The next time Merril had visitation, he didn’t bring the children back. I called my attorney on Sunday night, and she called Rod Parker. He said Merril was too sick to drive. I knew this was a game. I was also told my father was too busy. When I called him he said he couldn’t bring the kids back that week and he was sorry. I didn’t believe him, but I let it go.
The next day I called the schools and explained why my children were absent. My van wasn’t in good enough shape to make the trip. Mitzi said she and her husband would drive down to Colorado City. I couldn’t thank her enough.
Merril went nuts when he found out Mitzi would be driving his children back to Salt Lake. I had called his bluff. Moments later, my father called. He said he’d drop everything and drive the children back. I told him to forget it. Merril had already broken the court order by not returning the kids on Sunday, so I’d made arrangements for their safe return.
Merril’s family went ballistic. No one knew who Mitzi was, and they tried to claim they had no way of knowing if the children would be safe with her. My father returned with the children after all. Mitzi and her husband had made the six-hundred-mile round-trip for nothing. But Merril never tried this trick again.
Word found its way back to me that Merril had married five more wives since I’d left. Each had been married to someone else until Warren Jeffs had ordered her to marry Merril Jessop. I knew that some of the families who had joined Merril’s had a history of physical and sexual abuse among their children.
I told my attorney that I didn’t feel safe sending Merrilee into that environment. She was too young and too vulnerable. I feared she’d be molested by one of the older boys that were now part of her “family.”
We moved to get the case back into court as soon as possible. Lisa agreed with me that the situation for Merrilee was too dangerous.
My children’s therapists were frustrated by Merril’s behavior. They were trying to help them heal, but after every visit to Colorado City they came back injured and lost ground. The violence was always reported to Merril’s attorney. Rodney Parker began pushing to keep the case out of court and got three postponements. When he tried for a fourth, my attorney objected and stood her ground. A date was set. Parker said he had a conflict, and another conference call was scheduled among the lawyers and judge. But Parker wasn’t in his office, so the judge said the date would stand: June 24, 2004.
With no hope of getting subsidized housing for at least eighteen months, I knew that all of my income was going to be used for rent. I started every month knowing I didn’t have any money to pay utilities or purchase anything except food.
Patrick was having a play at school and needed a sword. I promised him I would try my best to figure something out. But this was going to be hard to pull off. Patrick got more and more agitated as the days went by. After two weeks his counselor took me aside and said that the sword was a big emotional issue for him. The counselor said she felt that the sword would make Patrick feel more secure about his life and my ability to take care of him. I told her I didn’t know where to get one and didn’t have the money. She said I could pick up a sword at Wal-Mart for five dollars.
I had six dollars to my name. I’d been saving that for laundry soap, but now I realized the sword came first. We stopped at Wal-Mart on the way home. We bought the sword. Patrick acted as though the weight of the world had disappeared from his little soul. It had been fun to buy it for him. But now what did I do for laundry detergent?
The next day, Connie, the homeless-shelter coordinator who’d helped register my children in school, stopped by to check on us. She brought along a box of laundry soap samples that she’d picked up from the shelter. “I knew with all your children you could probably use this.” Connie also gave me some gas vouchers. What a relief.
I could do my laundry, but I was still not going to make it through the month. Then Leenie called me and said a costume director from HBO was in town and was looking for someone who could help design clothes for the series Big Love. Leenie thought I could make some money by sewing at home. I leaped at the opportunity and got hired to sew several pairs of long underwear. I sewed like mad and finished the order in a few weeks. The job was a godsend. It gave me enough money to pay my utilities through the summer.
On the appointed day, I arrived at the courthouse at 9 A.M. I was scared but also hopeful. Rod Parker was not going to be there and had arranged for a substitute attorney to take his place. The guardian ad litem was not there, either. But my attorney was, and the small courtroom was filled with my supporters. Merril looked a little taken aback. For once he didn’t act as though he was holding all the cards.
Lisa argued that Merril should be allowed to continue to see our children, but in Salt Lake City. She made a persuasive case for why it wasn’t good for the children to be forced to travel to Colorado City every two weeks. The fill-in for the guardian ad litem admitted she didn’t know much about the case but said she didn’t see why the children couldn’t travel back and forth.
Lisa was brilliantly prepared. She outlined in great detail the incident that had happened, the stress and anger the visits caused, and why this was damaging to the children.
When the judge finally issued his opinion, the courtroom fell still. Our lives were on the line. He spoke deliberately and in an even tone.
“While I believe it is important for the children involved to have a relationship with their father, I find there is enough evidence to support the need to have the visitation restricted to the Salt Lake City area.”
My heart stopped. I’d won. We were safe. I knew Merril would never put the effort into coming up to Salt Lake City. The fight was over.
It was a huge win. I had proven that it was not in my children’s interests to ever be in Colorado City. We were finally and truly free.
This was a groundbreaking case at many levels. If I could get my children out of the cult, any woman with enough determination could, too.
The absolute power the FLDS had over women had been cracked. I had proved that a woman could not only flee and live on her own but also win custody of her children.
