Stolen Innocence: My Story of Growing Up in a Polygamous Sect, Becoming a Teenage Bride, and Breaking Free of Warren Jeffs

Stolen Innocence: My Story of Growing Up in a Polygamous Sect, Becoming a Teenage Bride, and Breaking Free of Warren Jeffs
by Elissa Wall, Lisa Pulitzer

Stolen Innocence: My Story of Growing Up in a Polygamous Sect, Becoming a Teenage Bride, and Breaking Free of Warren Jeffs
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Book Summary Information

Author: Elissa Wall, Lisa Pulitzer
Edition: Hardcover
Format: Bargain Price
Published: 2008-05-13
ISBN: N/A
Number of pages: 448
Publisher: William Morrow

Book Reviews of Stolen Innocence: My Story of Growing Up in a Polygamous Sect, Becoming a Teenage Bride, and Breaking Free of Warren Jeffs

Book Review: A persistent evil
Summary: 4 Stars

Other reviewers have described this book at length, and I will not repeat their excellent comments here. But I should like to emphasize some points. First, it helps to have done some background reading on Mormon history and the FLDS in particular. Personally I would recommend Jon Krakauer and Wallace Stegner for broad descriptions, and Martha Bradley's "Kidnapped from that Land" for an excellent account of polygamy, the origin of the FLDS, and the raids on their settlement at Short Creek. Second, it is easy to criticize the book as being too long, containing quite a number of typos, and being poorly written. However, I read it in one day, and found its perhaps amateurish style very appealing - I really felt this was something written by a poorly-educated woman who simply had to tell the world what horrors had happened to her, rather than a glossy "as told to" piece of sensationalism. Finally, I hope that this may serve to jog the conscience of those states that are home to FLDS and similar settlements. Religions that treat women as chattels, and which pander to pedophiles, should have no place in this country (nor in third world countries, which is where one reviewer seems to think they belong...). Given the presence of FLDS officers in local police forces, and the ambiguous status of polygamy in the mainstream LDS church (prohibited by the politically-convenient 1890 Manifesto, but remaining as a revelation in D&C 132), this seems to be something that only federal involvement is likely to solve. But bringing successful prosecutions of these secretive and highly-controlling sects will require many more Elissa Walls to have the courage to break free of their brain-washing and somehow to accept the appalling likely consequences for their love ones.

Summary of Stolen Innocence: My Story of Growing Up in a Polygamous Sect, Becoming a Teenage Bride, and Breaking Free of Warren Jeffs

In September 2007, a packed courtroom in St. George, Utah, sat hushed as Elissa Wall, the star witness against polygamous sect leader Warren Jeffs, gave captivating testimony of how Jeffs forced her to marry her first cousin at age fourteen. This harrowing and vivid account proved to be the most compelling evidence against Jeffs, showing the harsh realities of this closed community and the lengths to which Jeffs went in order to control the sect's women.

Now, in this courageous memoir, Elissa Wall tells the incredible and inspirational story of how she emerged from the confines of the Fundamentalist Church of Latter Day Saints (FLDS) and helped bring one of America's most notorious criminals to justice. Offering a child's perspective on life in the FLDS, Wall discusses her tumultuous youth, explaining how her family's turbulent past intersected with her strong will and identified her as a girl who needed to be controlled through marriage. Detailing how Warren Jeffs's influence over the church twisted its already rigid beliefs in dangerous new directions, Wall portrays the inescapable mind-set and unrelenting pressure that forced her to wed despite her repeated protests that she was too young.

Once she was married, Wall's childhood shattered as she was obligated to follow Jeffs's directives and submit to her husband in "mind, body, and soul." With little money and no knowledge of the outside world, she was trapped and forced to endure the pain and abuse of her loveless relationship, which eventually pushed her to spend nights sleeping in her truck rather than face the tormentor in her bed.

Yet even in those bleak times, she retained a sliver of hope that one day she would find a way out, and one snowy night that came in the form of a rugged stranger named Lamont Barlow. Their chance encounter set in motion a friendship and eventual romance that gave her the strength she needed to break free from her past and sever the chains of the church.

But though she was out of the FLDS, Wall would still have to face Jeffs-this time in court. In Stolen Innocence, she delves into the difficult months on the outside that led her to come forward against him, working with prosecutors on one of the biggest criminal cases in Utah's history, so that other girls still inside the church might be spared her cruel fate.

More than a tale of survival and freedom, Stolen Innocence is the story of one heroic woman who stood up for what was right and reclaimed her life.

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