SHANELL: I'm 24 years old, and I'm from the Kingston
Polygamist Group.
I got married at 18 to my first cousin.
I thought he was a good guy.
I thought he was a decent man who would treat me right.
But I was wrong.
My marriage to this guy was hell on Earth.
After only a few months, my ex-husband
started to verbally abuse me and constantly telling
me that I was worthless.
He would tell me that he wanted to marry somebody else.
I just knew I had to get out.
So I called my mom and finally told
her what had been going on.
Then she arranged to have a couple of my uncles come up
and get me.
While my uncles were on their way, my husband came home.
So I called my mom.
He took my phone away, and he dragged me in the house.
Once he got me inside, he threw me down the stairs.
And my mom was on the phone with me for some of it.
So my mom could hear a little bit of what was going on.
She called the police, and they arrested him.
The first few months after I escaped,
I was so broken, mentally and emotionally.
I didn't know how to handle the stress.
I had panic attacks every day, nightmares every night.
And there were a few times that I ran down
the middle of the street in the middle of the night crying
my eyes out because I didn't know
how else to handle the stress.
I literally could not mentally function.
It does hurt.
I mean, I thought--
you know, I thought I was marrying the love of my life.
I was so wrong.
Well, I'm sorry you had to experience
what you experienced.
I'm truly sorry.
SHANELL: Well, it got me to where I am today.
And this is a much better place.
That's a brave way to look at it.
Does it make you nervous to come back to your mom's house?
Yeah, I'm nervous about the neighbors seeing.
Right now I am going over to my mom's.
And I'm going to take this opportunity to talk
to her about leaving polygamy.
The last thing we want is we don't want anyone
making a phone call because we do not
want Daniel to show up there.
Be safe.
Good luck.
SHANELL: My mom is the seventh of 14 wives.
She lives in a building that is owned by the Order.
Part of the building is apartments.
But most of it is rented out to a trucking company.
My mom's lived here for 15 years and raised 12 children here.
It is a dump.
Mom?
SHIRLEY: Oh, yeah, hi.
There you are.
I was just noticing today when I was loading the dishwasher,
it goes way down right here where my foot is.
So I flipped this up.
How did that happen?
The water, I'm sure it is.
It's clearly falling apart.
She's living out here because that's
where Daniel told her to go.
My mom is a concubine because she's been raising her kids
on her own since she had them.
Daniel only comes around to either get her pregnant
or try to get one of the kids married off.
There's mold all over the place.
This shower is disgusting.
That shower is.
You can't even use it.
We've never been able to use it.
This place is a dump.
I feel like it's a dungeon.
I'm trapped.
Who cut that out?
Daniel.
SHANELL: If you look around house,
there's no pictures that have me.
So now my mom has some empty frames
on the wall and family pictures that
doesn't have everybody in it.
SHIRLEY: This picture, I'm missing
the first part of my family.
Daniel decided that because you've left,
then you're not a part of the family anymore.
So I will never be able to have a family picture.
That's the closest thing I've got to a family picture.
That's just the way it is.
We definitely need to get you out of this house.
I don't know where I would go.
But I don't want to deal with him anymore.
What is it that you want to leave?
The house, Daniel, the Order, or all of it--
at this point, honestly?
I don't-- I know that I don't want to be in this apartment.
I am sick and tired of being here.
And I don't want to be here.
I would like a better life for your brothers and sisters.
And I wonder if I'd leave, if they would get a better life.
You know, well where would I go?
That's the whole thing, where would I go?
Because if I go anywhere, I'd have to be able to have a job.
And I don't know that I could get a job.
One of my biggest fears is that my mom won't leave.
She thinks that if she leaves, she
will go to hell because that's what we're told our whole life.
My mom's brainwashed.
SHIRLEY: So just right here?
SHANELL: Yep.
SHIRLEY: Wow, that's a lot of trees.
SHANELL: I know.
I love it.
I'm excited to see this house.
Are you?
It looks interesting.
I'm hoping that once she sees what she could have,
she will make the decision to finally
leave and be out for good.
SHIRLEY: Oh, I like that.
SHANELL: I do too.
And you could be in here.
This is the master bedroom.
It's a nice-sized shower.
Cool.
If you lived here, you would actually have a master
bathroom you could use.
Don't you think this house looks so much better
and feels so much better than yours?
How would you feel living in a place like this?
I don't know.
I'm not sure how I feel.
In my mind's eye, I was imagining
having a vaulted ceilings.
I just-- I don't know.
SHANELL: Seriously, you're so brainwashed.
This is 100 times better than the place you're in now.
I think the kids would be so much happier here.
I'm offering to help her.
Her family outside of the Order is offering to help her.
And it's still not good enough.
I don't know what else we can do.
Well, it's time to consider.
But not today.
I just don't think I could do it right now.
I feel like that I still have a lot of responsibilities
that I have to wrap up.
And--
Before you could move into a different house?
Just before I could even make any really
big life-changing decisions.
And a move is a life-changing decision.
I'm not ready to do that.
It just feels too overwhelming.
And I'm not ready to do that.
It's really devastating to know that my siblings still
have to live that life and that my mom
is still living that life.
It's drilled so hard into your head
that that's Gods work, that's where you're supposed to be,
and that if you leave, you would have been better
off never to have been born.
It's going to take time.
So anyway-- she probably, in her mind's eye, is thinking mom,
you're a nut.
And my personal opinion is I feel like she
hasn't learned forgiveness.
The Kingstons do provide a home for you.
They provide a job for you.
If you hold on to all those hurts and those pains,
you don't hurt them.
You're hurting yourself by hanging on to that.