Research by Rebecca Kimbel

Rebecca Kimbel is an escape from FLDS polygamy.  She is a motivational speaker and can really pack a punch when she speaks of the “glue” that holds all Mormon Fundamentalist cults together–it is FEAR, fear due to the Blood Atonement oaths.  Here is her analysis of “Sister Wives.”

FLDS REALITY

Author Rebecca Kimbel, MSCD,  DTM

Sister Wives Reality TV Show is not reality. It is an attempt to deceive the public into accepting polygamist cults.

Kody Brown and his wives are from the same polygamist group I was born and cultured in. I am fifth generation fundamentalist polygamist. I was born a slave and sold as a slave. Few polygamist brides are sold. Most are bartered off to men of power to strengthen family ties. We are told we can choose our own husbands, but we must choose the one we are told to choose or suffer the consequences. We were taught to forfeit our minds, bodies and our lives to those in power who “spoke for God”.

Kody told Oprah polygamy was a life style “choice.” In the series Meri admits polygamy is her “faith.” Robin was “born into it.” To understand what “choice” means in an FLDS Polygamist cult, you need to be aware of the foundational doctrine these cults are based on. The following is a quote from the religious doctrine that binds all of the polygamist groups together.

Journal of Discourses volume 4 page 219-220

Allegedly the words of the prophet of God,

“I could refer you to plenty of incidences where men have been righteously slain, in order to atone for their sins. I have seen hundreds of people who have had a chance (for resurrection in eternity) if their LIVES HAD BEED TAKEN and their BLOOD SPILLED on the ground as a smoking incense to the almightily, but who are now angels to the devil. I have known a great many men who LEFT THIS CHURCH who have no chance for exaltation, but if their BLOOD HAD BEEN SPILLED, it would have been better for them. The wicked and the IGNORANT of the nations forbid this principal’s being in FULL FORCE, but THE TIME WILL COME WHEN THE LAWS OF GOD WILL BE IN FULL FORCE.”

This is one of many of our “blood covenant” quotes. The Journal of Discourses is filled with them and they are the basis of FLDS religion. This information is available through Tanner Books in Salt Lake City. www.utlm.org

We were systematically and repeatedly taught we had to live polygamy or suffer eternal damnation and the only way our souls could be saved was by blood atonement. Jesus didn’t die for our sins. We had to die for the sin of rejecting the gospel, to be saved. We were told we had a choice. We could obey or suffer the consequences. Like holding a gun to your head and saying, “Do you do as I say, or do I pull the trigger? Your choice.”

This is Kody Brown’s life style “choice” This is every FLDS polygamist’s “choice”. The glue that binds us is FEAR not FAITH. Look closer and you will see that we are America’s Taliban by another name.

Polygamy, Power and murder were front page news in the Salt Lake City Tribune for over a decade at a time. Jon Krakuer’s book, “Under the banner of Heaven”, a story of a violent faith, has been well documented. New York Times best selling author Irene Spencer’s “Cult Insanity” is a factual account of her life in an FLDS polygamist cult where Eril LeBaron, her brother in law, was responsible for the murders of over thirty people. Irene Spencer is my sister. The murdered included my family members and friends. You can verify all this on the internet by pulling up the names provided here.

Polygamist towns and compounds present themselves as “separate” and unrelated to those who behave irresponsibly, but they are all based on the same blood covenants and male entitlements. Ervil LeBaron was not an isolated case… JEFFERY LUDGREN was a polygamist and a MASS MURDERER, Other murderers entitled to kill because of their Polygamist religion are DAN LAFFERTY, PARLEY DUTSON, ADDAM SWAP, arson, bombing and killing. Search the archives of the Salt Lake City Tribune, there are more. TARZA LEBARON and RENA CHYNOWETH, VONDA WHITE, EDDIE MARSTON, DUANE CHYNOWETH, and others carried out the murders for ERVIL LEBARON. Ervil was upholding the “blood covenants” all FLDS cults base their religious teachings on. There are more. Research the Salt Lake City Tribune and prepare to be shocked.

