Daily Herald - Utah February 17, 2011
Utah filmmakers shine documentary spotlight on polygamy problems
What is it like, at age 15 or 16, to defy the community that raised you and start your life over in a dramatically different world? The new documentary "Sons of Perdition" (www.sonsofperditionthemovie.com) attempts to answer that question by telling the story of teenage boys who leave or are expelled from polygamous communities in the Beehive State, but don't know how to integrate themselves into mainstream society.
The film opens Friday in Salt Lake City and will begin a limited engagement at Provo's Carmike Wynnsong theater on Feb. 25.
Co-directors Tyler Measom and Jennilyn Merten decided to make "Sons" after sensing that there was a deeper story behind occasional news reports about Utah teens who had fled from or been kicked out of Utah polygamist clans. Measom said that such kids are often deeply conflicted, both frightened of their parents and lonely without them, relieved to have escaped, but confused about their new surroundings and fearful for loved ones left behind.
There's also the small matter hinted at by the film's title -- many polygamist sects consider leaving to be the ultimate betrayal, with the ultimate cost. "Being told that you're going to Hell is a tough thing for a 15- or 16-year-old," Measom said.
The film focuses on three teenage boys, and Measom said that he and Merten filmed them for more than two years after gradually winning their trust. The kids wanted nothing to do with the filmmakers at first, but Measom said that he wouldn't give up on them. "They lived in my house, we bailed them out of jail, we bought them meals," he said. "We talked to them. We listened to them."
The MPAA gave the movie a rating of R for the profane language used in some of its emotionally raw interviews. Measom said that the filmmakers appealed the rating, but that changing the movie's content would be unfair to its subjects. "When these kids swear, they're angry," he said.
"Sons of Perdition" has a distribution agreement with the recently debuted Oprah Winfrey Network -- after its theatrical run, it will be featured on a new documentary showcase program that will air on OWN later this year. Measom said that because OWN is a new and unproven media venture, the filmmakers don't know how much Winfrey's endorsement will help, but they're hopeful.
"What we hope is that Oprah will do the same thing for documentaries that she did for books," he said.
-- Cody Clark
This article was found at:
http://www.heraldextra.com/entertainment/movies/article_8d76c0b3-ec36-5a6b-80df-68efb9d9e46b.html
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The Daily Utah Chronicle - student newspaper of the University of Utah February 18, 2011
Local film highlights FLDS ‘lost boys’
http://www.heraldextra.com/entertainment/movies/article_8d76c0b3-ec36-5a6b-80df-68efb9d9e46b.html
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The Daily Utah Chronicle - student newspaper of the University of Utah February 18, 2011
Local film highlights FLDS ‘lost boys’
By Devin Richey
Born into a society that de-emphasizes education, individuality and monogamous relationships, groups of refugee apostates sometimes flee the oppressive, dictatorial world of the modern Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The people in these groups, known as the Sons of Perdition, are rarely given coverage of their hardships out of local news circuits. Local filmmakers Tyler Measom and U graduate Jennilyn Merten decided to document the lives of several people following their liberation from the sect in the new feature documentary, "Sons of Perdition."
The group is separate from the exiled "lost boys" who were banished from "the Crick"—the name for the FLDS communities of Hildale, Utah, and Colorado City, Ariz.—for breaking the community's strict rules regarding dating and popular culture or because of a shortage of marriageable women. They enter the outside world with no understanding of outside society and its culture. Merten asks a boy at one point if he has ever read a comic book, to which he replies, "What's that?"
"There is no competition allowed in the Crick, either," Merten said. "The kids can play basketball, but they aren't allowed to keep score. The leaders consider competition to be a tool of the devil."
Under the leadership of Warren Jeffs, the proclaimed prophet of the FLDS and a captured fugitive from the FBI's Most Wanted list, male members of the church were assigned marriage partners that could be as young as 12 to 14 years old, even if the polygamous husband was pushing 60 years old. As revealed in the documentary, these girls are given no form of sexual education prior to their vows and their marriages are consummated on beds located within the compound's temple.
