Stolen Innocence (8 page)

Rachel and Kassandra had joined us in two of Uncle Rulon’s family vans for the four-hour drive to the prophet’s other home in Hildale. They were there to help pass the time and keep the younger kids entertained. I didn’t know then, but Rachel had played a role in Mom’s decision to involve the prophet in our domestic problems. Over time, I learned that both Rachel and Mom believed that our home had become a battleground, with innocent children caught in the crossfire. For some time, Mom had been confiding in Rachel her fears about losing more of her sons and had sought her help drafting a letter to the prophet. Meanwhile, Rachel had independently gone to Uncle Rulon for advice. She and Kassandra knew that the previous morning Mom had gone to see Warren, who’d been acting for his father. To ease the severity of our situation, it had been arranged that my two sisters would accompany us on the long drive south. They tried to play games with us to lighten the mood, but I was too old and too aware to be distracted.

During the ride I searched my mother’s face for answers, but not surprisingly, it offered none. I knew I wasn’t to question the prophet—or God—but I was desperate. “Will we ever see Dad again?” I asked Mom.

“I don’t know, Lesie,” she replied, using the nickname, pronounced “Lee-see,” that I’d had since I was very young. “Put it on a shelf and pray about it.”

This was Mom’s and the FLDS’s standard response to questions that had no easy answers. Between Craig’s departure and the troubles at home, my shelf was already full. Now I worried it would tip over.

At the time I was so focused on my own experience that I didn’t stop to think about how that day affected my father, and it was not until years later that we had a chance to talk about it. In the hours before we were gathered in Uncle Warren’s office, Dad had been summoned to see the prophet at his home in Salt Lake. He was immediately shown to the prophet’s private office, where he found Uncle Rulon and his son Warren. As had become the case in recent years, Warren was there to speak on behalf of his father. Although Uncle Rulon was still officially the prophet, he was in his mid-eighties and not as active as he once had been. Warren had taken on many of the traditional responsibilities of the prophet. A year earlier, it had been Warren who performed Dad’s marriage ceremony to Mother Laura, and here he was, once again, delivering his father’s directives. Taking a seat across from the men on one of the chairs, my father didn’t know what to expect as he adjusted himself and waited to be addressed. Warren did not waste any time getting to the point.

“The prophet has lost confidence in you as a priesthood man and is taking Sharon and her children away,” he blurted out.

The words were an assault and Dad was too overcome by emotion to respond. It seemed like only yesterday that he had been honored with the addition of a third wife. Now, as Warren had bluntly put it, Dad was losing Sharon and all of her children. He sat there listening to Warren speak, and the reality of the situation began to sink in: Dad had been stripped of his priesthood duties as they pertained to Mother Sharon and her children, but Mothers Audrey and Laura would remain under his control. As he sat listening, he wondered how everything could have slipped through his fingers so quickly. Rising to leave, he was too besieged by emotion to speak and left in bewilderment. My father later explained that he’d felt as if he’d become detached from his body as he heard the prophet’s revelation that day. The words had been spoken, but Dad just couldn’t make them feel real inside.

When he returned home, he found the belongings of Mother Sharon and her children had already been taken away. Mothers Audrey and Laura were shocked by the news. They too had been unhappy, but they’d never thought it would come to this. In the weeks ahead, Mother Audrey felt a devastating loss. While things had not been working in the house for quite some time, losing Mother Sharon and her children was much more upsetting than she ever imagined.

W
hen our two vans arrived at the prophet’s Hildale home, my mother’s brother Robert was waiting for us. He’d been instructed to take us to the Steed family ranch, some 150 miles outside of Short Creek near Widtsoe, Utah. My heart was momentarily warmed as I watched his hug seem to give my mother strength. It had been a long time since she’d lived there, but I sensed that she felt a certain relief to be going home.

