Stolen Innocence: My Story of Growing Up in a Polygamous Sect, Becoming a Teenage Bride, and Breaking Free of Warren Jeffs

Big change in subject for me - this one was a case of thrift shop serendipity found when I had reason to wish to understand an inflexible religious mindset a little better. I remember this book from the days it was $30 or so brand new at Borders.

I can hardly believe that the FLDS members are an American people practicing an American religion. Goodness gracious, have they no care for freedom??? Have they not heard of the American taste for freedom? No, not so much. They have taken to their slavery like ducks to water and reason will not change minds there. They can actually "keep sweet" when such outrageous demands are made on them by their powers that be? Remove a man from his family, assign his woman and children to another man, exile show more the boys, and everyone cooperates? All I can say is.... wow. I had no idea. How horrible and frightening cult behavior is when you shine a light under the rock that people like David Koresh and Jim Jones live under.

I had sort of a panic attack at the mere sight of Warren Jeffs in the picture section. My Spider Sense literally screamed "CREEEEEP!" and I was literally frightened for just a moment, sitting safely in my home with a hardback in my hands. World of yuck. So glad he's in jail, so sorry the faithful are apparently waiting around for him to come back and take up the reins of power again.

It is probably quite relevant to say here that I'm not necessarily put off by tall, skinny and weird. I think Joey Ramone is one of the more adorable human beings to have graced the planet for awhile, and I do freely admit that seeing "Rock and Roll High School" at an impressionable age may have had something to do with this affectionate feeling for the Ramones.

High praise to author and escapee, free woman Elissa Walls, who somehow managed to maintain a most laudable sense of grace, forgiveness, love and hope concerning her True Believer mother and sisters, escaped siblings and and even her sad sack cousin-ex-husband. I tip my hat to her.

As for the FLDS, they are throwing away their children in the name of their religion, and I fear it is always a mistake to turn out your family. No matter why, even if it's in the name of religion. Especially when it is over religion. I can say that with some authority at the moment. Thanks Elissa, reading your story brought me comfort after my fight with a fundamentalist. show less

Stolen innocence: My Story of Growing up in a Polygamous Sect, Becoming a Teenage Bride, and Breaking Free of Warren Jeffs. Elissa Wall, 2008. The title says it all. This is a fascinating and horrifying look into the FLDS, the Fundamentalist Church of Latter Day Saints, and their practices. The author grew up into a family with one father and 3 wives and all their children. She was forced into marriage at the age of 14 to a man she had never liked. She details daily life under the hideous dictatorship of the Prophet Jeffs who controlled every aspect of the lives of the members of the sect. It is hard to believe that people still live like this. This is a very readable detailed account of Walls life and escape from this sect.

Everytime I give a memoir about a heartwrenching topic less than four stars, I tend to feel a tremendous amount of guilt. I always feel like the author will read my less than stellar review and think "Well I'm sorry that what I went through wasn't GOOD enough for you! What, did you want me to go through more so that you could me entertained?" While this wasn't my issue with Stolen Innocence, I do have to give it three stars (and that's being semi-generous).

My main issue with Stolen Innocence was that it lagged big time. A big chunk of this book was very repetitive. In fact, the first 100 pages were good and the last 100 pages were great. However, the middle was just a repeat of what she had mentioned in the first 100 pages repeated show more throughout about 200 more. This book would've been way better if it had been a bit on the shorter side sans any repeating.

Stolen Innocence was also terribly written. I do understand that Elissa Wall isn't a writer and hence this book wasn't going to be some literary masterpiece, but I did expect it to be semi well-written. Shouldn't her ghostwriter have made it a bit more readable? And the editor really should have done a better job. There were glaring typos all over Stolen Innocence. I had to resist the urge to take out a red pen and correct them all. This was a FINAL copy, not an Advanced Reader's Copy and therefore should have read like one.

Again I state that I did find Elisa Wall's story incredibly heartwrenching and the way that the FLDS treats its women really pisses me off. I am incredibly happy that Wall managed to escape and survive that ideal and I think it's great that she's sharing her story. I just wish it would've been better written. show less

I’m always interested in how upbringing and circumstances affect belief, and in Stolen Innocence Lisa Pulitzer has helped Elissa Wall write a fascinating account of her gradual transition from mildly rebellious believer to someone who would leave behind the only world she had ever known, even though she still worried her actions might cause her eternal damnation. Wall grew up in the Fundamentalist Church of the Latter Day Saints, the polygamous sect Warren Jeffs, now jailed, led, but since her father and the first of his wives were converts and hadn’t been raised in the faith themselves, they had a harder than usual time adjusting to the dynamics of plural marriage, making trouble for the whole family.