It was a proud day.
Brian
After I won custody, I went home to gather up all my children to take them to the zoo. We were going to celebrate! Betty refused to go with us and Arthur was very upset. The younger ones were confused and felt they should be angry, but they were too excited about the zoo to muster any anger. We all had a great time, and when we got home we had pizza and root beer floats. It felt like the weight of the world had been erased from every aspect of my being.
The school year started and life began to feel more normal. I was feeling stronger and less debilitated by the PTSD. It wasn’t such an ordeal getting the kids out the door. I was stronger and more optimistic than I’d been since the escape.
Merril came through Salt Lake City one night and took the children out to dinner. He was heading home from Canada with a new wife. Merril had married a young girl, Bonnie Blackmore, who was a Canadian citizen. He introduced her to my children as their new mother. Bonnie was barely older than Betty.
Two weeks later, he wed another young girl. Ally Barlow from Hildale, Utah, was the next in his marrying binge. In less than a year, he’d married seven new wives. He was sixty-eight years old with thirteen wives and more than a hundred children now, including many stepchildren. I think he needed to prove that he could still have any woman he wanted.
When Merril wasn’t marrying more wives, he was liquidating assets and building housing in Texas on Warren Jeffs’ compound in Eldorado, which spanned nearly two thousand acres. A few months after he married his under-age brides, he moved them to Texas and destroyed all traces of their ever having lived in Colorado City, presumably so there would be no evidence that could be used against him.
I knew I had to find a job to enable me to pay my utility bills that winter. With Harrison and Bryson, it was impossible to work a regular 9-to-5 job. I ended up going to work for
a small locksmithing business run by a couple I’d met over the summer who’d once been part of another polygamist community with no ties to the FLDS. Paul and Lodeen had fourteen children and needed help with their bookkeeping. Paul said it was fine to bring Harrison and Bryson with me to work. There was a room downstairs where Harrison could sleep and Bryson could watch cartoons.
I took the job with delight. I have a good head for numbers and was put in charge of collecting past-due accounts. Lodeen gave me a big stack of invoices, some of which went back two years. I tracked down phone numbers on the computer and made an endless stream of calls. Payments started coming in.
I was earning enough money to pay my bills. There wasn’t a lot left over, but this was the highest ground I’d managed to reach. Once I got the children off to school in the morning, I went to work with the boys. In the afternoons I shuttled kids to one appointment after another.
After an appointment for Harrison one afternoon, the ignition on my van froze. I couldn’t turn the key and start it. I called Lodeen to see if anyone was in the shop who could come over and help me. Paul came by.
Paul and I had an easy relationship and a lot in common because of our polygamist pasts. That afternoon he told me he had never truly given up the idea of living polygamy but felt the right person had never come along—until he met me.
I was stunned. He told me that I would probably never find a man willing to take on a woman with eight children. In his view, polygamy helped solve this kind of problem. He and Lodeen had worked hard and were now in the position of being able to help me. Why should I have to live alone because I’d been dealt a bad hand?
I told Paul I had no problem being alone and that there was no way I’d ever consider polygamy again. I’d fought hard for my freedom and I knew I might have to fight hard for the rest of my life, but there was no way I’d go back to polygamy. Paul wanted me to look at the positives. But frankly, I didn’t think there were any.
I told Paul I appreciated everything he had done for me. He and Lodeen had offered me a hand up instead of a handout, and I was deeply grateful for that. But that was it. I wasn’t interested in anything else.
For the first time in my life, a man respected me when I said no. Paul said he still needed my help at his business if I was willing to continue. I didn’t really want to work for someone who wanted to marry me, but I didn’t know what else to do. My job was enabling me to survive. I continued working, and he never said anything about marriage again.
The job went so well—I brought in $30,000 in past-due accounts for them—I realized my abilities hadn’t been wiped out by the trauma of the last year or my PTSD. What I knew I needed was work I could do from home. There was no way I could support my family on a teacher’s salary.
I decided to become an accountant. I could do that from home and make my own hours. I looked into graduate school at the University of Utah and realized I needed to pass the GMAT test in order to apply.
I signed up for a GMAT prep class and started going on Saturday mornings. It was hard to find the time to study, but I was thrilled to be using my brain again and doing something for myself.
One Saturday I started getting dressed for school but didn’t put any energy into it. I just didn’t care. When I looked in the mirror I thought I looked awful. I was wearing black jeans and a big heavy sweater. My hair was frizzy from a new perm. But so what?
Then a strange and unfamiliar feeling came over me. I had a sense that I was going to meet the love of my life that day. I wasn’t looking for the love of my life! That was what was so unsettling. I knew everyone in the class already. I was running late and brushed the thought off as something crazy.
That day we had a substitute teacher. He introduced himself as Brian and said he had an MBA from Harvard. That got my attention. I’d never met anyone who’d gone to an Ivy League school. He was good-looking and clearly very fit.
I noticed during the class that he paid a lot of attention to me. Why was he looking at me? Was it my imagination? No, I realized it wasn’t. He’d ask the class a question and stare at me.