Jeffs' recorded sermons can be heard throughout the film, condemning the outcasts and exiles from their ranks and demonizing the outside world to which those groups are headed as sick and evil. He considers certain otherwise normal occurrences such as spousal nagging to be tools of the devil aimed at damaging patriarchal rule. Jeffs is shown in the documentary to have a number of wives himself, many of them younger than the legal age of marriage or sexual consent, nearing 80 years old before his arrest in 2006.
The struggle of the film's subjects becomes especially engrossing and emotional when they begin their efforts to help family members escape. The mother of one of the boys struggles with her decision to leave when her husband, the boy's father, arrived at her new shelter to verbally harass and manipulate her into returning.
The people highlighted in the film have been thoroughly indoctrinated to the point that the church can hold the barrier of ignorance between them and a more fulfilling future. This puts into perspective the astounding hardship overcome by those who actually manage their flee for independence.
Merten and Measom have crafted a powerful documentary around the story of these determined teens and their struggle for a sense of normality and individuality. Although it is clear that the path won't be easy, a sense of hope lingers through the end credits that with perseverance and help from good Samaritans, these people can reform their perspectives and lead fulfilling, prosperous lives.
The filmmakers have associated themselves with the nonprofit group "Holding Out Help," an organization created to aid in the escape and transition of fundamentalist victims from their compounds and into everyday life.
This article was found at:
http://www.dailyutahchronicle.com/arts/local-film-highlights-flds-lost-boys-1.2473917
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Posts
New documentary Prophets Prey reveals how fundamentalist Mormon church survives despite its cult status
ReplyDeleteby ROHAN SMITH news.com.au SEPTEMBER 23, 2015
IN the hills between Utah and Colorado City, a man named Warren Jeffs was going about his business quietly. He wasn’t disturbing anybody, he didn’t appear to outsiders to be doing anything wrong.
A closer look revealed the opposite. For years, Jeffs, a fundamentalist Mormon, was accruing wives — some as young as 12 years old — and forming a cult like no other.
Inside the walls of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (FLDS), Jeffs was preaching love and patience and the word of God. But his intentions were not pure.
Sam Brower, a private investigator who got close enough to Jeffs to write a book about what he witnessed, said the 59-year-old was “committing the most vile crimes imaginable”.
“Kidnapping, tax fraud, child molestation, human trafficking, blackmail,” Brower said.
Jeffs would eventually answer for his crimes, despite trying t run. He was briefly a fugitive and briefly owned second position on the FBI’s most wanted list.
When he was tracked down he had with him 16 mobile phones, three wigs and one of his wives.
Brower’s evidence led to Jeffs’ conviction and a 20-year sentence for child sexual assault. He was additionally charged with incest and sexual conduct with minors.
Four years after he was put behind bars, a new documentary reveals the church continues to operate without him. Outside his jail cell there are 10,000 loyal followers waiting for his release, convinced he is their saviour.
‘I HAD NO IDEA HOW YOUNG THEY REALLY WERE’
Brower told an audience in 2013 that he believed Jeffs was the leader of more than a church.
“Most people think of them as a church, but I think of them as an organised crime syndicate,” he said.
In his book, Prophet’s Prey — the same title used in the new documentary by director Amy Berg — Brower recounts how, over seven years, he witnessed horrendous crimes under the veil of religion.
In an interview in 2011 he explained how he first gained the church’s trust.
“The community itself is very distrustful, very isolated, very insular,” he said. “It literally took years, baby steps, little bits at a time, getting to know somebody and then them having a brother or some other contact that would slowly begin talking to me. It was a very cumbersome process.”
He said the FLDS community were “more insidious” than the mafia with one subtle but important difference.
“The mafia threatens you with your life, but the FLDS threatens you with your family and your eternal salvation, and people that lose their family are without hope, and that’s worse than death.”
continued below
Brower said he knew he was likely to come across polygamy — traditionally one man with multiple wives — but he didn’t expect it to involve pre-teens.
ReplyDelete“I’d heard of polygamy and what was happening to these young girls, but I had no idea how young they really were. His one victim in Texas was barely 12 years old.”
A review of Brower’s book by Variety concluded “spiritual and psychological bondage does not end simply by putting a monster behind bars”.
That’s the premise of Berg’s documentary, one that revisits the cult years after Jeffs’ conviction and finds little if anything has changed.
