WARNING: DISTRESSING CONTENT Elissa Wall was forced to marry her cousin at just 14 years old when she was living in a polyamorous cult led by prolific leader Warren Jeffs, who is now serving a life sentence
After suffering a number of horrific traumas throughout her formative years, Elissa Wall decided to finally open up about her unusual childhood growing up in a cult led by the notorious Warren Jeffs.
Jeffs is now serving a lie sentence after being convicted of child sex assault in 2011.
Elissa Wall was born in 1986 in Salt Lake City, Utah, a U.S. state known for its mass Mormon population. Her two parents were both avid members of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (FLDS), a Mormon group that formed away from the LDS following its decision to outlaw polygamy, as they chose to practise a polyamorous marriage themselves.
Her parents shared a large number of children, making Wall one of 14 siblings born to her mother. Meanwhile, she had 10 half-siblings on her father’s side. In their very traditional household, the little girls were led to wear long “pioneer-style” dresses covering them from wrist to ankle, with their hair in simple matching buns and braids.
As a child, Wall attended the Alta Academy, which was owned and run by the church, owned Warren Jeffs himself and there was a point in Elissa’s life where this man controlled everything.
In 2001, when she was just 14-years-old, the ex-cult leader forced her into a marriage with her 19-year-old cousin, Allen Steed, a union supported by her parents. Despite voicing her feelings about this arrangement and her hatred towards Steed, everyone around her was encouraging, and the two tied the knot in a ceremony performed by Jeffs in Nevada.
In her heartbreaking autobiography, Stolen Innocence, Wall details the traumatic marriage she had with her cousin, where she lived through frequent rapes and experienced several miscarriages. The lack of sex education she received through the church meant that she was uninformed about her husband’s advances and it left her feeling confused.
When their marriage to her cousin fell apart, when she was just 17, Wall retreated to spending endless nights sleeping in her truck before meeting a former FLDS member and beginning an affair. Lamont Barlow was 25 and, after meeting her, was encouraging of her departure from the church, along with him.
Some of the 78 wives of Warren Jeffs(Image: Collect Unknown)
News of their affair broke out when Wall unexpectedly fell pregnant and Jeff annulled her marriage to Steed. It wasn’t long before she and Lamont married and went on to share two children together – but it wasn’t the end of her journey to freedom.
Her story with Jeffs and his church wasn’t quite over yet when, in 2006, Wall decided to press charges against the cult leader, as he was placed on the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted List after fleeing. Wall recalled the moment the police uncovered his whereabouts and the situation in which they found him.
She explained he was “in a red Cadillac found to contain $54,000 in cash, 15 mobile phones, three iPods, laptop computers, a police scanner, a stack of credit cards and two female wigs, one blonde and one brunette”.
It was in 2007 that Jeffs, now 69, was found guilty of raping a 15-year-old child bride, as well as raping a 12-year-old child bride, for which he was sentenced to life in prison, plus 20 years, and an additional fine of $10,000.
Wall captured the chaos of her childhood in her book and continues to share her story to this day in order to, in her own words, be an “advocate for the abused and disempowered”.
Her website states: “Being a part of rebuilding my community has also rebuilt me in so many ways. It allowed me to face my darkest demons and grow beyond the events of life, rekindled friendships of my past, and forged new ones with the many amazing people here doing really incredible work.