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[Wind blowing]
[Terrill musser] We were always taught we were special, okay?
We were these special people and we got to come to this special place
and we were going to build like a heaven on earth here.
[Lori Barlow] If you were thinking of a place to start a homestead,
it wasn't really an attractive one.
It was, you know, high desert and it'd need a lot of work.
[Laughs] But heavenly father had his purpose
in bringing the community here and offering that.
That... that's why it... It's special.
[Musser] It was one big family in... in a sense.
And their idea was to build a place where we were all equal.
It's peace on earth basically. A utopia.
[Indistinct conversation]
We have so much data go through.
We've only scratched the surface,
so I don't even know what's going to be there.
But it's archives of everything.
[Chorus singing]
This is the 1987 love at home, there at our meeting house.
- [Band music playing] - This is 1989.
There's things like that. There's the... the parade. The pioneer day parades.
[Marching band playing]
- [Kids shouting] - [Woman] Woah, that's a big crowd.
This is mostly for people to see what it really was like.
This shows who we really were before the craziness.
My childhood, like, was so happy.
Like... like there wasn't a place i'd...
I would rather have grown up.
This community was amazing. It was awesome.
I mean, we could roam the hills, we could play in the crick.
You know, the crick was my backyard.
[Shirlee draper] It was plays and programs and dances and community celebrations.
There were all these artistic expressions available to us.
[Musser] This town was a busy town.
You got to realize there was almost at one time 18,000 people out here.
We worked together to build our town.
That sense of community of,
"hey, we can all 200 of us go over here and build this house."
[Woman] Raise up the bucket.
- [Machine rattling] - [Kid humming]
[Musser] And we would. We'd go build a whole house in a day
and give it to a family that was in need.
Be like, "hey, let's go do a big 4th of July."
It wasn't the city that put it on. It wasn't the county.
It was we, the people, who put everything on.
We had so much community pride.
[Draper] We were safe and we were happy.
And we were fundamentalist mormons.
[Esther bistline] We still consider ourselves mormon.
We believe in the book of mormon,
but we believe in the original teachings of Joseph Smith.
The biggest drift between the lds and the fundamentalists,
the flds, is obviously going to be plural marriage,
which is the term we like to use.
[Norma Richter] When the lds church decided not to sanction plurality of wives,
we continued on with the fundamentals
that the prophet Joseph set forth to live.
[Musser] That's where we kind of broke off
our church and started this town.
[Richter] My grandfather was one of the first pioneers that came here.
He had his homestead
and then a group of them dedicated the land to the church.
And that's how it began here and it was with my grandfather.
The people could have a place
where they could live the united order as brigham young taught.
[Richter] The united order is to have everything in common.
There is no rich, there is no poor.
We all share what we have without having to rely on the outside world.
[Musser] And so the united effort plan
was everybody was going to donate all the land
so that nobody could take it and we could divide it equally
because that was the dream. We were all equal.
And so, the first united effort plan was a...
Was a bunch of land that was put together in a trust.
[Lori] When that trust was formed,
the land was then dedicated to heavenly father
and to the building of the peace kingdom on the earth.
- Build up that kingdom. - [Kids] Build up that kingdom.
- Say, "build up Zion." - [Kids] Build up Zion.
So everybody, at the time they were building their homes,
had the understanding that they were consecrating, were the words that we used,
these materials to the trust.
[Musser] We didn't own anything out here.
Everything was god's and the trust's.
Everybody here believed the same thing.
[Draper] You know, we believed this was how god wanted us to live.
If you had warned me, I would have gone ahead
and, you know, cleaned my laundry room. [Laughs]
[Dryer whirring]
Do you want to help?
You're no good at pretending the camera doesn't exist, are you? [Laughing]
There you go. You want to help me?
Oh, you're... you've never been so willing to help before.
You are quite a little actress.
Yeah, that's yours too, huh?
This is my baby girl, angel. Hi. [Laughs]
Angel will be 18 this month and, uh, she has cerebral palsy. Yes.
So, um, I have three older sons.
My oldest son, John, has autism.
And my two middle sons are brilliant geniuses
who walk on water and have always taken
really good care of us, huh? Huh, angel?
[Tape clicking]
I have no idea what's on that.
[Draper] That was... That was one of your favorite places, wasn't it John?
You loved that park and it had the train.
[Indistinct shouting]
This is in 2000. Wow. Boy, that would be interesting.
[All laughing]
- [Woman 1] Watch the... - [Woman 2] Is there a happy face?
There they are. There are all of the happy people.
[Draper] I had no problem with plural marriage.
I mean, born and raised into it.
Born and raised to people who had been practicing for a long time.
I had no problem with it because it's what I knew.
I grew up believing that god would choose my partner.
That god had the right person in mind for me.
And that the prophet would know and that was my expectation.
I got the call that the prophet was going to
place me and so, it was a Monday morning.
I did not know who I was going to marry.
And we were married at 5 o'clock that night.
First time I had ever kissed anyone.
The man I was told to marry. We were both in the choir.
Um, I did know him.
It wasn't like I was horrified at the thought of marrying him or being told who to marry.
And at the age of 22, you know, making a conscious decision
to marry the person that the prophet told me to marry.
You know, it's not like I was a 15-year-old and didn't know what I was getting into.
It was part of our culture.
[Draper] Here we are outside the honeymoon suite.
They just got home.
- Okay [giggling] - [Draper] here they come.
- This is so embarrassing. - [Grunting]
Hey, that's cute.
[Draper] Marge was brought into our family and it was fairly natural.
♪ There is beauty all around ♪
♪ when there's love at home ♪
[Draper] I had ten biological siblings and Marge was one of them.
By then, it was really common for younger sisters to marry
into the family of the elder sister.
And so, I kind of assumed that would happen.
And I could see some of the benefits of plural marriage.
In fact, I benefited greatly from plural marriage.
From having my sister, who I already loved in my home
taking care of my children after my little girl was born
I think, you know, nine months later,
and I ended up spending three years in the hospital with her.
And my younger sister was home, loving and caring for my children
how I wanted them to be taken care of.
That was a huge benefit.
You know, I think this is one of the topics
that really trips up a lot of people.
They feel like that because polygamy receives so much attention
that that is the tenet of our religion
and it's really only one of them.
It's a small piece of the religion.
I don't think it's fair that the hegemonic gaze
of mainstream gets to define a culture. Any culture.
But when it comes to populations that are,
you know, created to be deviants,
then that is absolutely accepted and that's the way it is.
They put them all in a basket and this is how we understand them.
The big line of police cars were like lining the street, coming this way.
And that went all the way out to the highway, which it doesn't now.
And so, when they came, they were facing this way.
[On tape] We come today to the subject of the 1953 raid.
It's very important that you young people see
how the prophets and other good people
have defended you, protected you.
How the government of the United States
persecuted this priesthood through the years.
The 1953 raid was made to destroy our families.
[Bistline] In 1953, the state of Arizona did come in.
They arrested all the men.
[Draper] They were planning to release the women.
They thought that women were here not of their own accord,
and they thought that they were going to open up the cage
and allow the women to fly free and they would be grateful.
And to their surprise, the women were not grateful.
[Warren Jeffs] They wanted to take the children away from the parents.
Adopt the children out, and then in a few years, destroy the records.
So the children wouldn't know their lineage.
The 1953 raid was always talked about when I was growing up
because both of my parents were taken away as children.
My own father was eight years old and was dragged out
from under a bed by a uniformed police officer,
whose intent was to separate from him from his parents and adopt him out.
[Jeffs] They wanted to stamp out polygamy forever.
But the mothers would not leave their children.
And they got onto the buses with the children.
Went with the children and were scattered throughout Arizona.
The state of Arizona wanted to erase us.
The state of Utah wanted to erase us.
We are an annoyance to them. A big Thorn in their side.
Why? I don't know other than that we're different.
And there were stories the women had written. I mean, we have books of it
because we want to keep this alive in the minds
of not only us, but our children, and our children's children.
[Jeffs] I realize this raid took place before you young people were born.
