I know that the listeners, no matter where you come from in your journey, whether you're Mormon or ex Mormon or not affiliated at all, it's a journey of, of healing and what it means to face hard things and what it means to do the right thing even when it, you don't know that it's going to work out.

Elissa Wall [03:28:54] And so after these 13 plus hours, I am grateful because I've gotten to speak my truth. I've gotten to name my shame once again and continue that journey of what does it feel like to, to claim and to reclaim and to, to talk about it. Even the hard, messy stuff. To talk about it in ways that a lot of people are afraid to talk about about it.

John Dehlin [03:29:18] Yeah. And you've broken a Mormon Stories record because this is the longest single interview in a day that I've ever conducted. So you beat Roger Hendrick for the, I think it was seven or eight hours. So you beat it.

Elissa Wall [03:29:30] I hope it's equally as interesting though.

John Dehlin [03:29:34] It's been great. Gerardo wanted to know, and what I was going to say is Herodo wanted to know what your faith transition's been like. So your belief in Joseph Smith, your belief in the Book of Mormon, your belief in and priesthood authority and God and Jesus, all that. And I just want to make one observation. There have been, we've talked a little bit about Joseph Smith history today and I would have thought you might know way more about Joseph Smith than me, just given how, you know, I would think fundamentalism might mean, you know, really understanding Joseph Smith in depth. But I've been surprised that several of the stories I've told you about Joseph Smith, it's the first time you've heard him. Like I like the Book of Abraham, just the basic Book of Abraham story seemed kind of new to you.

Elissa Wall [03:30:27] It definitely is.

John Dehlin [03:30:29] Yeah. And that's just one so Lord of the Carthage jail kind of stuff. So I guess I just want to say that there's this thing called the Jack Mormon in our culture which, and I'm sure you've heard of, of it where maybe you don't practice it anymore, but you still believe it, right?

Elissa Wall [03:30:46] Yes.

John Dehlin [03:30:47] But there's also this idea of leaving it and no longer believing it, but not really spending any time processing the belief portion of it and just kind of like. And sometimes those, those zombies return. In other words, those things you don't process in terms of the belief beliefs, you have to kind of wrestle with those at some point because you could take the person, you can take the girl out of the flds, but you also have to process the FLDS out of the girl. So what can you tell us about your spiritual process, your beliefs?

Elissa Wall [03:31:24] Yes.

John Dehlin [03:31:25] Yeah.

Elissa Wall [03:31:25] Well, one of the things I can tell you is I've become quite an expert wrestler of my beliefs because I've. I've just that I've had to wrestle them and take them head on. And it's been a journey with that too because originally I think when you, when you confront those beliefs, it's kind of a layered and it's a tiered experience. It's one thing to say, yes, I no longer believe in Warren, but what does that mean for Joseph Smith? What does that mean for the whole entire Mormonism, the belief system? And it was pretty quick in my journey where I really questioned all of it.

Elissa Wall [03:32:00] I questioned and the belief aspect of it. And then I started on this journey of okay, and I describe it kind of like this. I believe our beliefs are like, kind of like a library that makes us who we are. And in this library on the shelves there's different books that, that describe different beliefs we have. And for me, a child of religion, I had a space in my library that was once filled by religious beliefs. But at this moment in my life was vulnerable void.

Elissa Wall [03:32:32] And it became a vacuum because you do, it's. You have to replace that void or it sucks in everything. And so I went through this really in depth process of just exploring religion at whole, you know, exploring even the Mormon Church. There was a point where I went to Mormon, the Mormon mainstream Mormon Church for a period of time and I explored it and we. It was when I was in. It was prior to Warren being caught and it was prior to me testifying. But I really did because I hadn't been able to separate Warren from the beliefs. I still had these, these ideas of beliefs around the whole entire concept of Mormonism.

Elissa Wall [03:33:15] And as my journey continued, I was able to be, to question it and realize that it was not for me at all and ultimately question everything and know polygamy and Joseph Smith and The Mormon, the Book of Mormon, and the mainstream Mormonism. And to start to see all of it and look at it and say they're all very similar.

Elissa Wall [03:33:37] And to see those connection points was difficult for me because it didn't help me in my process of trying to fill this void that was inside of myself. But as. As I continued along the way, I started to explore out of all different kinds of religion, you know, looked into Catholic, looked into Buddhism, looked into all kinds of things, because I was searching for something to replace this void inside of myself. And over time, what I've been able to come to with it is, you know, in my process of healing, I was able to discover Brene Brown. And I. I highly suggest to anyone who is coming from any kind of a faith crisis crisis to really explore her body of work.

