Brent W. Jeffs - Lost Boy: The True Story of One Man’s Exile from a Polygamist Cult and His Brave Journey to Reclaim His Life

I woke up drenched in sweat, screaming. My heart felt like it was going to burst out of my chest, my throat was dry and raw as sand. Jodymy then-fiance, now wifewas trying to calm me. She was holding me, rocking me, gently touching my hair. Its okay, its okay, its only a dream, she said. I was safe in my bed, at home in the Salt Lake suburb of Bluffdale, wrapped up in the black and yellow leopard-patterned comforter Id kept from my bachelor days. Jody was with me.

But in my mind, I was back at Alta Academythe private religious school run by my uncle, Warren Jeffs. Warren is now the prophet of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (FLDS), a Mormon splinter sect of about ten thousand people who believe that the church erred when it abandoned polygamy. Back then, he was the principal of my school. My dad, his three wives, and all twenty of us children had been born into the church.

In my dream, Warren was holding my hand. His hand seemed huge and mine was tiny. Hes 6 4, gawky, scrawny, and awkwardhis neck is too skinny for his head and his glasses are too big for his face. His hair and eyes are a muddy brown. It seemed to me like the rest of him was really far way, like his hand came down toward mine from an incredible height.

I was in a small, cramped classroom. The kids around me were little ones, preschoolers and kindergartners, my youngest cousins. That meant it must have been a Sunday, during Jeffs family church. My dad has more than sixty-five brothers and sistershis father had about nineteen wives at that time. Every other Sunday, our whole family would have our own special services led by my grandfather, who was then the prophet.

To keep the little kids occupied while the adults worshipped, we were sent into classrooms in the basement and allowed to play, watched over by teenage sisters or cousins who had been assigned babysitting duty. Thats where I was when Warren tapped my shoulder and grabbed my hand.

I followed him, like you do when an uncle takes your hand and you are five. He took me into the hallway, which was paneled in dark wood and narrow. There were many doors along that corridor. One opened. I saw a flash of a bathroom with some pale blue tiles.

And then, terror. Jody says I was screaming in my sleep: No, stop, please. Dont touch me. She tried to wake me but couldnt immediately. All I remember feeling was overwhelming panic, pain, and helplessness. Something terrible was going to happen to me, something horrendous and unstoppable.

I was small and powerless and couldnt do anything about it. And it would hurt: beyond words. I knew this with complete certaintybecause, I realized, whatever it was, it had happened to me before. Now I dreaded it more than anything, even death. I felt frozen, just blank with fear and powerlessness.

As I began to wake up, I thought my body had been paralyzed. I tried to scream, tried to move my arms, legs, fingers, toesbut nothing worked. Not a sound seemed to come from my mouth and my limbs wouldnt move. I knew the pain would take over soon. I was unable to protect myself. Every single part of me was electrified by terror and apprehension.

I jumped. Jody had snapped me out of it, and now I saw her and realized where I was. My heart was still speeding, but it began to slow. I didnt knowor really, I didnt want to knowwhat had just terrorized me. Id been having similar nightmares for months. They seemed so real. I didnt want to think about why.

I did know that my brother Clayne had been raped by Warren at Alta Academywhen he was about five years old. That made me flash on an image of Claynes body after hed shot himselfanother thing I was trying to forget. It had been more than a year ago now, but I still felt like it had just happened and still didnt want to believe it was true. Asleep, I sometimes managed to forget my grief.

Now I was beginning to think that the abuse that had driven my oldest brother to suicide was something Id have to confront as well. I started thinking back to what had happened when Id left the churchand how Id gotten to the point that I had to leave. I thought of my life as a lost boy. Thats what the media came to call the hundreds of young men like me who had been forced out of the church to provide more young women for Warren and his followers. I thought about how that life had affected my brothers.

And, as I sifted through my memories, my life came to me in bits and pieces, often disconnected, just like my dreams. Even normal memory has gaps, but traumatic memory is even more discontinuous. This is my story, which put me back together.

E very child believes hes special. But when you are number ten of twenty, with three sister-motherstwo of whom are full-blooded sistersand a grandfather whom thousands of people believe speaks directly to God, it can be hard to figure out what special really means.

All told, I have roughly sixty-five aunts and uncles on my dads side and twenty-two on my momswith probably thousands of cousins. In families as large as mine, even keeping track of your own siblingslet alone cousins and aunts and unclesis difficult.

As a grandson of Rulon Jeffs and nephew of Warren Jeffs, it once seemed that I was destined for high honor in the FLDS. My family had what our church called royal blood. We were direct descendants of our prophet through my fathers line. My mother, too, is the child of a prophet, who split from our group in 1978 to lead his own polygamous sect.

When I was little, my family was favored, in the churchs elite. I was assured that there was a place for me in the highest realms of heaven and at least three wives for me right here on earth once I attained the Melchizedek priesthood. I was in a chosen family in a chosen people, visiting sacred land near end times. I would one day become a god, ruling over my own spinning world.

So why would I ever abandon such status and rank? In the world of the FLDS, things are not always what they seem. The shiny, smiling surfaces often hide a world of rot and pain. And even royal blood and being born male cant protect you from sudden changes in its convoluted power structure.

Outsiders tend to think our form of polygamy must be a great deal for us men. You get sexual variety without guilt: in fact, you are commanded by God to have multiple partners and the women are expected to go along with it. Indeed, they are supposed to be happy about doing so and obediently serve you. This is the only way for all of you to get to the highest realms of heaven.

To many men, that sounds like heaven right there, without any need for the afterlife part. They focus on the sexfantasizing about a harem of young, beautiful women, all at their beck and call. They dont think about the responsibilityor the balancing act needed to keep all of those women happy, or even just to minimize their complaints. During the one full year I attended public school, the few guys who befriended me rather than ridiculing me were fascinated by it all.