I ask you to go home today and imagine tonight
all of you taken away and placed among the gentiles.
Having to live among them and their ways.
[Draper] That raid really defined for us
of how the government's not to be trusted.
How law enforcement is specifically not to be trusted.
And so, we get into this idea that anybody new that comes in
they're coming to gather information.
They're coming to hurt us in some way.
So we work together even closer
more determined to not let the world in to hurt us anymore.
[Interviewer] So, first order of business,
tell me who you are and what you do for a living.
Uh, my name is Glenn meehan and I am a TV producer,
showrunner, um, lover of life.
[Laughs] I don't know what else to say.
I've done documentaries. I've done court shows, talk shows.
I co-created a couple of reality shows.
This was probably 12 years ago, maybe even longer.
There was this amazing article on, um, the phenonium
of the lost boys from the flds.
About how Warren Jeffs, who was the prophet,
he basically told these, um, families to kick their boys out
and send them away at 14, 15, 16 years old.
So the older men could have some of the younger women as wives.
So they didn't want the competition with the younger men.
I was fascinated with this.
So, I got a plane ticket and I went to look into the flds.
[Meehan] This town is on the other side of the Zion mountains
on the border of hildale, Utah,
and um, Colorado city, Arizona.
It is just stunning.
But yet, beauty is only so deep there.
We met Sam brower, a private investigator working with the government.
And I remember Sam telling me that they're aware you're here. Be careful.
[Brower] This guy right here is one of the spies.
[Meehan] He's a spy for who?
When I heard that, I was like, "okay, this is fucked up."
[Brower] Where that balcony is. And then, there's the rain gutter
and there's a lipstick camera right next to it.
That's a bell camera. It's a motorized camera
that they can watch and see who comes up.
See all these fences? They weren't here before.
- This is just... - [Donia jessop] No.
[Brower] This is just recent paranoia.
Two year ago, all these fences weren't here.
[Jessop] No. None of it was this way.
[Meehan] Get some of those signs.
You know, just get them. No trespassing. Uh-oh.
- [Cameraman] Are they coming after us? - [Meehan] Yeah.
And I remember when we were followed.
-Let me give you my card. It's just in the trunk, okay? -Okay.
- And are all you guys from Massachusetts? - [Jessop] No.
Are you part of the paper or?
- [Jessop] No, we're just riding around... - magazine?
[Jessop] ...Looking at the beautiful scenery.
Beautiful scenery.
We had rocks thrown at us and people were spitting on the car.
[Women screaming]
The interesting thing about this town that Sam taught me is like, you know,
if you get in trouble here you can't call the police 'cause they're all flds.
[Meehan] You just got to get out.
I remember one girl that I met
um, who said, "I will meet you in a parking lot.
I've got some stuff for you."
She didn't get out of the car. She rolled the window down
and she handed me tapes of Warren.
[Jeffs] Keeping sweet is an exertion to remain clean and pure.
If you're ever not keeping sweet, then you're not pure.
And I still get chills. Chills hearing that guy's voice.
It is the most eerie... You couldn't cast a voice like that.
[Jeffs] We give this lesson today, young people.
We have to teach you how to think and how to live in a pure way.
You purify your heart by first cleaning up your mind.
And Warren talked about the children must obey.
Talked about women always must obey their husbands.
[Jeffs] And knowing you're pleasing your husband, your head,
brings you a heaven.
But realize, young ladies, the best thing is to leave your life
in the hands of god through his prophet.
That's when I realized be careful.
You got to be real careful. I mean, these people were absolutely crazy.
[Bistline] When I was growing up, we didn't have a lot of outsiders coming in.
There wasn't a lot of scrutiny.
And it got to a point later on when
you'd come outside and a camera would be poked in your face.
You know, there was always somebody
that wanted to know what was goin' on.
[Richter] Every time we turned around,
they want to make us look horrible
that we were these demonic people
in this horrible cult, you know.
This is absolutely the most lawless community in the country.
It's run by a madman.
And he has total power over the people here.
They will do literally anything he says, and I mean anything he says.
Warren, you might say in the eyes of some people, became very unpopular.
[Clears throat]
[Piano playing]
♪ I desire here today ♪
♪ to sincerely point the way ♪
[Draper] When rulon Jeffs had is stroke in about 1998,
Warren Jeffs had taken over.
Things that were suggested and encouraged before kind of became mandatory.
And, um, and then started really becoming a lot more strict on things
like language and whether or not we could dance.
[Jeffs] Evil powers get in control over us when we are having fun
when we relax our prayers.
[Draper] He started, um, saying we couldn't wear certain colors and patterns.
Um, women had to wear their hair certain ways.
No tvs, no radios. Can't have the Internet.
[Jeffs] I know you young people are tempted
by the things of this earth.
And some of you have tasted of the wicked entertainment of the gentiles,
the movies, the music.
[Musser] Children books were started to be edited.
They would go in and color long sleeves
until it got to where there were so many books.
Warren just got rid of books all together
because he couldn't edit everything.
[Draper] Warren stood up in church and announced that they needed to shut down
the public schools because we had to associate with apostates too much.
That was, you know, two things that were really horrifying to me.
First of all, that we had to shun and hate,
which was not part of our religion,
and that we were going to deprive children of schooling,
which was really, really troubling to me.
[Jeffs] In priesthood, we know that the lord owns everything.
And the priesthood, the prophets, the bishops have the right to tell
who should have what and what they should do.
[Draper] One of the things that growing up in this community
was pretty sacrosanct was the family.
That was one of the big changes that Warren started to make,
just taking women away from a man that he was trying to punish.
And he would give women to a man that he was rewarding,
destroying family units that way.
[Jeffs] You ladies belong to the prophet
as far as the lord placing you where you belong.
[Draper] Ah, it became very troubling, you know, sending men away
in public meetings, reassigning children around.
And sending mothers away.
And he started just moving people around from home to home to home.
So there was literally no structure or safety anywhere,
not physically, not emotionally, not psychologically.
He really kinda set himself up as god.
[Jeffs] Any feelings against your priesthood had is death to you.
This is the law of god through the prophet to this people now.
It will divide us to be obedient or disobedient.
[Man] Mother...
[Children talking]
- hi. - [Mouthing] Hi.
[Draper] As I started to really look at Warren's actions,
I started asking questions.
I was telling people, you know, we don't worship a man.
How does it come about that he's asking us to worship him as god?
They were not voicing any kind of disagreement or disbelief.
And so everybody just, you know, we got in lockstep and marched behind him.
- [Child giggles] - [Man praying] Dear god, to help Warren.
[Draper] That made me just start looking around and thinking this is it.
This is the beginning of the end.
They're gonna trot in the kool-aid.
I need to get out of here.
And I was worried about my children at that point.
I had four children, two of them had special needs.
And I had no income.
And all of my sense of identity and belonging was inside of the community.
And all of my family, and all of my friends,
and all of my support structure
was inside the community.
By then Warren had... He'd put in these fail safes, right?
If somebody didn't believe, they were sent away.
And the cost of exit was that they lost
their families, their community, their sense of belonging.
I would bleed to death internally to give up my family.
So I would think, "well, maybe I'll just keep my mouth shut
for a little while."
And so for four years, it kind of went on like that.
And those are some of the darkest years in my life.
- Everyone say, keep sweet. - [Children] Keep sweet.
- We are grateful. - [Children] We are grateful.
[Draper] For four years, ya know, letting my children become indoctrinated.
- [Man] Keep sweet. - Yeah.
[Man] How come?
[Draper] My husband was saying all the right things and doing all the right things,
and I was not.
[Man] So we?
[Man] We could get what?
[Man] Wonderful.
It was only after, you know, they were coming to my home
to ask if I believed in Warren Jeffs.
I thought I really got to make this move and take my children and leave.
Honestly, I really believe it was angel that saved me.
The fact that she was born, and I had to be in the hospital
with her a lot gave me the excuse to be away and not going to church.
It gave me that space from that really, you know, terrible structure.
[Man] She can do it.
[Draper] She can do it.
[Man] Nice.
[Draper] Kay, step. Kay, step.
