Civil Claim From Jeffs Would Help Girls Escape Polygamy
Elissa Wall and her current husband both left the FLDS and want to help others.
Oct. 1, 2007 — -- Polygamist sect leader Warren Jeffs faces life in prison thanks to the chilling testimony from Elissa Wall, who said she was forced to marry her 19-year-old cousin when she was 14.
Wall is now 21 and remarried to Lamont Barlow, who also left Jeffs' Fundamentalist Church of Latter Day Saints, the renegade Mormon group that practices polygamy.
While testifying against Jeffs was extremely brave, Wall had already taken the most courageous step of her life by leaving the sect.
For her and Barlow, leaving the group meant leaving behind family members and everything they had known before.
Wall said today in an exclusive interview on "Good Morning America" that she is still in a sort of emotional exile from her family.
"We love so many people from there, and it's really hard for them to understand what we're doing," she said.
Jeffs was found guilty of being an accomplice to rape, and now Wall's cousin, Allen Steed, is facing rape charges, though he said at the trial that their sex was consensual.
Newly released photos show Steed and Wall kissing, his arm tightly around her on their wedding day, and even the bed they slept in on their wedding night decorated with cookies by her family.
Looking at those photos now, Wall said she was numb at the time.
"I was very young at the time, so it was overwhelming and extremely scary," she said. "By that point, I was numb, and I was a 14-year-old trying to do what everyone told me to do."
Wall said that not only did she sob in the bathroom on her wedding night, she also swallowed painkillers.
Barlow said it might be hard for outsiders to understand the pressure young people in the FLDS face.
"When you have grown up this way, you're surrounded by a conviction that if you don't stay and do what you're told, it's damnation," Barlow said.
"First you need to understand these people are born into this. They don't have a clear view of the world as other people do. They're children that are raised up from birth to adulthood in this society. ...The leaders of the church have absolute control over every aspect," he continued.
