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