"I think it is a form of pedophilia hiding behind religious beliefs."
Carolyn Jessup
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Horrible how the infants and children were tortured.
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COOPER: And welcome back. Passing through Colorado City, Arizona and Hildale, Utah -- they're pretty much one community, really, straddling the state line. You take them to be just what they seem, picture postcard representations of small town America at its best. And they are that too, but there's something else as well. They're centers of a practice that's outlawed and disdained by the Mormon church a long time ago. Polygamy. These are towns in America, but they're controlled by a religious sect with its own rules, and they're led by one man who is now a fugitive, hunted by the FBI.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
COOPER (voice-over): Carolyn Jessup grew up in a polygamous family in the FLDS sect in Colorado City, Arizona. She dreamed of going to college and becoming a pediatrician. Her father went to ask the prophet for permission and was told Carolyn Jessup had to get married first. That was nearly 20 years ago. The prophet then was Rulon Jeffs, Warren Jeffs' father.
CAROLYN JESSUP, WIFE OF POLYGAMIST: I didn't really know what to do with it. It's just like you can see something really bad's coming down, you can see your life going in a direction that's the worst place you'd ever want it to go, but yet there's nothing you can do to stop it.
COOPER: The man chosen to be Carolyn's husband, a 50-year old man who already had three wives and would eventually take several more.
JESSUP: I get in this car with this strange man, 32 years older than me, and we're going to get married that day and drive to his house to meet his family. It was like watching a horror movie, except for I was in the front seat of it.
COOPER: Carolyn moved in to her husband's home.
JESSUP: It was bad from the beginning. I mean, there was few if any happy moments. You're not allowed any form of birth control. And to say, you know, I really can't handle it, I'm having too many children, I'm having them too fast is a mortal sin. And so of course, if your husband sees you as worthy and he wants to father a baby with you, then it is considered a sin unto death to refuse him.
COOPER: She had eight children in 15 years, including a son who was severely disabled. Eventually there were five wives in her home and 54 children. Life became more extreme when Warren Jeffs took control of the sect after his father's death in 2002.
JESSUP: A lot of things changed when he took over. The children were pulled out of public schools and everybody was put into private schools. And then they burned all the books.
COOPER: Shortly afterwards, at the age of 35, Carolyn started thinking about the unthinkable -- escape.
JESSUP: Living in these polygamous homes -- or the one that I lived in, was like living in a police state. Everyone reports everything on everybody else.
COOPER: One night she had a unexpected opportunity. Her husband was out of town and all eight children were home. She called a brother in Salt Lake City.
JESSUP: He said, you know, Carolyn, I will do anything and everything I can to help you, but if I leave right now the soonest I can be there is at 5 in the morning. I just said, will you do it? And he said, I'll be there, but I don't want to come into the community. So he wanted me to drive three miles outside of the community and meet him at a store, it was called Canaan Corner.
The next issue was not letting the children know. There is no possible way they would have come with me knowing what I was doing. They were terrified of the outside world. So I had to come up with a story. So I got them up about 4 o'clock that morning. And I told them Harrison was extremely sick and that I had to take him to the doctor, which was common, that was life. And -- but I told them Arthur is here and so I want to get family pictures, so everybody is coming with me this time.
One of Merrill's other's wives walks in on my oldest daughter getting dressed and starts demanding answers. And so about 4:30 that morning I hear over the intercom, Merrill wants to talk to me on the phone. I knew I was -- I knew they were on to me.
COOPER: Carolyn began piling her children into the van.
JESSUP: The last person I went and got was Harrison, I took him off his oxygen, put him in his car seat, and I thought everybody was there. I got in the front seat and I was just about to put the key in the ignition.
COOPER: But her oldest daughter was missing.
JESSUP: Honestly, it was one of the most difficult decisions I've ever had in my life. I mean, because I knew I was out of time. And do I leave her? Do I leave one and save seven? Or do I go back in and get her and none of us get out.
COOPER: She made a split-second decision and ran inside her house.
