Stolen Innocence - Lisa Pulitzer [176]
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
THE TRIAL BEGINS
Opinion is flitting thing, but truth outlasts the sun.
—EMILY DICKINSON
On September 13, 2007, I appeared in court to testify against Warren Jeffs. The preliminary hearing had ended nearly a year before; now it was time for the real thing. The man I had known all my young life as “Uncle Warren” was finally being put on trial as an accomplice to my rape.
Even before the trial began, I felt a sense of relief. At least my voice was going to be heard. I was no longer a vulnerable fourteen-year-old girl with someone else’s convictions being shoved down my throat; I was a strong twenty-year-old woman, ready to confront the person who had squandered my childhood.
In the days after the preliminary hearing, word had quietly spread that the key witness in the case was me. Legally, my identity had to be revealed to Warren prior to the trial, and had been used in the preliminary. As a result, I went from being Jane Doe IV to being Elissa Wall more quickly than I had imagined. I received such an outpouring of affection and encouragement through a long chain of supporters. I realized that there must have been members of the FLDS who were secretly praying for me, and I could feel their silent support. I had even received word from friends of ours in Oregon who had begun an international prayer chain. To hear that so many people were praying for a fair outcome provided some much needed comfort. I no longer felt like Lamont and I were standing alone; rather, we had all these people to walk right beside us through the mud.
But we’d traveled a long and arduous road to finally arrive at this day. Over the previous year, Lamont and I had moved several times, taking our two small children to keep our identity and location from being compromised. To make matters more difficult, in the months after the charges against Warren were officially filed, members of both of our families shunned us. Lamont’s relatives who were still in the FLDS were particularly thorny, and at times we felt as though we’d collapse from the unrelenting pressure and stress. On the other hand, some of our greatest support and encouragement came from my close family and Lamont’s relatives no longer in the FLDS.
As in the preliminary hearing, arrangements had been made to bring us into the courthouse through an alternate door to protect us from the swarms of media gathering outside. In the previous months, I had experienced a small taste of this chaos, but now the media contingent had expanded further than I could have imagined. The rear parking lot of the courthouse was crammed with satellite trucks from local TV stations and major networks from across the country as well as from abroad. I worried about being subjected to the throngs of people shouting “Elissa!” and demanding responses to their questions.
Once inside the building, I worked to gather myself up. Glancing down at my outfit, I felt professional and well presented. I’d acquired some classy suits to wear, relieved not to have to hide under my tentlike maternity dresses anymore. Today I felt strong and free in a knee-length skirt, pin-striped blazer, and purple top. I wore my hair down with a thin black headband to keep it out of my face. I must have run through my hair with my straightening iron at least five times that morning, just to ensure that every strand looked perfect. Now, in these clothes, with my hair swinging defiantly across my back, I was ready to stand up to Warren Jeffs. I looked like the person I felt like inside, and this is a magical thing when it has been denied for so much of your life.
Whereas I’d been allowed to sit in the jury box at the preliminary hearing, now I was directed to take a seat among the spectators in the gallery. It had taken the lawyers three and a half days to pick the five men and seven women of the jury. Eight of the twelve would decide Warren Jeffs’s fate. Soon they would be entering the courtroom and looking to me to testify