‘WOMEN ARE TREATED LIKE ANIMALS’
Author John Krakauer features heavily in the documentary. Having previously written about fundamentalist Mormonism, he explains how the FLDS came to hold such strong beliefs about women and enabled people like Jeffs to demand multiple brides.
In an interview ahead of the Sundance Film Festival where the documentary was premiering, Krakauer said polygamy was “everywhere” in Utah in the 1800s but the government soon tried to ban it.
“The fundamentalists, the true believers, said ‘bullsh*t, what the f***’,” he said. “This is (the religion’s) most holy principle and so they broke away from the mainstream church.”
He said Brigham Young, one of the church’s leaders, had “70 or 80 wives” and that wives equalled power.
“Literally, in this religion, women are like animals, they’re treated so badly,” Krakauer said.
Polygamy is not the only crime being committed by the church. Prophet’s Preyportrays a culture of child labour, rape and misogyny.
Berg said “manipulation and brainwashing starts at a very young age” in America’s largest polygamous community.
Krakauer said even Jeffs was brainwashed as a child. He said he was born three months premature and believed he was “special” as a result.
‘HE WAS A KINKY, F***ED UP KID’
“He grew up with this sense of entitlement and he was a really kinky, f***ed up kid,” Krakauer said.
That kid grew into an adult who channelled his sense of entitlement into molesting children. He’s behind bars but the cult marches on.
The Daily Mail reported this year that through letters and phone calls Jeffs is still running the show but the community on the Arizona-Utah border is divided between loyalists and defectors.
Willie Jessop, who left the cult in 2011, said many refuse to believe their leader did anything wrong.
“That’s why you see such a fractured situation,” Jessop told the Mail.
“People try to come to grips with what he’s in prison for (and) it’s easier for people to put it under religious persecution than the reality of why he’s there.”
Salon recently compared it to ISIS, and the similarities are hard to argue with.
“Both groups have sought to pursue prophetic religious teachings to their ultimate extreme, and both have constructed a throwback social order based on male domination, female subjugation, forced marriage and the rape and sexual enslavement of children. If Warren Jeffs had the guns, the territory and the freedom that ISIS possesses, how far would he go?”
Thank God he doesn’t.
Prophet’s Prey opens in the US on September 25.
http://www.news.com.au/entertainment/movies/new-documentary-prophets-prey-reveals-how-fundamentalist-mormon-church-survives-despite-its-cult-status/story-e6frfmw0-1227539495326
Former Jeffs wife talks about escaping polygamy
ReplyDeleteby Ed Kociela, St George News November 21, 2015
Foreground: Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints self-proclaimed prophet Warren Jeffs. Jeffs is imprisoned in Texas for a 2011 convictions for sexual assault of two children. | Composite image, St. George News
OPINION – Without choice, there is no freedom.
And, without freedom, life becomes nothing more than simply finding a way to survive.
That is the essence of life as a woman chained to polygamy, at least in the mind of Lynette Warner, who was one of nearly 80 wives claimed by Warren Jeffs, the self-proclaimed prophet of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, an offshoot sect of the mainstream LDS church.
Warner, now 30, was a spiritual wife to Jeffs, who is serving a life-plus 20 years sentence in a Texas prison after his 2011 conviction on two counts of sexual assault of a child for his spiritual marriage to two underage girls – one 12 and the other 15.
She was placed in marriage at the age of 18 and soon realized she wanted out of a culture and community that she no longer understood. It took eight years of repeated attempts to escape before she finally was able to break away from the sect 3 ½ years ago.
Warner said she was punished for her escape attempts by having her privileges taken away, was locked up in solitary confinement to force her to conform to church guidelines and was threatened with blood atonement.
“It can get so bad they tell you that you won’t live another day,” she said.
As a result, she has been diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder. It took several trips to the hospital and a series of misdiagnoses over the years before she was finally put on a regimen of effective treatment and medication.
“It’s like what soldiers get when they come out of the army,” she said. “I start to disassociate. I start to go through a stage with severe nightmares that are very real to me. Now, I fight through it, I’m getting better. But, there are triggers that cause that. They would not allow me to talk to a psychologist. They kept me heavily medicated. There was another lady who, by the time she got to a real medical doctor on the outside, the doctors said she would have died from what was in her system.”
