She Escaped Her Father’s Polygamous, Child-Abusing Mormon Cult
It’s been a long, complicated journey for Rachel Jeffs Blackmore since escaping the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, a polygamous Mormon cult led by her father, Warren Jeffs.
Blackmore, who recently celebrated her 40th birthday, left her old life behind nearly a decade ago and is now living in Idaho with her husband, Brandon, another FLDS member, and all of their children. In the past decade, she’s been outspoken about the horrors and abuses she experienced at the hands of her father, who was once on the FBI’s Most Wanted List and is currently serving a life sentence after being convicted on two counts of child sexual assault in 2011. Not only did Blackmore testify against members of the church in court in order to ensure Jeffs’ accountability, but she’s also committed most — if not all — of her post-FLDS life sharing her story with the public in hopes that the awareness will make a change.
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In 2017, Blackmore published her memoir Breaking Free: How I Escaped Polygamy, the FLDS Cult, and My Father, Warren Jeffs. She’s also appeared in documentaries and series about Jeffs, including A&E’s Warren Jeffs: Prophet of Evil in 2018 and Escaping Polygamy. Now, she’s taking part in the new A&E docuseries Secrets of Polygamy, which premiered Jan. 8, to continue to give voice to those who’ve suffered at the hands of Jeffs and other FLDS abusers.
“I want to give a voice to the kids. I want to give a voice to the abuse, and especially the young girls who don’t have a voice who don’t realize that they are abused,” Blackmore tells Rolling Stone. “Most importantly, I want people to know that there’s healing after trauma.”
Secrets of Polygamy follows the current lives of FLDS survivors who have since left, including Blackmore, and shows investigator Matt Browning attempting to dig deeper into the abuse these women experienced at the hands of Jeffs and other leaders of the fundamentalist group.
“Growing up, you don’t really know more than what you’re taught, right?” Blackmore says. “So believing as we were taught that we were the chosen people, that we had the best home, that the people out here were wicked and wanted to kill us and hurt us and do all these terrible things to us, you kind of have a sense of fear of toward the world and a sense of safety in your home, even though it wasn’t a peaceful or happy home.”
There were fleeting moments of joy in Blackmore’s family while she was growing up, like when she would play and sing with her sisters. But that’s all relative because there was also “a lot of sadness and hurt.”
“I guess more than anything, I didn’t realize how much and as a child, you don’t know any different than what you’re taught. But yet, there’s little ideas that come to your mind about reality. Sometimes I thought, maybe I don’t belong here, or it doesn’t seem like the outside world is as bad as we’re told, or it seems like there are good people,” Blackmore says. “These little thoughts would come to my head.”
According to Blackmore, Jeffs started sexually abusing her when she was eight years old. For years, she blamed herself for the atrocities inflicted upon her, even after she was married and had children of her own. But the real lightbulb moment that persuaded Blackmore to escape the cult came when her sister revealed that Jeffs had also sexually abused her.
“That was my final decision. When you think you’re the only victim, then you don’t know where to place the shame, so you place it on yourself,” Blackmore says. “But realizing that he had a problem, he was the wicked one that hurt people and all those things, that’s when I came to that decision that I don’t have to stay here. My kids don’t have to put up with this. I don’t have to put up with this. And that gave me the strength to leave.”
Once she recognized that Jeffs was sexually abusing her other family members, Blackmore was horrified at the thought of her own children enduring what she’d been through.
“For me, my kids were the most important thing. I live for my kids. So when they started hurting my kids by separating them from me and leaving them with people who were hurting them, those kinds of things made me have a fire inside,” Blackmore says. “I thought, I don’t want to stay here if this is how it’s going to be.”
Blackmore has seven children, her oldest being 21, and she says she’s most happy with the fact that in her family’s new life outside of the FLDS most of her kids don’t remember what it was like to live under the reign of Jeffs and its other cult leaders.
“They’re not affected by the past, and they just have acclimated to the world so well. They do well in school; they have friends. It’s almost like it hasn’t affected them, which makes me the happiest of all, is that they can just live a normal life,” Blackmore maintains. “For me, of course, the past is always there, but I feel like I’ve acclimated, too. I’ve found lots of good friends, I’m part of an amazing community, and we have a beautiful home. Our kids just have a lot of freedom and they’re happy. That’s what I’ve always wanted — for them to be able to celebrate holidays, birthdays, and go on trips together. We live a normal life, and that’s what’s wonderful.”
While Blackmore has been candid with the public about the horrors she experienced in the polygamous cult, it’s not easy to share some of her worst memories and experiences with the rest of the world. But she sees it as a necessary part of her healing journey.
“There are days I don’t want to be public but more than anything, I want people to realize you can be happy after trauma. You can heal. It’s just mostly finding that strength within yourself to be happy after trauma,” Blackmore says. “I am bringing awareness for other people who are hurt. So many people have had these difficult experiences in their lives and they don’t want to talk about it, but sometimes talking about it helps us heal. Realizing so many people have been hurt and accepting that truth and growing from that is a part of learning how to live a normal life afterward.”
Blackmore hopes that viewers tune into Secrets of Polygamy and realize that even though she’s someone who was able to escape from the cult and start a new life, other people are still being hurt by the FLDS, many of whom still consider Jeffs its leader. She says she’ll keep speaking out as long as it takes so she can also help show former (and current) victims that there’s life on the other side of their trauma.
“I hope people will realize speaking out helps give a voice to those who are still being hurt and brings awareness to the world of the challenges lived in polygamy, and then just learning how to heal after trauma,” Blackmore says. “That’s a message that I want to put out for people.”
Secrets of Polygamy is currently available to stream on A&E via Sling.
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