I Was 17… He Was 46: My Life as the 23rd Wife to the FLDS Prophet

Added: 2026-05-13

[00:00:00]I was 17. He was 46. I was his 23rd wife. Then the wedding night did not play out the way that most traditional wedding nights happen. When a man marries two wives in one day, we has to choose. And that night was not mine.

[00:00:17]However, immediately started talking to me about do you feel good about yourself? As his wives, we were put on the pedestal of being the wives of the prophet. everyone being like, "What a great honor it is to be married to the prophet." What I felt was extreme overwhelm. The expectation of obedience just got ramped up. The next morning, he had those seven wives come into our morning class. He was like, "These are my wives now." And he kissed them all in front of us. So, we just got seven new wives. I felt the immediate shift in hierarchy. He sent my dad away and he took my dad's first wife and his third wife and remarried them to other men. A week later, he left my mom single, a single mother with seven children and no like actual income. He tore apart four of the biggest families. These men had been at the pulpit for years and I had heard every single one of them voice their support of Warren. He was physically serving us.

[00:01:22]>> Oh my gosh.

[00:01:23]>> And he put me on this diet. At this moment, he put me on this diet. When he told us he was on the FBI's Most Wanted, he had all of us who were married under the age of of 18 archive. All of our stuff. I don't know how many times I heard him say that to me. Lay low. Stay silent. The world does not need to know you exist.

[00:01:46]>> Mine is the only voice.

[00:01:47]>> What have I been doing? lay down my autonomy.

[00:01:52]>> After that, it got very dark very quickly.

[00:02:00]>> Hey guys, my name is Shalice Ansola and this is Colts to Consciousness where we discuss leaving high demand religions or organizations and finding healing and independence through awareness and true individual sovereignty. If you're only listening, come to YouTube instead because you can join in on the conversation. See the pictures we may or may not put up on the screen.

[00:02:18]And it's the best way to support our show and our guests who are bravely coming on and sharing their stories because you can talk to them directly by leaving them words of encouragement down below in the comments. Every little comment, even if it's an emoji, boosts the algorithm so more people can see the show and become more aware of these culty groups and manipulation tactics.

[00:02:38]Today's guest, we started off by talking about well in a previous episode talking about her life being groomed in the FLDS to marry who would eventually become the prophet Warren Jeffs. This is the fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, also known as the FLDS. Warren is currently in prison for crimes against children and she was his 23rd wife. So, if you're interested in learning more about the beginnings of that, you can go back and watch. If not, you can start here and go back and get more context later. But we ended where she was finally married to him and she is welcomed into the home with 22 other women and realizes, "Okay, this is my new home now and I have to learn how to be a good sister wife." So, thank you so much for coming back, Ila.

[00:03:23]>> Of course. Of course. This is amazing.

[00:03:26]>> Wow. So, you just went into the home with all of these women and you're about to learn the reality of being a plural wife. Even though in the previous episode you said you were groomed into being a plural wife at a very young age being told that get along with your sisters because you need to learn how to become a good sister wife one day.

[00:03:47]>> Yes.

[00:03:48]>> What is the reality now that you are in this home? I went into this marriage thinking everyone was going to try as hard as I was to just be a really nice person and get along and that everyone was going to be the sweetest, kindest of all women in the world because they were married to Warren Jeffs who was considered perfect in the eyes of the people. He was the right-hand man of the prophet. He literally was on the pedestal of pedestals. And I knew that I had to be even more obedient than I had been to my father, which was pretty extreme. Then the wedding night did not play out the way that most traditional wedding nights happen. I won't go into like intimate details but I will tell you when a man marries two wives in one day he has to choose and that night was not mine and that is okay. He did however immediately start talking to me about do you feel good about yourself? This was my wedding night and I didn't know what he meant by that. And then the next day he said are you healthy? Do you feel healthy? And this was kind of random. He had gone to Saturday work meeting and this was after Saturday work meeting. For those who didn't know, there was like a seminary that he taught every Saturday um morning. He basically did his normal Warren Jeff speech of obedience to the prophet, submission to priesthood, and then told the men to give their all to the prophet. And that's what the Saturday meeting was about. And then the bishop would assign huge building projects throughout the community but the people were allowed to attend. So after the Saturday meeting he asked me he was like do you feel healthy? Uh this is the first time he actually made fun of me. I had a migraine and I had not slept now for 3 days cuz when I found out I was going to be turned in on Wednesday. I found out on Wednesday I did not sleep Wednesday night. was turned in on a Thursday, did not sleep Thursday night, was married on a Friday, did not sleep Friday night at all. And I will tell you, when they showed me where my room was in his house, it was in a bedroom with four other ladies. They all had dayb beds. We had to put my bed in the middle of the floor and I was on a tundle bed because that's how crowded his home was at the time. And we shared a bathroom next door to my room. My sister moved into almost identical situation where her bed was a turtle bed. They ended up rearranging the house a few days later so that everyone could have like a little bit more decent space and it ruffled feathers because there were wives that had never had to share rooms that were suddenly having to share rooms. I do remember this was a week and a half after I was married definitely could feel tension and I was like what why you know everybody's supposed to keep sweet.

[00:07:18]looking back on I know why uh there was tension next day this so this was the day after I married Warren I'm sitting in his office there's a bunch of his family in there and I am like trying to keep my eyes open I had a horrible migraine and he turned to me and he's like why are you just holding your eyes like that and he started laughing and then a bunch of his kids started laughing she is she looks so weird And um so that was my first experience with like feeling attacked, >> humiliated.

[00:07:54]>> Yeah. Yeah. And I'd been married a whole day.

[00:07:57]>> And you were 17. I don't think we mentioned that.

[00:07:59]>> Yeah. I was 17. He was 46. I was his 23rd wife. I mean, we did not have anything in common as far as like age. I mean, we're two generations apart from each other. He's the same age as my dad.

[00:08:16]He's 2 months younger than my dad. I felt so overwhelmed, so humiliated, so embarrassed. Ever after that, I felt like I would look to the ground a lot when he would come around. I would like feel bashful enough that I was like, I I don't ever want him to say that about my eyes again. And then like it immediately started, you look so much like your mother.

[00:08:42]And I got the message pretty quickly that he did not approve of my mother. A week or two after I married Warren, I found out that my mother my mother was pregnant when I married Warren. And I was very excited about this baby. And I I want to touch on this because we we talked about infant fatality and how like I feel like it's like so dismissed there to give you my experience of what happened on my mother's little girl that was born in May. I was married at the end of March. She was born the first week of May. When she was born, we knew she was going to have health issues, would have to live on a ventilator. So, it was kind of like we were holding this space for whatever the prophet told us to do with her. And then now I'm married to Warren and all the communication would come through him. And so I felt like my family wanted me to reassure them in it. And my mother would call me a couple times a week from the end of March to the 1st of May.

[00:09:56]And we would talk a little bit and I know she was scared of losing this baby.

[00:10:01]This was now her third daughter that she would lose. I was very very sad because growing up I loved babies a lot. um always pretended I had like twin dolls or you know as a little little girl always pretended to have lots of babies.

[00:10:19]I always wanted lots of babies and I felt like it was it was part of my identity to be a mother. It was part of who I needed to be in this world. So the day after I married Warren, he said I think you would get health feel healthier if you would cleanse.