FLDS children are taught to deceive the “none believer” to protect our prophets of God. (The TV series Sister Wives” is doing this.) We were taught to obey the law ONLY when it doesn’t get in the way of the gospel. In other words, we, God’s chosen people, were above the law. Check out the following criminals on the web. Some of these polygamists are powerful cult leaders;

Owen Allred                      Grand Theft                                Polygamist leader of the Apostolic United Brethren (and my uncle)

Ross LeBaron                    Child Molestation and Incest

Warren Jeffs                       Child Molestation                       Polygamist leader of Yearning for Zion ranch in Texas.  (Warren Jeff’s father, Rulon Jeff’s,

performed my marriage in the back seat of a car, when I was a child bride).

Brian David Mitchell         Kidnapping of ELIZABETH SMART

Tom Green                         Child Molestation                       (He took my thirteen year old niece, his stepdaughter, as a child bride to become one of his wives.)

And the list is too long to include here.

“Bleeding the Beast” or deceiving and taking from the non believer, is a polygamist entitlement. Lying to protect our way of life is justice because we are God’s chosen people. (And you are NOT). This is a vital part of our religious teaching.

Susan Ray Schmidt, author of “His Favorite Wife” speaks in an effort to get the church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints to take responsibility for polygamist women and children. Many polygamist view the church as the parent from which they sprang, and like a disobedient child they hold onto the church for validity and justification with one hand and pull away from it with the other in their struggle for independence, superiority and control. They do not recognize The Church of Jesus Christ of Ladder Day Saints authority. Fundamentalists believe the authority is theirs. The responsibility belongs to the church. Thousands of members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Ladder Day Saints find them selves reeling in shock that they should be held accountable for something they have not believed in, have not done and for many, have not known about.

Polygamists always blame others for their actions. Biblical King David from thousands of years ago, a religious zealot pioneer from one hundred and fifty years ago, a church they admit they don’t even belong to, anybody, everybody, except themselves. In a real world adults are responsible for their own behavior. If polygamists can make someone else responsible for their behavior, they will.

All FLDS polygamist families have the same basic religious beliefs and the same internet of transferable women which are the breeding stock of their kingdoms on earth as well as heaven. Polygamists believe they will become Gods, having worlds of their own and people them with their own seed. This is why they need so many wives and why breeding is basic to their power.  This is also why interbreeding has left its consequences.

Google “Polygamist community faces rare genetic disorder.” Research this for yourself.

I am one of thirty nine children born to my father’s six wives. I am among the thirty one Dad claimed as his own.

There were four babies born in four months when I arrived. We slipped into our enormous family comparatively unnoticed, in a sea of women and children whose psychological and emotional needs were considered to be unimportant and unnecessary.

We were regimentally trained in blind obedience and self sacrifice from our earliest memories. My mother, like other polygamist women, was in bondage to responsibility, ignorance and fear that embraced our culture. She lived her life in quiet desperate servitude.

Our religious basics came from the Biblical Old Testament and were endorsed by early Mormon zealots. Women had no rights. Women and children were property and it was the religious right of the men to punish them to any extreme, including death, if they were disobedient to the faith.

In my world the men had the freedom. The women had the servitude.

The men had the rights. The women had the responsibility.

The men made the rules and if anything went wrong, the women got the blame and the consequences.

We lived our lives in mandatory submissive bondage, while we placated our minds with holy self-righteous superiority. We hated and feared the outside world for its evil and inferior spiritual condition.

We upheld our freedom to believe as we chose to believe, but we chose eternal damnation and death by blood atonement for those who chose not to believe as we did.

This was especially true for those who tried to leave our religion.

We embraced suffering and hardship as necessities to gain heavenly rewards, but we wept with bitter anger when life gave to us, that which we embraced.

Boundaries were confused in our culture. All light work was to be done by women, which was interpreted as any work a woman might be able to do. The fact that women were producing children as fast as possible did not ease their work load.

Gardening, care of animals, milking, picking  crops, canning, food, grinding flour, making meals, sewing clothes, home schooling children and serving the men the best of what we had, never slowed down for childbirth.

When our mothers were incapacitated through child birth or illness, the responsibility fell to the children. Most of us grew up believing it was our fault if we didn’t have enough to eat. It was our fault if there wasn’t enough water in the ditch to make the crop grow. It was our fault if the range cows broke in and ate the garden, or if a child got hurt and we weren’t there to prevent it, while we worked in the fields, ground the flour and tried to make the world we knew, turn out right.

If we spoke to strangers, if they found out about us, we may be taken away from our families by the welfare. If they found out we were polygamist children Dad may go to prison and it would be our fault because we weren’t legal. Polygamist children grew up feeling the weight of the world on their shoulders and in fear of constant persecution from the out side world. We were too young to understand that our persecution came from inside our own private world.