[Draper] She also has the most incredible nature and personality.
And she is only love.
She is unadulterated love.
I've never experienced unconditional love before in my life.
[Woman squeals] Did you see that?
She lets go of her cane and walks to me with one cane.
[Woman laughs]
She is just so full of love.
This little girl, I think she keeps me alive.
[Whispers] Yeah.
Yes.
And it was because of her, and it was because of all of the circumstances
that I was with her in my life that actually enabled me
to make the decisions that I made
and to drive away and to support myself.
And so I've...
She saved me.
We're gathering what we call Indian marbles or sandstone marbles.
We're gonna be making things out of them.
Look at this. I found you some coasters for your...
- Coasters. - Yeah. Look.
For your what?
- There's ya coaster set. - [Chuckles]
For what?
That's to put your hot drinks on the coffee table.
[Lori] Why do you do what you do? Why do you dress the way you do?
Why do you live the way you do?
Why don't you have any, you know, entertainment here?
Why don't you have skating rinks? Why don't you have movie theaters?
Some people felt like that, "yeah, why don't we?"
[Chuckles] You know?
And the rest of us were like 'cause we don't want 'em.
We don't want this kind of stuff that comes with those places.
That, you know, for sure this community wasn't set up to handle it.
How many people have actually met us individually
and thought, "oh, goodness, they're horrible people,"
that actually got to know us that said hello.
And got to know me as a mother.
Would they say I'm a horrible person?
I don't think so. I hope not. [Chuckles] You know.
Uncle Warren...
All he did is want to protect us from some really yucky stuff
that's out there.
Whether it be, you know, the kind of music that comes in and just...
I watch it even still with my children.
If they get too much of certain kind of music, it's like their brain is fried.
You know, or they get these ideas,
and you're like, where're you comin' from, girl? [Chuckles]
The only thing he did that probably got some people little bit agitated
was that he says, "hey, guys, we've been told to do this
by every single prophet. We've been told that this is how we need to live.
We've been told this. Why don't we do it now?"
[Richter] Some didn't want to live the ways
that we've, you know, we should live.
And we had to send some people away
that were very close to me too.
This is my...
father.
He wasn't here in the community.
He was sent away.
He was making restitution for some things
that he knew better than to do.
And, um, I love him.
I still love him.
Even though it was very, very hard for everyone. We all went there.
The shock, you know.
But at the same time,
we could see the good.
In my mind, when some of these people started getting sent away,
I felt like the town was being made more safe.
[Richter] Uncle Warren was just like his father.
They were just genuine, concerned, loving people.
I don't know what else to say.
I mean, that's my truth.
And I'll hold to it.
But...
people may say what they believe.
We kinda grew up in a different culture
'cause everybody else grew up and mtv, and your like, what is mtv?
Who's that?
Who's nirvana?
What?
Warren just slowly controlled everything by information.
You couldn't have the Internet.
No tvs. You couldn't travel.
You couldn't be educated.
And he'd always bring in some sort of revelation of why you couldn't it.
[Jeffs] The lord has a message to me.
He will not protect an unclean people.
And if you set a bad example
one day in the day of judgement
you will have to pay for it.
[Musser] At that point, you realize he's just down there playing around.
He's just, let's see what they'll do next. See what they'll do next.
No would stand up and say, "that's wrong."
My dad had taken me into Warren's office.
He wanted all the elders to go in and swear their allegiance.
Where you go in and say, "I will follow you. I will do everything you say."
And get on a knee.
I had no idea that's what you did.
And I didn't want to do it.
I'll swear my allegiance to god, to something else,
but not a man.
And that's what all the books said.
In fact, they say if you do that, you're stupid.
I mean, you see the results of history every time.
And he got really pissed.
He says, "I'm your only way to salvation."
And I says, "well, that sure shoots the shit out that Jesus Christ theory
I was raised my whole life to hear."
And that pissed him off even more.
He is just raised up on his tippy toes over me yelling.
And my dad's behind me 'bout to pass out
'cause my dad does not do confrontation.
He does not like to go against anybody, especially at that time.
And he was just white.
He didn't say one thing. And I walked out.
I got in my blazer, drove to st George.
And that's where I stayed for in my blazer for the next three months
trying to learn how to navigate life
because I didn't know how to do anything outside this world.
And I was one of the first to leave in my family.
My dad gathered up all the kids,
said that I was no longer their brother, no longer their sibling.
They burned all my pictures. They threw everything away.
I was no longer part of the family.
And, uh, I never had contact with them.
I'm the apostate now.
I'm an apostate. I'm the worst of the worst.
I knew...
knew the truth, and I turned my back on 'em.
In their eyes,
and they even say it, you'd been better off to die.
[Meehan] You know, it was pretty fascinating 'cause from the time
I read the article about how Warren Jeffs told these, um, families
to kick their boys out till the time I arrived was literally about 48 hours.
Back in those days there wasn't Google.
And I just kinda basically had the article and a few other people
that I was talking to on the phone.
So I went over to this woman's office
and, uh, she said, "okay let's get in the car.
I'm taking you to this apartment building about 25 miles north
to find our own group of lost boys that were recently kicked out."
[Interview] Are you the main cook?
Uh, yeah, I guess you'd call me another Martha Stewart.
[Chuckles]
[Meehan] So the first person I met was Ethan... Uh, Ethan Fisher.
He was one of the first that Warren Jeffs...
Asked his parents to take him home.
I was, uh, told I was not, uh, performing like I should've been.
I guess from a religious standpoint, so.
So I was just told to... Try and do better from a different place.
[Meehan] He was a father figure, because he was...
The first out.
So we moved in here with, uh, three, and... That turned to five, and...
Then six, then seven, and then it just varies.
Varies during the week to the weekends,
depending on who even just needs a place to land, and something to eat.
I really do...
Uh, go out of my way to try to care for anybody that really does need help.
Especially somebody that I, uh, can relate to.
It's almost like you consider them...
A brother or a sister, just because you've shared a lot of the same experiences.
I remember the first kid that I met besides Ethan was this kid parley.
My name's parley dutson. That's spelled p-a-r-l-e-y. That's d-u-t-s-o-n.
[Meehan] I think he asked if I knew Arnold Schwarzenegger
and Tom Cruise.
Uh, you know, because of course,
everybody thinks that if you live in la,
your next-door neighbor is Tom Cruise. [Laughs]
[Meehan] Why do you think was... Was it your father's doing,
was it somebody else's doing that you were asked to leave?
Well, Warren told them that...
They'll be asked out if they don't...
Tell their rebellious children to get out of the house.
To leave town. The whole family will have to go.
[Meehan] So your father...
Listened to Warren, and decided he didn't want to leave,
- so he asked you to leave. - Yeah.
[Meehan] He was probably one of the most lost boys there.
When I first left, I didn't have anything to look forward to, really.
Kinda sucks, because you don't have family, real family to go to.
No one to hang out with, stuff like that.
So I missed that a lot.
[Meehan] They took us on a tour of the community.
[Boy 1] Uh, they used to have, like, uh, some of these booths are...
Set up for a lot of those, uh, park-type days, where they'd have...
- [Boy 2] Waffles. - Hamburger lines, and waffles...
And... and it was, it was really a lot of fun.
We never had any harvest fests when Warren was the prophet.
- Never had any activities here. - When he was the prophet,
he shut all of it... Everything down.
You couldn't say the word "party."
Because it would turn into "fun,"
and I think even fun became a bad word.
So he's kind of a fun-hater.
Fun is... you're supposed to call it "enjoyment."
- Yeah, "enjoyment." - You're there, you're not even supposed to say fun out here.
We're just going to go to my house, because...
[Meehan] I remembered Leroy, he wanted to go home.
He needed to get... something, at the house.
The house he was kicked out of.
And I remember we drove up to the house and Leroy was mic'd.
And I asked him if he wanted to take his mic off.
I wanted to give him privacy. He said "no.
You can hear what's going on inside, right?"
And I said, "okay."
[Leroy] Sylvie!
- [Sylvie exclaiming] - Hey!
