ReWrite the Story of Your Life

as i watched my brother

put the last screw in the window pane

i wasn’t sure if i would ever escape

this room again

i was now locked in solitary confinement

i did notice there was only two screws

in the window pane

and that if i slipped up there would be

many more screws

and that terrified me

i didn’t have a any hope inside

that i would escape i had been brought

back at least 10 times

to the flds but i am stubborn

and i didn’t want to give up so

i was lynette warner jess

the 65th wife of polygamous cult leader

warren jess and this is me

right here

so warren convinced many people that he

was god

and that he had the only authority on

earth to grant the gift of marriage to

his followers

i am a product of an arranged marriage

and as a child

i was always told you will be a mother

in zion

i was never asked the question what do

you want to be when you grow up

at 18 years old i felt like i was

standing

on the edge of a cliff with two choices

which way do you want to jump off

one being do you accept marrying war and

gifts

and the other being or never have

another opportunity to marry on this

earth or an eternity

i did marry warren just that day without

a wedding dress

without my mother being invited to the

wedding

and it wasn’t a legal wedding

in my raising we were strict about

waiting for this day so this when we

would be told

we were married so in the trainings that

we were taught

we were taught that we were supposed to

treat the boys like snakes we couldn’t

look at him we can think about and we

were just supposed to wait until we

turned 18 years old

and we also quoted that if we left the

choice up to god

he would give the best to us

i don’t believe that anymore

um he had

with he so this is his 65th wedding

warren

65th wedding and my first so his

expectations were significantly

different than mine

and i was supposed to somehow switch

that brainwashing

immediately and i didn’t even really

register that i was supposed to do that

so after the ceremony within 10 seconds

he sent my father out of the room and

then

he asked me to come sit on his lap and i

paused i hesitated to accept his

advances toward marital relations

and i could see the anger in his face

and he called my father back in the room

and he sent me home to my father’s house

which was a punishment but i didn’t

realize it was for months later

so thank god he’s heading home

i um within the next two weeks i was

invited to a secret meeting

that would qualify me to live among his

family

in this meeting i noticed some

terrifying realities about oranges

him being a pedophile and wanting access

to the children

he used the excuse in this meeting that

god told him

because he was running from the law and

because he

didn’t want his children his own

children to be

questioned by the law he needed to take

those children away from their

biological mothers

and to a new location which meant he

took about 35

children away from about 35 of his own

wives

and he took him to a new location so i

made a commitment within myself i

couldn’t tell anybody but i

i made a commitment that day that i

wanted to see what happened to those

children it wasn’t to warrant jeff’s

it wasn’t to the flds it was to advocate

for those children

he took him to the yearning for zion

ranch which i did go to

and what i witnessed was

those children had no stability and no

hope of stability it was worse than

adoption

because every time they would get

attached to their assigned caretaker

warren jeffs would rotate the caretakers

and so they if they had a deep truth

inside of them a secret

they would never trust anyone to tell

that was my breaking point

warren just by this time was on the

fbi’s most wanted list

and he was um captured

two years after that i noticed at that

time i needed to

protect myself from oranges and having

children with him so i successfully did

that for the next two years

and i was trapped in there and he was

caught

and because we didn’t ever consummate

the marriage

he surround he was angry and he sent

people to

abuse me he said he surrounded me with

people because he was still the prophet

of the flds

and he sent he surrounded me with people

that would abuse me they

they drugged me and

had cult doctors drugging me and

falsified documents

to deem me insane with the ultimate goal

to be me insane

and take away my rights as an american

citizen

i worked my way using scripture to an

older compound and that’s why i

was able to escape out the window so

this is me

i um this is my first picture

after i escaped i cut my hair

immediately because they were chasing me

have makeup on i went to organizations

i changed my name was legally adopted

and changed my social

i still had fear and ptsd that gripped

my life and so i

had to ask myself the question are they

still following me because they were

chase they chased me in the beginning

and what can they do to me legally

without

with everything changed how can they

legally

hurt me like they were so

i made a decision to face my fears and i

went back

to the very house that i once lived in

that was warren jeff’s

mansion and i

had a dream for this house i went and

applied because he’s in prison for life

i got his property his 28

000 square foot mansion

and it had 45 bedrooms

and over 50 bathrooms and

the blueprints were burned i had never

heard of an appraisal

i did media because it was a high

profile house

and free tours of the building and was

able to partner with a worldwide

organization

called the dream center

so the buyers they

partnered with me to build a safe house

for women and children escaping

isolated situations and especially the

flds

so this house is no longer known as

warren jeff’s house

it is now the short creek dream center

[Applause]

um this is what it looked like when we

had it

and it had carpet up the walls and

needed a lot of work and we wanted to do

it but

we needed that support so this

is what it looks like now this is the

same room they’ve re-transformed the

whole room

this is one of the rooms that the women

warren jeff’s wives had lived in now the

carpet’s not there

it’s completely redone

that’s not all i’ve done in the last

eight years

i married him out of my own choosing for

four years now

we have our own house together and i’m

working toward building a dream center

in salt lake city

even though you cannot see feel and

touch the hope

have the courage to keep trying if i had

given up that day

i was climbing out the window because i

had been brought back

so many times i would have never known

freedom i would have never met the man

of my dreams

and speaking about dreams i’m passionate

that every person

live your dreams cut your accord to fear

and live the life that you want to live

you don’t have to live the one that

people other people plan for you live

the life how you want to live