Rachel Jeffs, now 33, told NBC News the abuse began when she was 8 and happened countless times, despite her mother\u2019s attempt to intervene, before she confronted him about it in a letter at age 16.<\/p>\n
Other former members of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, including son Roy Jeffs, have also accused him of sexually abusing them as children. Rachel Jeffs has penned a book about her experiences titled \u201cBreaking Free: How I Escaped Polygamy, the FLDS Cult, and My Father, Warren Jeffs.\u201d<\/p>\n
Warren Jeffs is serving a life prison sentence in Texas for assaulting girls he considered wives. He does not have a lawyer and did not respond to NBC\u2019s request for comment.<\/p>\n
At age 18, Rachel Jeffs was informed she would become the third wife of a man in the group, a breakaway sect based along the Utah-Arizona border. The prospect left her shaken and afraid, as did her father\u2019s suggestion that she try to become pregnant with her new husband\u2019s child on the day of the wedding.<\/p>\n
She left the group after her father sent her away from her children for months at a time over perceived wrongs she denied committing.<\/p>\n
\u201cI felt that he was punishing me for what he did to me. Like he was trying to break me and make me feel like I was worse than him,\u201d she said. \u201cAnd I wouldn\u2019t let myself go there. I knew he had done wrong, and I didn\u2019t want to let him break me.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Jeffs, now 33, told NBC News the abuse began when she was 8 and happened countless times, despite her mother\u2019s attempt to intervene, before she confronted him about it in a letter at age 16. Other former members of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, including son Roy Jeffs, have […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":102813,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5736,5735],"tags":[3586,463,407,524,121],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-102812","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-local-news","category-news","tag-arizona","tag-mormon","tag-religion-and-belief","tag-sexual-assault","tag-utah"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/102812","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=102812"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/102812\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/102813"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=102812"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=102812"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=102812"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=102812"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}