CEDAR CITY — More than $8,500 was raised recently on behalf of those seeking to leave polygamous relationships.
Nearly 200 people attended the third annual “Freedom to Choose” fundraiser benefiting Holding Out HELP, which took place on Oct. 15 at the Courtyard Marriott in Cedar City.
The dinner event featured several speakers, including some who were featured in the Netflix documentary series released earlier this year, titled, “Keep Sweet: Pray and Obey.”
Tonia Tewell, Holding Out HELP’s executive director, told those in attendance that the nonprofit organization’s most recent data as of 2021 indicates that 95% of their clients report having been physically abused, while 61% have been sexually abused and 47% have been labor trafficked.
Additionally, she said that virtually all of the organization’s clients, whether they have been abused or not, face a difficult period of social and emotional adjustment.
“Just leaving this closed environment and coming out into our competitive environment, where you have to know how to make the most basic decisions, is paralyzing to them, because they’ve never been taught,” Tewell said.
Compounding the issue, she added, is the stigma of damnation that many feel they’ve brought themselves by leaving The Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints and the polygamous lifestyle it espouses.
“If they choose to leave, because the burdens just get too great to bear or they’re kicked out of their community, a lot of times they truly believe that they have become sons and daughters of perdition,” Tewell said. “They’re being sent to hell, they think, or worse yet, into outer darkness. So those are primarily the people that we are serving here tonight.”
Tewell said that once clients have been furnished with basic needs such as food, clothing and shelter, they are then given assistance planning out their future.
“Then, the fun begins,” she said. “We get to dream with these people. We get to sit there and say, what do you want to be? Do you want to drive a bus? Do you want to become a welder? Do you want to become a nurse? Do you want to be a doctor? The sky’s the limit. It’s their journey.”
“From there, we look at job skills, we look at education, life skills, really … anything a refugee really coming in from another country would need,” Tewell said, adding that there is no set time frame on how long a person or family may receive help and services from Holding Out HELP.
“We don’t want to kick anyone out,” she said. “We don’t want to say you only have 18 months to get on your feet. Sometimes it’s two months, sometimes it’s four years. They might be going to school. And if they’re moving forward in a healthy way, you bet we’re going to empower them. We’re not going to allow them to leave our place until they can take care of themselves and their families.”
Another speaker was Sam Brower, a Cedar City resident, best-selling author and private investigator. Brower talked about how key FLDS leaders still maintain a high level of control over the church’s membership.
“A lot of a lot of people think that when Warren Jeffs went to jail, that was the end of it,” Brower said. “But that was not the end. That wasn’t even the middle, I don’t think, because he is still creating a lot of havoc.”
Jeffs, the FLDS church’s self-proclaimed prophet and spiritual leader, has been incarcerated since 2006. He was convicted in September 2007 in St. George of two counts of being an accomplice to rape, for arranging a marriage between a young girl and her cousin. Although that conviction was later overturned, Jeffs was subsequently convicted in a separate case in Texas on two counts of aggravated sexual abuse of a child and sentenced to life in prison plus 20 years. He’s been serving time in a Texas state prison since 2011 and won’t be eligible for parole until 2038.
To illustrate how Jeffs is still attempting to exert control over his followers, Brower showed on screen and talked about a recent “revelation” that Jeffs had purportedly issued on Sept. 1 from prison in Palestine, Texas.
“Some of the young people are starting to rebel,” Brower said, quoting from the document. “And many unclean things have been committed through unnecessary use of vehicles. And let there only be two vehicles per household.”
Brower also talked about the social dynamics associated with an elite subgroup within the church known as the United Order.
“You have two groups, the United Order, and the other one, the Restoral Order,” he said, noting that those in the former group are striving hard to remain at that level and not get demoted.
“And (those in) the Restoral Order are trying to scratch and climb and make it to the United Order,” he added. “So that was a brilliant way for Warren to keep people in line, to keep them loyal and to keep them wanting to yearn after him.”
“I think Warren’s entire purpose … is about money, power and sex,” Brower added. “That’s exactly what it boils down to. And to do that, he had to start breaking down families because that was a place where he didn’t have the control he wanted.”
“So to exercise his control, that was his purpose, to break down families,” Brower said. “He started separating families, tossing men out, … or just abandoning the children completely, especially boys.”
Private attorney Roger Hoole talked about his extensive involvement in helping teenagers who had been ousted from their families and the FLDS community.
“I was asked to help represent some of these young boys, who are called the Lost Boys.” Hoole said. “They were kicked out of their families, and told that they were never to have any contact with their families again. And these were sometimes boys 11, 12, or 13 years old. And so you wonder, how could that happen?”
“But it did happen,” he added. “So you have to look for the reason, and it’s hard to understand. But you have to try to understand what kind of pressure the parents would be under to literally drive their boys to the Walmart parking lot, drop them off with a black garbage bag of clothes and say, ‘You’re never to contact us again.”
