Stolen Innocence - Lisa Pulitzer [177]
I was uneasy sitting in the second row squeezed between my husband and Roger. In the chairs in back of us and to our right, reporters and television journalists were sizing me up. Behind us, I felt the eyes of at least ten FLDS loyalists who’d come out to show their support to their prophet. As I waited for the proceedings to begin, I could feel their angry stares boring into the back of my head. I understood the full importance of a guilty verdict in this case; if Warren were to be set free, the implications for the girls of the FLDS community were grave. Winning a conviction, on the other hand, would send a message to the priesthood and hopefully slow or put a stop to the practice of underage marriage.
Unzipping my purse, I snuck a peek at the photo of Ally and Sherrie I’d tucked inside, drawing strength from their cheerful faces as I waited on pins and needles for the judge and jury to enter the courtroom. As soon as Warren was led in, we heard all the seats of the third row snap back as his followers stood in respect. They’d also done this during the preliminary hearing, but after this display, Warren’s attorneys advised them to discontinue this practice. They apparently didn’t want the jury to see this show of the obvious control that Warren had over his people.
Brock Belnap delivered the opening remarks for the prosecution, keeping his points short, not condemning Warren Jeffs with any suggestive language or trying to sway the opinions of the jury before they heard the evidence. Instead, he simply stated that we were here because there was substantial evidence to support the fact that I was raped. He also illuminated for the jury that the prosecution was not there to make a case against the religion or even polygamy. Rather, it was strictly about accomplice to the rape of a minor.
Not surprisingly, Tara Isaacson made several comments in her opening statement that frustrated me, at one point telling the jury that in this case part of their duty was to put aside their personal feelings about whether or not fourteen was too young to have sexual intercourse. Their job as she described it was to determine if I was raped at all. Then she said, “For me, it would have been too young,” as if to imply that it was too young for her, but not for me. She also said that in Utah, a child of thirteen engaging in sexual relations is considered to have been raped no matter what. A child of fourteen, though, is not being raped unless he or she is “not consenting.”
In my mind, the difference between thirteen and fourteen is small. Images of forced encounters with Allen pulsed through my mind—him above me in bed, yanking my underwear off, forcing those stale kisses onto my mouth as I tried to keep it shut tight. If shouting “No,” fleeing the scene for my mother’s arms, crying beneath his body, and begging him to stop did not count as protest, what would? As far as I knew, and as far as I intended to show everyone in that courtroom, I was raped—even though at the time I had no understanding that what Allen was doing to me had a name. It had taken the past year working with members of law enforcement for me to accept what had really happened. But I knew in my soul that even though Allen had been told to do those things, and had been told by Warren Jeffs, he still chose to hurt me, and that when I sought help from Warren he turned a blind eye instead sending me home to repent and submit.
Isaacson’s opening statement utilized a PowerPoint presentation complete with a “time line” of my marriage to Allen. One caption read, “Pregnant with Lamont’s Child and Left.” It was clear that the defense was trying to establish that I was an adulterous wife, but I wasn’t going to stand for blatant misrepresentations being shown on the projector. I tapped Brock on the shoulder and whispered that she had no right to present that caption to the jury. The judge had ruled that the testimony in this case be narrowed to a specific