Though it was never idyllic, show more life deteriorated in the community after Warren Jeffs anointed himself prophet and began a series of self-serving proclamations that eliminated most celebrations, banished potential rivals, and tore families apart. The unraveling, and the way believers struggled to maintain their faith while coping with the changes make gripping reading.

For me, the most intriguing, though heartbreaking, part of the book covers Wall’s life after being forced to marry a first cousin she despises when she is only fourteen. Still young and isolated enough to be naive, her nature and strict way of life also allowed her to be much more resilient and self-sufficient than a lot of young teenagers. She’d run to her mother for comfort, but she also found numerous jobs so she wouldn’t have to ask her “husband” for money, and many nights she slept alone in her pickup truck on isolated desert roads a to avoid spending the night with him.

For those interested in Warren Jeff’s trial, that is covered in detail because Wall was a star witness in the case. show less

4.5 stars

Elissa Wall grew up as an FLDS (Fundamentalist Latter Day Saints, the polygamous sect of the Mormons) member. As she grew up, she watched many of her older siblings either leave or be kicked out of the FLDS. When she was 14-years old, she was forced to marry her first cousin, Allen – a man she loathed. She begged from the start to get out of the marriage, both because she was too young and he was her cousin. “Prophet” (or the mouthpiece for the current prophet, ailing Roulon Jeffs – Warren’s father) Warren Jeffs didn’t listen or care. She continued to try to be released from this awful marriage as Allen continually abused her.

I’ve read a few books about the FLDS. This is another horrifying story, as Warren Jeffs show more took power from his father and things got worse and worse for the members, in addition to young Elissa. It seems that it’s hard enough for victims of abuse to come forward; there is so much additional pressure for FLDS in that they first need to get away - for many, against the wishes of their families and other loved ones, and of course, against their church and religious beliefs. I listened to the audio and thought the narrator did a good job. show less

I thought I knew everything I needed to know about the FLDS from reading Under the Banner of Heaven by Jon Krakauer and watching Warren Jeffs, the FLDS prophet, in the news, but I still found Stolen Innocence to be utterly fascinating.

In 1986, Elissa Wall was born into a polygamous Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (FLDS) family in the Salt Lake City area. She was one of her father’s 25 children and one of her mother’s 14. When she was a child, the FLDS became unhappy with her father and they reassigned Elissa’s mother and all her children to another FLDS man in the Utah-Arizona border area. Like everyone in the FLDS culture, her life was one of physical, social, and physical isolation. At the age of 14 show more she was told that she was to be married, she protested as best she could, and even more vehemently when she learned that it was her 19 year old bullying cousin who she was to marry. Like all FLDS children, she had been segregated from all males (except her brothers) and had not been taught the first thing about anatomy or sex, in fact, she didn’t even know the word. She also didn’t know the word “rape,” which is what her husband did to her over the next four years. By the time she was 17, Elissa had had three miscarriages and one still birth. She eventually escaped, married someone she loved, and was a star witness in Warren Jeff’s first trial.

Read my full review at: http://www.librarything.com/topic/158479#4350349 show less

America watched in shock and disbelief in April 2008, when Texas law enforcement authorites raided a compound called "Yearn for Zion" ranch , removing hundreds of women and children. Who were these people called the FLDS? Why did all the women look like they came from the set of Little House on the Prairie? They were not really forcing hundreds of young teenage girls to marry and have babies against their will...were they? Elissa Wall is a former member of the FLDS who in 2007 brought the first successful prosecution of Warren Jeffs, the former leader of the FLDS, to trial for rape as an accomplice. In this book, Elissa courageously shares the details of her own forced marriage and, in doing so, shines a light onto the abuses that are show more endured by women and children in the name of this religion.

Elissa was born on July 7, 1986, to a family with one father, two mothers, and 16 children living at home. She was the eleventh of her mother's eventual fourteen children, and nineteenth of her father's eventual twenty-four. Elissa's father had converted to the faith, but her mother was a child of a prominent FLDS family. Because Elissa's father did not grow up in the faith, he was unfamiliar with the management of a home with multiple wives, so their family was fraught with tension as the two mothers bickered and struggled to maintain control of the household in the way each saw fit. When Elissa's father brought a third wife into the home when Elissa was nine years old, the problems only intensified. It was seen as an honor to be given a third wife. However, Warren Jeffs, son of the current Prophet (leader) of the church, decided Elissa's father could not manage his home, so Elissa's mother and all of her children were taken from him and relocated from Salt Lake to Short Creek, Utah, an FLDS stronghold. It was there that she first met her cousin Allen, who would later become her husband.

