Woman Who Grew Up With 41 Siblings in Polygamist Cult Speaks Out

[KamaAina]

https://www.yahoo.com/parenting/woman-who-grew-up-with-41-siblings-in-polygamist-210023241.html

“The sound of gravel was the sound of home,” Wariner tells Yahoo Parenting, explaining that Chihuahua, where she grew up, was very rustic, with no paved roads. “We had no electricity and lived in an adobe house that was unfinished.” But it was home base for the fundamentalist Mormon cult her young mother had gotten into by marrying Joel LeBaron, the cult prophet. Wariner was the 39th of his 42 children.

“Three months after my birth, my dad was rumored to have been killed by his own brother in a bid for church power,” Wariner writes in an excerpt of her book published Thursday in the New York Post. “My mother, Kathy, remarried, becoming wife No. 2 of a man named Lane. She already had four children with my father and went on to have six more with Lane.”

That’s when things truly turned tragic for 8-year-old Wariner, who was repeatedly molested by Lane. But when she reported it to her mother, she was urged to “practice forgiveness.” The family subsisted on beans and eggs, while her mom regularly went to collect welfare checks in the U.S. and Wariner was left to care for her young siblings, many of whom were mentally disabled. Lane pulled her out of school at 14 so she could help out at home, and a year later, Wariner found her brother and stepbrother dead after they’d been accidentally electrocuted on a wire fence.

“I screamed in horror,” writes Wariner in the excerpt. “My mother came running out. ‘Do not touch the fence!’ I yelled. But she did. She died, too.” Shortly after that, the orphaned teen knew she had to get out, and with the help of an older brother who had moved to California, managed to escape with three younger sisters.

[monmouth4]

1. An interesting read...n/t