Stolen Innocence - Lisa Pulitzer [150]
“Yes,” I said back to him. “I am in a relationship with this gentleman. I met him a while ago.”
“Have you ever betrayed your marriage commitments with this man?” Warren’s disembodied voice filled the small room.
I could feel myself growing flushed as I sat in my chair, unwilling to provide an answer. I knew why he wanted to know, he wanted to humiliate me by prodding for salacious details. There was a long pause before Warren spoke again. “Have you ever had relations with this man?”
His question repulsed me and I refused to answer him.
“Has any part of him ever been inside you?”
Now I was infuriated. He had no right to know and even less of a right to inquire about such a personal thing. But Warren continued in this vein for several more minutes. “Well, I will take your unwillingness to answer the questions as a yes,” he said. “William, I want you to end the marriage.”
In one moment, what I’d been asking for since the very beginning had been granted. Not because of all my begging and pleading. Not because I’d complained about the terrible things that Allen had done to me. Not because I’d endured three years with a man I didn’t love and Warren had taken pity on me. I had been forced to suffer with no hope of it ever stopping. And now that I’d finally taken a step toward my own happiness, I was being punished and labeled a sinner.
“Do you realize that adultery is a cardinal sin?” Warren asked me. “And that the only way that someone can repent from a cardinal sin is to be destroyed in the flesh?”
I sat dumbfounded. Uncle Warren was telling me that I literally had to be destroyed, killed, in order for God to forgive me. In my short life, I had heard teachings of the doctrine that Warren was referring to. I had always felt petrified when I’d heard whispers of the ritual called blood atonement. If deemed necessary, an FLDS believer who was wanting forgiveness from the priesthood and God for a sin must willingly turn himself over and allow his blood to be “spilt upon the ground.” While I’d never known if it had been practiced in my day, there were stories of people succumbing to this bone-chilling act in earlier times. The way it was supposedly carried out was in a secret ceremony in a special room dedicated by the priesthood where the “sinner” would lie upon an altar and agree to be bound while a specially ordained elder took his life. And he who took the life would be guiltless before God.
I couldn’t believe the direction this meeting was going. Here I had gone to Warren multiple times, begging for help with things I felt were wrong, and in an instant he was judging me and telling me that I may have sinned so greatly that I was eligible for destruction. He continued to probe me for information. But I was so enraged that I burst into tears.
“I want you to write a letter of confession for all the things that have transpired between you and this gentleman,” Warren directed, seeming to take joy in my sobs. “And I want you to know that you are no longer welcome to see your mother or be in Fred’s home. You’re to treat your mother and your sisters as though they are dead to you.”
Now I broke into hysterics. What I had feared for months had finally come to pass. Warren had enough power to take from me everything that I held dear in that community. I would never be allowed to see my mother or my little sisters again. All these years of pain and suffering had been for absolutely nothing. The only reason I had endured for so long with Allen was to be close to my mother and sisters. Now I would have to live without them. It was the harshest verdict he could have delivered, but then he drove the dagger even further.
“Allen,” Warren’s voice boomed. “Job well done.” Warren was commending him for his role as husband in the marriage he had placed him in.
I had to summon all my strength not to rise to my feet and rip the phone from the wall. As he sat there lavishing praise on Allen for having his way with me and intimidating me for nearly three years, the rage that had been