[00:10:38]And he said, "When you feel healthier, the Lord will give you children." What does that mean to feel healthier? Like, what do you mean? Because I had been kind of dieting off and on for probably 3 years because I was self-conscious about my weight. My older sister was incredibly tiny, so I always felt like I was not skinny. I was 160 lbs. I'll be honest. But I am I was almost 5'8 when I married Warren. So I was not a tiny woman. He said, "You need to eat right and exercise. That's how you'll feel healthier and then you'll have babies."

[00:11:20]I will just say this about the intimacy that happened between he and I.

[00:11:25]Everything happened almost every time.

[00:11:29]He almost let me have children, but then he would stop himself and he would be like, "You need to get healthier." And honestly, I just don't think that I was what he wanted physically. And I would ask him, "What what do I need to do?"

[00:11:43]He's like, "You need to exercise more.

[00:11:45]You need to exercise more." And this was in the first few months of me being married. So the intimacy is very traumatic for me because it was very connected with rejection and insignificance and not quite good enough. But he would start with what a beautiful woman I was, you know. So, the whiplash and I will tell you very openly, Warren Jeffs was not the same person on the at the pulpit that he was behind closed doors. At the pulpit, he was very humble. He was very like, I'm here to do the will of my father in his home. Everybody loves Warren.

[00:12:34]Everybody wants to be Warren. Everybody wants to do what Warren's doing. He would say those words and I would be like, "Well, everybody but me."

[00:12:44]Oh my gosh. Just how you said that. They said that in the documentary. I don't know if you got to that part, but with Sam Baitman, he was like, "Oh, everybody wants a piece of me. Everybody exactly the same energy with all of these women just kind of melting over him." So, I will tell you, I mean, I could tell you right now or we could circle back to the documentary.

[00:13:09]>> Okay, we'll circle back. Everyone stay tuned.

[00:13:12]>> We will circle back. We will circle back cuz I I don't want to jump too too far.

[00:13:16]Um >> Okay, >> so Warren immediately started asking me to lose weight. He put me on a cleanse, a 10day cleanse the day after I got married. So, I did lose some significant amount of weight right away, but I gained it all back postsurgery. I'd had a hernia repaired when I had turned 18, the week I turned 18, and the medications.

[00:13:43]So, he allowed me to get my hernia fixed because he had had a hernia, he was like, "Those are terrible. You need to get that fixed." And what I really noticed with him was if he understood it, it had to happen. But if he didn't understand the seriousness of the procedure or like the disease or anything like that, he would push it off and be like, I don't know. Do they need it? Do they need to go to the doctor? I watched the medical neglect happen almost immediately.

[00:14:20]one of the sister wives um she had been having gallbladder attacks and he was like well aren't there cleanses you can do to fix that and yet like my hernia he had had a hernia when he was a younger adult and he had had to go to the doctor have it fixed and because he knew what it was like then he showed me all kinds of empathy all kinds of like oh you need to get that fixed Oh, don't be lifting anything. Don't do this. Don't do, you know, um like he knew all about it. Warren always knew all about everything more than anybody.

[00:15:01]You couldn't know more than him. That would not be right. He would say, "I'm not shy about anything." And I will tell you, my first impression of Warren Jeffs was that he was a shy, humble, prayerful, fervent man.

[00:15:14]>> Yeah.

[00:15:15]>> No.

[00:15:18]No. very doineering, very outgoing, not afraid to say anything to anyone, not afraid to make fun of anyone. He was quite a bully like that with, you know, little things like my eyes. And then my weight was like something he always commented on. You need to get healthy so you can have babies. You need to get healthy so you can have babies. almost invite me into his room and he'd say, "You need to lose weight. I want you to go on a walk every day. I want you to exercise for an hour every day. I want you." It was always what he wanted me to do to change my body. I was not fat. No. 160 at 5'8. I feel like that's pretty normal. I mean, I was I'm 5'5 and a half and I was 156 when I got pregnant. And I was by no means overweight.

[00:16:09]>> Yeah. But 6 months after Warren after I married Warren he his father passed away he became the prophet. I will tell you everything changed at that time like everything changed.

[00:16:25]We went from being second to the first chair basically as his wives. We were put on the pedestal of being the wives of the prophet. And I remember everyone being like, "What a great honor it is to be married to the prophet." And what I felt was extreme overwhelm. The expectation of obedience just got ramped up a few weeks after his father passed.

[00:16:55]And he he did appear sad when his father passed. And in my opinion, this is just my opinion, I'm not sure he was quite ready for his father to pass. I don't know that he felt like he had enough control over the people at that time, but he did a pretty good job of faking it. Um, there were just little things that he would say like, "What if they don't want me to be the prophet?" He told us all to pray for a testimony of who the prophet was. And it was like, "Who am I going to follow now?" You know, who am I supposed to follow now?

[00:17:31]Well, and we really had only two real choices. There was and not even really two choices.

[00:17:38]There really wasn't another option.

[00:17:40]There is a lot of rumors going around even now that Warren did things with one of his father's wives and got her pregnant before his father passed away.

[00:17:51]And so Warren helped to unaly of his father. And I will dispute that loudly.

[00:17:58]That did not happen. Everyone, she did not get pregnant until November. Her babies were not born until August and was twins. So, she did not get pregnant until at least after the end of October in order for her to carry her babies as long as she did. And Renan just died in September. So, I will dispute that that did not happen. He did not get her pregnant before his father passed away.

[00:18:28]He did not unal alive his father. His father had a severe bowel obstruction.

[00:18:32]He had had cancer in his colon. They cut it out, but he was 92 years old and he had been in frail condition for a little while. He handled the surgery, but he could not come out of it. He just his body was was old and tired.

[00:18:52]So, he did not recover from the surgery.

[00:18:56]Warren did show like extreme concern for his father like constant and that was supposed to be our number one focus was whatever he wanted to do with his father. So I will circle back my mom was having her baby and she had asked me if I could be there and I had heard Warren tell other wives like have you seen a baby born yet? Have you seen a baby born yet? Every wife needs that experience at least once. And he had told me that he had made his daughters eat watch births of some of the wives. And I remember asking one of his daughters. I was like, "Was it strange being a daughter?" She was like, "It was so weird."

[00:19:43]And I I could just like empathize with her feelings on that. But my mom had asked if I could please be to her delivery. And Warren was like, "I don't think so." My mom delivered the baby at a hospital and found out yes, there were the health issues and I asked Warren if I could go down and see her and he was like yes that's fine. So I went down saw the baby. I asked because a few days later we found out that Uncle Rulan said they were going to pull her off of a ventilator at some point and she could not live without a ventilator. So, I knew I was going to lose my baby sister and I asked Warren, "Can I can I go down and visit my baby sister?" And he's like, "No, you just need to be at home and at your duties." And I was like, "Okay." And he's like, "In fact, um, you need to go help with storehouse sewing."

[00:20:38]And at the time, storehouse sewing meant that I would sew one piece of long underwear, and I would sew like 18 to 24 of them in a day.

[00:20:49]>> What? Yeah.

