A 19-year-old woman that helped down the authorities to bring down a cult leader revealed what it was like to be a member of a polygamist church where she was forced to share an 85-year-old man with 63 other women.
64-year-old Warren Jeffs, the leader of the cult, was sentenced to life in prison plus 20 years in 2006 after he was charged with arranging marriages between adult men and underage women, multiple counts of rape, sexual assault of a child, and incest.
Rebecca Musser, who is now 44 years old, was one of the key witnesses that shed light on the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, which was operating in Utah, USA.
Musser said she was forced to marry Prophet Rulon Jeffs, the predecessor of Jeff, when she was just 19 years old.
Recalling the moment, Rebecca said:
He was 85 and I was 19. I just resigned myself to the fact that was my fate, to surrender to it. It was horrifying. This is a man of God and yet he is doing this to me.
After Rulon died, his son Warren, came into power as the church’s President Prophet, Seer and Revelator, and gave Rebecca an ultimatum, which was to either marry him or choose another husband.
Rebecca added:
When [Rulon] did die that is when Warren made his move. Warren was appeasing the questions with you’ve been so faithful, here is a beautiful new bride for you.
She said this is when she realized that everything was wrong and that she had to escape this.
A couple of days after this, Rebecca managed to slip past the guards of Warren and scrambled over the wall of the Mormon compound.
Rebecca traveled to Oregon where one of her brothers who had left the group lived.
After Warren was placed on the Most Wanted List of the FBI in 2006, Rebecca testified against him in courtrooms in Texas, Arizona, and Utah.
She told the agents of the FBI the horror of living in the cult and its secrets and inner working.
Rebecca told her experience in her book: “The Witness Wore Red: The 19th Wife who Brought Polygamous Cult Leaders to Justice”.
Her book was released in 2013.