Prophet's Prey (7 page)

CHAPTER 9

Headmaster

LeRoy Sunderland Johnson became a beloved figure in Short Creek, although he was not loved by everyone. The leadership of the polygamist movement had been unsettled for a number of years, and “Uncle Roy” was almost defrocked in 1979 when he suffered a debilitating case of the shingles, which left him bedridden and vulnerable to opponents who branded him a false prophet. Because of Rulon's closeness with Uncle Roy, his own influence and future also were in jeopardy, but he stuck by his friend and mentor. The old man was comforted with large doses of morphine and slowly recovered. The wilderness years came to a dramatic end on February 12, 1984, when Uncle Roy was helped to the pulpit and challenged his major foes, J. Marion Hammon and Alma A. Timpson.

“The Lord gave you men five and a half years to change your thinking on this principle of having one man holding the sealing powers in the earth at a time, and you have made a mess of it,” Johnson told them in front of the congregation. Hammon and Timpson were expelled.

Among those in attendance on that momentous day was the twenty-nine-year-old headmaster of the Alta Academy, Warren Jeffs. He likened the experience to a holy wind rushing through him, and was so thrilled that he wept with joy. That was the way to lead! That was how
he
would do it!

Hammon and Timpson did not exactly leave town. They just started their own rival fundamentalist sect only two miles away on the other side of Highway 59.

To ease some of the confusion between the uneasy neighbors, Colorado City and Hildale became known within the FLDS faith as the First Ward, and the new group of Hammon-Timpson dissenters in “Centennial Park” would be the Second Ward. It was all still the Crick.

Uncle Roy died two and a half years later, in November 1986. This time, there was no question of succession. Rulon Jeffs and Uncle Roy had laid down the law of one-man rule within the fundamentalist movement, and Rulon grabbed the golden ring, becoming the new “prophet, seer, and revelator.”

Rulon's most fervent supporter was his son Warren, who was by then in full manhood at the age of thirty-one. Warren had spent his entire career since graduating from high school—thirteen years—teaching and being the principal at the academy. He already had the addictive taste of power on his own lips.

Alta Academy was not only a school for elementary school children, but also a learning institution where Warren would hone his skills as a predatory monster.

Each day started with Warren's flat, hypnotic monotone either being delivered in person in the gathering hall or being broadcast over speakers to classrooms. The children would be quizzed on what he said. The FLDS educational process was so totally skewed toward strict religious dogma that many kids graduated still unable to speak or write in whole sentences. For most, the ability to properly read a list of food ingredients or a tape measure at a construction site was deemed adequate. Many teachers were hired based on their loyalty to the extremist faith and obedience, rather than credentials of a college education. There was no need to be certified by the state in an FLDS private school. Some of the students would roll right into the position of teachers, perpetuating the low educational standards and toeing the religious line. The instructors taught that the outside world was devoid of honor and not to be trusted, and gentiles were, of course, excluded from the faculty. Gentiles were bad, but apostates were worse. Students must “keep sweet” no matter what they were required to endure, even physical abuse. It was not education, just a thorough theological brainwashing.

The academy had several labor and delivery rooms on the second floor designated for the use of a midwife to attend the births of new babies, which reduced the need to expose fundamentalist wives to the prying eyes of gentile medical staff members in public hospitals, where family names and dates of birth were routinely sought. It was symbolic of how the breakaway fundamentalists withdrew from the scrutiny and norms of the world.

A former student by the name of Mike recalled for me the day when he was eleven years old and Uncle Warren singled him out for punishment. The youngster was made to stand in front of the classroom and drop his trousers to his knees so Warren could savagely beat him with a yardstick. Other former students echoed Mike's experience with their own stories of what happened in the downstairs room containing the baptismal font. If a yardstick broke, Warren would continue beating them with the remaining portion. He spouted religious diatribes about committing his young victims over to the judgment of God as he circled the boys, ogling and brushing up against them.

My contacts among Jeffs's former students would reveal that it wasn't just the boys being subjected to his psychotic behavior. Warren was the self-appointed dress code enforcer and young females would recall standing numb and frightened beside the principal's desk as he pretended to check their dress length to see if it fell to the appropriate height above the ankle. While doing so, Uncle Warren's hands wandered over their bodies and beneath their clothing.