[00:20:51]I would sew a bundle and a bundle typically was 18 or 24. Most people it would take them about a week to do I could do in a few hours. I was I was that experienced with sewing. And I had a set of commercial sewing machines that my parents had given me kind of as a wedding present which made it so I could sew faster. I was in my room doing my storehouse sewing and my sister burst into my room. She was like, "We've got to go. we got to go right now. Warren's brother, Seth, is supposed to take us to the hospital. And I was so confused because he had just told me that morning, be at your duties. And I was like, "What? Why?" And she said, "Because they're taking the baby off a ventilator." So I found out from my halfsister of my other mother that they were taking my baby sister off the ventilator. And that was the first time that I really felt the inequality between even my sister and I that it was like pretty obvious that we were not on the same level with him. So we went down there. I ended up holding my baby sister while she breathed her last. It was very intimate. It was very very very hard. Um, I had prayed for years to be worthy to be a mother. And so to to feel that the life leave that baby and just I was so crushed. I went home and made her a little burial dress. Her name was Precious Nora and she looked again like a little China doll. She had tons of black hair. She was just this tiny little thing. She was like 5 lb, just beautiful little baby, super dark eyes. So Warren invited my parents over to see him. And they came in the dining room with the family. And while my parents were there, Warren was so nice to me, like so openly nice to me, like put his arm around my shoulder, acted like that we were very close. And then he gained my parents. He hugged my mother. I could tell it was like strained. Then the grave site and burial was a few days later.

[00:23:13]And I had asked Warren, "Can I go?" And he was like, "I guess if you want to go." And I said, "Well, are you going to go?" And because my parents had asked him if if he would sing again because on my mom's uh other loss of baby than he did sing on one of the little graveside funerals that we had. He said, "I think so. I don't know." And he just kind of brushed it off. It was very indifferent. Telling me very last minute he was like, "I'm not going. Father needs me. Father needs me to stay here. He needs me close." I said, "Well, is it still okay if I go?"

[00:23:50]And he said, "If you want to." And of course, I wanted to like, "Hello."

[00:23:56]Went to the funeral, cried my eyes out, was very broken about it. Was a new wife trying to figure out how to be worthy to have children, ready to have children, be healthy enough to have children, because these are all the thoughts that I had already planted in my head, you know, six or seven weeks into my marriage. I got home and my eyes were puffy. I had been crying. I got home and he was out in the yard playing ball with the kids, his children, and running around. They were laughing, having a good good time, and he ran up to me and he's like, "Smile." And then ran past me, right? Running around with the children again. He ran up to me and he's like, "Smiling a smile."

[00:24:43]And I really didn't feel like smiling.

[00:24:47]I really did not feel like smiling, but I I like forced myself to kind of smile and then he stopped. He's like, "Okay, come here. Let me give you a hug. I don't want a hug at this point."

[00:24:59]>> Yeah. So patronizing.

[00:25:01]>> Yes. Uh yeah, very. And when he was like, "Why are you sad?" He literally said, "Why are you sad?" And I said, "Well, I don't know. It's a lot for me to process. I guess that was a lot." And he's like, "Well, it wasn't your baby.

[00:25:18]What an ass girl for real.

[00:25:22]That one every time every time I process through this story, I'm just like, are you freaking kidding me? Um, but that kind of I feel like this story is so essential to display his indifference for any other human life but his own.

[00:25:42]>> Mhm.

[00:25:43]>> He just was indifferent. He really just did not care. He told me, "Go in the house, have a good cry, and come out and be a part of the family." So, I went in the house. And I dried my eyes. And he never saw me cry again.

[00:25:57]>> Never cried again in front of him. It was It was too painful the humiliation in front of the entire family cuz the whole family was outside while he was playing. Everyone followed him around all the time. And if you didn't, then you were obviously being jealous and having issues. But then he would just turn around and say, "Now be at your duties. You need to be at your duties.

[00:26:18]Stop following me around." Then you be like, "Everybody wants to follow Warren around." He'd say it like third person.

[00:26:26]Oh jeez. And so when Rulan died and he became prophet, he took on most of Rulan's wives or all of them? I think 35 or 37 of his father's wives out of the 55 younger wives. So out of Wow. Just within a day you gained 35 more sister wives. No. So within the course of seven or eight months. So a month after Ren Jeff's passed away, he married seven ladies. He didn't tell us. only one of his wives knew his uh favorite wife. We all knew who she was. And the next morning he had those seven wives come into our morning class and he was like, "These are my wives now." And he kissed them all in front of us. And we were like, "What the heck?" Like, "Wow, so we just got seven new wives."

[00:27:30]And these were previously your mother's technically like mother-in-laws because >> mother-in-laws. Yes.

[00:27:37]>> Warren is ruin son. But now Okay.

[00:27:41]>> Oh my gosh. Yeah. So the awkward does not even begin to I felt the immediate shift in hierarchy.

[00:27:51]Immediate. Those ladies were put up higher than all of Warren's wives. I saw even his f favorite wife have to work so hard and humble herself so much to stay within his like vision of acceptance and it was rough watching her go through that even I never felt so Warren had told me probably a week after my mom's baby passed he was like you don't need to be calling your family all the time and going over there. I would like you to stay closer to home. I would like you to get closer to me. And then at the same on the same day, I'd hear him tell my sister, you need to go visit your mother at least once a week.

[00:28:43]So I would see her leave the house and she didn't hear what he said to me about you need to stay close to home. You need to get closer to me. And so she would tell the family, "Oh, she's just busy doing what Warren needs her to do." So my family thought, "What an honor."

[00:29:06]They didn't know that I was actually being isolated and cut off.

[00:29:11]He was very good at that with with several of the wives. Very good at isolating, making us feel like we owed it to him. Yeah. our obedience, our submission. And when he married his father's wives, when he started to marry them, he married seven.

[00:29:32]A week later, he married three. A week later, he married seven more. And then like through the next few months, then like the last 15 or so that he married over the next few months. And he also took other wives as well, young girls.

[00:29:49]In that year that I got married, he married three other young girls. They were 16. All of them were 16. One of them barely barely 16. Like 16 in 4 days, I think. And tiny little things.

[00:30:03]All of them. Wisps of girls. And I just remember realizing because of the wives of his fathers that he took that got pregnant immediately. Oh, that's what he wants.

[00:30:20]>> That's those are the wives that get to have babies.

[00:30:23]>> The ones that are children or are thin and small like children.

[00:30:30]>> Yeah.

[00:30:31]>> Uh are you comfortable talking about cuz he keeps framing it as health, you need to be healthy, but really the decline of your health because of all the pressure that he was putting on you. Yeah. So by 2004, I had like, you know, when you go from like age 17 to 19, your body kind of chooses its shape.

[00:30:56]>> It kind of chooses where you're at. I think I was like 148 lbs. So pretty thin. And he had started to leave and do his hiding stuff.

[00:31:07]He was leaving all the time, not telling anybody where he would go or what he was doing. But every time he was home, there was always instructions on how to be more obedient, how to be more humble, how to be more prayerful. He did publicly condemn me to the family. Within like I think it was about a month after he had sent my father away, he sent my dad away and he took my dad's first wife and his third wife and remarried them to other men. A week later, he left my mom single. So then I knew for sure uh definitely um >> that he didn't like your mom.

