Women Who Escaped a Polygamist Mormon Cult Share Their Story

The twin towns of Colorado City, Arizona, and Hildale, Utah—a border community formerly known as Short Creek, which is home to the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (FLDS)—are a place of immense beauty and unspeakable pain.

Founded in 1913 by Mormon Fundamentalists who broke away from the traditional Latter-Day Saints church in order to practice the principal of plural marriage, this community, geographically isolated by the Vermillion Cliffs of the Colorado Plateau, is a step back in time for anyone who drives through it. Here, women dress modestly in ankle-length, arm-covering prairies dresses and wear no makeup. Because it is believed that in heaven they will wash their husbands' feet with their hair, they keep it long and braided in elaborate ropes down their backs. Men increase their chances of becoming gods themselves in heaven, if they take a plurality of wives; the more, the better. In this community, present-day polygamy is alive, but not so well.

Though the Mormon Church has officially disowned the fundamentalists, the FLDS trace their lineage all the way back to founding Prophet Joseph Smith. John Y. Barlow (whose last name is claimed still today by many of his descendants) was the first leader of the FLDS, until his death in 1949. He was succeeded by a series of men; more recent was "Uncle Rulon" Jeffs, who died in 2002 and was famously succeeded as Prophet by his son Warren.

After crisscrossing the country to evade police, and ultimately landing himself on the FBS's 10 Most Wanted list, Warren Jeffs was captured in Las Vegas in 2006. He had 78 wives at the time of his arrest—a third of them under the age of 17. In 2011, Jeffs was successfully convicted on two counts of felony child sexual assault for the rapes of just two of his child brides, ages 12 and 15. Yet, despite that fact that he is currently serving a sentence of life plus 20 years from state prison in Palestine, Texas, Jeffs continues to control the cult...