Although painful, the trauma helped Warner succeed in her desire to leave the FLDS community.
“I tried for like five years to get out,” she said during an exclusive interview with St. George News. “My main problem was that I didn’t know about the organizations on the outside (that offer assistance to those trying to escape polygamy). I had a brother that was out, but I knew that was the first place they would look for me.”
Finally, she was able to escape through a window of a house where she was being held.
“They had turned around the doorknob and put two screws in the window so it wouldn’t open,” she said. “I broke one of the screws and undid the other and got out, crossed the yard and was gone.”
With help from the Shield and Refuge Ministry, which describes itself as “a loving, Christ-centered outreach to those seeking freedom from Mormon Fundamentalism and Polygamy,” Warner was able to make her way to Tennessee where she lived for two years, changed her name and was adopted by author Kristyn Decker, who had escaped from polygamy many years earlier.
Warner was raised in the FLDS faith and was a student at Alta Academy, a church school at the mouth of Little Cottonwood Canyon in Salt Lake City where Jeffs served as principal for 22 years.
“They taught you from a young age that it was a privilege to have more than one mother, that it was a blessing,” she said. “One will make the meals, one will tend the children, one would do the yard work.
continued below
When you are children, you just want to fit in, but when you get big is when you start to realize ‘Is this something I really want?’ You have to really want something to get out and face the differences (in lifestyles) and say ‘I want this.’ I wanted freedom. I wanted to live. I wanted to help the children.”
ReplyDeleteAs most born into the faith, Warner was taught from the cradle that her eternal salvation depended on her living the word of her church and prophet.
“It was always part of everything to work toward salvation,” she said. “Salvation is all he (Jeffs) talks about.”
Warner said Jeffs would often coerce people into following his will by telling them they would “only be qualified to be a servant in heaven” if they didn’t obey and that small children were a part of FLDS indoctrination.
“I got to a point where I thought if that’s what we have to do to children in heaven, I don’t want to be in heaven. It’s psychological abuse. They withhold toys, their childhood, and the child labor is also abuse.”
Warner said her attempts at escape led to her often being remanded to what the FLDS call “houses in hiding” where she would be sent with, usually, a handful of other women who were deemed rebellious or unworthy.
The women, she said, were placed under the watchful eye of a male caretaker whose job was to urge repentance.
“I lived in several (houses of hiding). You live there until you pray hard enough (to be returned to the community).”
Warner said things became so desperate while she was living in one of the houses of hiding in Wyoming that she threatened to take her own life.
“They speak a kind of code,” she said of FLDS followers. “They wanted me to teach the children the symbols and the code. It was hard enough on me; I couldn’t think of doing it to a child. If they learn it, they can’t communicate in the world.”
She refused and was sent to do her penance at the home in Wyoming where she became so despondent she thought of suicide.
“The caretaker said if I killed myself they would cover it up as an accident,” she said. “There was a reservoir close by. I said, ‘What if I jump in the reservoir?’”
She said her caretaker basically shrugged it off.
“I went in up to my neck,” Warner said, “and I sat there long enough to see if they would come after me or let me drown.”
Nobody came to her rescue.
“That, to me, was telling me they really do stage things to look like an accident,” she said.
Afterwards, she was sent back to Colorado City, Arizona.
Warner said she didn’t want to marry Jeffs, but she believed if she didn’t, she would never marry.
“So I felt I had to say yes and that I might get by with trying, but it wasn’t easy. He’s very mean. I was scared of him. I resisted from the very start. A lot of my harassment was a result of that. He wasn’t physically violent himself but very much in control. There was no compassion, no mercy. He told us ‘The time of compassion is over, there’s no love.’”
Christine Marie Katas understands the life Warner lived,although she was once a member of another polygamist sect.
Katas said she hopes people listen to Warner’s story and offer support.