[00:31:46]>> Yes.

[00:31:47]>> And your mom had how many kids? My mom at this time had I think 1 2 3 4 5 6 seven children at home. So she was left a single mother with seven children and no like actual income and then told to go live with her brother and her mother as a guest in their home. I mean and this was really like the beginning. Um, I would say like my father's family was like one of the first ones where he it was practice for him, but he had just taken his children away from their mothers a month before. So, we were going through incredible feeling of loneliness. He took the children away to we knew not where. We were constantly being reminded of how we needed to humble ourselves and prove worthy prove worthy of the mission. pretty worthy to be a part of God's work. He had stood up in front of the people and this all happened within like a month and he said, "This is not this is not a democracy. This is a benevolent dictatorship." He legitimately said that over the podium.

[00:33:01]>> Yeah, >> a benevolent dictatorship. So, for those who aren't familiar with Warren and everything, all of his shenanigans, aside from the horrible abuse things, he would just on a whim send people away and he would make up reasons. They were most of the time unfounded. And so, he was actively separating families. So, this is something that you said initially started with your family. My family, my father's family, um was among the first 10 that he did. And he started with four other men that were incredibly prominent.

[00:33:39]One of them was like my grandpa from another from my dad's first wife, her dad, and he was very high up in the community. He was the mayor. He was very well known. Everybody loved him. And so to have him be told that he was no longer worthy of his family and that he got sent away to repent and humble himself. And my dad was among this group of people.

[00:34:10]And it was just devastating to the people because he tore apart four of the biggest families. These four men aside from my father, they were all Barlos.

[00:34:21]They were all sons of John Y. Barlo. So these were my grandma's brothers. My mother's mother was the daughter of John Wayne Barlo. These men had been at the pulpit for years. They had been supporting the prophet for years. They had been doing everything for years. And I had heard every single one of them voice their support of Warren and that they would do whatever it was they felt like he needed them to do. And they were well into their 70s. All of them. One of them was in his 80s. He took their families away. He remarried the wives within weeks and months of of tearing that family their families apart. And he took my dad's first wife. She was actually one of the very first that he remarried to anyone. And he married her to another right-hand man of his. Um most a lot of people are familiar with Maril Jessup.

[00:35:17]So she married Mel Jessup. Immediately my family was just destroyed. Like we were not to consider our siblings. We had literally grown up and shared bunk beds with and never been separated from. We were to not consider them our siblings any longer. And that was the beginning of like the devastation that he did with tearing families apart. He really he really just was indifferent to emotion and children's need for security and consistency or anything at all.

[00:35:57]Which was strange because when I first married him, he was always like, "Consistency is so important with raising children. They need to go down to nap at the same time every day. They need to have their food at the same time every day." But the same parents, no big deal. Yes.

[00:36:12]>> So this is you were painting the picture and then I kind of sidetracked you. So this is around the time all this is happening and your health starts to plummet. So Warren had told us right around this time, stop going around the people. You need to stay home on the property. They built a wall, a very tall wall with like solid iron gates and you had to have permission to come in and had to have permission to leave.

[00:36:43]You had to call the office and get them to open the gates for you.

[00:36:47]And um we got told right soon around this time, stop going to the grocery store. I started to just feel like extreme anxiety. I don't know. He constantly made sure that we knew that we were not worthy to be a part of Zion and that's why we were still there in Short Creek with the rest of the people who were not yet named to be worthy.

[00:37:09]Then in 2004, he put us into hiding those of us who are not worthy to be a part of the redemption of Zion that he was doing the Lord's will. You know, he put me in hiding. The first home I was in hiding, I was actually in a home in Colorado City, but in another part of the community, and I had to uh stay completely out of sight of other people.

[00:37:37]I was there with seven other wives and we just started exercising, exercising, exercising like all day long. It's all we had to do. We had nothing to do um but clean and exercise. So, I lost quite a chunk of weight. I had like fluctuated a little bit between the 150, the 160, like back and forth in those two years.

[00:38:02]But when I did this, I dropped down. I was 130. Um, I think it was 137, which is on a very fit side of nice for my height. Then I got very, very sick.

[00:38:16]Had a kidney infection. Um, ended up needing an IV.

[00:38:21]After a few days of being sick, they finally decided they would let me go get an IV, but I had to do it in the middle of the night. They took me to a clinic in the middle of the night, and they made a doctor put in my IV. He had not done an IV in 15 years. Yes.

[00:38:41]And this was he was my uncle. Like I called him uncle because he was one of my mom's brothers, one of my mother's like so he was my uncle growing up. So I knew him and I was like well are you sure you can do this? But I was I was so sick. And so they gave me an IV through the night and then Warren called me I think 2 days later he's like I heard you lost a lot of weight and I was like I mean he's like well how much do you weigh? And I said it's like right around 137.

[00:39:18]He's like well that's a good start.

[00:39:21]A good start? Yeah. And he said you're very small boned. You're very tiny boned. I would really like to see you between 115, even 112.

[00:39:35]He said, "The Lord will bless you with babies. The Lord will bless you with children."

[00:39:40]>> He's clearly out of touch because that can prevent you from having kids if you're not >> Oh, I know.

[00:39:45]>> at a weight that I mean, you just it just ruins your whole cycle, your hormones, everything.

[00:39:53]Which is why I think he only had children with 17 of us because you think he was telling them to starve.

[00:40:03]Yeah. How we couldn't get pregnant. It wasn't that he wasn't being himself.

[00:40:09]It's just he was physically starving us.

[00:40:12]>> Oh my gosh.

[00:40:13]>> And he put me on this diet at this moment. He put me on this diet. And I was on this diet the entire time I was married to him.

[00:40:23]Eat fruits and vegetables, very little fruit, some vegetables, and a couple times a month you should eat protein.

[00:40:32]>> Do you know how many calories that would kind of equal out to a day if you had to guess?

[00:40:37]>> Uh yeah, about 3 to 400 >> Oh my gosh.

[00:40:40]>> calories a day.

[00:40:41]>> 3 to 400 calories. He had already told me to go off fat because I had had a gallbladder attack.

[00:40:48]And he was like, "Oh, you got to get that out." And one of the wives said, "Oh, but she could cleanse." He's like, "Or do what she said, cleanse."

[00:40:56]So, I was also fighting with gallbladder attacks through this time. So, he had told me, "Quit eating fat. Quit eat any fats. Don't eat any fat." And he's like, "Cuz you can't go to the hospital."

[00:41:11]He told us he was on the FBI's Most Wanted. If they ask you questions, answer them. Nothing. They're not your friend. The world will hurt you. They will basically tear you up and spit you out. They will use you and take everything that you have of value and purity and then they will discard you because they have no more use for you.

[00:41:34]And then when we went into hiding, he would say, "The world does not need to know you exist."

[00:41:41]I don't know how many times I heard him say that to me.

[00:41:45]Lay low. Stay silent. The world does not need to know you exist.

[00:41:50]How long were you stuck in this house? I was in this house for a month. Then he moved me to another house in Short Creek and I was there for a few weeks. Then he moved me to a home in Las Vegas. I was there for a week. He moved me to a home in Mosquite. I was there for 2 weeks. He moved me to a home back in Las Vegas in Henderson area. I was there for a few months. And in all of these homes, we were not allowed to go outside at all.