JESSUP: But she didn't want to come. And she was crying and she said, you know, Mother there is something you're doing that's wrong. Why doesn't Father know what you're doing?
COOPER: Carolyn grabbed her daughter and pulled her into the van.
JESSUP: After I got out of the community then the realization that my van was completely out of gas. So, it was like just making it on a prayer that I could get three miles out of town. And about a mile before I got to Canaan Corner the van was sputtering. It was definitely out. But I made it there.
COOPER: She met her brother and reached safety. Her life began all over again.
JESSUP: I have something now that I've never had in my life before. I have hope.
COOPER: Carolyn had to fight a bitter legal battle for custody of her children. But in the end she prevailed. They all live together near Salt Lake City.
JESSUP: I think that one of the things that the outside world doesn't understand about the world that I come from, is that they see the polygamous lifestyle as an issue about religious freedom, religious rights. But what I've experienced is its basically about human rights issues. You're not supposed to think. You're supposed to be willing to be perfectly obedient. To me, I see it as a life of slavery.
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COOPER: One woman's struggle and a community's struggle. Coming up next on 360, what's the history of this sect and who exactly is the leader? Part 2 on our report, "The Power of Polygamy". And Pope John Paul II, the biopic, a blessed event, coming to TV.
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COOPER: Before the break we saw how people get caught up in polygamy, barely realizing what's happening, unable to question, because no one else around them is questioning either. Then reality sets in for some. Now a look at how it got so bad and who the FBI says is to blame in this one town, Awatamin (ph).
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COOPER (voice over): It's easy to see the isolation of this community along the Utah/Arizona border. What's harder to grasp is the total domination that one man, Warren Jeffs. Has over the 10,000 people who live here. They're part of a Mormon sect of polygamists, who call themselves the FLDS, the Fundamentalist Church of Latter Day Saints. They call Warren Jeffs, The Prophet.
The mainstream Mormon Church banned polygamy in 1890 and doesn't associate with this sect.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I had to sit down with my children and say, that The Prophet told me that I can no longer be your father. And that was the toughest day of my life. ISAAC WYLER, FORMER FLDS MEMBER: If young men, or something like that were called to stand in front of bullets for Warren, they wouldn't even hesitate.
COOPER: This is one of the few photographs of Warren Jeffs, a seemingly ordinary man but one with extraordinary power.
DR. DAN FISCHER, FMR. FLDS MEMBER, SMILES FOR DIVERSITY: If there were a Taliban of America, I would say this is it.
COOPER: Warren Jeffs hasn't been seen in more than a year. The FBI has been searching for him since June on charges of fleeing prosecution in Arizona for arranging marriages involving underage girls. Utah has now frozen the assets of Jeffs polygamous sect, which the attorney general says is worth about $100 million. In the FLDS, reality is filtered through Warren Jeffs. ] SAM ICKE, FORMER FLDS MEMBER: If the law comes in and takes over, or anything happens to them, it is all a test sent from God, through Warren. Everything is a test, because they believe that the afterlife is going to tell the truth. And they believe that once this life is over then they're going to be -- they're going to be either celestialized, which is you know, given the highest degree of glory in the kingdom of heaven, or they will damned forever to hell.
COOPER: Sam Icke is no longer part of the FLDS community. He was expelled by The Prophet when he was 18.
ICKE: The thing that actually got me kicked out was, you know, I kissed this girl and then she told. You know, told everybody what was going on. I got a call from the leader, Warren Jeffs, and he told me to come and talk to him about it.
I left, went home, and within the next day or so, he called my dad and told him that I had to leave.
COOPER: Sam is one of several young men asked to leave the community. They are called the "Lost Boys". What happened to them is to some a question of math. Too many boys are competing in a polygamous world, where some men have 10, 20 or even 30 wives.
MARK SHURTLEFF, UTAH ATTORNEY GENERAL: They trump up charges against these boys, but the bottom line is they don't want them there competing. They are told that not only are the being kicked out of their homes, and from the community, the only community that they've ever known, but that they're going to burn in hell. Talk about "Lost Boys", that term, is absolutely applicable. These boys think that they have no chance in this life or in the afterlife.