Since Grandpa Newel’s death at the age of eighty-six, many of his sons had cared for the ranch where he had raised his large family. Uncle Robert and his family lived in the main house and had started a home school for their children on the sprawling grounds. The ranch had been in the Steed family for about eighty years, ever since Grandpa Newel settled it in 1916 at the tender age of fourteen. Despite his youth, Grandpa Newel had traveled alone with sixty head of cattle to the remote and barren land in southern Utah that his father had homesteaded, and it was there that he made good on his promise to his father that he would establish a fully functioning ranch. He spent hours alone caring for the stock, milking the cows, and churning fresh butter, barely making it through that first long, hard winter. But even as the isolating snow and ice cut through the valley, Newel Steed endured it all in the name of his dream: living a life where he could practice Mormonism as it was originally envisioned by Joseph Smith, a life where he was free to practice plural marriage.

Grandpa Newel’s belief in the principle of plural marriage first took root when, at the age of ten, he accompanied his father to a clandestine meeting of men still in the Mormon Church who continued to embrace the practice in secret. This was in the early days of “The Work,” decades before it was known as the FLDS Church. In time, Grandpa Newel was not only free to practice his religion, he also became one of the most respected members of the FLDS in southern Utah. When the Steed family arrived at a community event, all eyes were on their perfectly styled hair and their attractive homemade clothes. The Steeds were known for their taste in fabrics and their unique, trendsetting interpretation of the church-mandated dress code.

Although there was this rich tapestry of family history at the ranch, I had not spent much time with Uncle Robert and his family. Still, he seemed genuinely happy to see us. I will never forget riding in the back of his white truck with the camper shell on it. The drive to Widtsoe seemed to take forever, and a little bud of excitement formed inside of me. I had rarely had the opportunity to visit the Steed ranch since my grandfather Newel’s passing in 1988, and despite the acute sadness and confusion I had experienced over the past couple of days, I couldn’t deny my eagerness to get there.

When we arrived, the house looked cozy, the snow-covered ground and the white picket fence that surrounded the historic wood residence giving it a homey feel. After such a long, emotional journey, it felt good to be received with love by Uncle Robert’s many wives and children. Mom’s brother was a faithful follower and he and his family did all that they could to move aside and open a place for us to stay in their home.

We were moved by their generosity, but the accommodations were difficult for a family that had been used to more modern living. This was the original home that my mother had grown up in and it had not been updated. There was no power or central heat. The home was run on a generator and heated by an old wood-burning stove. Uncle Robert had cleared a bedroom for my mother, sisters, and me, but my brothers had to bunk with some of Uncle Robert’s sons. Uncle Rulon had allowed my sister Kassandra to stay with us full-time, and Rachel traveled to see us when she could. At various points, there were as many as seven children in some of the rooms.

My mother’s spirits seemed to lift immediately upon our arrival at the ranch. I sensed her relief and joy at being back in her childhood home. Having her and my older sisters close helped us get through this scary and trying period. But there were moments when I longed for my home in Salt Lake and to hear my father’s soothing voice leading the family in evening prayer.

Even though everyone was willing to adopt us into the family, life was still not easy—especially for Teressa and my brothers. I was young enough not to understand everything that was going on, but they were fully aware of our situation’s harsh realities. As we tried to process complex emotions, we couldn’t help but feel that Dad had been unjustly dealt with. While those outside our family may have thought that the prophet and Warren were saving us from a father who could not control his family, I never saw it that way. Things were not perfect at home and something did need to change, but breaking the family apart would not solve the problem. It was just another wound from which our family would never recover.

We’d been at the ranch for a few weeks when Mom suddenly went away, leaving us in the care of Kassandra and Teressa. While I trusted my older sisters, I was worried about my mother’s unexpected and secretive departure. We were told only that she’d gone to Hildale to see the prophet. During her absence, I became so ill I nearly collapsed. Perhaps it was the change of climate or the stress of losing my dad that had me fighting off constant colds and spells of the flu. I’d never really gotten over the Lyme disease I’d contracted the previous summer during our camping trip to the mountains, and I often felt weak and tired. Fevers plagued me during repeated bouts of illness, and as the snow and cold of winter set in, I found it impossible to get warm. I walked around much of the time with inflamed tonsils and a general feeling of ill health.

