![]() ![]() Teressa quickly made it clear that, unlike her sisters before her, she would never marry an old man. Sharon feared for her daughter's soul and begged her to discuss her future with FLDS head Rulon Jeffs (the stern, bespectacled FLDS "prophet" and Warren's father, who used to be the organization's accountant). Typically, FLDS followers spied on each other, and someone reported that Teressa listened to forbidden music - which eventually included anything not written and sung by FLDS patriarchs. "It made me so mad, the way they treated her," says Teressa, "the way they treated all of us." Indeed, she says, her nose was bloodied and her jaw bruised in the course of standing up for her mother and siblings to the first wife. The seventh of Sharon's 14 children, Teressa spoke her mind. "We were the first family's servants," Teressa says. As such, Sharon worked tirelessly, cooking, cleaning, and sewing for both families. Then she tells me her story, starting with her father, Lloyd Wall, and her mother, Sharon Steed, who was what is known as the "second wife" - Lloyd Wall had another family with his so-called first wife. They don't know that the biggest reason I left was to protect them." With the children in bed, Teressa whispers to me, "They can't understand why I don't just go along with the rules. "Why won't you just put on a dress?" she asks, eyeing Teressa's khaki pants. Summer wonders why Mama and Father can't be together. Everything is tidy and shining, typical of polygamists who make the most of what little they have and deeply believe that "cleanliness is next to godliness."Īfter the children bathe, Teressa combs their wet hair and straightens their pajama tops, speaking respectfully of "Father," who will come tomorrow to take them for a three-day weekend. In the bedroom, two lacy camisoles, which would be heretical in a strict FLDS home, dry on a blanket stretched on the hardwood floor. In the spare living room there's a huge lighted aquarium with water but no fish. Her children are in tow: tall and sober Jasmin, 9, who wears long, tight braids reminiscent of her fundamentalist roots 8-year-old Nike, who looks just like his father and Summer, 5, who asks for ice cream and wants to watch a movie when she gets home - wild pleasures they had been denied until two years ago, when Teressa escaped the FLDS compound in Creston Valley, Canada.Īfter dinner, we travel over icy back roads to her small snowbound ranch house, with firewood stacked near the door and icicles stretching from eaves to porch. She radiates unusual pizzazz for a single mother who has just worked a full day at an auto-service center. While the typical polygamist wife is a beribboned woman-child dressed in pastel prairie garb, Teressa, 27, betrays a whiff of modern savvy in her khaki pants, long-sleeve henley, and ski vest. Now it is Teressa who risks losing her three children for having taken a stand. ![]() But it was Teressa who set the stage by repeatedly challenging the FLDS patriarchy over the years, and it was Teressa's testimony that dealt Jeffs a fatal blow. Better known is her sister Elissa, who testified against Jeffs last September, having accused him of forcing her into marriage at age 14 to her cousin and abetting her subsequent rape. She is, after all, partially responsible for bringing down Warren Jeffs, leader of the polygamous cult called FLDS (Fundamentalist Latter-day Saints - not to be confused with the official Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which cast off polygamy in 1890). The clearest examples are fundamentalist Mormons and aboriginal persons.I shouldn't be surprised by her forthright nature. “The criminalization of polygamy has been used to target groups that are already disadvantaged. “The criminalization of polygamy is perpetuating prejudice and perpetuating stereotyping,” George Macintosh, who was appointed to represent the FLDS members, said in final arguments for the landmark case. The constitutional case involves a Bountiful, B.C., FLDS community, and stems from the failed prosecution of Winston Blackmore, who reportedly has 25 wives. Specifically, the government said, polygamy involving men with multiple wives leads to sexual and physical abuse, child brides, teen pregnancies and human trafficking. In the case, provincial and federal governments argued that polygamy is inherently bad, the Canadian Press reports. A Canadian law criminalizing polygamy is not unlike the country’s stance on homosexuality, which was decriminalized in 1969, a lawyer for members of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints told a British Columbia court yesterday. ![]()
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