Sunday Mirror (Northern Ireland)
BRAVE CAMPAIGNER ON HOW SHE
FORTY-NINE women flash identical smiles in an eerie image which haunted Briell Decker for years.
All wear pastel dresses, their hair neatly pinned back and, hanging on the wall behind them, is a picture of Warren Jeffs, the Mormon sex monster who controlled them.
Briell is the young woman, circled, on the second row.
She was one of Jeffs’ 79 wives – some of them only 12 years old. He would control Briell’s life for years.
But today she tells how she escaped the clutches of the religious sect – and, remarkably, transformed Jeffs’ lair into a refuge helping women like her. Fellow survivors are looked after by Briell and her team at the Short Creek Dream Center, on the Utah-Arizona border.
It was where Jeffs – now in jail for sexually abusing girls – headed the Fundamentalist Church Of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, an unsanctioned branch of Mormonism.
Briell, 34, was able to buy the property after it was seized by state officials. She tells the Sunday Mirror: “I felt I could do something positive with the house. No one knew its history like I did. I had a dream for it.
TRUST
“I really wanted to make a difference. I want to make it easier for people that were trying to make the transition that I had and that’s what we have achieved.”
The group provides housing, counselling, job skills and help to adults and children who have left the church.
Briell won’t talk of the many former members she has helped, nor reveal their own terrible stories. They trust her and she won’t break that privilege.
The three-storey, 44-bedroom house is being modernised, with remnants of Jeffs’ evil legacy slowly fading away.
Briell has suffered post traumatic stress disorder on a painful journey to hell and back. It centred on the chillingly named area of Short Creek, which embraces two cities.
She was 18 when her father – a member – decided she was ready to join Jeffs’ cult in Hildale city... as his 65th bride. Her older sister Colleen was already one of his wives – she was also married to the sect leader’s father, until he died aged 92.
Women were under the total control of perverted Jeffs.
Recalling her own wedding day, Briell says she was petrified. She says: “After the ceremony, he asked me to come and sit on his lap. I just froze. I had no words.”
For the next few years, Briell was further “brainwashed” as she calls it, into her husband’s sick world. She did anything she could to avoid consummating their union.
Jeffs did, she says, abuse her – bringing back the pain of similar harm inflicted by a relative when she was eight. But even after Jeffs’ arrest, Briell’s nightmare was far from over. From jail, where he maintained control of the
I had a dream for the house where he kept us... I felt I could do something positive
ON TURNING SECT LEADER’S LAIR INTO REFUGE
FLDS, it is claimed he sent supporters to intimidate, drug and threaten to kill her if she tried to flee. Briell was transferred from state to state by the elders, who move people they don’t want police to find if they believe they are thinking of leaving. But she was determined to gain independence, saying: “As soon as I was strong enough, I knew I had to get away. I had a lot of anger around me for a long time.” She returned to Short Creek and lived outside of the sect’s mansion.
But any hope that she had her freedom back soon vanished as the infighting for power among the church’s elders exploded.
At times, she claims, she was sedated with an anti-psychosis drug that left her barely able to walk.
LOCKED
She ran away several times – only to be hunted down and taken back. In 2013, Briell says she was kept under lock and key while living at a trailer park. She recalls: “If I wasn’t being watched, my room would be locked.
“The windows were screwed shut and the lock on the door was facing outside. Eventually, I managed to find and hide some scissors to unscrew the window. When I was alone, I climbed out and managed to get to safety. I was finally free.”
Briell ran to the home of a friendly neighbour who called a group that offers assistance to women fleeing the FLDS. She was taken to a safe house hundreds of miles away in Tennessee.
The first picture of her after she escaped shows a changed woman. The forced Stepford Wives smile seen in our main picture is replaced by one that projects joy and sheer relief.
Briell was 27 when she finally broke free. It was four years later, in 2017, that she returned to Short Creek to