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RUTH CROSSES THE RUBICON
âBrigham Young, Journal of Discourses, Vol. 9
âWarren Jeffs, lecture to eighth grade girls, November 1, 2002
âJournal of Ruth Stubbs, nineteen-year-old plural wife, June 2001, Phoenix
On a night nearing Christmas 2001, a resolved Ruth Stubbs stroked the perfect faces of her two sleeping toddlers, reviewing her deliriously dangerous plan to save their lives. If it worked, and that was a big qualifier, the plan would save her life as well, but Ruth didnât care about her own messed-up life. Looking back on the eternity of her nineteen years on earth, she understood she had never cared. FLDS had tricked her into self-loathing from birth, and tomorrow theyâd begin hunting her like an animal.
The last three years had been the most monstrous. So monstrous it was sometimes hard to remember what had come before the prophet, out of the blue, âgaveâ her to a guy twice her age whom she didnât know. Until that surreal day almost exactly three years ago, Ruth felt sheâd enjoyed a pretty OK childhood despite living it around the utterly twisted Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, with âaroundâ being the operative word. Looking back on it, Ruth realized sheâd never truly been in FLDS. Until recently, her life had not been the physically battering, emotionally hopeless existence that sheâd handed her own children, but in her defense, Ruth never imagined there would be any children in this picture. Sheâd only just turned sixteen when theyâd literally thrown her in a pickup truck and driven her to hell.
That her father had helped them had been completely out of character and very difficult to accept, but Ruth didnât really blame him anymore. David Stubbs was FLDS raised. Heâd acquired the three wives needed to enter the celestial kingdom and rule a planet after death before Ruth was born in 1982. That was lucky, because not so many men got a shot at the celestial kingdom after Rulon Jeffs and his son Warren took over Short Creek in 1986. After that, you had to be on the good side of Uncle Rulon, as he was called, to get the not-quite-ripe young girls assigned to you, and the Jeffs had some high-handed notions about strengthening Israelite bloodlines when making the assignments.
Until the Jeffs happened, David Stubbs had been kind of like FLDS royalty, being descended from one of the oldest polygamist families since The Workâas FLDS used to be calledâgot started in Short Creek during the 1930s. Consequently, the Stubbs family had some of the best lands with the most water rightsâvery important in the desert. Stubbs women had married into all the important Short Creek families who were also there from the beginning, and everybody was cool with the Lord and one another. Not to be too profane or anything, but Ruth had observed that the bonds of a more terrestrial nature could make the day-to-day business of living go a lot smoother.
Which was probably why David Stubbs wasnât too impressed with the Johnny-come-lately Jeffs family when they moved from Salt Lake City to Short Creek after the former prophet, Leroy Johnson, died. Naturally, Ruth hadnât known Uncle Leroy personally because she was just four years old when he died in 1986, but she did know he was beloved by a lot of Short Creek people, her dad included. When Rulon Jeffs just up and announced he was the new prophet when heâd lived in his Salt Lake all that time, a lot of Short Creekers didnât buy it. The first prophet, Joseph Smith, said that only God selects the prophet, and Uncle Leroy, who was the only one talking to God at the time, hadnât said squat about Rulon Jeffs before he passed on.
Plus, it was very cheeky, the way Uncle Rulon moved down from his big house in Salt Lake to take over Short Creek. Rulon and his favored son, Warren, had always been a little snotty to the Short Creek folks, who were still in shock that the prophet Leroy Johnson had died at all. Like all the prophets before him, Uncle Leroy said heâd never die until the apocalypse, which FLDS people have been expecting just about any day now from the beginning. Uncle Leroy predicted the end of days about three times, even anointing with sacred oil the ATVs Godâs chosen peopleâFLDS peopleâwould need to hightail it to higher ground once the wholesale butchery of all the disbelievers started.