- Leroy, there's Leroy! - Hey.
- Hey there. - [Sylvie squealing]
[Meehan] You can hear the joy in his brothers and sisters. "Leroy's home! Leroy's home!"
And I started to cry... Hearing this.
At one point, one of his younger brothers said, "are you gonna stay?"
[Boy on recording] Why won't you stay over here?
[Leroy] Because I can't.
He said, "no, I can't."
"No, I can't."
And he got back in the Van, and we looked at these kids looking out the window.
That was probably one of the most memorable moments. That's when it hit home to me.
Here's a kid, that was probably 16 at the time...
Kicked out, in the name of... A prophet,
and the parents didn't even question.
I was, all of a sudden, somebody witnessing something that...
I couldn't believe was happening in this country.
[Richter] We are a kind, loving...
Forgiving people.
There's things we won't tolerate.
We won't tolerate, um, immorality. We won't tolerate deceit.
We just don't tolerate that. And when we find someone among us that's doing that,
then they're asked to leave.
The people that caused... have caused us the worst harm...
Are the ones that have... Left our religion.
And, they become...
Empty, I guess? I don't know.
They just become... They're out of water.
They're like a fish out of water, and they're...
They're trying to figure out who they are.
So in that, they become sometimes very...
Hurtful.
Joining us are two women who have escaped the flds,
and what they say was a living hell.
Elissa wall spent 18 years in an flds compound.
She was forced by Warren Jeffs to marry her own cousin when she just 14.
[Richter] They just... Try to bring a lot of
- injury upon our culture. - [Indistinct]
I had to go through all the horrors of...
Being in that abusive relationship.
Of watching the women around me,
watching the men around me, watching the people around me, be abused.
The church, and Warren, and the other church authorities
were bombarded with...
Uh...
Lawsuits.
[Intense music playing]
[Musser] All the court cases,
all the subpoenas, and... Him thinking he's above the law...
Finally, the people were gonna see this man for who he really is.
Oh, no.
They twisted the story of... Just like Joe Smith.
They're persecuting prophet.
The truth of the matter is it's been going for 200 years.
And every prophet and bishop,
clear back to Joseph Smith, and brigham young, John Taylor...
They've been blamed.
"Just like Joe Smith, see, we... we are the chosen people.
The same things are happening."
Of course the same things are happening.
You're doing the same stupid shit, you're pissing people off!
[Laughs] You're breaking the law!
[Lori] Before he... He started...
You know, moving to different locations,
he had told us,
"I love you.
And I care about every one of you.
And they're going to tell you
that I don't care about you.
And they're going to tell you that I have abandoned you.
But, don't... Don't believe them.
And... if you believe something is true,
then live it."
[Richter] The day that uncle Warren was arrested...
Oh.
It was like...
A very sinking feeling. Extreme sadness.
It's unbelievable. [Laughs] I mean, all these feelings are just...
Coming up and through, and it... ugh.
You know, why would they do that to us? Why?
[Inhales] What are they trying to do? He's done nothing wrong.
As things go on, they start saying
why they had him there, and what they were accusing him of.
Uh, he has been indicted for first-degree felony,
uh, sexual assault of a child...
[Reporter 1] Jeffs is charged with felony bigamy, aggravated sexual assault,
and assault.
[Reporter 2] Jeffs is accused of sexually assaulting two girls
and could go to prison for life.
They found, uh...
You know, whatever...
Circumstantial evidence or whatever it was,
that they had convicted... Convicted him on.
[Reporter 1] Damning evidence that Jeffs had sexually abused a 12-year-old girl,
and fathered a child with a 15-year-old he'd taken as a wife.
[Man 1] There was audio tapes, there was forensic evidence...
[Man 2] Toward the end of the tape, after what sounds like heavy panting,
Jeffs is heard saying, "in the name of Jesus Christ, amen."
To which the 12-year-old echoed, "amen."
[Man 3] His DNA is inside the DNA of a baby,
inside of a child.
That's it. We're done.
Ms. Wall, what do you hope will come out of this trial?
I really do hope that the truth can come out.
That through this, we can...
See for the public, but also for the people within the flds community,
that they can see the truths about what Warren has done, and what he is capable of.
I'm trying to think of some other stuff they accused him of,
I tried to kind of just shut it out, because...
I know him personally, and I know that...
That's... that's just not him.
He didn't do it. [Laughs]
I... I personally don't believe the stories.
I've heard them.
It's not that I haven't heard them.
It's that I don't... I knew him.
And I... They're not true to me.
[Man] Do you believe that they could be true to other people?
- Is that something you'd... - Um...
Other people may feel that way, but I...
I don't know, because I honestly feel like
that there were stories that were made up.
Just to make problems.
[Reporter] A jury has sentenced polygamous Warren Jeffs
to life in prison, plus 20 years.
[Richter] It was heartbreaking. It was hurtful.
And the whole people, we all felt it.
He was important to us.
[Voice shaking] I know people don't like to hear that,
because they... They don't even know the person we know.
They know... Some fictional... character.
Every time we get to hear about him now...
We just pray for him.
[Somber instrumental music playing]
[Meehan] What... what... Help me understand
what "not worthy" meant in the eyes of Warren Jeffs.
Not... didn't have your top button buttoned up, your shirt tucked in...
No, you just didn't believe.
From a religious standpoint,
maybe you disagreed with a few points.
And so, you weren't 100%... submissive, I guess you would say.
[Meehan] Well, at one time, uh,
our idea behind this was originally just a documentary.
And we'd go out and pitch it as a documentary,
and we'd hear from everybody, "this is fascinating.
But... what's the ending? This happened so many times, what's the ending?"
So we kind of put it away.
About a year or two after,
I remember the... Like it was yesterday.
I got a phone call from Ethan, and he said...
"Parley's in trouble."
My name's parley dutson. That's spelled p-a-r-l-e-y.
[Meehan] Didn't sleep last night.
Thinking of parley and the visit, and I...
I always feel this way, I always get kinda sick to my stomach
before I go there, because it's... scary, to go into a prison.
The story is... very sad.
I guess everybody came over to the house that night.
And... parley was...
Making, uh, mushroom tea, and he was on every drug imaginable.
And he was whacked out of his mind.
And at one point, I'm told,
that he was extremely paranoid.
So he went into his bedroom, and...
Got a gun.
[Parley on recording] Well, I was already... [sighs]
Pretty high from the mushrooms I consumed, and the alcohol, but...
It crept up on me pretty quick,
and I started getting paranoid holding the gun,
and it all went down from there.
Lot of the people laughed, because he was supposedly...
Swinging the gun around.
He had a girlfriend, Kara Hopkins.
She stayed.
[Woman] Parley, I know this is hard,
but do you remember firing the gun?
Did you mean for it to go off?
[Parley] I had no idea that I was gonna kill somebody.
I didn't even... Appreciate the fact that I had
a loaded firearm in my hand, and that...
I was gonna take someone's life. [Sniffles]
I wish people could see that it was an accident.
That I'd give my life to bring hers back.
[Meehan] Well, when parley went to gunnison, I, um...
Still had my producer hat on. And... was still...
"Doing research" to go and visit him.
And then I remember watching him,
as he walked through the door, and seeing a man that...
I knew.
In a jumpsuit, and in shackles.
And...
All of a sudden, something shifted.
So this is a book that I keep with all of parley's letters,
I... wanna make sure that I don't lose them.
I realized...
He wasn't just a subject matter in a documentary.
He was somebody that...
I knew before.
The incident.
I knew he wasn't a monster. I knew he did something terrible.
And I kind of put that producer hat away,
and just sat there and talked to him.
And... furthermore, I sat there and listened to him.
[Reading] "You and a few others are my friends.
And with you guys, I'll be okay.
I'm moving forward in life, not looking back too much."
That was the moment
when it all of the sudden just became a friendship.
He was, um, somebody I cared about.
[Richter] Uncle Warren was in prison,
and everybody is entitled
to their story and their truths.
I mean, my perception of what happened
is my perception.
The next person over has there's,
and they may have left our religion, and all that,
and that's fine.
