“Both creepy…and quite moving.”
—New York Times Book Review
“Wall’s story couldn’t be more timely.”
—People
Stolen Innocence is the gripping New York Times bestselling memoir of Elissa Wall, the courageous former member of Utah’s infamous FLDS polygamist sect whose powerful courtroom testimony helped convict controversial sect leader Warren Jeffs in September 2007. At once shocking, heartbreaking, and inspiring, Wall’s story of subjugation and survival exposes the darkness at the root of this rebel offshoot of the Mormon faith.
In this courageous memoir, Elissa Wall, the star witness against polygamous sect leader Warren Jeffs, tells her inspirational story of how she emerged from the confines of the Fundamentalist Church of Latter Day Saints (FLDS) and helped bring one of America's most notorious criminals to justice.
Detailing how Jeffs's influence over the church twisted its already rigid beliefs in dangerous new directions, Wall portrays the inescapable mind-set which forced her to wed her first cousin at age fourteen, pressured her to follow Jeffs's directives, and, once she married, encouraged her to submit to her husband in "mind, body, and soul." For over three years she suffered at the hands of her husband, until one snowy night when a chance encounter with a stranger set in motion a friendship that eventually gave her the strength to break free of the church and come forward against Jeffs, so that girls still inside might be spared her cruel fate.
More than a tale of survival and freedom, Stolen Innocence is the story of one heroic woman who stood up for what was right and reclaimed her life.
"Wall's story couldn't be more timely. Her descriptions of the polygamous sect's rigidity are shocking, but what's most fascinating is the immensely likeable author's struggle to reconcile her longing for happiness with her terror of it's consequences."