The descriptions of it could just make you sick with all the Gentilesâ guts and blood flying everywhere and getting on your clothes. FLDS held survivalist skills classes where you learned how to slit cowsâ throats and everything, but nothing ever happened. People were disappointed when the world didnât end, but they felt even worse when Uncle Leroy explained that it hadnât happened because the FLDS people hadnât been pure enough for Joseph Smith and Jesus to ride their heaven cloud back to earth. The people felt really bad theyâd let Jesus down that way. Uncle Leroy said that everybody had to double down and do better to help end the world, but he never said anything about the stuck-up Rulon Jeffs being elevated.
There was a big fight over it with a good number of people, Ruthâs dad included, saying that Rulon Jeffs was not the prophet. But Uncle Rulon had his supporters too. They got kind of ugly about it, forming what some dubbed enforcement âGod squadsââmen who did what Uncle Rulon told them to do, including men in the police force. Uncle Rulon started âpoofingâ people, sometimes in the middle of the night, which meant they were excommunicated and driven away. Their wives and kids got reassigned to guys Uncle Rulon liked, and nobody could ever say the other guysâ names again.
There were too many dissenters to poof them all, though, and it might have turned into a standoff, except the people on the wrong side of Uncle Rulon were alarmed about the rough exuberance of his support, so the dissenters banded together and moved onto land adjoining Short Creek. They were still fundamentalist Mormon polygamists, but they called themselves the Centennial Park group, later naming their town Centennial Park City. The men were allowed to wear short-sleeved shirts, which Uncle Rulon said just proved how they already had one foot in hell.*
David Stubbs still didnât accept Rulon Jeffs as the prophet, but he didnât want to abandon his choice lands by moving to Centennial Park either, so he stayed put. This was unheard of. Living in Short Creek without acknowledging Rulon Jeffs as Godâs prophet pretty much made David Stubbs an apostate, and everybody knew that those who renounced FLDS were stripped of everything they owned and run out of town. But David Stubbs didnât take the hint, so in 1986, Jeffs sent notices all over Short Creek that FLDS folks were âtenants at willâ of the prophet, and it was the prophetâs will that Ruthâs father and twenty other guys get the hell out of town. When this legal-sounding declaration, along with all the preceding threats and harassment, still failed to persuade the upstart FLDS men to abandon their lives, Rulon Jeffs was stumped. Heâd never needed a backup plan in the past, but before he could fully consider his next move, Stubbs and the others hit Jeffs with the unimaginable. They filed a lawsuit against Rulon Jeffs in federal court claiming that they actually owned their lands under the terms of the UEP trust.
This was a lot more serious than the Centennial Park insurrection. That had been a stone shocker too, but those people had run away like they were supposed to. If people who didnât believe that Rulon Jeffs was Godâs prophet were allowed to live among those who did, it could really mess up Jeffsâs power, which was utterly dependent on blind obedience coupled with Jeffsâs ability to destroy the lives of anyone who opposed him. If the twenty-one families refusing to leave their lands won, what kind of message would that send? If Jeffs couldnât take away a manâs home and family, would people still fear him? Would they still do what he told them to do? Jeffs didnât want to know the answer to those questions, so he dialed up FLDSâs trusty Salt Lake City law firm of Snow, Christensen, and Martineau and the most dedicated FLDS attorney of all: Rod Parker.
Like he always did, Rod Parker just blistered the apostates led by David Stubbs in court, saying that a religion is untouchable in America, and religious leadershipsânot the courtsâhave the right to decide who stays and who goes. This argument had always prevailed, so you could have knocked everybody in FLDS over with a feather when, after years of battling, the Utah Supreme Court ruled against Rulon Jeffs in 1998, meaning that David Stubbs and the others got to stay put without declaring Rulon Jeffs the prophet.
Sure, the court had ruled only on a small technicality concerning the definition of the trust. It had not addressed the overall religious questions, which were still open for the legal hunt. But technicalitiesâlifeâs little detailsâhave a strong historical track record of tipping events in one direction rather than another, and so it was with the 1998 decision in Jeffs v. Stubbs. In seven years, the case would act as the explosives in a legal bomb that would leave the FLDS leadership fighting for their lives in three states, or at least fighting to retain control over every aspect of the membersâ lives, which was more or less the same thing.