Total obedience was mandated. If a child dared to complain about the abuse at school, the parents would most likely take the side of Warren against their own children. In interviews with parents who had left the religion, I would discover that most of them could not fathom what kids had to endure within their culture. They would continually struggle with the fact that they had been complicit in the abuse and hadn't recognized what was going on around them. Any parents who forgot that Warren was the favored son of Prophet Rulon Jeffs and dared to protest could count on incurring Warren's enmity for many years to come, the potential for future public humiliation compounding like interest in a bank.

The more parents and former students I spoke with, the more I heard the same story over and over again. For Warren Jeffs the Alta Academy was more like the mountain chateau of the Marquis de Sade than a school. The only person who really learned anything there was Warren Jeffs, who earned himself a post-graduate degree in the use of unchecked power.

My first personal look inside Warren Jeffs's shop of horrors came shortly after I was hired by Joanne Suder in 2004. It was even worse than I had imagined.

This particular case involved the family of Ward Jeffs, one of the prophet's many brothers. Ward was among those who had been banished years earlier by their father, Rulon, but he had refused to give up his family. Although once a polygamist, he now lived only with his wife Susan. They were waiting for me at their home, along with their three grown sons: Brent, Brandon and David.

A fourth son, Clayne, had endured a tormented life that eventually had led to a tragic death by his own hand. Shortly after Clayne's death, his therapist revealed to his family that he had been treating their son for a horrifying trauma he had experienced as a very young boy. Clayne had confessed to the therapist that he had been repeatedly raped by several of his uncles, including Warren Jeffs. As these tragic details came to light, his brothers Brent and Brandon courageously admitted the secret that had been haunting them for years: They also had been victimized by the same deviant relatives.

During the following week, I interviewed each family member separately, paying close attention to their stories and looking for inconsistencies. I found none. Both young men held fast to their accusations that when they were just little kids, between the ages of five and seven, they had been repeatedly raped and sodomized by Warren and several other uncles for more than a year.

The abuses that I learned about from Brent and Brandon had taken place at the Alta Academy. I had already heard about Warren's terrifying methods there, and I felt I needed to see the place first-hand. Brent mustered the incredible strength to give me a guided tour, although it meant having to relive his childhood horrors. He has since described it all in his book,
Lost Boy
.

The Alta Academy had closed shortly before the turn of the millennium and the compound eventually would house a charitable organization known as Common Thread, which provides services to people awaiting organ transplants. It was heartening to learn that the building was no longer linked to the church and had been put to a worthy purpose.

Brent led me downstairs to a room that had been used as a nursery for the young children while the others attended worship services upstairs in the main hall. Behind that door, the disturbing shadow of Warren Jeffs still lingered. Brent painfully recalled how when he was only five years old, his uncle Warren would come into that room and fetch him out by the hand. He would lead the child through the narrow corridors to a children's bathroom where happy paintings decorated the walls, and in which all of the sinks and toilets were at a low level to be accessible to the kids. Once the bathroom door was locked, the helpless little boy was folded over the edge of the bathtub and Warren and a few more of his uncles, all grown men, took turns raping their nephew. Brent described the pain as being almost unbearable.

Warren would be keyed up tight in his lust and babble continuously that it was part of the boy's secret initiation into the priesthood. He warned that if Brent ever told anyone about their “sacred rite of passage,” the boy and his entire family would be plunged into hellfire. Decades later, Brent was still struggling to come to grips with the brutality he had endured, but he did not flinch in reconstructing the horrific events.

One of the most painful experiences for victims of abuse is to summon the courage to tell of that abuse, anticipating that a backlash is certain. Sure enough, when Brent told his story, he was demonized by his former friends and family members and called a liar. Defense attorneys for the church used every trick in the book to try to discredit him, but he was no longer a little kid who could be led around by the hand and coerced. He was a grown man who was determined to tell the truth.

It was a disquieting story, to say the least. This wasn't my first case dealing with child abuse, but as the father of three children, I always find it tough to hear those stories, and I have spent many sleepless nights trying to put them out of my mind. My task, though, was to nail down information for possible litigation, so to substantiate the facts I made another trip to the academy, this time with Brandon, who brought along their other brother, David, for moral support.

