The only honourable way to leave the FLDS is to die and I’ve known that since I was a baby,” said a Crown witness, who asked not to be identified fearing reprisals from FLDS members.
She left the religion in seven years ago but still has family, including children, who remain in Bountiful.
“I knew there was no one in the world who could help me,” she said. “There wasn’t a lawyer, there wasn’t a policeman, there was no one that could help me leave Bountiful and still be able to have my children.”
Jim Oler, a former religious leader associated with Bountiful, is accused of removing his underage daughter from Canada in order to facilitate a marriage to an American member of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (FLDS) in 2004.
The witness was born in community and raised in the FLDS doctrine, which included religious training in school, church and in the family home.
She said she was taught by religious leaders to fully obey the family priesthood head — her father as a girl, and her husband after she was married.