Though they werenât planned or intended, the unrelated actions of three members of the Stubbs family would undo fifty years of FLDS untouchable status imparted by the disastrous raid of 1953. On the night nearing Christmas 2001, Ruth hadnât a clue that her desperate bid for freedom would be the timer set upon the ticking bomb, but Ruth and David Stubbs hadnât been the only family rebels. Ruth had another example from which to draw strength.
WHEN RUTH WAS five years old, her full-blooded sister, Pennie, accomplished the impossible. Threatened with the prospect of an intolerable marriage, Pennie fled Short Creek and got away clean. Sheâd been fourteen years old with flashy blue eyes, a beautiful brunette child with a womanâs full figure, one that had not been overlooked by Rulon Jeffs. Without fanfare, Jeffs gave Pennie to a fifty-eight-year-old loyalist the girl absolutely detested, a swaggering bully with five other wives and something like seventy kids, many of them far older than Pennie. Ruth expected the guy must have been a serious Uncle Rulon fan to be given this juicy young girl, but Pennie wasnât having it.
In FLDS fashion, Pennie had only twenty-four hours to get herself together. As their mother worked on the wedding dress with other FLDS women, Ruth could just barely remember Pennieâs loud despair, screaming at their mother, who was urging her to obey the prophet in the strongest terms. In an astonishing display of independent thinking, Pennie shrieked that her life was worth something and she would not forfeit her future to become a pedophileâs concubine. Their mother, Sally Stubbs, told the girl to hush up and accept her place like all FLDS women before her. Sally did not go after her daughter when the girl stormed from the house. Where on earth could she go?
Even today there is no public transportation in Short Creek, not even taxis. Girls are closely monitored. A girl even walking alone on the streets would be reported to the cops, whoâd come pick her up.* Even if she managed to get to the main road and hitchike, the first person who stopped would be driving her straight back to town. Walking out of the desert southwest was laughable, and even if, wonder over wonder, she did get past Short Creek, theyâd be coming after her for sure. She might get flat out kidnapped from wherever she landed. Or FLDS would sic one of their law firms on her. Parental rights were tried and true. If she had kids, theyâd go after them through her husband. If she were a kid, theyâd come after her through her parents. If all else failed, some women had been legally committed to insane asylums.
But Pennie Stubbs beat them. Keeping to the bushes, flattening herself against walls when camouflage was scarce, the scared but steady girl made her way though Short Creekâs dark streets to the two-lane blacktop leading out of town. In those days, getting past the polygamy-sympathetic town of St. George forty miles away was imperative. A fleeing girl had to make it almost to Las Vegas to be truly clear of FLDS influence. Between the FLDS police, the members, and the fact that nobody outside of these two groups would be afoot at the late hour in the remote area, Pennieâs chances were as close to zero as it got.
But as a confident Sally Stubbs continued the wedding dress as she waited for her daughter to be returned, the impossible materialized behind a lone set of headlights on the highway, illuminating a quivering, bedraggled teenage girl with a tear-stained face and her thumb out. The driver who should have been an FLDS cop or member was instead a businessman whoâd elected to take the back roads on a whim, then decided he felt fresh enough to push through the night to his Las Vegas destination. Most staggering of all, the man knew all about FLDS, and he didnât like anything he knew. Although the businessman was inviting big trouble by driving a runaway minor girl across state lines without parental permission, that is exactly what he did. The man Pennie still regards as heaven-sent risked his own arrest rather than return her for the rape and misery that awaited her. He drove out of his way to bring her to a womenâs shelter, which would not report her presence, and left her with all the money in his wallet, $200, and an order to have a good life.