“My situation? I believed in a false prophet,” Katas said, continuing:
I experienced the power of psychological change and the traumatic fear of consequences for disobedience. When my experience was over, people did not have compassion for me because of this misconception that I should have known better. They did not understand the power of religion, my background.Religion is such a powerful force that people become suicide bombers. It’s more powerful than a gun held to their head.When people go public with their story as people who have experienced psychological manipulation/violence, they are trying to make something good come from something bad. They have a life narrative. Our identity is the stories they’ve been through. continued below
Survivors are terrified to share their stories because of the media and its insensitivity. The public needs to realize that what she’s (Warner) telling is probably one 100th of what she actually experienced.
ReplyDeleteKatas, who is now working towards her doctorate in media psychology at Fielding Graduate University in Santa Barbara, California, said it is difficult for people to understand how difficult it is to escape from a religious cult.
“A pet peeve I have is when people come out of a community and outsiders say ‘Why didn’t you just leave?’”
She said for some people it is all they know, but quickly added that there are also those who convert to religious cults.
“The fact is, the media never seems to cover the psychological process of cult mind control,” she said. “They show the horrors of religious abuse, but not what’s behind it. These people (who join cults) are not stupid. They are more idealistic and educated. It’s a misconception that these are only young people searching for things.
“Nobody joins a cult, they join something they think will make the world a better place. When they start seeing the hypocrisy, it helps them realize this isn’t what they thought it was.
“There are films and TV shows about all of this, but we need more discussion on the psychology of the brain, about how predators work, what a psychopath is, about people with no conscience. We also forget that there is a good part, that there is a certain happiness, a certain love, a certain sweetness; that the evil world does not flourish without this artificial good side. My hope is that people have compassion on the people who come out of this situation. Nobody signs up to become a zombie. This is a manipulation strategy.”
As a result of her experience in a fundamentalist cult, Katas, too, has been diagnosed with PTSD. She said:
I was being abused and exploited and I was in so much psychological agony that I thought about ending my life every single hour. But the reason I stayed is because my critical thinking wasn’t working. There are techniques that predators can use to cause women to live in fear.Even if it’s just the fear of eternal damnation, when the emotional part of your brain is activated, the rational thinking part is not activated. So if a prophet keeps his people in a state of worrying about their eternal survival they are living in a state of fear so even when they see red flags and inconsistency that would make a person question if they were being told the truth, they can’t act on all these red flags, inconsistencies and questions of why would God do this to me?When cult leaders continually put people in a state of being tested then their critical thinking is a handicap. So what happened with me is I saw inconsistencies and things happening that I did not deserve. It caused me to be uncomfortable so I ignored them. I said it must be me. The problem must be me because I wasn’t righteous enough. I ignored how my prophet put me in harm’s way. There was the religious me battling the real me all the time. My critical thinking was turned off because I was in a state of trying to survive and not kill myself.I remember that my brain, after I got out, could not make sense of the world for years. There were certain things I just had to stop asking questions about. (My brain) was spaghetti that I couldn’t untangle, the world did not seem real to me. I would have waves of mourning with each new realization that what I had believed wasn’t true.When they have this healing and wakeup, invariably the women who left polygamy realize, ‘Really, I didn’t have another choice. Going to hell was no option.’ continued below
Choosing to survive is not a free choice, it’s your only choice. When in a placement marriage or arranged marriage, you’re not given a healthy set of options from which to choose. The choice is do this or be damnedThe way we take responsibility for our lives is by not blaming ourselves for what was done to us.
ReplyDeleteWarner assessed life within the FLDS church in similar terms.
“It’s women and children that are trapped against their will,” she said.
It’s a regimented lifestyle, with few, if any, choices.
“It’s all controlled – the food you eat, the house you live in, the clothes you wear, the way you comb your hair. If you don’t do what they say, things get taken away, one thing after another. At one point I just wanted to stay in my room. I didn’t even want to go to the kitchen because it was too dangerous, so I’d stay in my room.”
She said nobody tried to help her, that they wouldn’t even bring her food.
But, Warner said, that was typical of her life in the FLDS community.
“I wasn’t allowed to listen to music on the radio, all I heard were hymns. We weren’t allowed to watch movies. We had only specific books we could read. Now, it’s even more strict on books. TVs got outlawed.”
The control extended deeply into the community members’ day-to-day lives.
“The ladies, the mothers, are taught to sew, cook. They would get assigned to do cooking every single day for awhile, then they would rotate it. I was told my mission was to be an upholstery seamstress. I said I didn’t like sewing. They told me I wasn’t listening to God.
