Stolen Innocence - Lisa Pulitzer [192]
While I was out of the room, Allen went on to testify about his counseling sessions with Warren, explaining how Warren had instructed him to get me to love him, so that I would obey out of love. He said that Warren had told him to “take things slowly.”
“It was a rough and rocky road, then we learned to love one another,” he told the court. “And I’m sure it wasn’t easy, knowing what I didn’t know then.”
Allen admitted to the jurors that as much as he wanted to believe that he was in charge of the marriage, it simply wasn’t true. “I tried to make decisions with wisdom and love, and a lot of times I didn’t voice my decision, knowing there would be opposition.
“If she decided to do something I didn’t want her to do, she would do it anyway,” Allen muttered. He even told the court that although I was avoiding him and he was hearing rumors that I was seeing someone else, it had never crossed his mind to ask Warren for a release from the marriage.
When I finally felt composed enough to return to the courtroom, Craig Barlow was just beginning his cross-examination of Allen. I was glad I’d come back, because watching the state’s attorney tear Allen to shreds was satisfying. Even under the questioning of the defense, Allen’s testimony seemed shaky and hard to believe. Now that he was experiencing real pressure from the prosecution, cracks began to form in every other word he said. He was trapped, by his false testimony and the pattern of deception he had chosen to protect his prophet. Before Craig Barlow even asked his first question, Allen blurted out, “Uncle Warren has done nothing wrong.”
Stopping in his tracks with a half grin, Craig informed Allen that usually the witness waits for a question before giving a response. Allen’s oddly timed declaration of allegiance to Warren Jeffs suggested right away that he would do anything, even lie, for his prophet.
Craig immediately established that Allen’s claims about his motivation behind the exposure incident in the park were ludicrous. Then he asked, “How did you communicate sex to her? What was the language you used?”
“We called it ‘in-and-out.’”
My mouth was agape, and my stomach turned in anxious fury. He seemed to just make this up on the spot, compounding his deceitfulness by the minute. We never called anything “in-and-out.” A hush fell over the room as spectators seemed to try to comprehend what he was saying. Even Craig Barlow revealed his astonishment in the line of questioning that followed Allen’s outrageous claim. “So, when you wanted to do it, you would say, ‘Let’s do in-and-out’?”
“Yes, sir,” he replied. At that moment, the only thing that crossed my mind was that Allen was the embodiment of a creep, and I swore never to eat at an In-N-Out Burger again.
Allen tripped over his own words when he claimed that, in an effort not to get pregnant, I had urged him, “Don’t go in me.”
It was clear to Craig that I wouldn’t have had access to that kind of information about conception, nor would I use language like that. Furthermore, if members of the FLDS were only supposed to have intercourse as a means to reproduce, his testimony was hypocritical.
Allen grew so uneasy during the remainder of his cross-examination that at one point he asked to stand, explaining that he would feel more comfortable. It was a strange request, and I could feel a stir of amusement and confusion in the courtroom. It was painfully awkward for me to watch him. I shook my head in disbelief that I had ever been “married” to this odd man. After his testimony, my own musings were confirmed by the comments of people milling about in the hallway outside the courtroom. I heard someone refer to Allen as Forrest Gump.
Stepping down from the stand, his crumpled pants sagged slightly as he made his way toward the exit sign. It was clear from the way his shoulders matched his sagging pants that he knew he’d failed in