We didn’t know the difference between piety and integrity. We were commanded to obey without question. The price of disobedience was high.

In our world, fear of power masqueraded as faith in God.

Unquestionable obedience masqueraded as wisdom.

Sacrifice and devotion were taught to be the same.

Joy was crushed beneath the heels of piety until after years of suffering many looked forward to death as a liberator. Our suicide and mental illness rate were always higher than those of less “saintly people.”

Laced together with bonds of fear from all directions, we were too terrified to accept the consequences of doing anything about our condition. We were told the price would be everything, in this life and the next. Our children, our family, our homes, the only life we had ever known and if we could leave, could we get our children out? How would we survive? How could we care for them? How could we cope in a wicked world who hated us?

Before I was old enough to know that women had choices, I was the mother of a large family. Before I was wise enough to direct my own life, it had been taken in a direction to keep me in bondage and control. Before I learned how to be responsible for myself, I was responsible for six children.

Today, my children are grown and in pursuit of their own dreams. Today I have realized accomplishments I once only dreamed about. Today I share what I’ve learned with others, motivating and directing them in taking control of their own lives, their dreams and their successes.

The dual standard was an extreme hallmark of FLDS thinking. Multiple partners took men to the highest of heavenly glory and women to the depths of hell. Men became Gods by spreading their seed into glorious eternal kingdoms in heaven and Godhood on their own planets. Women were born to serve them and provide the population for their kingdoms on earth as well as in heaven.

In the name of religion, there is a mind-boggling lack of responsibility for behavior. In the real world, every adult should be responsibility for their own behavior, not their leader, not someone who lived a hundred years ago and not a church they admit they don’t belong to. They and they alone are responsible for what they do.

As long as they don’t have to take that responsibility, you can be guaranteed, they won’t.

In the name of freedom of religion, they take freedom away from others.

In the name of God, they force a standard on others that they themselves would never tolerate.

In the name of scripture, they avoid responsibility.

In the name of superiority they hold others responsible for what they themselves do.

In the name of Holiness, they use fear to control others.

In the name of the priesthood they use children as hostages to control their mothers.

Legality, the only question seems to be, “Is the sex between two consenting adults?

Wake up America. Sex is the topic title, but the script is about POWER

If men were personally financially responsible for the children they spawn, polygamy would quickly shrink.

Remove poor self esteem, fear of retaliation, damnation and blood atonement and polygamy would almost disappear.

Aristotle said, “To free a man it is not enough to strike the shackles from his limbs, you must free him from the bondage of his ignorance. To enlist a man it is not enough to take him into your army, you must enlist the power of his reason.”

Justice, wisdom and compassion can work in harmony, if we have the courage to see that ignorance claims it’s victims from subordinate servants to those who are tempted by glory, power and money, only to find themselves trapped in a Stockholm syndrome concentration camp reality where escape from slavery can mean death.

In cultures where a segment of the population has no rights, because they are women, slaves, those of a different culture, religion or race, the degree of abuse escalates in proportion to the degree of inequality between them. This is true of communities, tribes and families as well.  Ultimate power is opportunity for ultimate corruption.

The MO (method of operation) for victimization is standard. The seduction is glory, power, money and women.  Men see it as opportunity. They don’t recognize it as bait. They take the hook, jump in and work their way up the ranks learning how to get and keep control. Later they realize their freedom, their choices and their lives don’t belong to them any more. They are owned and controlled by the men above them, as surely as they control those beneath them. Getting out is dangerous and difficult. Fellow members “suck up” to those in power to make the best of a bad situation. Descent is dangerous and unspoken. Men doubt their own courage to turn their lives around. They drown their conscience in an attempt to deny their pain. Now they too are among the guilty. These are the methods, the MO of organized crime. It can be the Mafia, a drug cartel, a pornography ring, a sex slave operation, the neighborhood gang or cult, who takes your labor, your property and your life direction in the name of God.

Those sucked in to organized crime, by any name, are subject to and controlled by the men directing them, the men who control the money, the women, everything EXCEPT themselves. The lust for power is quick to change from Narcissistic to Sociopathic. Human life becomes insignificant. Controllers have no use for those they cannot use. Trapped Men watch as their morals, their lives and their power to do anything about it appears to slip away. Few leave. Most die as a pawn in someone else’s game.