RACHEL JEFFS NEVER LOOKED BACK AFTER BREAKING FREE FROM CULT
On the last day of 2014, Rachel Jeffs fled the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latterday Saints (FLDS), leaving behind everything and almost every person whom she had ever known.
What she didn’t know is what lay ahead. And what she couldn’t have known is that within three years, she would publicly accuse her father and the church’s prophet with sexually assaulting her, remarry and testify in a Canadian court against her future in-laws.
What Rachel did know is that when she left with her five children, they would become ghosts.
Under orders from Warren Jeffs — her father and the FLDS prophet — church members can’t speak to apostates (those who leave the church). Photos of them are destroyed. Their phone calls go unanswered and messages are never returned.
But Rachel Jeffs didn’t care. She had had enough years of abuse at her father’s hands. First it was sexual abuse, from the time she was eight until she was 16, then years of threats if she ever divulged the secret, and cruel retribution for the few times that she did.
In her book — Breaking Free: How I Escaped Polygamy, the FLDS Cult and My Father, Warren Jeffs — Rachel Jeffs describes the abuse and the absolute control her father still wields from a Texas prison cell, where he is serving a sentence of life plus 20 years for sexually abusing a 12-year-old Canadian girl and a 15-year-old American girl.
Now 34, she’s convinced that the next chapters of her life will be happier ones. Yes, it’s been tough to leave behind 47 of her siblings, the man she loved and three sister wives with whom she had shared a home and husband.
Until she decided to leave, every decision had been made for her, including whom to marry. Outside, there was nothing but decisions to be made.
“It was really hard for me to realize the amount of responsibility it was, taking care of kids by myself. The hardest thing was figuring out how to support them,” she said in an interview.
Her Grade 8 education was enough for her to teach Grade 3 at the church-run school. But it was nowhere near enough to get a well-paid job that would support five children, the oldest of whom was 12.
Her first decision was enrolling her children in public school where they began the tough task of catching up on all they’d missed.
Initially, they stayed with relatives in another polygamous community known as Centennial Park, which split from the FLDS more than 30 years ago.
“I loved my relatives there and was grateful for their help, but I didn’t like the way so many men there were on the lookout for more wives,” she writes in her book. “It seemed so unfair to the wives they already had.”
They bounced around from Salt Lake City to Texas to Montana.
“My cousin helped me for a while. We were on food stamps. I gave some violin lessons. Money was just really tight and hard. I cried a lot,” she said in an interview from her home in Idaho.
“Still with all that pain and hardship, it was not near to the pain experienced there (within the FLDS) and I never, ever dreamed of going back. The hardship of money (is) much less pain than church.”
In Montana, Rachel focused on her own education, getting her high-school equivalency and then starting college. A few months later, she met Brandon Seth Blackmore. He’d grown up in the FLDS community of Bountiful, B.C., which is about a four-hour drive north of where Rachel was living in Montana.
Blackmores founded Bountiful. But the community split in 2002 after Warren Jeffs excommunicated the FLDS bishop, Winston Blackmore. Half the community went with Winston’s breakaway group. The rest — including Brandon’s father, Winston’s younger brother — stuck with Jeffs.
Two years later, Jeffs ordered 21-year-old Brandon Jr. to drive to Colorado City, Arizona. Brandon didn’t know why nor did he ask. A few days later, Brandon was married to a young woman that he’d never met. Within hours, the bride and groom were back on the road for Bountiful just as the prophet ordered.
It was a day of weddings. An hour before their wedding, the 48-year-old prophet married Brandon’s 12-year-old sister.
Brandon’s father — Brandon James Blackmore — and Gail Blackmore (the third of his father’s three wives) had driven their daughter to Arizona, met the prophet for a counselling session before the wedding, witnessed the religious ceremony and left almost immediately to return home. Jeffs raped the girl a few months later, recorded it on tape and filed it among the church’s records.
By 2012, the younger Brandon had four children with his wife, before Jeffs deemed him unworthy. He found out when he arrived home from work and the door was locked. His wife didn’t let him in. Ever since, Brandon has been locked in a battle to gain sole custody of their children, so that they won’t be denied an education as he was.
In November 2016, both Brandon Seth Blackmore and Rachel Jeffs testified against his parents in the B.C. Supreme Court trial. Brandon James and Gail Blackmore were charged with the unlawful removal of their 13-year-old girl for an illegal purpose.
The girl’s parents were convicted and sentenced to jail time — a year for Brandon, seven months for Gail. In the same week in September, 2017, that Rachel and Brandon Jr. were married, Gail filed an appeal. A hearing date has yet to be set.
Many former FLDS members were stunned by the sentences, especially Gail’s. Rachel wasn’t one of them. If anything, she believes the sentences weren’t long enough.
“They (Brandon Sr. and Gail) thought they were safe and that the prophet would keep her (their daughter) safe,” says Rachel.
“They honestly believed it was right that she married the prophet.”
Rachel describes what her father has created as a dark abyss, because his followers only know and believe what he tells them. His absolute control is possible only because he banned all forms of knowledge, from basic education to contact with anyone who questions him or his infallibility.
Rachel wrote the book to educate others about who her father really is. It’s also why she and her new husband testified against his family. They know from harsh experience that education is the solution to the riddle of this kind of repression and the path to freedom.