That is exactly what Pennie intended. Today, she is Pennie Petersen, happily married mother and a scourge for FLDS, one of a half-dozen people denounced from FLDS pulpits by name. Her outspoken public activism is irritating enough, but it has been her success in helping dozens of young girls escape Short Creek that has proved most devastating for a sect that needs to keep every single female born into the cocoon available for its older men.
WHEN RUTH STARTED thinking about leaving, she was sure glad she had Pennie for a sister because everybody knew that getting out of town was just part of the fight. Like most FLDS girls, Ruth had been pulled from school, such as it was, in the fifth grade. With abbreviated educations, FLDS girls have no job or social skills. More insurmountable than that, they donât know anyone in the outside world who can offer support and guidance. Theyâve nowhere to live and have never handled money outside of food stamps. They end up frightened and destitute, usually with small, wailing children for whom they cannot provide. Disoriented, confused, terrified, it is usually not difficult for FLDS to lure them back with promises of forgiveness and love.
For the less persuadable, there were always the FLDS lawyers and the polygamy-friendly Utah courts bordering Short Creek. Going after a girlâs children killed two birds with one stone, because once FLDS lawyers got custody of a womanâs children, she almost always returned to the sect. Ruth was sure sheâd react to losing her kids the same way other FLDS women had: unable to bear life without her children, she would return.
When she did, there would be terrible punishment. The loss of eternal salvation wasnât always deterrent enough for the most desperate FLDS girls. Elders had to be certain potential runaways suspected more corporeal consequences. The possibilities were whispered shadows, elusive as snow on the wind. Women werenât supposed to know anything at all about FLDS worldly workings, and damn few men did either, but Ruth figured the elders let just enough slip out, oopsy-like, to give the community a shudder of what âuppityâ women could expect. Maybe youâd be stuck up in one of those caves in the vermillion cliffs with not enough food or water. Cold, hungry, scared, with only sporadic visits from these gnarly old men who would yell at you or even hit you. You might be shipped off to some other FLDS settlement for the same treatment. After a few weeks of that, girls would be just begging for that sealing ceremony. It was known definitely that if you had kids, theyâd be taken away, maybe forever. This was a measure that could be taken in the open, with the full support of folks who agreed a hell-bound, disobedient woman shouldnât be taking her kids with her.
Ruth knew all this, but it had just come to the point where staying was scarier for her kids than being caught. Pennie was her ace in the hole, the sister who knew the ropes. And Ruthâs father had given her another set of skills most FLDS girls didnât have: the freedom to think for herself.
To the horror of his three wives and everybody else in Short Creek, David Stubb allowed Ruth to wear pants. Donât ask her why, but Ruth had fallen in love with tractors as a little girl. Her dad let her work on the familyâs tractors while wearing pants, a double whammy scandal that first set the harsh Short Creek rumor mill churning. Ruth was a natural, the ultimate tomboy. She worked alongside her brothers loading timber, digging fence posts, and laying pipe. For a while, she had a tomboy twin, her sister Jinny, who was born the same year as Ruth by a different mom. They were like the two musketeers, sacrificing the sacrosanct FLDS modesty for such disturbing activities as fishing, camping, and hunting, although she didnât enjoy the death part of hunting.
David Stubbs also allowed Ruth to have friends, even friends who were boys, as she got older. That was another bad scandal, made worse by the fact she could also talk to boys and girls from excommunicated or apostate families. This behavior was so shocking, the fact that Ruth smoked the occasional cigarette and drank a watered down, convenience store beer now and again was practically overlooked, except by the FLDS cops. They kept picking her up, giving her tickets, and threatening to take her before the prophet for hanging around the wrong people and having fun. Ruth sure got tired of getting those stupid, expensive tickets from the police, but David Stubbs always straightened her legal difficulties out quietly. One day sheâd be facing hundreds of dollars of tickets and court dates, and the next day her troubles would disappear as easily as did the guys the prophet didnât like.
âDonât get caught again,â Stubbs would advise her with a jocular wink and no insight into the true meaning of the tickets. But then, Ruthâs percei...