Elissa Wall [03:34:22] Because I. I got a chance to. To very first discover her work with her first book. I thought it was just me, where she explored shame. And to have that speak so completely to me was absolutely essential and vital to me. Beginning to unweave those beliefs that were given to me, me, and forced on me. They were not chosen beliefs. And to learn the difference between a chosen belief system and a forced belief system was really vital in this faith crisis. Because so much of what we think we have faith in, when we really question it and ask ourselves, is this mine?

Elissa Wall [03:35:04] A majority of the answer that instinctually comes back when we really listen to ourselves is not no. And then it's, well, where did it come from? Well, it doesn't matter where it came from. What it is, is. It's not ours. And then the question is, are we willing to continue to adopt it? Are we willing to continue to have it? Or are we at a point where we're ready to let it go and to have that process of, of, you know, someone like Brene Brown, who's a researcher and does this incredible body of work, kind of walking you through that process. But more than anything, she had a description of spirituality that really resonated for me, for me.

Elissa Wall [03:35:42] And I had come to a place in my journey where I knew there was a very big difference between being a religious person and being a spiritual person. And too much of the time I was frustrated because they were overlapped in a way where you couldn't be one without the other. And I couldn't be a spiritual person without belonging to a religion. And I didn't feel like religion had spiritual aspects at all. But she explains it as just this, this higher, this power that connects us all. And it doesn't matter the belief. It's what we do with that connection that we have to this higher cause and this higher power that we're all a part of.

Elissa Wall [03:36:22] And that resonated with me because I allowed myself to then realize that I'm a deeply spiritual individual. And I do have so many practices in my life today that it was feeding my spiritual self, my spiritual body, whether that's meditation, whether that's being in nature, whether that's whatever it may be. And, you know, I've started this process of. Of some of my healing journey, and that's. It's going back to singing, and it's not the same as singing in karaoke. It's. It's this process of activating my. My voice in those moments of the most difficult pain and the struggle along the way and being able to sing out my pain instead of internalize it.

Elissa Wall [03:37:12] All of these things are practices of my form of spirituality. And that's really where I've come to in. It is, yes, I went through a very intense faith crisis, and I've gone through more than one in this journey, but to arrive at where I am of articulating for myself what is my spirituality and what is my relationship with that spirituality, and I can tell you it's changing always. It's evolving. And as I evolve and expand as an individual, so does my understanding of my spirituality and my clarity on there is a difference between spirituality and religion, because I am not a religious person. I'm very spiritual.

John Dehlin [03:37:58] Beautiful. Yeah, you clearly processed that quite a bit.

Guest 3 [03:38:03] A lot.

Elissa Wall [03:38:04] That's the. That's the tough stuff to process. And, you know, I. I want you to know all the listeners that are out there that may be in the midst of their own faith crisis. Keep going. There is light at the end of the tunnel. And no, it doesn't always make sense. To this day, there's a lot of things where I've had to process and confront my beliefs or. Or what was the beliefs of where I came from that are really hard to find a reason. You know, it's hard to say why did this happen? Or why did we believe in this? And honestly, sometimes there's not an answer for it, but the question is, is what is it?

Elissa Wall [03:38:47] What about now? Now am I willing to hold on to this? And sometimes it's really hard because we want the answer. We want the. The this is why it happened to me the way it did, or want to reach back into history and say, you know, Joseph Smith did it because of this. Well, at the end of the day. The question is, is how is this impacting and affecting us now?

Elissa Wall [03:39:10] And are we at a place where we're brave enough to let it go? And trust me, I confront this process even today in coming here and being able to step into, you know, my beliefs about myself and about my story, you know, am I creating a difference? Have I come far enough along the way that I have something to share all of these things, these beliefs that we have? Because so much of faith crisis isn't so much about what we believe in in as a religion, it's what we believe in about ourselves.

Elissa Wall [03:39:47] And that's the real face faith crisis is do we have faith in ourselves? Do we have faith in our ability and our value? Or are we still in crisis with that? And sometimes we are, and sometimes we're better at it. Thank you.

John Dehlin [03:40:08] Beautiful, Wise. What's next for you? Like, you've got maybe some plans. We've been scheming with you a little bit about why isn't there a podcast? Why isn't Elissa. Why doesn't she have a podcast? Why does she have a YouTube channel? Maybe she should be a life coach or conduct workshops and retreats, because you certainly have enough wisdom, wisdom not only to help your people, but to help our people and our people. And we're all the same people at

Elissa Wall [03:40:43] the end of the day, we are

John Dehlin [03:40:44] all the same people, but our people needs a lot of help. So between our people and your people, we. We need you, Elissa, to the extent that you want, you know, want to be a part of this type of work. So what. What. How can people invest in support in you and what you want to do going forward. Forward.

Elissa Wall [03:41:04] I really appreciate that question, because what I can tell you is there is a great blossoming that we will see of Elissa. And what I'm here to do today is still in formulation. Yes. To all of those things. Is all. All that possible? Absolutely. And the way that people can. Can support is as this process starts to happen, I'm here to tell people the next part of the story. I want to start doing retreats in Short Creek where people can come and see with their own eyes the evidence of what change and resilience looks like in the community, and they can hear the stories of the history.