The FLDS church broke away from the more well-known Mormon Church in 1935, after the Mormon Church abandoned their core belief of polygamy. Members of the FLDS church believe that a man must have a minimum of three wives in order to attain admittance into the celestial kingdom, the highest of the three levels of heaven. The FLDS also believe in the Law of Placement, which means that all marriages are chosen by the prophet based on a special revelation he receives from God. They believe that everything the prophet says is the word of God, thus any marriage he decrees is commanded by God. After marriage, a woman is considered the property of her husband, to be used in any way he sees fit. Their highest responsibility is to "keep sweet" - literally, to pretend to be happy no matter what, and to be completely submissive in word and deed to whatever their husband demands.

It was in this environment that Elissa was told, when she was just fourteen years old, that the prophet had found a "place" for her - that she was going to be married. Initially, Elissa thought there must have been a mistake. She was only in the eighth grade, after all, and marriages for girls under the age of eighteen were supposed to be stopped, since they were against the "law of the land." However, she soon found out it was no mistake. She was to be married in just a few short days to Allen, her first cousin, whom she despised. Ever since meeting him as a young girl, she had felt uncomfortable and uneasy around him, and he had tormented her mercilessly whenever they were together. She begged unsuccessfully to be released from this placement, even for a few more years, but Warren Jeffs would not relent. On April 23, 2001, Allen and Elissa were sealed together in the FLDS church "for time and all eternity."

Elissa's marrige was a nightmare. Because as children boys and girls were taught to treat each other as snakes and not allowed to date or even spend time in each other's presence, she had no idea of the physical demands a man was allowed to make on his wife. She was scared and begged Allen repeatedly not to do things that were painful and, she believed, sinful, but he continued. She was pregnant by the time she was fifteen and suffered three miscarriages and a stillbirth by the time she was seventeen. She continued for four years to beg her mother, leaders of the church, and Warren Jeffs himself to help her escape from a marriage that she knew was wrong, but she was continually told that all her problems were of her own making. If she would just learn to submit to the authority God had placed over her, she would be happy.

One night, fleeing from her husband and in the middle of yet another miscarriage, Elissa's truck had a flat tire. It was raining, and she was covered in mud. Suddenly, headlights appeared, and a kind voice asked her if she needed help. The voice belonged to Lamont Barlow, and although she didn't know it yet, he was going to save her. Elissa and Lamont slowly and secretly developed a friendship, hiding and sneaking away so no one would discover them. Eventually, Lamont told Elissa he loved her, and she realized she loved him, too. She knew she would have to leave the FLDS church but was reluctant to abandon her two younger sisters to the horrors she had been subjected to. However, when Allen and other church leaders discovered her relationship with Lamont, she had no choice but to leave her family behind. In 2005, at the urging of her sisters, along with lawyers and members of the Utah law enforcement, she filed a lawsuit against Warren Jeffs, accusing him of conspiracy to commit rape by forcing her to marry an older man. Hers was the first trial successfully prosecuted against Jeffs and paved the way for several more trials in Utah and other states.

Elissa has a truly remarkable story. Because so much of the world in which she grew up is alien to the reader, she has to spend a good portion of the book explaining concepts that many will find difficult to believe. She is still able, though, to keep the narrative of her story moving forward, making the book nearly impossible to put down. It reads like a thriller, and often the reader must be reminded that this is the author's real life. Elissa does an excellent job of making each of the people in her story seem real, rather than simply caricatures of a repressive religious order. Even in the face of betrayal by her parents and siblings, Elissa shows us that they are just doing what they believe to be right. She has obvious compassion for the members of the FLDS church, and she allows the reader to feel for them as well, even though their decisions seem so obviously wrong.

Stolen Innocence will naturally be compared to Escape by Carolyn Jessop, the other true story of FLDS life published earlier this year. Both books are worth reading, but Stolen Innocence captures the fear and helplessness of a woman's life in this religion in a more accessible way. I was captivated by this book from beginning to end and will be encouraging all the readers I know to pick it up.

Originally published on Curled Up With A Good Book at www.curledup.com. © Elizabeth Schulenburg, 2008 show less