Stolen Innocence - Lisa Pulitzer [49]
The music in particular became a point of contention. At Fred’s home, as in other FLDS homes, it was preferred that we listen to Uncle Warren’s tapes, including his home-economics classes or church-distributed music. While I listened to those tapes over and over, I also had classical music that I had been listening to all my life, which was comforting to me and helped me to relax. Even that small outside influence was too much for the Jessop household, and Fred made no attempt to hide his disdain for my choices. This would have been hard in any environment, but what made life in the Jessop home so unbearable was that it was impossible to trust any other family members. One time, another mother went so far as to hide in Mom’s closet to spy on us and catch us listening to “worldly” music. When I noticed her behind some dresses, she became very upset with me for questioning her authority. She didn’t feel that she’d done anything wrong and in fact got me in trouble for the incident. In response, Fred demanded to see our entire music collection and threw out any titles he deemed “worldly.”
Incidents like this made it that much harder to accept Uncle Fred as my new father, and the sting of his corrections did not seem to go away. Ultimately he struck at the one thing I loved about my new life—school. It all started when one of my new stepsisters tattled on me to Uncle Fred for having a friendship with a boy at school. Austin Barlow had been nice to me in class when I was still “the new kid” struggling to fit in, and throughout the year, we shared many classes, developing a friendship in the process. He was the first boy I’d ever met who didn’t make fun of me. It was a new experience for me not to have so many restrictions and to be able to forge an actual friendship with a boy. Being treated kindly by someone of the opposite sex felt good, and for a time I even had a secret crush on him, though it was never anything more than an innocent schoolgirl feeling.
Still, my associations with Austin became a source of great pain when my stepsisters saw us talking after school one day. One of them felt it was her duty to report it to Fred. That night Uncle Fred stood me up in front of the entire family during prayer time and reprimanded me for these boy-girl relations that would “taint” my future. I hung my head in shame as he made me feel so guilty for something I hadn’t even done. I tried to get a word in, but he refused to stop the tirade, forcing me to defend myself against his accusations.
“Did you kiss him?” he demanded.
“No way,” I insisted with a trembling voice, as every pair of eyes in the room bore a hole through me. “I would never even touch him.”
But for all my denials, Uncle Fred wouldn’t let it go. I wanted to run and hide as my cheeks grew fiery from the embarrassment. I already felt like an outcast, but now I was on a life raft all by myself.
Until then, school had been my lone refuge from the chaos of the Jessop house. It was the one place I felt safe. Back at Alta Academy, I had always been afraid of Uncle Warren. His critical eye was always upon us, and any minor infraction would be taken very seriously. In this new school, I felt free in a way I never had before. Because it was a public school, the principal was not required to adhere to the strict mandates of the FLDS Church. With some room to breathe, I grew comfortable in my own skin and enjoyed socializing