Stolen Innocence - Lisa Pulitzer [181]
“Why did you feel betrayed by Warren Jeffs?”
“He overlooked what I wanted, what I knew was important.” This was, in fact, the heart of the issue. My voice had been silenced, my desires ignored. I was owned and always had been—now I was simply being passed to another set of hands.
Tears welled up in my eyes and my voice shook as I beheld the photographs projected on the court’s viewing screen. In the pictures Kassandra and my mother had snapped during that night, my face was red and blotchy from crying. I remember their soft, sad voices, almost pleading with me to smile for the memory books. Now the images glared out over the entire room, filling me with the nausea that had plagued me in the wee hours of that tiring April morning in 2001.
“How did you feel when this photograph was taken?”
“I kept thinking—I felt like I was getting ready for death.” It might have sounded dramatic to those assembled, but it was the most accurate description I could come up with.
“How long did it take to get to Caliente?”
“Forever.” I heard the flutter of stifled giggles in the gallery at this response that might have been given by a child. I then relayed for the jury how I spent that whole trip to Caliente in silent panic, overwhelmed by the simple truth: I can’t do this. “I could not believe I was in this situation. I felt like I had no control.”
I could feel angst rising inside me and had to work to keep it together on the stand. Craig Barlow continued his questions, focusing now on the ceremony itself. Envisioning myself in the lace overlay dress with the upswept hairdo and my splotchy, tear-stained face, I explained. “I couldn’t stop crying.”
“What kind of tears?”
“Despair…fear. I could not agree to do this.” I choked on the words, unable to continue. I needed to get out of there, to take a minute to myself. “Can we take a break?” I managed. Luckily, my request was granted.
After the brief break, I was back on the stand for more. I relayed the story of my defiant and barely audible “Okay, I do” and the tiny peck I managed to deliver my husband upon Warren’s demand to kiss him at the close of the wedding ceremony.
“Why did you do it?”
“He was my ticket into heaven. He was my leader. My future was with him.”
“And did you have an understanding of when you would have children?”
“Other people got married, and then pregnant, and nine months later had a baby.” It was crystal clear to me then, just as it is now, that the expectations had been strong. I was to marry and immediately start producing children. Child brides were not shielded from the demanding and mysterious world of sex in the FLDS, no matter what anyone in that courtroom would claim on the witness stand.
A second slide show illuminated the courtroom, and I detailed what the images were. A shot of the young bride with hands covering her face appeared. The next photo revealed Allen and my “honeymoon hideout” in the light of day. “This was the next morning,” I said, mustering a clear voice, “My mother had come to take pictures of the decorations and…us.” I was wearing a pink dress with strawberries in the pattern. Next came another photograph my mother had taken, in which Allen and I were the vision of new marital bliss, sitting together with his arm slung valiantly around me.
“How did you feel here?” Craig asked.
“Numb. That was a posed picture.”
“Had you ever been physically that close to a boy?”
“No.”
“How did that make you feel?”
“Extremely uncomfortable. For a girl who’d never experienced that…I felt wicked in a sense. I knew it was okay for us to touch, but I still didn’t want to.”
The subsequent piece of evidence was the brown paper bag I had held during my honeymoon with Allen and the two other couples. I had marked a time line of the the brief trip, to occupy myself and my hands. To an outsider it might appear that I had been keeping track of our travel as a memento, for the sake of the scrapbooks. But that couldn’t have been farther from the truth.