Aug 01 2008
“Stolen Innocence” by Elissa Wall
Stolen Innocence: My Story of Growing Up in a Polygamous Sect, Becoming a Teenage Bride, and Breaking Free of Warren Jeffs by Elissa Wall and Lisa Pulitzer has more than a heck of a subtitle. It contains an amazing story about a girl forced into marriage at a stunning 14 years of age, and to a 19-year-old first cousin to boot.
I have read three polygamy autobiographies now: Shattered Dreams, Escape, and Stolen Innocence. Out of those three, I enjoyed Stolen Innocence the most. As I said in my review of Escape, Carolyn Jessop seemed to be very bitter towards the FLDS Church and everything that had happened to her. I didn’t get that vibe from this book - instead, Elissa seemed to concentrate on showing how much she loved her family, and the fact that what she was doing was for her family. She carries a picture of her two younger sisters in her wallet with her at all times, so she can remember that she’s fighting to give her sisters freedom from the FLDS cult and everything that comes along with it.
Elissa’s story is markedly different from Carolyn Jessop’s or Irene Spencer’s. She is the first wife of her husband, Allen Steed, and he never takes on another wife, so she doesn’t deal with “sister wives” and everything that comes along with that.
She also gets pregnant four times in two years, but loses three to miscarriages and one as a stillbirth, so when she leaves the sect, she doesn’t worry about trying to sneak any children out with her. At the time, she thought that God was mad at her, which was why he kept killing her babies (this is a common teaching in the FLDS Church - if you lose a baby, it’s because you’ve done something wrong and God is cursing you for it).
She found out after she got out and had prenatal care for her next pregnancy, that she had Rh-negative blood, something easily fixed by modern medicine, but otherwise fatal for the babies. She has had two children since then with no problems.
It’s amazing what modern medicine and simply having access to information can do.
Another big difference in the books is the poverty that the other two women suffered - Elissa Wall doesn’t focus on any of that. Her parents go through periods of prosperity and then periods of difficulties, but overall, her family was much better off than many polygamous families are. Her father has specialized skills, and the jobs he was able to do were high-paying. This made for a big difference in Elissa’s quality of life.
Last but definitely not least is how her family got into polygamy to begin with. In the other books, the families had been in the FLDS Church for generations. The Walls, on the other hand, grew up LDS. Elissa’s father and his first wife, Audrey, were practicing Mormons when Audrey’s parents joined the FLDS Church. Hoping to disprove the FLDS Church and find flaws in it, they started studying the religion. They ended up joining the FLDS Church instead.
It’s not terribly common for people to convert to the FLDS Church, so for a long time, they were looked upon as outsiders. Along with that was the fact that Audrey wasn’t born and raised with the idea that polygamy was the correct way of life, and so for her, when her husband married Elissa’s mother, Sharon Steed, and then later on was given a third wife, it was very difficult for her to handle. This made for a tense family life.
The children, however, were raised in a fairly relaxed environment because of the background of the parents, so they often did things that other families in the religion did not: Attend concerts, football games, play musical instruments, ride ATV vehicles, listen to classical music, and more. I think that this more open environment was a big help to Elissa when she finally did get out of the church.
What makes her story the most remarkable, of course, is the fact that it was Elissa’s story that helped put Warren Jeffs behind bars. He was prosecuted for being an accomplice in rape - her rape. She was forced to marry her cousin, and then when she went to Warren and complained that she was being forced to do things she didn’t want to do (she literally didn’t know the word “rape” at that point) he told her that she had to submit to everything her husband wanted her to do, no questions asked.
It is because of Elissa’s brave actions that Warren Jeffs is now behind bars. She chronicles the trial and everything that led up to it, which in itself was fascinating. She ends the book with the raid of the YFZ (Youth For Zion) Ranch down in Texas, making this book the most up-to-date and applicable to the headlines in the newspapers, out of any of the polygamy books.
This was an absolutely captivating and stunning story. If you’re only going to read one book on polygamy, make it this one. I give it 4.75 out of 5 stars.
Hava
PS I have His Favorite Wife by Susan Schmidt on my list to read. I’ll have to read and review that one sometime, so I can get a well-rounded view of the polygamy world. Each book has been so different from the others, I really feel like I’ve learned something new with each book that I read on the subject.