Kassandra and Teressa took care of me as best they could, but the homeopathic remedies of cayenne pepper, garlic, and echinacea could not prevent my deterioration. There were moments when my throat seemed to almost completely close up, and my tonsils became severely infected. Even if my mother had been there to take care of me, with no health insurance and no doctors nearby, there was not much more she could have done to help. Nevertheless, I longed for her comfort and presence at my side.

At the ranch, we were expected to share in the workload. Our names were placed on the job chart and we worked alongside everyone else, but because I was so sick, it was difficult for me to do my share. We were also required to attend morning lessons with our family members, where we would listen to the taped sermons and teachings of Warren Jeffs. There were days when I felt well enough to ice-skate and sled, and I was able to enjoy the big New Year’s Eve party when we made homemade candy and played games with our many young cousins.

In addition to Uncle Robert’s family, my uncle Lee and his wife, Debbie, were living at the ranch in a smaller home. Some of my older male cousins shared a “bunkhouse” just behind the main house, where they had been sent from Hildale by their fathers to help care for the ranch. One of these was my fifteen-year-old first cousin Allen Glade Steed.

From our first contact that winter, I didn’t like Allen one bit. He was gangly and awkward, but that didn’t stop him from teasing my younger siblings and me because we didn’t have a father. Though he probably knew that his words stung, he would remind us with a gleeful smile that we didn’t have a “priesthood father.” We were quick to defend Dad’s honor, and it led to many arguments. As a ten-year-old girl, I was very self-conscious and insecure. For most of my childhood, I had kept some baby fat, and even though Allen seemed to know it scorched my feelings, he took to calling me “Tubba-Tubba.”

He seemed to enjoy embarrassing me. One day, I had been ecstatic about going ice-skating because illnesses had kept me from many other skating trips. The reservoir on the Steed ranch was too far from the house to walk, so we would usually drive over. I waited patiently for my brothers and sisters to get ready, and we all rushed outside to pile into the trailer attached to Allen’s four-wheeler. They got in one by one as I waited for my turn to hop on. Just as I stepped toward the trailer, Allen let out a loud, cruel laugh and sped away, throwing me off balance and causing me to hit my head. Tears stung my eyes, but rather than act like a baby, I stood back up and shouted “Stop!” and asked him to please return for me. He simply went on laughing, not even hearing my words as he left me behind in the snow.

Although he was particularly mean to me, I wasn’t Allen’s only target. My younger brother Caleb and I were in the milk shed one day watching a few of the Steed siblings milk the cows. I was feeling shaky after another bout of illness, and the bitter-cold winter air was hard to ignore. Allen, with a menacing smile, started to spray us with the hose he was using and continued until our clothes were soaked. I begged him to stop, but he wouldn’t. Caleb was bolder than I, and picking up a nearby shovel, he threw some manure at Allen. Allen left in a rage, telling Robert that Caleb had tossed manure at him while he was working and claiming that the attack had been unprovoked.

I couldn’t even stand seeing Allen at the dinner table in the evenings. The Steeds ran their home much like a business, with meals served at set times and in shifts; those who found a seat at one of the two dining tables in the kitchen ate first. When the rations ran out, there was often nothing more to eat. Unlike Salt Lake and even Short Creek, Widstoe was a kind of ghost town, with no grocery stores in close proximity. The town and the surrounding area had long been abandoned due to a lack of water. Our nearest neighbor was about fifteen miles away. Much of the food was harvested from the big vegetable garden on the property and pickled and stored for use throughout the winter. Sometimes we would go to bed hungry.

The run-ins with Allen were not the only problems between the Steed kids and the Wall children. After Mom had been gone for a while, a dispute broke out between my brothers and some of Uncle Robert’s sons. Despite the fact that both families belonged to the same religion, our father had raised us differently than Uncle Robert raised his family, and these disparities became a point of contention. With Mom temporarily out of the picture, some of Uncle Robert’s older sons took it upon themselves to impose their more rigid form of FLDS observance on my brothers. They were constantly proclaiming their faith in the prophet and quickly became impatient with my brothers’ apparent lack of conviction. The Wall boys resented the perpetual, uninvited tutorials, and Kassandra and Teressa were forced to step in to mediate.