“The men actually worked either for money like in outside jobs or on the land, to build houses. Some men would work three days and two nights without rest. They were told ‘God reveals that you need to have this done by this day at this time, if not, there will be punishment from God.”
Warner said that even when he was on the run, Jeffs held a strong hold on his following, to the extent of holding church meetings in a remote canyon near Hildale.
“He would call us to the woods in a canyon and he would have us drive there to meet him and listen to his sermons while he was running from the law,” she said. “He would be out there for a few hours then he was gone.”
Warner confirmed that even after his capture, Jeffs continued to exert his power.
“He said it was the people’s fault that he was caught because he’s perfect, he can’t do anything wrong,” Warner said. “It just got stricter and stricter since he was caught. A lot of people have been sent away from Colorado City. He split up a lot of the families and told all the parents they were no longer married to each other, that they shouldn’t even desire to be together. And he assigned 15 guys to continue reproduction. He called them seed bearers. If the ladies don’t get pregnant they get kicked out, if they do get pregnant the baby is given to a caretaker.”
Warner said she plans to help the children of polygamy in the future.
“I want to become a psychologist and help the children, teach them how to communicate,” she said. “I understand the programming. I want to see a path in their lives, something at the end of the tunnel for them to cling to. Every little step makes a difference. I want to go into shelters and help people.”
And, while she is appreciative of the support she has received, she still remains driven.
“People tell me I’m strong and that is encouraging,” she said. “Personally? I want to be stronger.”
Ed Kociela is an opinion columnist. The opinions stated in this article are his and not representative of St. George News.
http://www.stgeorgeutah.com/news/archive/2015/11/21/exclusive-on-the-edge-former-jeffs-wife-talks-about-escaping-polygamy/
Advocate says AG Reyes 'tainted' by Kingston campaign contributions
ReplyDeleteBY BRIAN MULLAHY KUTV 2News FEBRUARY 18TH 2016
(KUTV) A woman who has helped teens escape abuses in polygamous communities said Utah Attorney General Sean Reyes is "tainted" by $40,000 in campaign contributions from the Kingstons, and said by accepting the funds, he cannot be trusted to investigate crimes linked to polygamy.
"Sean Reyes has failed us," said Joni Holm, in an interview with 2News on Wednesday. "He should not have taken the money."
For more than a decade, teens in trouble have sought help from Holm, as they embarked on the daunting task of transitioning from closed societies -- including the FLDS enclaves of Hildale-Colorado City -- into the wider world. She said she has aided roughly 30 teens or young adults.
Last week, federal agents raided several offices in Salt Lake County connected with the Kingstons, a family known for polygamy, varied business interests, and several high-profile past run-ins with the law. Agents also were seen at the multi-million dollar Sandy home of Washakie Renewable Energy CEO Jacob Kingston.
2News reported on Tuesday night that Sean Reyes accepted tens of thousands of dollars to his campaign, money that came from Washakie -- and an individual with Kingston ties. In addition, Reyes was said to be the keynote speaker at a Christmas party for the energy company.
What should Sean Reyes' campaign do with the money?
"He should give it back, or give to the victims [of polygamy]" replied Holm. "He shouldn't keep it, because he cannot be trusted at this point."
"I feel badly she feels that way, but that's not true," said Reyes' campaign spokesman Alan Crooks. " No donation that Sean has ever taken has influenced his decisions."
Crooks said the campaign has now put the $40,000 in escrow, awaiting direction on what to do with it from federal investigators.
He added that just last weekend, Reyes was in Cedar City with private investigator Sam Brower, the author of "Prophet's Prey," which delved into the workings of FLDS leader Warren Jeffs, convicted and serving time for his crimes.
Brower said Reyes has gone "beyond the call of duty" in raising awareness of trouble in polygamous groups and even arranged a showing of the movie, "Prophet's Prey" to members of the Attorney General's Office.
Reyes has made human trafficking a priority; now Holm is challenging him to investigate the Kingstons.
"I challenge him to go in and look, do the paper trail."
http://kutv.com/news/local/advocate-says-ag-reyes-tainted-by-kingston-campaign-contributions