There is no such thing as a “typical” victim of child abuse, and Brandon was a good illustration. At twenty years old, he stood six feet four and was solid muscle, a soldier home on leave from the U.S. Army prior to being deployed to the Middle East. But that hard toughness began to evaporate the moment we entered the building and he led me step by step toward that evil bathroom. As he described the horrors he had endured behind that door, tears tracked down his cheeks and his voice shook. Before my eyes, this soldier was reliving those scenes from his childhood, tormented by the memories of what he had endured at the hands of his trusted teacher and uncle. His chilling descriptions were almost identical to those of Brent, but with a few differences, which convinced me that their stories were unscripted.

Finally, it was too much for Brandon. He staggered, sobbing openly, and David grabbed him in a bear hug. Both were crying. Then David looked solemnly at me and admitted, for the very first time, “It happened to me, too.”

Visions of my own children raced through my mind, as well as intense rage for a monster that could do something so unspeakable to any child, much less a family member. I turned away from the scene to avoid losing control of my own emotions. All four boys had been raped as small children by their pedophile uncle: Warren Steed Jeffs. I promised David I would keep his secret and I did until after his untimely death only a year later. Now, two of Warren's nephews had succumbed to the lifetime of torment inflicted on them by the hideous headmaster of the Alta Academy. To my way of thinking, Warren inflicted a slow and tortuous death on Clayne and David just as sure as if he had plunged a knife into their chests.

The shy and awkward principal's extreme fear of girls had not improved as he matured. The situation was finally addressed through someone else's intervention, and it was remarkably similar to the experience of Uncle Roy when he had been a young and single future leader of the FLDS. Warren chronicled what happened.

“When I was eleven, I thought I would never get married. At seventeen, I was sure of it. I got up to twenty-three … and I thought, ‘Oh, well.' Then father walked down to my bedroom. Knock, knock, knock. He said, ‘Uncle Roy wants you to get married.' ”

His brother, Lyle, rushed excitedly into the room to offer congratulations. “Warren! Do you know who you are marrying?… She is a dish!”

His first wife was a beautiful girl he didn't even know. He learned later that her name was Annette Barlow. She was from an independent polygamist clan, and it was an arranged marriage, almost politically feudal in its roots, a joining of the clans. Love was unnecessary. Annette was just the first of his many brides, and her sister Barbara loomed in the wings.

By the time of the rapes of his nephews, Warren was married to two women. Strangely enough, he seemed to feel no remorse; he could go home after raping a little boy and have a calm Sunday family dinner.

CHAPTER 10

Coup

Rulon Jeffs was an imposing figure: tall, supremely confident, charismatic and commanding. “If we had ten men like you with us, we would turn this world upside down,” the old prophet John Y. Barlow had written to his protégé almost forty-five years earlier. With dark hair that he combed back in a suave pompadour, Rulon was also fastidious and vain, spending long periods before a mirror, re-knotting his tie over and over to get it just right before stepping outside of his home.

Following the death of Uncle Roy in 1986, Rulon was the sole authority over everything in the FLDS—the “Keyholder, the Prophet, and Mouthpiece of God.” In the FLDS, being recognized as the mouthpiece of God on earth automatically quelled any dissent, for who can argue with God? The blind obedience that was hammered daily into the membership, combined with his financial savvy, allowed Jeffs—unlike his followers—complete freedom to do as he wished. But as the British historian Lord Acton wrote, “Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” It was a perfect description of Rulon Jeffs. Simmering just beneath that smooth surface, the prophet was a philanderer, a fraud, and a drunk.

He made sure that alcohol was usually nearby. Several of his grandchildren and people close to him told me that during family get-togethers, kids were warned, “Don't touch Grandfather's water!” Of course, that only heightened their curiosity and compelled them to sneak a sip. Most never went back for a second sampling. The ever-present “glass of water” was actually a tumbler of vodka. At dinners, he frequently would consume glasses of wine. As his secret drinking became more noticeable, the prophet sought to condone it by redefining a long-standing Mormon doctrine known as the Word of Wisdom. Rulon declared the Word was only a guide, and that drinking, in moderation, was acceptable. That allowed him to put his stamp of approval on his own alcoholism. I was surprised to discover that many FLDS members have followed his example, resulting in a culture of closet drunks who deceitfully hide their alcoholism from their neighbors.

Fueled by alcohol and unlimited power, Rulon Jeffs began to indulge his deviant urges with abandon. During his sermons, he would focus his attention on a pretty girl out in the congregation and later, while everyone filed out at the close of services, he would give her hand three gentle squeezes. That was the signal for her family to prepare this daughter for marriage to him. Eventually, he would have between fifty and sixty brides.