[00:42:19]Not even at all clear up until I had been in that home that the home in Henderson, Nevada, which was like the nicer end of Las Vegas. We were in a gated community. Um, we were not allowed to go outside at the property.

[00:42:36]>> What year was that?

[00:42:38]>> This was in so 2004 and then 2005.

[00:42:43]>> Okay. the end of 2004 and into 200. Um, no, I would say like, yeah, I think either like New Year's, the week of New Year's or the week of Christmas, so either four or five. I had gotten to see him for the first time in months and months and months. And we had to travel to meet him. I don't remember where cuz we were in a blacked out van.

[00:43:12]So being taken from these houses going places, it was a form of trafficking. We were not told where we were going. All we were told was pack your stuff, be ready to go. Somebody will be there to get you. And then you'd get to the destination. And then he would call and say, "Oh, I trust you made it. Okay, this is what I want you to do while you're here." He had had us like minimize all of our stuff. When he told us he was on the FBI's Most Wanted, he had all of us who were married under the age of of 18 archive all of our stuff, which meant anything that indicated that we were married to Warren. Any pictures of us with Warren, he took and hid them. So, I have no pictures of me with Warren. To be honest, I'm not sad about it. I just I don't think it would do me any good emotionally to see that now. Yeah.

[00:44:06]>> And I feel like that if people don't want to believe me, then that's fine. I have enough people who knew who I was and where I was and that that knew that, you know, I know my truth now. I started really pushing to lose weight to 112 lbs. And then he moved me to Colorado and he had rebuked me. In that time when I was in Vegas, I just wanted a hug.

[00:44:41]I was feeling lonely. I was like, I want a hug. And my caretaker and his wife were in the kitchen. Caretaker, by the way, was a cousin. I had zero attraction toward him. It was like seeing my brother in there. Him and his wife hugged and they were laughing and having a good time and I was like, I miss that.

[00:45:04]And then I was like, what am I even talking about? And I've never had that.

[00:45:08]Not really, you know. Um, well, someone took that to Warren and he called me and said that the Lord had revealed to him that I had had immoral desires toward the caretaker and that I needed to repent of all my immoral immoral everything.

[00:45:24]And he told me to confess of everything that I had done in my life that I knew was wrong so that the Lord could wash me clean if he chose.

[00:45:34]And in my confessions, I had revealed to him that I had been hurt by a certain family member when I was seven.

[00:45:50]I had been hurt by a cousin. He told he called a few days later. He said, "I got your letter now. Humble yourself.

[00:45:59]You need to forgive these people that have hurt you. Let's just us forgive.

[00:46:04]Let's just us go forward and get close to the Lord and know that we ourselves need to be, you know, he would read the scripture um if any of you the scripture from like Jesus saying, "Let whoever is without sin among you cast the first stone."

[00:46:25]Basically telling me that I was just as guilty.

[00:46:30]I had to be just, you know, as a seven-year-old of having those things done to me. And um then he moved me and we were it was very trafficked. We were put in the back of a van, very tinted windows. We were not allowed to lean up.

[00:46:51]We were taken a very very long drawn out route down all the way through Arizona, through New Mexico, through Oklahoma, back around into Colorado, and up to the very top of the mountain, 11,000 ft elevation in the middle of the winter. When we got there, it was8 and I could I could not breathe.

[00:47:20]Um, changing 11,000 feet elevation is huge. And um, I' I've had chronic migraines. Warren had told me over and over my migraines were just like attention getting attention seeking.

[00:47:39]Yeah. Chronic migraines. The lack of oxygen did not help the migraines.

[00:47:46]So, I had lost weight. I had not been going outside in the sunshine.

[00:47:54]I'd been rebuked several times by Warren, like very publicly shamed in his family.

[00:48:01]And I didn't feel like, oh, I'm the only one. because he did it to just enough of us that we felt humbled that we just felt like we had to try so hard to be worthy of a to be a wife. Two weeks after I confessed about or about a I think it was about a month, he made the person who had hurt me as a child become my caretaker.

[00:48:35]Yeah.

[00:48:37]>> What what did that mean in practice?

[00:48:40]>> This person would do all of our shopping. They would read us scriptures every morning, every night, have prayer with us, and they were our only connection to Warren and to the outside world. If Warren called, he called the caretaker and then he would bring the phone to whoever Warren wanted to talk to. So essentially, he put this person kind of in the middle of our relationship because this person was my cousin and I was the only one who was actually biologically related to this person.

[00:49:14]He had me be the communicator for the most part between the ladies and the caretaker. And so I was doing a lot of communication and I was feeling a lot of like like how do you unremember and just look past it and forget >> the trauma.

[00:49:35]And so I literally had to turn off all of my emotion.

[00:49:41]Completely turn it off.

[00:49:44]And it made it pretty easy to starve myself into submission to Warren.

[00:49:50]Um, I did get down while living with this caretaker. I got down to 98 pounds. When I told Warren, the last time that I had spoken to Warren before he was taken in 2006, he had gone several months where we did not hear from him. The last time that he saw me in person, I was 118 lbs. And he's like, "You're almost there. The Lord is pleased with your work and you >> you'll soon be worthy. So >> soon be worthy to have a child with him.

[00:50:26]Is that what he's saying?

[00:50:28]>> I don't know because I wasn't worthy to go be where his family was in Texas yet.

[00:50:33]I wasn't worthy to have children yet. I wasn't worthy to know everything that was going on except what he wanted me to know.

[00:50:44]>> How old were you around this time? So 2005 I was 21.

[00:50:49]>> 21 116 lb 5'8 and just trying to survive and please him and be worth something in his eyes. Yeah. Lowered him with all of the submission that I could possibly muster. Anyway, when he was taken, I was I was devastated. I felt like we messed up. And then he pretty much said it that it was kind of our fault as his family because we were not humble enough that the Lord allowed him to be taken. I had just written him the letter that I had reached 110 lbs. I had done it.

[00:51:33]Anyway, a few months later after he was taken, he kept a lot of us in hiding.

[00:51:41]And I remember thinking, why are we in hiding? and then asking why are we still in hiding? Because we were hiding to protect him, right? We were we were there to protect him and he was like, you're now you're there to finish your qualification or whatever. Then we didn't hear much from him in the first few months of him being taken. I got so sick for months. I did not feel well enough to get out of bed, but I had to because I would be rebuked if I did not show up to my duties constantly. So, over those few months before December of 20 or 2006, I got down to about 98 lbs. I'd been having constant gallbladder attacks, constant, constant, constant. And they finally decided to let me go to the doctor.

[00:52:40]Went to the doctor and I had to go incognito kind of. We had to drive 4 hours to a hospital. We couldn't go to one that was close by. And when I was there, they basically said, "Oh, by the way, you need to tell them you have no money and see what they will do for you.

[00:53:02]So, you're at the mercy of the hospital and don't know if they're going to treat you. So, they did this emergency gallbladder removal and found that part of my liver had actually been wrapped in scar tissue and had died because of the how bad my gallbladder was. And my gallbladder was just dead. It was just it was not good at all. So, I was sick for a reason.

