Stolen Innocence - Lisa Pulitzer [171]
I was glad that Kassandra and Teressa would testify before me. I had no idea what to expect and I hoped that watching my older sisters handle the lawyers’ questions would empower me. They had been instructed to leave the courtroom before and after their testimonies as the court enforced the exclusionary rule, and aside from Kassandra’s husband, Ryan, I had no family inside from whom to draw strength.
Kassandra was the first witness called, and she remained poised as she walked to the witness box, wearing a tailored black pants suit with a red camisole peeking out from beneath her jacket. Remembering Rulon and Warren’s ban on the color red, she’d chosen a red garment as an act of defiance. While he remained stone-faced as she settled into the wood armchair, I was certain her rebellious gesture was not lost on Warren.
Brock Belnap smiled at me from the prosecutor’s table. He’d come to court that day with assistant district attorney Ryan Shaum, who, Brock had explained, was more experienced in this criminal courtroom setting.
“What type of relationships did Mr. Jeffs teach the girls they could have with a young man as they were growing up and going into their teenage years?” the diminutive Shaum asked my sister.
Kassandra paused, a delicious grin parting her thin red lips. “He would use a phrase,” she explained. “For the boys to treat the girls like snakes and the girls likewise…. You got in a lot of trouble if the boys started to talk to a girl in high school or in any of the grades, because they felt like that, you know, that was improper in their society.”
“Did Warren teach or discuss with the girls whether or not they could date at any point in time?”
“He discussed it. And it was absolutely not,” Kassandra said.
“What did he say about it?”
“That the reason they did not date was because God would talk to the prophet and tell the prophet who that girl belonged to…. He said, if any girl did get involved with a boy, that they were clouding that revelation to the prophet, that God would not, because they had sinned by that, that God would not reveal to the prophet who they belonged to.”
“Did you ever have an opportunity to talk to Mr. Jeffs about what Allen was doing and the way he was treating Elissa sexually?” Ryan Shaum asked Kassandra. I leaned in to hear her response. I’d never heard the details of this conversation that my sister had with Warren.
“One time, he had called me into his office—”
“Can we have foundation?” the lawyer Wally Bugden called out from the defense table. Warren sat beside him, unfazed and looking directly at my sister.
“When was this meeting?” Shaum asked to establish a time frame for the court. Kassandra told the court the conversation with Warren had occurred during the summer of 2002.
“Okay, and what caused you to go to Warren at that time, do you recall?”
“I had got in a lot of trouble because we, Rulon’s wives, had been told to cut off all ties and communications with anyone outside his family, to cut off all ties with our parents, our mother. And I spent a lot of time with Mom and my sisters. And I was told, he particularly called me into his office to tell me that I was being rebellious and I was not being submissive to my husband.
“And he reprimanded me quite sharply. And then he told me that I was being a bad example for my sister and I needed to straighten up so that she would see what a good wife does and is submissive. And he said you cannot blame a man for finding out about himself, his life. And they need to work things out between themselves. She doesn’t need to be talking to you about intimate matters, and to keep sacred things sacred. And that was between her and her husband. And if she was even to mention something to me, to say, no, you need to go to talk to Allen about this.”
There it was, plain as day. As far