FISCHER: They're extremely strict.
COOPER: Dan Fischer, a successful dentist near Salt Lake City has created the Diversity Foundation to help the "Lost Boys", who have banished from the FLDS in recent years. He says he has names of 400 young men. FISCHER: Some actually expelled out in which they are given no more than an hour or two to be out of town, pack their bags, take whatever they can carry, and be gone. And with the communication that they're not welcome back.
COOPER: But those who defend the FLDS say the lost boy issue is overblown. In a statement, Rodney Parker, an attorney who has represented the FLDS since 1990 said, quote, "The number is completely unsubstantiated as well. The label '"Lost Boys" ' is a characterization that I don't think most f the people it's applied to would agree with. They say, 'I chose to leave, this wasn't for me.' "
ICKE: Well, when I turned 18 I was kicked out, dumped on my head.
COOPER: Sam Icke lives under the protective wing of Dan Fischer, who actively supports about 60 lost boys, some with jobs, housing and schooling. Fischer was once part of the FLDS and had two wives, but he divorced one and left the sect 12 years ago. He's known Jeffs for years.
FISCHER: In the last few years, where this society has become a apocalyptic, at a fanatical level, it has set the stage for crazy things to happen and people accept it, believing that their salvation is on the line if they don't do as their told.
COOPER: The absolute power Jeffs wields destroyed the life Paul Musser loved. He was married for 23 years and hat 13 children. Jeffs told him suddenly, five years ago, that he was unfit to get his wife into heaven.
PAUL MUSSER, FORMER FLDS MEMBER: He just said that she needed somebody to exalt into the celestial kingdom and that I couldn't. And I kept asking him -- I asked him at least three times, if I could repent or make it right with him. And he just said, well, you don't have time to repent. And so that was it. He told me to move out, and my wife and family would be given to somebody else.
COOPER: What happened next may be hard for anyone outside the sect to understand. Musser told his family goodbye the next day.
MUSSER: I just hugged and kissed all my children. Told them that I love them very much. That I wasn't good enough to be their father anymore, according to what The Prophet said.
COOPER: Since then Paul Musser has had a change of heart.
MUSSER: As time went on and as I saw my family given to this one man, and then he fell out of favor. And then she was given to another man. So, she's been with two men, besides me. And I just said to myself, this is wrong.
WYLER: This is a fanatical religion. I mean, if you go back and look in Mormon history and see some of the things that's been done in the name of religion. It's not different now.
COOPER: Isaac Wyler was in a group of 21 men told to leave their families by Jeffs at a routine church meeting.
WYLER: That's the kind of control that is here. So being kicked out and losing your wife and children is -- it's a big thing, but it's not like throwing your life away. To die for The Prophet? To die for God? Yeah, that would make -- that would be an honor.
COOPER: We wanted to talk to people with a positive view of their lives inside the FLDS community. But David Zitting, mayor of Hilldale, Utah, and a member of the FLDS for more than 20 years, said that's not likely to happen.
"The citizens of this community have gone through many years of dealing with the media in various forms," he told us. "And what they have experienced in this has caused them to not to want to make statements to the media or be interviewed by the media because it has in the past tended to be more fabricated and non-factual."
Jeffs absolute control seems linked to his followers belief in his divine power. Wyler's daughter once asked him if Uncle Warren was Jesus Christ.
WYLER: And I says, no. What would give you that idea? And she says, teacher so and so -- because I don't give the teacher's name -- says that he's Jesus Christ and he's returned. Jesus Christ returned and he's going to be killed.
COOPER: In a country founded on the separation of church and state, it is hard to fathom a community where the church is the state. And hard to understand why polygamy is rarely prosecuted, even though it is a felony in Utah.
SHURTLEFF: The problem is, how do we put every single polygamist in the state in jail and then what do we do with tens of thousands of kids? I don't have the resources to get involved in that. I want to focus on the most serious crimes being committed in the name of religion.