[00:53:27]>> Yeah. So, they cut it out. cut out just a little bit of my liver with it. And they took my appendix at the same time cuz I was like, "Listen y'all, both my parents had their appendix burst. Just take it. You're in there. Just take it."

[00:53:39]Like if if you think, you know, so they did. Um I'm not upset about it, but later I found out that that was probably not my place to tell them. I did not have that right to tell them that they could take it. After Warren was taken, we were like put in this constant mental state of like prove for his worthy of his deliverance. Pray his deliverance.

[00:54:01]Pray him out of there. And scriptures, you know how people would pray and the walls of the prisons would come down and the prophets would walk free and they were constantly brought before us. It's like that's that was our duty. That was our responsibility now to get him out of prison. We didn't even know why he was in prison. know really any of the legal proceedings.

[00:54:26]Then in 2008 when the raid happened a few days before the raid, I had been told, "Hey, you're going to go to Zion.

[00:54:36]Get ready cuz you get to go." And I was all packed and ready. And they called me and said, "Um, we're going to put a hold on that because there's some legal stuff going down." And the next day when the van was supposed to come pick me up, instead the van showed up and dropped off a bunch of girls who had married him at very young ages of 16, 15, 114.

[00:55:00]So that was the first time I'd met her.

[00:55:02]The wife then married him when she was 14. It was very difficult. I had biological siblings in that raid from my dad's first wife. Some of her children were taken from her. Um, ironically, my little sister had gotten married at the age of 13 and had two little boys and she was married to Warren's brother. So, at the time of the raid, she was a child with two children. They were trying to figure that out. Yes. Her husband also is in prison.

[00:55:33]>> Wow.

[00:55:34]>> Thank goodness. And yeah, she was 13. He was 38. When I found out about her marriage, I was so devastated in my heart. like that was like that's my baby sister. Like they're all my baby sisters that are younger than me, but I I felt so protective of her and so like and then to have Warren like take me away from my family and I had like nothing to do with them for years and then to see her married with babies and she wasn't even 18 and she had these babies and I was like, "Oh my gosh." And I just remember thinking, "How is this right? How could this be right?"

[00:56:15]>> Yeah. Like it just I I couldn't I couldn't wrap my head around it. I mean, I had pretty much wrapped my head around 16-year-olds for the most part. But then when I when the raid happened and I found out that Warren had babies with a 14-year-old and that he had married girls that were 13 and 12, I I did not know where to put that in my head. I just I was like, how can how can that be right? And then I started to think about it. They were all tiny. They were tiny.

[00:56:51]And I think that I really um I never really felt attraction for Warren. I felt wicked inside because I almost felt disgust.

[00:57:03]And yet I was supposed to love him and honor him. He was God's prophet. He was my husband. Yeah. So I will fast forward. He's he did send me back into hiding with some of the family members.

[00:57:17]It was very stressful, very traumatic. I lived in a home with Jaden as a a young boy. You did? As one of the caretakers.

[00:57:25]So Jaden was three when I married Warren.

[00:57:29]He's the cutest little thing.

[00:57:33]I have like so many good memories of like Jaden saying offthe-wall crazy funny stuff as like a fouryear-old.

[00:57:43]That's what he was saying that he was always a little outspoken. So if you guys haven't seen Jaden's interview, go watch it. And he also has a great YouTube channel that you can go see.

[00:57:55]He he had no filters. He was not afraid to ask any questions and I just like adored that about him. Just so proud of him all the time. Um he did point out to me, he was like, "Did it feel obvious that you were like at the bottom of like the [ __ ] list with some of the the sister wives?" And I was like I tried not to let it feel obvious but yeah I yeah I mean I felt very excluded all the time. Um I wasn't a Jessup and I wasn't a steed and those two bloodlines in Warren's family were the more elite. Um my sister fell in that category of more elite because her mother married a Jessup. So yeah there was like definite hierarchy. There was definite I got very sick in hiding after the raid.

[00:58:50]I ended up having swine flu, influenza A and strep and pneumonia all at the same time.

[00:59:00]What? Which they finally let me see a doctor for after I had been sick in bed for 14 days. I did not get out of bed for 14 days. The only wives who came to check on me were Sheena and one other wife. I saw nobody else for 14 days. But the brethren called to like get after me because I was not on my duties and I couldn't even talk to communicate and say um I really haven't been able to to be a caretaker to the little girls like you've all wanted me to.

[00:59:35]Um, I was very, very sick. And the thing that they gave them to give me for all of this was the garlic, ginger, lemon drinks with olive oil in them. I was not allowed pain relievers of any kind. It didn't matter at all. So, I had like zero overthec counter pain relievers. So when they finally heard how sick I was, I was again moved back to incredible elevation. I moved 40 times in my marriage to Warren.

[01:00:14]I moved a lot. I was in hiding for 5 and 1/2 years total.

[01:00:20]>> Wow. I moved a lot. A lot. A lot. A lot.

[01:00:23]When I was sick like this, I was back up at 11,000 ft elevation with pneumonia. And I didn't know if I would live. I didn't know I was going to live through it. Jeez. And I had sister wives that were kind of biasious about it. And there was like always these little rumors that people would say, "Oh, it's in her head." If I would go sit in a room in the dark because let me check out a migraine. So, yeah, it is in my head. It's not fun.

[01:00:53]>> But I was not allowed Tylenol. Even after a while, I wasn't allowed Tylenol.

[01:00:59]In 2009, my uh sister wife Sheena had been starting to have a lot of pain. She is one of the more one of the stories that like I've come out and talked about it, other wives have come out and talked about it as like blatant, neglect, and abuse in the medical treatment. Um he literally denied her medical treatment for 5 years and she passed away with cancer consuming the entire lower part of her back. It consumed or of her vertebrae in her back and she had a tumor in her brain and she had had breast cancer. So >> Oh wow.

[01:01:44]>> It was unbelievable. And then he like openly rebuked anyone who would help her um as like doing not the Lord's will because they were not at their duties.

[01:01:58]He had done that to me on a smaller scale, but I didn't have cancer. Um if anybody helped me, he would be like, "She's just doing it for attention or whatever." He basically sent this sister wife and not just her, many other people in the community, one of our mother-in-laws to live alone in a home. The mother-in-law was sent to a hotel where she passed away. Our sister Reich was sent alone in a home with zero contact with any of us and she was denied any comfort at all or any connection with any of us. She died alone and I'm just horrified because she was the sweetest, kindest, most loyal, obedience, giving, serving wife. Just the epitome of perfection. If there are angels on earth, she was one of them. And she was the one that came and took care of me when I was sick and nobody else was. She was the one that came and took care of me. So, I have like a lot of I don't know feelings about her. Um, she finally passed away in 2017, but she suffered with excruciating pain from 2009 to 2017. It was unreal. I learned pretty quickly that they would go they would say, "Oh, it's all in your head." I had an abscess tooth and they said, "Are you sure it's not in your head?" I'm like, "No, actually, I'm sure it's actually in my head."

[01:03:29]>> Yeah. if we want to talk about where it's at.