He told us we were going to go down the rows and answer the questions in the book. I was second in line. I read the question, answered it, and then looked up. Brian was staring at me but didn’t say anything. Had I gotten the question wrong? I must have looked puzzled, because he snapped out of his reverie, commented that my answer was correct, and moved on to the next student.
As the class continued, Brian kept encouraging me to participate. I felt confused by his attention, so I stayed quiet.
During our break, Brian said to some of us that he’d send us a study guide for the GMAT class that he’d prepared if we’d give him our e-mail addresses and phone numbers. We all signed up.
On another break, I overheard Brian telling someone nearby that he was divorced. After class, several of the students went to the front of the room to chat with him. I felt shy, but I didn’t want to pass up the chance to talk to someone with a degree from Harvard. I drifted up to the front along with everyone else. Brian had his eye on me.
But then the dean of the business school came in and invited Brian to lunch. I could see that waiting around to talk with him was a waste of time, so I left and did not look back.
It turns out that Brian told everyone he had to leave. After making apologies to the dean, he jumped in his car.
Brian could see me walking down the sidewalk on the right. If he left campus, he’d have to turn left. Left meant never getting to know me. He had taken a new job in San Francisco and was already working there. Turning left was the safe decision. But he’d been making those all his life. He turned right.
Brian pulled up to me in his BMW and rolled down his window. “Carolyn, I know you don’t know me and this may seem sudden, but would you like to get some lunch with me? You can ride with me or follow me in your own car. Whatever you’re more comfortable with. But I would really like to get to know you.”
My heart nearly came to a halt. What a surprise. What a happy surprise. But what should I do? Should I say yes and go to lunch with a total stranger? The safe thing was to say no. But I didn’t. “I’d love to get some lunch with you,” I said, and got in his car.
Now what? There I was sitting alone in a car with a strange man. What a weird feeling. I had never felt so shy in my entire life. Ever. I was thirty-six years old and on my third date. (My first two dates were awkward non-starters.) This was the first date I’d ever had with someone I found really attractive.
Brian mentioned something about his son. I looked at him and said, “Oh, you have a son?”
“I do. Two boys, in fact. What about you? Any kids?” he asked.
“Yes, I have eight.”
Brian started laughing. He thought I was joking.
I looked at him because I didn’t get what was so funny.
Then it was his turn to look surprised. “You have eight children?”
I nodded.
Brian looked like he was choking on something. “Seriously, you do not look like you even have any kids. I thought you were joking. Is a sports bar okay for lunch?”
I’d never been to a sports bar in my life. I said that sounded great.
The mention of my eight children broke the ice. Brian came from a family of six. He said his mother was very beautiful. “Like you. You remind me of my mother in a lot of ways,” he said. Well, that seemed all right.
Brian admitted that he had begged off having lunch with the dean so he could try to catch me after class. He said if that had failed, he would have called me with the number he had from the study guide sheet.
“You made up the study guide thing just to get my number?” I said, shocked.
“No, not exactly. I’m e-mailing everyone a study guide. I just didn’t need their phone numbers.” He smiled.
Over lunch I told Brian how I’d ended up with eight children and about my escape and the seemingly never-ending custody battle I’d finally won. Talking to him suddenly
felt as easy as breathing and as natural as blinking. No man had ever listened to me as intently as he had.
Brian had just gone through a divorce, and in talking we realized we’d both been married for seventeen years, almost to the day—he was married three weeks before I married Merril and divorced two weeks before my escape. Both of us had been divorced for eighteen months, and neither of us had dated seriously since.
Brian later said he realized at lunch he wanted to have a relationship with me even though he knew it would turn his life upside down. He was scared but didn’t let that stop him from saying, “Do you want to go see a movie tonight?”
“Sure,” I said.
“I work in San Francisco but I come to Salt Lake every two weeks to see my sons. I’d like to date you when I’m not seeing my two boys.”
I smiled. “Sounds good to me.”
He took me back to my car and kissed me goodbye. Really kissed me.
We never got to the movies that night because Brian wanted me to meet his friends. All of them had degrees from prestigious schools. A few had Ph.D.s. I’d never socialized with such educated people before. What a difference. It was stimulating to be around such vitality. The next day I met more of his friends at breakfast and lunch. By the time Brian went back to San Francisco, I’d met almost every friend he had in the city and I was in love for the first time in my life.
Brian began calling me every day from San Francisco. After two weekends of dating in Salt Lake, Brian began begging me to fly to San Francisco with him. I pulled out all the stops to find a babysitter and did.
For years I’d lived a nightmare. Now I was living a dream. I could not believe someone like Brian cared about me and wanted to introduce me to his family. His dad had been career military and Brian had been an army captain. Part of what attracted me to him was that he’d worked hard for everything he’d achieved but still remained open and caring in a strong and natural way. He gave me hope that I might be able to pull myself out of the bad place I was in. It was easy to be with him but still so unreal. What a joy to be able to laugh with a man.
Escape Page 42