We live in our world
without having to rely on the outside world,
and that's how we want it.
Uh, we're still trying to survive.
Our prophet's in prison.
And we're still going to just stay focused
on building and blessing each other,
and living as close to god as we can,
and let the united order.
And then they came after us for the land.
[Jeff] The trust, it's a very controversial issue out here,
depending on who you sit down with.
The uep trust came from religious connotation,
with, you know, everybody working united
to try to build up the trust.
That, you know, if a young man 18, 19, years old
was ready to build a house,
he would go to the religious leaders and say
"I'm ready to build."
They would, they would assign him a lot,
and give him permission to build his home on the lot.
But he never got ownership, there was never
a transfer of deed, and in fact
it was made quite clear that as you built the home,
the church, who controlled the uep trust at the time, uh,
owned the homes, and they had legal right to it.
Ten years ago, you know, Warren Jeffs
was kicking families out of this community
by the hundreds and the thousands.
So when Warren Jeffs was in legal trouble,
what you saw was sort of a reverse migration,
you had all these people
that had been kicked out of their homes,
say, "well, wait, I wanna get my home back."
And so people started moving back into the community
by the hundreds and by the thousands.
[Lori] What makes this place so significant,
to so many that believe the way I do,
is because when you dedicate
or consecrate something to heavenly father,
you don't take it back.
It's his, it's for keeps.
[Draper] I think the people who are saying,
"they have taken over our town and they have done this,"
really suffer from a whole lack of information in the first place.
Um, most of them do not know
that Warren Jeffs is why the trust ended up
not being in the control of the church.
Well, in 1998, Warren Jeffs decided to take the uep trust
from a private trust to a charitable trust.
Why would Warren Jeffs suddenly decide
that it was a good idea to transfer
from a private trust to a charitable trust?
In a private trust you have trustees and beneficiaries,
the beneficiaries have legal rights.
In a charitable trust,
there's just a charitable purpose,
and the trustees can do anything they want.
So by changing it from a property trust to a charitable trust,
there would be nobody that he had to account to,
except he failed to recognize that, in the state of Utah,
a charitable trust is under the auspices
and the direction of the Attorney General.
Which was really his fatal flaw.
[Jeff] In the early 2000s,
when Warren Jeffs was in legal trouble,
lawsuits had been filed against the uep trust.
No one was protecting the uep trust.
No one was responding to the lawsuits,
and, uh, and doing the business that needed to be done.
So the state of Utah, because it was now
a charitable trust, stepped in.
[Musser] The state sees that he's liquidating
all these assets without anybody else knowing.
That was the whole reason it was set up,
was to protect the assets.
So that nobody could ever liquidate them off,
and sell the people's land.
The people didn't know this,
and a lot of them argue today that it never happened.
But you can, you can go to the state of Utah,
and you can get on, it's all public records,
and you can see where he's liquidating assets off.
And the state's like no, your not just gonna take everybody's land.
So they stepped in and actually took over the trust.
And since 2006, it's stayed a charitable trust,
but became a new version of the charitable trust
that was void any religious test,
or any religious purpose.
And that's the trust, that I'm now the director of
is the reformed trust.
The judge who was in charge
of the probate case for the trust,
called me and asked me to be on the uep trust board,
which would bring me back into the community.
[Musser] And that created so much tension
with the people, even today.
The trust is the enemy now, it's the apostates.
[Richter] Ex-flds, which we call apostates,
were now governing over our land.
The land that my family gave to god,
and now they think they're god over it?
[Lori] It felt like, we want your town, we want your houses,
we want your businesses even,
we want everything...
But you. We don't want you.
[Glenn] So here we are back in Colorado city
when I was here 10 years ago, it was all flds.
The town has changed, you can...
See how much it's changed.
You know, these buildings, they just leave them...
To rot.
A lot of the buildings are just abandoned.
[Glenn] The interesting thing about this documentary
is that it started off as a completely different film.
We were...
Thinking we were doing a story back in those days,
on just the lost boys.
And when I look at parley's story,
it was a big lesson for me to try to...
See people differently,
and, and, I have to say that his letters
made me look at some of the fld members differently
I just realized my job was to
just listen and tell their stories,
about a town divided.
Knowing we were gonna go in this new direction,
everybody's like "you need to talk to Christine,
you need to talk to Christine!"
Everybody I talk to says,
"have you talked to Christine?"
And I was like, who the hell's Christine?
Oh, they're ripe. Yay.
My name is Christine Marie,
and I moved to the town of short creek.
Like the garden of Eden.
Coming here from the city and Las Vegas lights,
I get to walk out my yard, and...
Pick apricots from an orchard.
It's like living in heaven.
When we moved here, we started seeing trailers
heading out of town.
One after another, after another,
semi-trucks, we started taking pictures.
What's going on here?
It's like an entire town is moving.
Then we saw an eviction
of elderly people with oxygen tanks,
handicapped people in a wheelchair.
People crying, just mobbed around this house,
and I took photos.
[Katas] Who in the world, evicts a grandmother with an oxygen tank?
I'm sorry, I don't care what the legal thing is,
you don't do that to a grandmother
who is an American citizen.
[Christine Marie] My husband tolga
posted some of the photos of the evictions.
And we got attacked.
When the children are being deprived of their education,
and they're being taken from their parents,
and farmed out from house to house,
and abused and malnourished,
where were you, calling for the government, then?
They could stay there, if they signed a lease agreement
and paid the back-taxes,
just like anyone else in america.
Then I meet two flds ladies
at a gas station.
[Richter] Christine came around the little island there,
and she just says,
"I'm so sorry, what's happened to you."
I told them, "we just got attacked
and slaughtered on Facebook
by people who live in this town, because we posted these pictures
saying, 'how is this right?'"
it was an outsider,
it wasn't just us saying, "help, they're hurting us!"
It was an outsider saying, "what is going on?"
And that began the beginning of my friendship with Norma.
[Richter] About a month later, I was in my room,
and then I could hear the sound of equipment and things being moved.
And I thought, "oh, no...
The business next door is being evicted."
I just called her up, and I says, "are you ready?
'Cause I'm coming to get ya."
She took us over there, this is our first time
ever going into a building with flds, and we saw
all this crazy stuff happening.
And they were just running around
women and children everywhere, just trying to save the food.
And, uh, it really touched me, really...
[Katas] The flds processing plant,
they have till midnight to get the stuff out.
This is absolutely insane and ridiculous.
We started live-streaming it, because we couldn't believe what we were seeing.
[Katas] Can you explain what's going on, Christine?
This is the processing plant, they were just evicted.
This is where they make their food,
and, you know, they store it for the future.
So it's taking away their livelihood and their food.
[Katas] This is the United States of America,
stuff like this should not take place.
The flds built this building,
they paid for this building,
and they're kicked out of this building.
So whose side do I take?
The people who used to live here, who were sent away
or kicked out, deserve something.
Don't they?
But what about the people still in?
They get nothing?
Whether we agree with it, or not, they have rights too.
This town has an invisible civil war.
That has been their home and a safe haven.
Yeah, but now, many flds families
being evicted from Colorado city, Arizona and hilldale, Utah.
[Reporter some are saying these evictions are a form of genocide.
Others believe it is a self-inflicted wound brought on by following Warren Jeffs.
Representatives of the uep trust say no one has to be evicted,
if only the flds families would sign what's called an occupancy agreement.
[Landlord] I know. I work with the trustees every day.
I know they have absolutely no intention
of trying to drive a certain group of people out
and invite another group of people in.
The criteria's very neutral.
The courts require three basic things:
The first is you have to have some sort of an agreement.
And right now, there's a little two-page occupancy agreement.
The second is the court has... Is requiring a $100 occupancy fee.
And the third is, keep your property taxes current.
[Christine Marie] I have tried to get them to sign so they can save their houses.
Not one of them has budged.
We're not signing any occupancy agreement. I will not.
To me, that is like telling me... Telling... Everybody, the whole world and them,
I agree with you and I don't agree with my convictions and my religion.
So why don't I just sign away my religion?