[01:03:33]>> Um, you know, and there was just, oh, I mean, there's no way to tell it in a few hours. You can't you can't cram 20 years of living in 2 hours or three because I had lost so much weight. Um, I would say it really messed with my serotonin. Long story short, I was told by one of the brethren, you need to do what the doctors say for these. I was like having extreme anxiety attacks and I would I would just like sit up crying all night.

[01:04:06]I was like 105 pounds. I I didn't feel well. I was not feeling well.

[01:04:12]And so they put me on an anti-depressant. My sister came to me.

[01:04:17]We had been moved to the South Dakota state of Zion and she came to me and she was like, "You know that you will no longer be worthy to be a part of the United Order if you take that medicine."

[01:04:30]She's like, "I just know this." Well, because she had read some of Warren's revelations and I was like, "Well, what? What do I do?" So, I went and called the brethren, and one of them were like, "Yeah, Warren would not like you to take that." that. And the other one was like, "Oh, you need to do whatever the doctors say." Well, a few days later, I get a call that I need to go back to hiding.

[01:04:54]I got to hiding and Sheena was there.

[01:04:57]And I didn't know till later that it was because she had asked for medical help.

[01:05:02]This was a few years into her pain. And when I got there, then Warren had one of the brethren call me with this message of complete rebuke. Basically, they were sending me away to live with my mother as a daughter in the home because I had given myself over to the buffetings of Satan because I had subjected myself to the power of medication, mindaltering medication, and that now I needed to like basically repent of everything all over again and prove myself worthy. Oh, and I could not be around the children anymore. I couldn't be around Warren's family anymore. I couldn't have anything to do with them. And I needed to stay home, work for the storehouse, basically go back in hiding, but in short creek. It was like, oh my gosh, I was the lowest of the low. There was no really reason to leave. I was already feeling depressed.

[01:06:03]>> I had anxiety through the roof. Is that when you finally started deconstructing?

[01:06:09]So, he sent me to live with my mother.

[01:06:10]And I will tell you, I think it was supposed to be a punishment, but it was like the best thing he could have ever done for me.

[01:06:16]>> I bet >> because suddenly I was not working under these other women's like constant scrutiny. I wasn't being tattled on all the time. I still was being tattled on, but not not by 79 people. Yeah. That's when I started to like deconstruct and and I it was very slow the process. I was still like to be a very obedient wife.

[01:06:42]But when it really hit me, it was the end of July 2013 and I was like, he's never coming out and I will never be worthy of children by his standards. I will never meet his expectations. Like, and it just like hit me like I was like, "Oh my gosh." Like, yeah, I want babies.

[01:07:02]I want a family and I want happiness. I I was watching my sisters have children and I just could see how much joy those babies brought to them and I was 29 and I was like I wanted babies so much and it been I was 17 to 29 being almost worthy to have children. So, I was just like, it's not happening for me. And then it was like this really big scary thing, like you're going to have to give up everything to have children. And I was like, you know what? I think it's going to be worth it. It happened right within like a few days, I had met this guy who was fixing a piano. And for some reason, he he was from Salt Lake.

[01:07:46]We had chemistry.

[01:07:48]It was the first time in my life I had felt chemistry with anyone. And I was like, "What is this?" Like, "Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa." He definitely felt it with me because he slipped me his business card and he had written his personal cell number on the back of his business card. I was with another lady and she was like, "Oh, he was weird."

[01:08:14]Um, so I happened to be with one of Warren's wives that were also sent to repent at her mother's house. We were both in short creek when this happened and I was like, "Oh my gosh, like this is so bad.

[01:08:27]I feel terribly wicked that I feel something. I feel something at all." And for 4 days, I tried and tried to get a hold of the bishop. Was like, I've got to tell him I feel wicked. And he wouldn't take my calls. The bishop was Ly. My brother-in-law wouldn't take my calls. Wouldn't take my calls. And then I was like, you know what? Screw it.

[01:08:46]Like, forget it. Then my sister had come up to me. She was irritated at me about something. I was living with my older sister and part of her family at the time cuz I took her children from her that were United Order. She was living with me because she wasn't United Order.

[01:09:03]Like the community was in this like chaos, this chaos.

[01:09:08]And my uh sister wife was in the duplex next to mine with her mother and all of their non United Order people. And the not United Order people were already like looking down on each other a lot because we were being looked down upon.

[01:09:27]And I just walked out the door. I remember my sister being like, "Where are you going? Why?" And I just remember like, "I don't know. And I grabbed my hair bag and I went to my car and I just remember thinking I I'm done. I got in the car. Oh, a few months before that I I very blatantly disobeyed Warren, went and got me a job and got myself a car.

[01:09:53]It was in the community. I changed my name. I went by Heidi so nobody would like but yes, I went and worked for money against his will and got myself a car. So, yes, I had a car with a car payment, not paid for, y'all. I was I did not start building credit till I was 29 years old. And I drove away and I just drove and drove and drove and was like waiting for the darkness to consume me.

[01:10:21]And it did not consume me. I felt lighter as I drove. And I was like, "What is this?" Like, being an apostate is supposed to feel so wicked and I feel so happy.

[01:10:32]>> Yeah. and like sad at the same time that I feel happy. Ended up going to Salt Lake, met this person, but not we did not um do more than just like go on a few dates. He wasn't in a good space in his life for a relationship, but for some reason he was like, "We were brought together for a reason." And if for nothing else, it was to show you that there was a door open for you. I had $34 when I left. I had no money when I got to Salt Lake. He um was a gentleman put me up at a hotel and the next day I was able to get a hold of some of my relatives who had been sent away. My mom had been sent away in 2013.

[01:11:18]And I had been legal guardian of her two younger children, her two children under the age of 18, which because I left, we had to go back and get my little brother because he wanted to leave with me. And they told me that the the innocent blood of his apostasy would be on my hands because I'm the one who led him out. And honestly, I'm really grateful that he wanted to follow me. I It means a lot to me. Yeah. So, I've been out since 2013.

[01:11:54]I told no one. Um I told people I was ex Mormon. I got into a relationship about 4 months, 3 months after and I got pregnant 4 months after I left. Had a baby in July.

[01:12:10]The dad did not want anything to do with the baby. I said, "Well, that's your loss, not mine." You know, I am now very happily in a relationship with my husband.

[01:12:24]We have three almost four beautiful babies together. My son is his. They're all his. Um, so I have my 11-year-old son, a 2-year-old son, a one-year-old daughter, and we are welcoming baby boy in August, at the end of August. And >> I'm tearing up right now.

[01:12:45]>> These are the babies that Warren said I was never worthy of. And so, I know what it's like to want to be a mother. I know what it's like to I know what those women go through who try everything and can't and can't have children or have to wait till they're 30 or 40. I had my first baby at 29 or no at 30. I had him at 30 and then I could not get pregnant again. My husband, for some reason, he's the miracle man because I now have going on four beautiful babies. And I just feel like for anyone who is or isn't in their life, it is it is your loss. It was Warren's loss that he did not let me be a mother.

[01:13:40]>> He did not deserve your children, Ila.

[01:13:43]He did not even come close to deserving your children. No, cuz my babies are pretty freaking awesome.

[01:13:50]They're monsters, but they're awesome.

