Destroying Their God: How I Fought My Evil Half-Brother to Save My Children (Zarahemla Books, 2018) is Wallace Jeffs’s memoir, written with Shauna Packer and Sherry Taylor. It won the 2018 AML Creative Non-fiction Award. Literature scholar and author Helynne Hansen conducted this interview with Wallace and Shauna.
Book blurb: Growing up alongside future Fundamentalist Latter-Day Saint prophet Warren Jeffs, Wallace tried to follow FLDS teachings. After he built a successful business, the church required him to marry a second wife. Wallace fathered twenty children, but he never felt comfortable with polygamy or other FLDS beliefs.
As his prophet-brother increasingly manipulated him, Wallace started hearing about FLDS atrocities. On the day the FBI arrested Warren Jeffs for child rape, the prophet was en route to reclaim Wallace’s second wife for himself. Wallace defied the prophet and soon ended up in a coma. Though Wallace fears FLDS sabotage caused his car crash, he keeps fighting the sect.
With today’s movement against male abusers, Wallace’s story reminds us that power and position don’t corrupt all men. In 2018, Wallace found resolution by marrying an LDS woman in the Salt Lake Temple. At the same time, Destroying Their God renews our concern for the thousands who still live under FLDS control, including some of Wallace’s own children.
Q: What is the current state of the FLDS? Is the community thriving, diminishing, or imploding in terms of membership? What do current FLDS member see as the future of the church and its practices?
The community is crumbling slowly. It is about a tenth of what it was at the height of membership. There are still hundreds that remain loyal, hoping that Warren will miraculously be freed and come and save them from the evil of this world.
Q: Is Warren Jeffs still trying to exert his influence over remaining believers from prison?
He is not trying to exert anything. He no longer has contact with anyone except his remaining faithful daughters and has told all members that they are not worthy of his administration or presence.
Q: Is the U.S. government attempting to have more control over the group or at least to offer more protection of children?
The government has never tried to exert any control over them. Warren told the faithful FLDS that the government would interfere in their lives and take away their children as a means of controlling the membership. The government has only tried to help those who would come forward with information and charges, which they use to convict the leaders who were opposing the laws of the nation and states. They have always offered protection and help to those wanted it.
Q: How has the publication of Destroying Their Godmade any impact on the community?
The book has opened the eyes of thousands of FLDS. I have had numerous people come and tell me that this book has allowed them to see the truth that they never wanted to believe. The evidence is overwhelming and they have said that it has truly freed them just by reading all that is there to know. Even some of those who still want to practice polygamy have said that it has made them question that choice.
Q: Without being overly personal, how are you doing in your new post-FLDS life and what is going on with your 20 children?
I am doing great. I live my life the way I choose to live it instead of how somebody else thinks I should live. I feel liberated and free. Never been happier! My children are thriving and have a greater respect for me now that they know the truth and are no longer hearing the lies. My children are amazing and doing very well. I feel they are all more mature than others their age due to their life experiences. And, of course they are finally happy.
Q: Now that you are living in a more mainstream environment, outside of the community, how do you see your years in the community impacting the way you live your life? Education opportunities are limited in the community, how has that impacted you?
My life in the FLDS was lived in constant fear. Fear of doing the wrong thing, fear of dying if I did the wrong thing. When I finally got out and realized that God is a loving God and not a God of cursing and threats of destruction, it helped me become a more compassionate person. I can see that nobody is perfect and nobody can tell another how to live their life. I am more understanding of people and their particular circumstances. I am far less judgmental and, of course, no longer living in fear. I am very much self-taught and have had to learn on my own. Education is very much a personal choice for most of the ex-FLDS. We just have to learn in other ways!!!
Q: Can you tell me about the writing process? How did you work with your collaborators? And for the collaborators, how did you work with Wallace?
It was essential that as a writing team we were clear on our goals and individual responsibilities before the project began to take shape. From the beginning, it was important to me that my story was told in a straightforward manner. Other writers had approached me and wanted to work on the book, but they wanted to sensationalize the information. That has never been my purpose in this project. I wanted the information to be factual and Sherry and Shauna agreed.
It was also key that we were all on board with the information which we would or would not choose to include. Some of the details were very difficult and unsettling to work with. As a writing team, however, we agreed that we would not shrink away from the often difficult subject matter in order to honor Warren Jeffs’s victims and also to make it clear why I had to get my daughters out of the FLDS community. It was more difficult, in the end, to sell this book and several publishers wanted us to strike out some objectionable content, but we made the goal to be true to the story as a team, and we were.
After our goals and non-negotiables were settled, we began to work. To facilitate the project with my collaborators, we met together a few times a week and I would relate a portion of my story, in no particular order. They took notes and recorded our sessions. Shauna and Sherry would then form individual chapters, which they would forward to me to read and approve. I also read several versions of the finished version of the book!
It was up to us to divide the work as it came in and it was great to have another experienced writer to bounce ideas around with. Shauna is a compulsive re-writer, so that was something everyone had to get used to, but in the end, it worked out well because the editing we did throughout our two-year process of writing Destroying Their God made it so that our editor/publisher felt like he did not have to do a tremendous amount of work in order to prepare the book to be published.
Normally, we would have jumped out and tried to start selling this book earlier on proposal. However, there was much work that needed to be done to nail down the chronological timeline. Since the information was given as Wallace felt ready to share, it did not always come in order. Also, with the accident and the trauma, we found Wallace had some repressed memories that we needed several sessions to uncover. For this book, it made more sense to finish the entire project before we could formally start selling it to publishers.
Wallace Jeffs was born the thirtieth child of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints’ prophet, Rulon Jeffs, and is the half-brother of the current prophet, Warren Jeffs. Raised as a devout FLDS member, he was eventually excommunicated after daring to defy one of his brother’s self-serving commandments. After the FLDS prophet kidnapped his children in retribution, Wallace worked with the FBI, various Sheriff departments, and local authorities, to insure that his deranged brother would never be allowed to hurt a young girl again. Wallace is the devoted father of twenty children and stepfather to eight. He resides in Salt Lake City, Utah. Wallace acts as a resource for those seeking to flee the FLDS community and is an outspoken advocate for human rights and the protection of all innocent children.
Shauna Packer has been a professional corporate and freelance writer, researcher, and content editor for over twelve years. She is a multi-award-winning fiction and non-fiction author. Shauna has been published in several commercial anthologies, including Angels to Bear You Up, Utah Voices: A Literary Annual, and Mother’s Messages in a Bottle. She resides in Salt Lake City, Utah.
Sherry Taylor has published her poetry in The National Library of Poetry’s book, The Voice Within. She has three anecdotes published in the anthology Mormon Mishaps and Mischief: Hilarious Stories for Saints. Sherry is the author of a YA fantasy series, The Ceramia Trilogy. She resides in Salt Lake City, Utah.
Helynne Hollstein Hansen is a professor emeritus of French and English at Western Colorado University in Gunnison, Colorado. She is author of the 1998 monograph Hortense Allart: The Woman and the Novelist, and of a 2011 novel, Voices at the Crossroads. She resides in Salt Lake City, Utah.