[Christine Marie] They'd rather lose $100 million in property
than violate their religion.
The worth in money means nothing.
It's the worth in our family and our soul and our... our faith.
[Jeff Barlow] This valley is ripe for a really solid economy.
I mean, we're talking, uh, 750 houses,
150 commercial properties.
I'm a capitalist. I believe in order to have any good economy,
you have to have houses being sold and purchased and for new businesses,
for new construction.
I think it's necessary. I think it's a little painful but it's really necessary.
[Richter] So this was the granaries.
These were some of the first items that were taken from us, which only makes sense.
If you want to, uh, discourage a people, go take their food source.
This is where we had a dairy.
And it's just weeds.
Why take something if you're not going to use it?
It's hard to watch them just take over.
It almost feels like it's an infestation coming [Laughing] through.
Maybe I shouldn't say it that way.
But that doesn't sound very forgiving.
[Draper] We are taking the walls down.
You know, that's one of the things that I love about all of the buildings
that we're using and that we're turning...
You know, taking a storehouse and turning it into a school,
and taking that other warehouse and turning it into a social services place,
is that we're taking down these walls and we're saying,
hey, this building was used to harm you before
and now we're gonna use this building to heal you.
This is disgraceful.
It's good. We... We gotta get rid of all of this out of our town.
[Richter] No, it's not.
You went and left your family. You destroyed them.
[Katas] We kinda start telling them
that the only protection you guys have is the camera.
The camera will help you. I said, you guys gotta film your evictions.
- What happened, Lori? - When we got up here, they had the backhoe right here,
scraping the rest of the foundation from the house.
This was my great grandfather Elmer's homestead.
That's just totally heartless.
They don't need this.
[Filmmaker shouting] I am so upset. I am so upset by the actions of this uep.
This is gonna sit here empty while you destroyed another life.
[Katas] It wasn't just an eviction of a building.
It's going into a culture, destroying their food, destroying their schools.
- Their economics, their businesses. - Their economics.
So it was very heart wrenching to see.
[Christine Marie] America's secret ethnic cleansing.
[Draper] Honestly?
I believe that there was a cultural cleansing that happened there
and it was Warren Jeffs that did it.
You know, the health aspects, the poverty aspects, the lack of education,
the early childhood traumas. The social structure, the physical structure.
There's not anything about this community that Warren Jeffs left intact.
I think there was a picture of Warren Jeffs right here.
What's happening now
is not a cultural cleansing. [Laughing]
What's happening now is business.
You know, if they're paying their property taxes,
if they've signed an agreement with the trust,
they can continue to live and live their religion
and they can worship Warren Jeffs day and night.
This is your town, it's not my town. It's our town.
Your grandpa and my grandpa showed up here
to build this town for family, protection, and freedom.
Not walls, bullshit and what we're doing today.
I'm telling you, they'd be pissed off today if they knew what we did.
Because we created everything they didn't want.
It's the same damn piece of earth, dude.
It's just two miles. This land doesn't care about us.
It never has. It never will. It's gonna be here when I'm gone.
We define it.
You gotta realize I've been gone for 15 years.
I had set foot in this town maybe three times in that whole 15 years,
had just started my second company trying to be successful.
And was so sick with the disease that I was born with
and a lot of other diseases it was compounding it.
So I was born with a disease called milroy's and it's kind of a really rare disease
and it's... What it does is my lymph system in my body don't work.
And then with my disease, it'll attack my big organs, my main organs,
my... sometimes they hit in my heart, my kidneys,
and it leaves a lot of scar tissue.
It's destroyed my blood veins, it's destroyed my bones.
It's destroyed my circulation.
I spent half my life in the hospital. I spent half my life in medical care.
I finally got successful in my business and lost it because of my health issues,
it felt just like leaving the crick again and just having everything taken away.
And I'm living in the garage going through chemo,
my wife's pregnant on bed rest.
Here I am, I'm gonna die in a few months.
I'm just making peace, trying to do the best I can with,
you know, what the time I had left, really.
And at that time, after the state had taken the trust,
there was a process and they said that anybody that was born out here
had a right to come out and claim a house.
To come home.
I just remember coming out here and like, man, this town just...
Looks just like I feel. It's been just screwed, just...
Drove past my dad's old house where I grew up and there was nobody there.
It was empty and just run down. I'm like, well, hell,
I don't wanna take it from anybody, but if nobody's in there, I'm homeless.
I'm sitting in the garage down in Saint George, gonna die.
Let's come out and get you a house and get you and the kids somewhere settled
and I'll come home and die, and you...
You'll get a place at least out of the whole shitty part of my life,
at least something good will come up out of it.
You gotta realize, I'm an apostate that came back
to the motherland of where all this started.
It was just surreal.
You're home but you're not home, kind of.
You know, it's like... Don't know if this is really happening.
You fantasize this all your life,
'cause this town was such an amazing place to grow up.
It didn't need to be dead. These walls weren't here.
I didn't grow up with these stupid-ass walls everywhere.
Warren Jeffs was here for six years.
He doesn't get to define us. It's our story now.
[Draper] So when I first started going back to town,
uh, after I was put on the trust board,
we set down and sketched out our strategy.
We can blame people and we can say we shoulda coulda woulda,
but we're here now.
I don't care who got us here. It's time for us to just fix it
and own it and say this does not work anymore.
This train track that we're on?
People need to stop putting trains on this track.
[Draper] At that time,
whoever was in charge of the church would appoint city council.
And my very first public meeting with the trust,
I started telling people, register to vote.
Candidates in an flds community are preparing
for one of the biggest political elections in hildale in years.
Now, I never knew what politics... I knew that the pol...
That the government was bad. I could tell you that.
Your local government
is the most powerful form of government in the United States.
It's your local government, if it's done correctly.
I didn't know any of this.
I come home and go, we just want a city that represents the people.
[Draper] Donia, my best friend and sister-in-law, chose to run as mayor,
and it was such an incredible choice,
but the symbolism of the choice was beyond incredible.
[Reporter] Donia jessop was a fundamentalist latter day Saint.
When she left the flds sect, she made the tough decision
to leave behind the town and the people she grew up with and loved.
But then she returned as an outsider.
[Anchor 3 on TV] Donia jessop says when she was in the flds church,
she was told who to vote for.
I know. [Laughing] It's so UN-American and unconstitutional.
It's like, how does this happen here in america?
But that's what's been happening.
So that is the change that i'm talking about that needs made.
I have a lot of support.
I have definitely some who are not in support.
Behind me is a vandalized campaign poster.
There are a lot of 'em in this town, and this election,
it could be one for the hildale history books.
[Puppet] Oh, there's the alphabet.
[Christine Marie] Yeah, there's the alphabet, all right.
I wanna eat a "a."
Can you find him an "a"? Can you feed him an "a"?
[Gasping] Okay, pull it out. Feed it to him. [Laughing]
That was really good. Yummy.
All right, can I have a...
[Christine Marie] In this town, there has to be give and take.
But it should not require the flds to violate what they believe.
People say, you're enabling them, they're in a dangerous cult.
Yeah. I want a "s."
[Christine Marie] I just wanna promote education and empowerment.
That's not enabling them to stay in harm.
That's giving them options.
I keep pushing the limits for the flds and for the trust.
We got this crappy little building
as a very first "reclaim."
It was sort of a test to see if the trust
would let me kind of pull a building out of the eviction
and repurpose it for the flds. It worked.
The flds all pitched in to remodel it and restore it,
and it... To me it seemed symbolic of what's happening in the town in some ways.
My goal is to see them all come together,
not to violate their religion and start big happy family reunions.
I mean, I'd love to see that, but I don't expect that.
[Christine Marie] But at least if they can show mutual respect
and start doing
communications of love here and there.
You know.
If you went to St. George,
cedar city to you know, London.
Had to go to another country.
And, and you see kids and, and mothers
who are, are being displaced
that don't have anywhere to go.
The whole town, community would be running to help them.
[Christine Marie] Right.
And I think here we have
a really unique misunderstanding.