[01:13:54]And I I would not change. I say this all the time. You can write your story how you think it will be, but it will never go how you write it. But if you had to rewrite it, you would have to write it the same as it went for you to have the same result. So, I really I can't change that to acknowledge and embrace the joy that I feel today because I know that a huge part of what I went through makes my love for my babies stronger. It makes my protection stronger. It makes my desire to change the world bigger.

[01:14:39]And a lot of people have asked me, "What changed in your life that made it so you opened the door and said, "We're going to change the world." Y'all, I had a daughter.

[01:14:50]I had a daughter. Suddenly, I was like, "Oh, there is no way in hell that the world is going to be what it was. You know, this girl is not going through what I went through."

[01:15:05]>> Yeah. So, yeah.

[01:15:07]Well, I'm just over here trying not to cry again. I'm too pregnant for this, >> girl. Oh my gosh, it's the hormones.

[01:15:17]Blame it on the hormones.

[01:15:19]>> I'm crying like every day now.

[01:15:23]That is so inspiring. You are so inspiring. Truly, you've been through so much and you've come out the other side just a beam of light. And I I know everyone is going to be so thrilled to hear your story and also inspired. And we didn't even get to the documentary and we're pretty much out of time. Just to because we did say we would get back to it. What is quickly? And then maybe we could even do like a live discussing this. I know I I threw out the idea of a panel. We'll see if other former Warren wives want to come on and do something before my baby decides to come in like a week. But that would be incredible. But okay, documentary. The moment that I mentioned was all of the girls fawning over Sam Baitman and him saying, "Everyone wants a piece of me." What were your thoughts on that? Literally everything I saw in that documentary, Sam pulled out of the Warren Jeff's playbook.

[01:16:25]>> That's what I thought.

[01:16:26]>> Everyone wants to be like, "Wo, this is so shocking. I can't believe these ladies went through this." And I'm like, "Really?"

[01:16:37]Because imagine that times 10. Warren had 79 wives and 10,000 people. So everything Sam did, Sam worked for Warren with Warren under his wing for years. Sam did Warren's bidding, not as one of his main men, but one of his henchmen. So Sam got to see secondhand how to act. I won't say he saw it firsthand all the time, but enough that he knew how to behave to at least collect the the audience that he did. Literally took it out of Warren's playbook. The difference is Warren is a sociopath.

[01:17:25]So, he knew how to control himself even more completely than Sam. I would say Sam was just a narcissistic.

[01:17:36]Okay, fun fact. Sam is my second cousin.

[01:17:38]We grew up together two houses down. He used to play basketball with my older brothers. His dad and my dad are first cousins. So, we've come to the conclusion all my relatives are crazy.

[01:17:54]>> They all want to be prophets.

[01:17:56]>> Yeah.

[01:17:57]>> Um but it's Yeah. Like it's kind of strange. Moroni Johnson is my dad's younger brother from the same mom and dad. So that documentary um is very intimate for me. Yeah.

[01:18:12]>> I didn't even watch it all the way through because >> this is my family still that we're talking about.

[01:18:17]>> And so I just beg people please like hold space for the victims and don't glorify the monsters >> and the villains like they don't deserve that time or acknowledgement. The people who deserve your time and energy are, wow, what about the curls? Where are they now? Are they healing? Are they coming out from there? Are they, you know, are they going to feel safe? Are they going to That's That's where I go with it because I know what it's like to not have a place to go or a feeling of feeling safe. So, yeah, that's where I go with that.

[01:18:53]>> Yeah. And that's why we're trying so hard to get as many people to speak on this as possible and why I also wanted to talk to you because I knew it's like same story, different characters basically. And I wanted to hear your perspective and I want other people to see that Sam was not just making stuff up like he clearly was following Warren Jeff's footsteps. And I'm currently talking to Christine >> to get her opinion on the actual infiltrating. We're trying to schedule something. She's out of the country and we're doing our best to schedule that.

[01:19:28]And I'm trying to get a hold of gnomes too because I also want to hear her perspective. And if we can do a panel with you and Belle and Aydah potentially, that would be amazing to to talk about that. Three sister wives talking about experiences with Warren.

[01:19:46]But thank you so much for being willing to share also while you're pregnant. I know it's not easy and for being so vulnerable and open and honest. I really appreciate you coming on. And we need one more Linda listen. I didn't tell you we were going to do two cuz we did two episodes, but can you think of another one? Hold space for the victims who are recovering from cult.

[01:20:12]And I'm not just talking about LDS. I have found in my social media coming up in my Tik Toks and in my lives, I've gathered a lot of people who have been through similar trauma.

[01:20:28]And there's not enough space held for people to freely come forward and heal from that. And too many people are afraid of the healing process because they're afraid of judgment.

[01:20:42]So when you are hearing their stories, don't ask how could you ask how are you, >> you know? Yes. How are you now? You know, absolutely. And that's that's probably the tagline of this entire show, aside from be conscious and be well, is showing compassion to those who have left. helping people who've never been in high control situations understand that it has nothing to do with intelligence being in a cult. It has nothing to do with how could you miss the signs and it has everything to do with how can we extend a hand to these people who need help, who need understanding, who need someone to just say, "I'm here for you." And not try to quote fix them because they're not broken. they're just relearning who they are or finding out who they are and finding out how the world works outside of these high control situations even within relationships. We need to extend that grace and that compassion and understanding because it's it's so impossible to leave a cult without kindness on the outside. They need that landing place just like the piano man in your story. Just a place to softly land and take a breath and find that safety within your nervous system.

[01:22:05]Safety enough to finally start to deconstruct the mind because you can't it's impossible to deconstruct anything if your body is in fight or flight. So kindness and compassion so important.

[01:22:18]How can people find and support you and reach out to you?

[01:22:21]>> My Tik Tok channel is where I am the most prominent. Leila more than the ex of orange. That is my handle. And um you can also find me on YouTube, Leila Matson. I do have a small platform there. And yeah, drop me messages. I definitely do respond. So yeah. Yes.

[01:22:42]Thank you so much, Leila. It's been so great hearing your story.

[01:22:46]>> Yeah, this has been great for me, too.

[01:22:48]Thank you so much for letting me hear.

[01:22:50]Yes, of course. Anything else you want to say before we go? I about talked to your ear off.

[01:22:59]>> Thank you so much.

[01:23:00]>> No, it was awesome. Of course. Yes. And everybody watching, leave those comments, those words of encouragement down below. Let us know if you've watched the documentary, your thoughts on it. But most importantly, rally around Leila because she's incredible and she's been through a lot. And come out on the other side and wish her happy pregnancy and yay. I'm so excited for you. August is a great month. That's my my birthday month. And >> that's that's >> it is the best way to support the show.

[01:23:26]Yes, great birthday month. If you want to support further though, aside from just interacting with the post, the free things, you can do channel memberships and get early access to some of our videos, membersonly live streams, and some behind the scenes content and bloopers. I think we're going to release some bloopers soon. If you would prefer to do something over on Patreon, you can find us at patreon.com/cultstoconsciousness.

[01:23:50]And we have so many incredible interviews from women and a few of Warren Jeff's sons who have left the FLDS. You're going to want to check out that playlist I'll link to down here below. If you haven't seen the first part of Leila's interview, go watch that. And until next time, follow your highest excitement. Be conscious and be well.