“If you can understand what kind of pressure that was, then you can get a glimpse into what it was like for them to grow up in the FLDS,” Hoole added. “We have people here that are former FLDS members and they can tell you what kind of pressure that is.”
Hoole acknowledged that the group, like other churches, does have legal protections regarding its religious beliefs.
“But there’s limits on religious protections,” he said. “You can’t operate a religion like a mob. If it becomes a criminal enterprise, if you step over the line into illegality, you can’t do that.
“Warren Jeffs stepped over the line into illegality,” Hoole added. “A leader, and even parents, cannot make children religious martyrs. You can teach them but you can’t make them do things that make them a religious martyr. You can’t make them strap on a tool belt when they’re 12 years old, and send them off to Nebraska to work on a FLDS work crew and take all their money. That happens all the time. But it’s not legal and it should be stopped. You can’t make a 12-year-old marry a 45-year-old man. It’s not legal. So where they cross over the line, they lose their religious protection.”
“The problem, in my mind, is not so much the polygamy, it’s the secondary crimes that affect the children,” Hoole added. “They can’t just operate polygamy by itself. They have to support that with a lot of control and a lot of pressure. And to do that, there’s all sorts of secondary crimes that really impact children.”
Hoole said another problem is Jeffs and other FLDS leaders keeping important information from reaching their followers.
“The FLDS do not have the information they need,” Hoole said. “They are not allowed to know the things they need to know to make very critical decisions in their lives. They have religious freedom, they can make religious choices. They have sincere religious beliefs, but they do not have the information they need to exercise their religious choices. They’re not allowed to know anything about what Warren Jeffs has done. They’re not allowed to know or believe or accept that he’s confessed that he’s not a prophet or that he’s been defrauding the people. He’s said that numerous times, but that message just doesn’t go through, because there’s too much emphasis on not telling the people what they need to know: no media, no radio, no television, no internet, no newspapers, no communicating with folks like you. The problem is information.”
“It’s very difficult to force information on people,” Hoole added. “You can’t change religious beliefs by forcing people to do that. People have to do that on their own. But a parent cannot be deliberately ignorant when it puts their child at risk.”
Hoole recounted an instance where he was in a deposition and an FLDS mother “heard things that she did not want to hear.” The woman was accompanied by her son, who was also her priesthood leader, Hoole noted.
“By the time they got to the parking lot, the mother turned to her son and said, ‘We’re leaving this church,’ because she heard things for the first time that she had never been allowed to know,” Hoole said.
Also speaking at the event were Charlene Jeffs, former plural wife of Lyle Jeffs (brother of Warren Jeffs and also a high-ranking FLDS church leader), and Elissa Wall, a former child bride who was forced to marry her cousin. Both gave first-hand accounts of their experiences within the FLDS community.
Charlene Jeffs said she confronted her then-husband Lyle Jeffs after being sent away from the group in order to repent.
“Lyle and Warren exiled me again, but this time it was to repent from afar,” she recalled. “I told Lyle as he was giving me my message of repentance, I said, ‘Not only will you regret this, but you will have to stand before God and say why you threw away a wife, like trash. And he said, ‘You don’t know what you’re talking about, you don’t repent, you are nothing more than a sinner, and I can’t have you in my sight.’”
“I stand before you today because (God) knew I had a bigger purpose in life,” Charlene Jeffs added. “And that was to educate people, to help them realize that these children are being abused, these children need help.”
“It’s frightening to be kicked out and not know where to go,” she added. “I was lucky, I had a high school education. I was lucky, I had a brother that was already kicked out. And he said, come live with me until you can get on your feet, which I did. I went back to school and got into the medical field.”
“I was able to move on in my life,” she added. “I own my own home. I have my own car. I don’t have to ask anyone for the keys. I can go to a movie.”
Wall, who wrote and published an autobiographical account of her FLDS experiences titled “Stolen Innocence,” told those in the audience she was celebrating the 18th anniversary of her exit from the FLDS community at age 18.
“Eighteen years of freedom, which put me in a very interesting place because I was in the FLDS for just a little over 18 years,” Wall said. And as I come to this place in my life where I’m sitting, I’m straddling the line, and I’m getting to choose, you know, I have my story, I have my past. And I have this life that I’ve created over the last 18 years. And I’m here to talk to you about hope. Because I look at what has been done, what I have been able to experience, to heal and to become in 18 years.”
Wall said that 18 years ago, she found herself at a figurative precipice as she weighed her future.
“I was at this edge where I had no idea what was on the other side,” she said. “But I could look behind me and I knew the life that was behind me no longer fit. And as scary as it was, I could look behind me and I would tell myself, the hell that I’m walking away from cannot have anything on what I’m told I’m walking into.”
Wall encouraged those in attendance to keep striving to help those transitioning away from polygamy.