Elissa Wall [03:41:48] I want to continue to use my voice to be an advocate for women, especially in this day and age, and to help to coach people along the way. I want to be able to be an incredible speaker and empower people of all walks of life with my experience and my journey and how it applies into their own world. And so I would love to speak for people's events and be able to come and be a part of, of continuing the story and, and showing how we are all one people. It's not your people and my people and their people and that people. We're all one people, people in, in so many ways.

Elissa Wall [03:42:29] And the facing adversity and facing struggles in our life, it's all. It connects us as one because there's something that we all need in that we all need hope. We all need a light in the darkness. We all need a reason to keep going when it's so dark and it's so heavy and it feels impossible.

Elissa Wall [03:42:59] And if I can continue to work on that, then I would love to, you know, something that we've kind of been talking around back and forth and people will start to see and you and I invite the listeners to stay updated for future. I'll have a website here soon. It's just Elissa Wall dot com. You can follow me on social media and Instagram. Elissa Diwal. Elissa Wall. Excuse me. As well as Facebook and I'll be starting to announce these things as they come on. But one of the things I'm really exc. I working on a project of, it's, it's called Reclaiming Short Creek. And it's going to be this Wonderful podcast slash YouTube of the stories of what Reclaiming Short Creek looks like and, and feels like so that people can see firsthand through these stories and experiences of what that resiliency within Short Creek looks like and then also really begin to curate and put into legacy the next part of the history.

Elissa Wall [03:44:07] Because you know, Netflix did a really good job at one piece of the history. And now we get a step forward and tell our own history of where we are today and what we're doing. And so stay tuned. I think in this blossoming it's not going to look one way way. But I'm very open to this new season of my life. And that is what does it look like for me to step forward in, in being, in fully embracing using my life experience to create change and hope and methods of how to help people heal, how to help people take on their own heroes journey and return home to themselves.

Elissa Wall [03:44:49] Because that's exactly where I'm at is I'm in that process of returning home to self. It is a hard process because even though I look at my life and I say, okay, I have faced tyrants and I have brought those tyrants down and you know, the story that's often told to me is I was the David in the Goliath story and the David and Goliath story, where the, the. The stone is what took out the giant. But what a lot of I'm experiencing now is, is there, there is this process where the hero has to return home to self and claim myself. Now, for me, in my journey, there was so much of the time where I had a lot of body issues and I had a lot of hatred towards my body because of everything that happened, happened.

Elissa Wall [03:45:41] And I was so disembodied from my experience that it took me years to kind of catch up and to start to learn to be compassionate to myself, to start to learn to give myself space and room to. To not be okay.

Elissa Wall [03:46:01] That is what I hope to bring into this world, is creating more value of how to help each other and support one another. Whether that's through coaching, whether that's through speaking, whether that's through ritual retreats, whether that's through podcasts, but to continue to help all of our people keep taking the first next best step, because that's where I'm at, is I'm just taking the next best step that I know how to take in this journey of claiming myself, reclaiming my innocence, reclaiming my. My relationship with my spirituality, with my body, with my sexuality, with my story. And how do I bring it into the here and now to create more value, more life for myself, my children, and the people that I love so much?

John Dehlin [03:46:52] Beautiful. Well, Elissa, we can't thank you enough for coming on. And Jen, this wouldn't have happened without you. Any final questions or comments for Elissa? You want to share? Sure. And Jim, thanks for staying all day. You've been working super hard today, so thank you.

Elissa Wall [03:47:10] You have. I consider myself really lucky for both of you. And I'm watching. And to all the listeners, these guys are incredible. I've just recently met them, but they're. They're champions for storytelling, and I'm so grateful to both Jen and John for it. And I'm watching them get more and more tired as we're. We're going into the wee hours,

John Dehlin [03:47:31] coming

Elissa Wall [03:47:31] to the wee hours, 1am but it's okay. I just want to say thank you to both of you for giving me space to tell my story, the next part of the story, and, and it's, it's important and it's messy and for all of the people that are out there that have maybe heard parts of my story or maybe read my book, and they're getting to listen to this and, and hear, hear new things for the first time. Thank you for creating a space for people to share their story because stories are what create true change in the world around us. And curating those stories and helping people to be brave enough and comfortable enough to tell them is powerful, magical work. And I thank you both for being a part of that.

Guest 3 [03:48:24] That, yeah, I, I want to thank you for coming on and telling us your story and being vulnerable and allowing us to see from your eyes the story that has been like broadcast all over the world, really within Netflix documentary. But to hear it from in your words and to share that with us is really meaningful and will touch a lot of people transitioning from high demand religions, no matter your FLDS members or LDS members or, you know, other high demand religions that we have around. And I know you love Brene Brown, but as I pulled up her quote, because I knew she had a quote about owning your story, but she says owning our story and loving ourselves through that process is the bravest thing that we will ever do.