The families did not object. Most young girls considered it an honor to marry the prophet, and it meant added prestige for her mother and father. Truly fortunate families might have several daughters in Rulon's stable. Any hesitancy on the part of the inductee or her family would be looked upon as questioning the will of God and would result in severe reprisals, not only by church leaders but also by neighbors, friends, and other members of the extended family.

But even the easy harvesting of new wives to do his bidding was not enough to tame Rulon Jeffs's compulsions.

A ranking member of the church who eventually left the FLDS described for me what happened when he caught one of his daughters with a neighbor boy in the back of his van. What had been taking place was apparent by their lack of clothing. The distraught father believed that in order to confess and repent, the youngsters should seek the counsel of the prophet. “Rulon first spoke with my daughter, alone, then summoned the young man to hear his version of the transgression,” the father recounted to me. “I had never imagined him using such language, graphically referring to body parts and sex acts unnecessarily by their common names and trying to extract all of the sordid details, over and over again.” The flustered parent listened in astonishment as Rulon quizzed the children, asking for explicit details about sexual positions and intimacies that the parent himself didn't even know existed, having been raised with the church's strict teaching that sexual contact was solely for the purpose of procreation. As the interview progressed, Rulon became more and more excited, “as if he was on drugs or something,” and had a wild look in his eyes, “like he was on a high.” The father's sadness over his daughter's sexual transgression turned to disgust at the lewd interrogation, and his own faith wavered. He began exploring thoughts of leaving the church rather than follow such a perverted prophet.

No matter what Rulon did, he was able to rationalize his disturbing behavior to his obedient followers; it was he who was really the one suffering—sacrificing himself before God in order to protect and prepare them for the imminent day when the world would end. They could either be lifted up with the righteous or burn with the wicked. “We are living in that great and dreadful day, the great day of the Lord when all the prophecies will be fulfilled concerning the last days, the dreadful day because of the judgments that must come, and will come to try our people,” he would bellow, looking straight into their fearful hearts. “They are coming upon the House of God first.” Such prophecies of doom often poured from “God's mouthpiece.”

In addition to performing hundreds of marriages, Rulon started reshuffling FLDS families. He would take wives from men whom he deemed unworthy and place them instead with men he decided had the ability to lead new concubines to the celestial kingdom. He performed this pimping and pandering for his favorites without fear or hesitation. He did not ask the people involved what they thought. Even Warren was amazed. “We had never seen anything like it,” he said.

A shift in the center of power was taking place within the FLDS. Although people not born into the faith were never welcome, the church had grown substantially over the years through the multiple wives who kept producing children. In Salt Lake City, when the flock became too numerous to continue meeting in Rulon's living room, they met in the more spacious rooms of the Alta Academy.

Although the Jeffses remained in Salt Lake City, the population was growing even faster down in Short Creek, and the faithful there built the LeRoy S. Johnson Meeting House, a sparkling structure of 42,000 square feet with an ornate pulpit area and an organ to supply the music for up to four thousand people.

The splinter group finally took a name in 1991, when leaders of the First Ward congregation founded a corporation, and chose a name that virtually parroted that of the mainstream Mormon Church, creating a great deal of confusion that continues to this day.

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints—the mainstream LDS Church—has nothing to do with the polygamous sect. Nevertheless, the breakaway group made some minor changes to the name and the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, the FLDS, was born.

In many other religions that have broken from an established church, such as when Martin Luther led his followers away from Catholicism, the new movement attempts to separate itself from original ideology or doctrine. However, the ragtag group of excommunicated fundamentalists in Short Creek did just the opposite. The adherents to polygamy considered themselves to be living according to a higher spiritual calling than the regular Mormon faith. They claimed the mother church had drifted from its true purpose, leaving the FLDS as the true Mormons. At one end of the spectrum, the fundamentalists try to convince people that they are Mormons, thus riding the coattails of LDS legitimacy. At the same time, they denounce the mainstream church as being filled with heretics. On any given day, whether they claim to be true Mormons or Mormon-haters depends upon what agenda they happen to be promoting at the time.