The stories out there are like,
"these people will never get along it's
you know, never ever,"
but it's not true.
I see something different.
I see steps.
I can stand up right now,
and I can walk over here
and I can give her a hug.
[Katas] Aww.
Just like that.
And you know
that before
you guys came into that town, this town
that was impossible. [Katas] Yeah.
[Christine Marie] It's got to take somebody
who is never flds
or ex-flds,
like me.
I grew up in a small town in Michigan.
My parents were against it,
but on my 18th birthday I was baptized.
So I became mormon
and it was the happiest day of my life.
Here we are at the children's art festival
and I have pat here, "hi, pat."
- Hi. - And what has...
[Christine Marie] So I became what's known as a Molly mormon.
Which is the person who tries to live Mormonism perfectly.
- You know our... - Puppet?
- Yeah. - Did you say puppet?
And when I went to college
I majored in children's theater.
S o I created this
interactive TV show.
I was developing my children's characters,
my puppet dream.
And then,
I met somebody,
you know, he turned into Mr. Charming
started courting me,
and now he could tell me the truth.
The truth was
that he had translated
the sealed portion
of the book of mormon.
In the book of mormon, there's a prophecy
that in the last days, the rest of the book of mormon,
which has been engraved on these gold plates,
will come forward.
All mormons believe this.
So he sent me eight chapters.
It felt the same to me
as the book of mormon
that I loved, and I studied, and I read 32 times.
I decided,
he was telling me the truth
and that made him
the new Joseph Smith.
My dearest sister and fellow servants
I received your letter
on the sixth of may which was
sent from your indicated address
at a downtown hotel
ran exclusively for the homeless.
Downtrodden, sick, afflicted and needy of our society
and I ask you my dear sister,
"where else would a true disciple
of Christ be found?"
Not only was he the new prophet
but I had to pass lots of tests.
I had to live among the poor and needy.
When men got out of prison
they went to this like, halfway house, resident hotel.
That's where I had to be.
This is
how decrepit
the walls were and the floors were.
This is the toilet.
It was just like out of an... Out of a horror movie.
It was filled with ex-cons,
murderers, rapists
and I
was an innocent girl
from the country who had lived a...
Wholesome mormon life
and I was like
a lamb among wolves.
I was raped,
I was beaten,
I was robbed,
I was trafficked.
So I found one picture of me
that was provided to
my prophet
as proof.
This... the photo was taken by the man
who had just
used me.
To think...
It was all just a big fat hoax.
I have something that finding proof
can mean without a shadow of a doubt.
What religion
can do to people
and Julie might have mentioned it to you.
I wrote the sealed portion of the book of mormon
and I presented it to mormons
who are more fanatical than you,
and they took it hook, line, and sinker.
Thought I had the gold plates.
And so right there I proved to myself
that need a man to know what he was doing
could write scripture
when he had no inspiration at all
just knew what people wanted to hear.
Write the scripture
present it as such
have these people pray about it
and accept it.
Well you laugh, I'm sorry...
[Christine Marie] The prophet was a fraud,
he was an atheist,
and it was just a big experiment.
And when they told me this
I just was rocking,
and wailing.
Because it was like my life flashed before my eyes.
Like just rocking and I screamed
"why?" you know, "why wouldn't, why didn't you..."
Why didn't you help me?
I was psychologically fractured,
and I just wanted to get a job
and I wanted to get out.
The church didn't help me,
the state of Utah didn't help me,
law enforcement didn't help me.
They said,
"you believed him?
You deserved it."
S o that's why I'm here.
When I help the flds,
my goal
is harm reduction
and empowerment.
Because I know what it's like
to believe in something that other people
ridicule you for.
And as a result,
you don't get any help.
[Meehan] When I first came here
we drove by these homes
and tried to... Kind of, look behind the gates.
We got shots of kids running away from us
and screaming at us
and I didn't regret that because
I look back now
and those kids weren't asking for that life.
But yet, here I was
and CNN and everybody else
doing the same thing.
[Meehan] I looked at these people as the enemy.
It has totally changed.
[Meehan] When you and I started working on
this documentary again
yes, everybody knows Colorado city,
the flds, and Warren Jeffs.
But nobody is telling this story from both sides.
I never thought I would ever
play with these kids, be with their...
Their mothers and their fathers.
They are pretty amazing people.
On a personal level
they have really welcomed me with open arms.
[Children chattering]
- Oh, my gosh. Let me... - Please stand.
[Boy] You can sit on that.
- [Meehan] Did you make that? - Yeah, from scratch.
- [Girl] I want presents. - [Meehan] Oh.
- Can I open them? - Go ahead.
[Meehan] These kids gave me these letters.
A lot of artwork,
that I'll always treasure.
[Meehan reading] Be happy, keep sweet.
You gave me hair.
I'm so happy you gave me hair.
Rosa may.
You do have a little teeny bit.
[Chuckles softly] Aw, thank you.
[Meehan] Oh, wow.
[Meehan] Little letters, like "thank you for
being kind to us."
Who couldn't be kind to those kids?
[Girl] I think you love us.
[Meehan] Yes.
Bff forever.
Aw, these are really wonderful.
Yeah, because you're my bff.
[Meehan] That's right.
You see these kids too, and you...
You, you have to say,
"they didn't choose this life.
They were born into it."
And you can't help, but look at these children
and not think about their future.
[Musser] It's like going through a haunted house where every room,
kind of had its own story of growing up.
It's like a time machine in here
coming back in here again after
19 years.
This is when they moved into town
and you can see John y. Barlow and uncle Roy
uniting the people.
We sat here,
and when I first started going to church
this stage was always full
of the patriarchs and the people that built this town.
And over the time
it got to where there was just
Warren up there, and his counselors in the end.
He literally just of rid of all the influence
all the patriarchs,
all the people that really built this town
he slowly got rid of off of that stage.
I mean you can literally watch
watch our downfall from a stage.
If you look at it like that.
[Christine Marie] Today this
chapel has been opened up
to the public for the first time.
Probably in forever
and they're letting the people walk
through the building.
So they can
experience it,
see it one last time
before they remodel it,
and turn it into
a non-religious community center.
So for the people who left the church
this is an exciting moment to heal.
For people who are still in the church
this is a trauma.
[Lori] You know, it feels like
if they
you know, taken everything
they could possibly take
that's... that's the... That's the last one.
There's nothing else left for them to take.
They know what that building means to us.
How can they do that?
[Children chattering]
[Boy]
But there's a purpose in it,
I needed to learn how to trust the lord more.
If I can just
let my faith carry me over
this one next step.
How do I know
that... that the goal isn't just
beyond my next step?
He knows what he's doing,
and I don't.
If I can just trust him.
So, I was able to get some of the portraits from the meeting house.
And they need a place to stay until you get a new meeting house,
so pick one.
[Lori] We've never asked anyone to believe something they don't.
We just ask that they let us.
That's really all we want.
We just want to
worship as we believe.
I mean, is... is that a crime?
[Draper] It was a few weeks before the election.
You're in there running against a regime that has won all of these years.
People just kept saying, "oh, we'll never have a chance,
it's always been this way, it's never going to be different."
[Musser] This town is one, big survivor group.
It is terrible what we've all gone through, but how do you move on
without some sort of change?
[Draper] It seemed like the citizens weren't that motivated to make sure
that everybody on their block was registered to vote,
and I certainly could not go do all of that personally.
And sometimes, I just sat there and thought,
"well, you know, if you don't want it, why are we working so hard?"
Because I knew that it would be that close,
that we would need all of the voters to be registered
and for them to turn out.
[Jessop] If I win today,
it's gonna be a true testament that people really are stepping up,
taking care of their civil responsibilities
to make the change happen that is necessary.
[Voter] I think it's really good. I think, uh,
our community kinda needs a change.
[Female reporter] But, not everyone is on board.
Those of the flds faith who spoke to abc4 Utah,
all who declined to go on camera,
said they felt Barlow had their best interest,
and that is where they were casting their vote.
Just a couple more hours until we know the results,
and when we do know, we'll have those on our website.