“You are here today, because you have empathy, you have compassion, and more than anything, you have a purpose: to serve those who may have a little less than you,” she said.
Wall said she told Hoole years ago as they were talking about goals, “If I can just save one person, or maybe my two sisters, that’s enough.” Both of her sisters were able to transition out of the FLDS about four years ago, Wall added.
But Holding Out HELP has helped far more than just a few people. Since its founding in 2008, the organization reports that it has assisted more than 2,500 people who’ve chosen to leave the FLDS and polygamy. The organization’s numbers grew by 25% last year and have grown by an additional 16% this year as of mid-October, Tewell noted during her remarks. The acronym HELP organization’s name stands for “Helping, Encouraging and Loving Polygamists.”
At the beginning of the meeting, participants also watched a short YouTube video featuring Bikers Against Child Abuse; several members of the BACA organization were in attendance at the dinner.
Jeff Black, a former FLDS member who was also featured in the Netflix docuseries, said he was particularly grateful to BACA for the support they provided to his sons during a time of crisis.
“I called and had them show up to my house and they adopted my boys,” Black said, “My kids were separated from me for two years. During that time, they were horrifically abused, beaten, sexually abused … you name, it happened.”
Speaking during the question-and-answer session at the end of the meeting, Black said he wasn’t aware of the abuse at first because his sons had been sent away to work in another state and he wasn’t allowed to have any contact with them.
“They were kept from me until my daughter fled in the nighttime and brought them back to me,” Black said. “Thank God for my eldest daughter who got them out. And I was one of those who were sent away to repent, and our family was torn apart.”
Cheryl Merrill, who works as a counselor for Holding Out HELP clients, spoke about the emotional traumas that many polygamy survivors must work through.
“Oftentimes, when we think of trauma, we think of PTSD,” she said. “We think of maybe like a single incident that is maybe the result of a natural disaster, or military combat that overwhelms a person’s ability to cope. What I want to talk about is something called complex trauma. It’s a little bit different. First, rather than being a single incident, complex trauma is repetitive and pervasive. It typically involves a relational betrayal.”
Using a hypothetical example involving a girl she called Jane to illustrate the point, Merrill said, “Jane’s perpetrators were those she loved and needed. Her betrayal contradicted the belief that a primary caretaker would be there to nurture her and that she could feel safe.”
“You can imagine how confusing it must have been for Jane to need comfort, and to have to figure out how to get that comfort from those who were abusing her,” Merrill added.
“I am just continually awed and amazed at the strength and resilience of our clients,” she added. “The fact that people leave all they know, the only thing they know, and they go on into a world that they know nothing about. They don’t know what’s going to happen. They don’t know what it’s going to look like. And then they survive it. That is just tremendous.”
Event organizer Meggie McMullen thanked all those who attended and contributed donations, making it the biggest Holding Out HELP fundraiser to date.
“We are so amazed at the support of the community,” McMullen said. “We will definitely be doing it again next year.”
Photo Gallery
Meggie McMullen welcomes attendees to "Freedom to Choose" fundraiser, Cedar City, Utah, Oct. 15, 2022 | Photo by Jeff Richards, St. George News / Cedar City News Holding Out Help executive director Tonia Tewell speaks during "Freedom to Choose" fundraiser, Cedar City, Utah, Oct. 15, 2022 | Photo by Jeff Richards, St. George News / Cedar City News Private investigator Sam Brower talks about a recent "prophecy" from FLDS leader Warren Jeffs during "Freedom to Choose" fundraiser, Cedar City, Utah, Oct. 15, 2022 | Photo by Jeff Richards, St. George News / Cedar City News Attorney Roger Hoole speaks during "Freedom to Choose" fundraiser, Cedar City, Utah, Oct. 15, 2022 | Photo by Jeff Richards, St. George News / Cedar City News Charlene Jeffs, a former plural wife of Lyle Jeffs, speaks during "Freedom to Choose" fundraiser, Cedar City, Utah, Oct. 15, 2022 | Photo by Jeff Richards, St. George News / Cedar City News Holding Out HELP counselor Cheryl Merrill speaks during "Freedom to Choose" fundraiser, Cedar City, Utah, Oct. 15, 2022 | Photo by Jeff Richards, St. George News / Cedar City News Former FLDS child bride Elissa Wall speaks during "Freedom to Choose" fundraiser, Cedar City, Utah, Oct. 15, 2022 | Photo by Jeff Richards, St. George News / Cedar City News Panelists answer questions from the audience during "Freedom to Choose" fundraiser, Cedar City, Utah, Oct. 15, 2022 | Photo by Jeff Richards, St. George News / Cedar City News Members of Bikers Against Child Abuse were among the nearly 200 attendees at "Freedom to Choose" fundraiser, Cedar City, Utah, Oct. 15, 2022 | Photo by Jeff Richards, St. George News / Cedar City News
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