By the time of Rulon's ascension in 1986, the FLDS was firmly under one-man rule. The advisory council created in the formative years to put checks and balances on the actions of the president had been reduced to a “First Presidency” made up of the president (Rulon) and his first and second counselors, Parley J. Harker and Fred Jessop. The two ancient men held no real power.

Unofficially and behind the scenes, Rulon's son Warren had become his father's closest advisor, although he held no office within the church. He was merely the school principal in Salt Lake City, but he held the confidence of the prophet.

Others spoke. Warren listened. He knew the people, the inside workings of the church, and could spout scripture and give trainings with the best of them. He carefully followed his father's path and step-by-step became the power behind the throne while his father savored the good life.

Rulon's appetites were insatiable. He had dozens of women, indulged freely in alcohol, and he was also a glutton, making almost daily trips to the home of his friend Ron Rohbock, who laid out feasts of rich foods accompanied by overflowing glasses of homemade wine from Rohbock's excellent vineyards. The aging patriarch began to put on weight, and by the time he realized his health was in trouble, it was already too late.

In 1997, Uncle Rulon suffered a series of minor strokes, and the following year, he was incapacitated by a major one. That same year, First Counselor Parley Harker died, and Warren readily stepped into that vacated leadership position. With his father crippled, Harker dead, and Second Counselor Fred Jessop old and compliant, Warren grabbed the reins. Many members who lived down in the Crick, primarily in the large Barlow clan, grumbled about this usurpation of power, but none stepped up to contest Rulon's favored son up in Salt Lake City.

After all, the prophet wasn't dead, so he was still the prophet. They remembered how Uncle Roy had been laid low for years by illness, only to return to power. Rulon might recover.

It took only about a month before Warren publicly flexed his new muscle by announcing with cold certainty, “My father has the mental capacity of a child. I am now my father's mouthpiece.”

Although his statement carried no legal standing within the church, it served to cap an audacious coup that could only have worked among a subservient people trained in total obedience.

Since everyone in the faith already acknowledged that Rulon was “God's mouthpiece on earth,” and Warren was now his father's mouthpiece, sitting on his bed and talking with him daily, the implication was clear: God was now communicating directly with Warren through the broken vessel that was Rulon.

The great Uncle Roy had declared that, “Only one man at a time holds the keys and power of the sealing power, and those who act during his administration are only acting under a delegated authority.” That provided Warren with plenty of cover to exert control without actually having to fight for leadership. After all, he was only helping his ailing, revered father. He remained polite and respectful in his dealings, and still did what he wanted, bulldozing his way through all obstacles by claiming that “Father” was still calling the shots. He actually took over Rulon's big desk, leaving no question about who was really in charge.

Rulon required constant care, and the handling of those personal needs was up to his doctors and his many wives. Warren decreed that seclusion was necessary to protect his father from the troubles and burdens of daily life and leadership. He had become an invalid confined to his bed, with great trouble articulating words, and then dementia set in due to brain damage caused by the stroke. Warren would translate for him.

From Rulon's bedroom, the first counselor issued a series of dire pronouncements that guaranteed the followers would look to him for guidance: The world was coming to an end!

God would lift up the FLDS faithful, scour the world with fire, and then replace the chosen ones back down safely in the holy city of Zion, Warren declared. The date was set for September 1998, but when that came and went without incident, it was reset for October, which was another failure. A new forecast naming December as the time of reckoning also did not work out, but that did not stop Warren from continuing the drumbeat of doom, insisting the predictions came from his father. With the FLDS penchant for anniversaries, another, more certain end-of-the-world date was set for June 12, 1999, which would mark the 111th birthday of the late Uncle Roy.

It was a big day in Short Creek, and at dawn, thousands of the faithful crowded into the meeting house for a special service. After a prayer circle, they trekked over to Cottonwood Park. All day long they waited, along with the groceries that were to sustain them during the unknown temporary time that they would be up in heaven. Nothing happened. Warren said his father was disappointed that the believers still were not strong enough in their faith to deserve this blessing.

There was hope, however, because God was ready to grant them yet another chance. The close of the twentieth century was at hand, so they had been given another six months to sort out their behavior. If they strengthened their beliefs, the new millennium could really be the end of the planet, spelling death and destruction for everyone who was not a member in good standing of the FLDS church. This series of cataclysmic pronouncements was successful in one sense, however: it distracted the faithful from anything as insignificant as worrying about the ambitious Warren. They apparently never saw the pattern.