Elissa Wall [03:49:46] It truly is. And there's a key word in that quote because that is a quote that has been a lifeblood for me and that is loving. And I made reference to this, this Japanese art of the shattered pieces coming together. And I've often asked myself, you know, what are the, what are the veins of gold that stitch us back together?

Elissa Wall [03:50:05] And I can tell you, as corny as it sounds, it's love. It's love for self, it's love for the world around us, it's love for our people, it's being loved, it's giving love. And as I've had this journey of really an epic love story, because I look at it and I see through all of it, of all the tragedy and all the pain and all the sorrow, I look at all the points where love was the thread that kept me going. The love for my family, the love for my people, the love for the voiceless women of the world who had endured so much pain and sorrow and trauma and ultimately without realizing it, this, this vein of gold, of love for self.

Elissa Wall [03:50:59] And it's a process. And reading that quote often from Bernay of loving self, what does loving self mean? And how do I continue to flow those gold veins into my cracks? Because there we all have them. We all have those cracks. And it doesn't matter if you come from a high demand religion or if you come from a domestic abuse background or if you have been sexually abused, we all have those broken parts of us.

Elissa Wall [03:51:28] And my where I am today of being in a position where I feel that love everywhere I go and to even sit here with both of you and to feel the love woven into this, it's continuing to allow me to continue my own art form of putting myself back together of the pieces and to be in a position of. Of there is hope. You know, even after all the years of physical and psychological, mental abuse and even after going divorce and the collapse that happened and the reasons why it happened and, and feeling so devoid of that love now to recently been able to do the greatest act of courage and that was to open myself back up to love.

Elissa Wall [03:52:16] And so I invite anyone that no matter where you are in your journey, there is hope. Because where I am today is I'm in this incredible partnership with someone that loves me and I love, love them with so much compassion because we see the cracks in one another and we see how the cracks in one another is what the. Lets the light shine through.

Elissa Wall [03:52:41] And I hope that of all the listeners that if there's something that you pull from this and that is the incredible resilience of the human spirit and how important it is for us to have that and spirituality is, is the representation of spirit, but that it's all weaved together with love.

Elissa Wall [03:53:04] So keep loving, keep loving yourself, keep loving your story, keep offering love and continue to know that we're worthy of that love no matter what, no matter what beliefs someone told us to believe or whatever beliefs that we have transcended. Love is the key. As corny as that sounds,

Guest 3 [03:53:32] I believe that.

John Dehlin [03:53:34] Amen.

Elissa Wall [03:53:39] That's very. You know, that's ironic. That's what we end with.

John Dehlin [03:53:47] I have nothing else to say other than meet me, Elissa and Jen in Short Creek for a weekend of retreat history Karaoke information coming soon. And if you drink wine, maybe some wine, definitely.

Elissa Wall [03:54:07] And you know, to all the listeners, reach out. Follow me on different social media platforms. Follow this journey. It's going to be fun. It's going to be interesting to see where it all goes and if, if there's someone out there who's listening that, that can, can kind of help me along that way. Reach out and, and help me as I start on this, this new journey of, of being a conduit for continuing to share my journey and, and what we can create in this world with it.

John Dehlin [03:54:34] Beautiful.

Guest 3 [03:54:35] Perfect.

John Dehlin [03:54:36] All right, thanks so much, Elissa Wall. You take care. Good luck and we look forward to seeing you do great things.

Guest 3 [03:54:45] Thank you.

John Dehlin [03:54:46] Thanks, Jen. You're the best.

Guest 3 [03:54:47] Thanks. Thanks everybody. Thanks for sticking around and on this journey with us.

John Dehlin [03:54:54] All right. And check out reclaimingshortcreek.com. is that right?

Elissa Wall [03:54:58] Yes.

John Dehlin [03:55:00] Check that out. And the website is elisowall.com wall.com thanks, everybody. Take care. I don't have time for any closing. My voice is about to give out. 1am

Elissa Wall [03:55:14] Good night, everyone. Hopefully you don't need therapy after this, but.

John Dehlin [03:55:19] No, we don't, because we got our therapy. We don't need therapy because you gave it to us.

Guest 3 [03:55:24] Well.

Elissa Wall [03:55:24] Well, enjoy. Thank you all for tuning in. It's been a journey, and I'm grateful and lucky that I got to take it with you all.

John Dehlin [03:55:33] And we'll see y' all again soon on another episode of Mormon Stories Podcast. Take care, everyone.

Transcript © 2026 John P. Dehlin. All rights reserved. Brief quotations are welcome with attribution and a link to mormonstories.org; all other use requires written permission.