Cult Escape! Warren Jeffs' Child Bride Tells All
Briell Decker was just 18 years old when she was forced to marry polygamist cult leader Warren Jeffs and plunged into a living nightmare. Now, she's revealing the truth about her time in the controversial cult over a year after her escape, to RadarOnline.com.
Decker, a member of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, spent almost a decade married to the religion's "prophet," Warren Jeffs, who is now serving a life sentence for child rape. In that time, she told RadarOnline.com, she hit rock bottom and feared for her life.
"When I was living in Wyoming, I was being held in a secret house and I was being accused of rejecting the group," Decker told RadarOnline.com.
"The raids were happening and I was so scared," she said. "This was the darkest time for me. In the house people told me if I could kill myself they would tell people it was an accident so that no one would know how unhappy I was. It was so manipulative and it worked."
Decker was one of Jeffs' 79 wives, one of the few that actually escaped from the cult and the only one who has publicly spoken out about the horrors she faced.
She told RadarOnline.com how she believes the people in the cult tried to brainwash her into submission.
"They told me that I was going to be killed in a 'Blood Atonement,'" Decker claimed.
According to the fundamental Mormon church, Blood Atonement occurs when someone commits sins that are so heinous, that they must be killed and then their blood is given as a sacrificial offering.
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Decker said as she feared for her life, "I had to make him Jeffs believe I wasn't worthy of Blood Atonement."
Another dark period descended, she said, when she was preparing to flee the cult's clutches.
"People were hearing that I was trying to escape so they started harassing me," she said. "They told all of my neighbors that I was crazy, so that if I ever went to ask them for help they wouldn't help me."
Decker admitted she was "so uneducated," she almost couldn't escape.
"They took me to Flagstaff, Arizona," she said. "And I saw the police there and they told me that there were papers signed because of my mental state and I had to stay with them, I couldn't leave.
"I was so devastated, I thought for sure that I would never get out."
Despite pressure from the cult to rejoin their ranks, Decker told RadarOnline.com that she refused to follow the cult rules: "I just didn't give up."
Stay with RadarOnline.com for more exclusive details from Briell, including photos from her days imprisoned in the cult and her mother's description of her escape in the dead of night.
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