The trepidation, you know, right before election about
is this going to work? Is this going to work?
And watching the numbers come in.
[Male reporter] Incumbent mayors were ousted
across the valley on election night.
Results so far showed big changes could be coming
to the polygamist border town of hilldale.
Donia jessop is the projected winner from the mayor's race.
And having it turn out to be, you know, that we had won,
and I just... I remember where I was sitting
and I was screaming and hollering and, "it worked! It worked!"
[Female reporter] It was a historic victory
over a longtime incumbent mayor.
But one can argue the victory heard across the beehive state
was also a victory against patriarchy.
[Jessop] We' ve been beaten around by Warren Jeffs for 15 years.
So to come out from under his dictatorship,
and make the decisions that are...
That are the best decisions for the people living there,
not the best decisions for Warren Jeffs,
is one of the most important steps.
[Musser] We're not done. We're just...
We're just almost getting started.
We're almost done with the prelude or the story, so we can start writing.
I don't know if we're gonna make it,
I don't know if we're gonna fail.
I know that we're doing something different.
Our kids gonna remember it's their town when we tell 'em,
"this is your town. We're simply getting it ready for you guys,
so that you guys don't have to fight this damn fight when you're our age,
and not have broken bodies and broken mind and broken dreams."
[Lori] When they held the, uh,
swearing in of the new mayor,
I went to that with Christine, Esther and I.
We decided we were gonna go, and...
I don't know if that was a very good decision on my part.
Wow, there goes donia.
I literally did not recognize her.
I didn't recognize her husband,
and they were very, very close friends of mine.
It was kind of overwhelming.
In all of this, what my goal is is to create community.
That we can come together under the community banner.
We can all have our different beliefs.
We can all have, um, everything we want.
In the end, we all came from the same dirt.
And I am just so glad to be here,
and to be a part of this community,
and I thank each one of you for being here.
She's like, "we're gonna start by singing
a song that we always sung at our dances."
And you may recognize the song as something we sang at our dances.
So, in the spirit of creating community...
- I'm not gonna bawl. - [Audience laughing]
In the spirit of creating community, please join us.
If you don't know how to sing, you just go, "la-la-la-la."
[Audience laughing]
[Accompaniment begins]
[Lori] They start playing the music to
"give me a home in the heart of the mountains,"
♪ give me a home in the heart of the mountains ♪
[Lori] W hich is a song that we would sing sometimes at the end of our dances.
Our church dances.
The church that now she was
participating in dissolving.
And I... I tried to sing the song and I... I couldn't.
[Singing continues]
Even someone like donia and her family,
you never really stop loving them.
Even though they can, you know, do things that hurt,
really hurt,
there's always, you know, something in your heart
that remembers what they were to you.
And you'll always love 'em.
Right around the time of the election,
we were served with an eviction notice.
There's something that comes with
the idea that
we want your stuff, but we don't want you.
But, by that time, they had evicted the storehouse buildings,
they had evicted the processing plant,
they had evicted
just home, after home, after home,
after home, after home.
There really wasn't a desire to fight to stay here.
[Meehan] Since day one, I've just gone with it.
From the night I met the boys down in St. George and talked,
and started filming right then,
I didn't know where it was gonna go,
and here we are, over ten years later.
You got dust on the lens, I think. Is that dust?
[Cameraman] Eh, it's alright.
All right, as long as you can still see.
It's probably a good filter for my face, but... [laughs]
I've met some wonderful people doing documentaries and other things,
but this is the one I can't shake.
This is... This is the group of people
that will always be in my heart and my head.
[Children] Glenn, watch! Glenn! Glenn!
[Children chatter excitedly]
Mush!
Come on!
Go! [Both laughing]
[Meehan] Because, you know, what's really been interesting for me,
is I come in here,
and I think, "I'm with the flds families,"
and I'm thinking, "yes, right!
All those people outside are... They're horrible!"
And then I go and I meet these wonderful people that have left,
and I'm like, "oh, boy! Those flds people have it all wrong!"
And then the next day, I'm back with them, and the next day...
And it's been this ping-pong match in my heart.
And what I've realized
is there hasn't been anybody we talked to that I don't like,
that I don't love, that I don't feel for.
And I think the world needs to hear these stories,
and really understand what's happening here,
not just in a sound bite,
and not just in an agenda.
This town, everybody has their story, and that's their truth.
And everybody just needs to accept that.
Independence day has a whole new meaning for us here in short creek.
And I just want to honor each one of us,
each one of the soldiers,
each one of us that have stood up and claimed our independence.
And I want to honor all the family that isn't here,
all the fallen soldiers,
and each one of us.
And I ask each one of you today
to reach out to someone that you may not know,
because they're probably family.
And we all need each other. We belong here.
Thank you all for being here. Welcome home.
[Crowd cheering]
You'll never find a community again like this anywhere.
It's just old school, people coming together, hanging out,
not a lot of phones, or...
It's just, you'll see groups of people talking in circles all day.
You'll see moms and dads, uh, sisters and siblings
that haven't seen each other for years.
So, it's jus t a big old, like a family reunion, really.
I just came home to die in a town that just, felt like I did.
But, at the same time I was like, why?
You know, coming home almost gave me purpose.
It almost saved, saved my life, it did, in so many ways.
The very thing I was doing just saved me.
Was to come home and just have purpose. Because, this is home to me.
And this town is such an amazing place.
[Draper] All of the fences are gone, they're, down from the park.
Anyone can walk in and everyone's welcome.
This is us. This is our home.
And so, I think it's a beautiful transition that's happened
that we don't have to declare anything. We're here. We're home.
There's a function over at the park.
Uh, I've heard people say that it's supposed to be
a recreation of what it used to be like
and, uh, quite frankly, I don't see how it can be
what it used to be like
when the people aren't what they used to be like anymore.
[Interviewer] And how does that make you feel?
Oh, lonesome.
[People cheering]
[Bistline] Things have changed.
People have changed.
["Wobble" by v.I.C. Playing]
♪ Let me see you just ♪
♪ get low n scrub the grown let me see you just ♪
♪ push it up, push it up let me see you just ♪
♪ wobble baby, wobble baby, wobble baby, wobble, yeah ♪
[Bistline] There's not very many of us left.
But, some of us don't have anywhere else to go.
[Man] So good to see ya.
[Bistline] We don't get involved with the celebration that they do now
because it feels like they're celebrating the fact that they've
ripped it away from us
and they're taking over the community.
[People cheering]
[Both singing] ♪ there's a special little place ♪
♪ called short creek ♪
♪ far, far away ♪
♪ that's where my heart starts turning ever ♪
♪ longing to be whole again ♪
[No audible dialogue]
[People cheering]
[Lori] We're about an hour, to an hour and a half drive from short creek.
The best thing about it is no one bothers ya.
[Chuckles]
When we first moved here, then, it was quiet.
Not even our neighbors bother us so it's always peaceful.
That's one thing I like about it,
is that we're never bothered.
It was hard to just leave there but we had to.
Like heavenly father said,
if we're, you know, pure and clean,
then we'll always get to live back into where we wanted to live.
[Man] We've had many, many opportunities
to give up our beliefs.
Zion is, is... here
with me. I mean, it's inside it's not
what everybody else thinks they know.
I mean, my religion is right here.
Right down in here.
And what I believe, no one can take away.
[Man] We've always been a believer that the heavenly father is testing his people,
the people that he's chosen, to be the leaders in Zion will be tested.
It says that in the Bible,
the lord will have a tried people.
Well, I believe that's a test. Absolutely, absolutely.
I think that we will, under the right circumstances,
that we will eventually move back there.
I mean, none of the promises that the lord has placed on the place have changed
because god doesn't lie and he doesn't change his promises.
It's just, kind of hard to go there right now.
[Chuckles]
[All singing] ♪ give me a home in the heart of the mountains ♪
♪ out in the hills of the glorious west ♪
♪ nursed in the arms of her crystalline fountains ♪
♪ playfully hurrying down to their rest ♪
♪ hurrying down hurrying down ♪
♪ playfully hurrying down to their rest ♪