The Witness Wore Red Quotes

“You must not lose faith in humanity. Humanity is an ocean; if a few drops of the ocean are dirty, the ocean does not become dirty.”
― Rebecca Musser, The Witness Wore Red: The 19th Wife Who Brought Polygamous Cult Leaders to Justice

“Never treat another in a manner which would make them feel small; not anyone, not even yourself.”
― Rebecca Musser, The Witness Wore Red: The 19th Wife Who Brought Polygamous Cult Leaders to Justice

“Nobody was all bad, and nobody was all good. We were human.”
― Rebecca Musser, The Witness Wore Red: The 19th Wife Who Brought Polygamous Cult Leaders to Justice

“Assertiveness means that you stand up for your rights while honoring the rights of others. It is difficult to be manipulated or to manipulate others when you are genuinely assertive, so that was why it was a danger in a culture built on manipulation.”
― Rebecca Musser, The Witness Wore Red: The 19th Wife Who Brought Polygamous Cult Leaders to Justice

“To be passive means you don’t stand up for your own rights. To be aggressive means that you stand up for your rights while not honoring the rights of others.”
― Rebecca Musser, The Witness Wore Red: The 19th Wife Who Brought Polygamous Cult Leaders to Justice

“my society, and even during the trials in Texas, I hated it when men and defense lawyers would say, “You had every right to ______” —whatever their argument was. But I was quick to clarify that women did not have every right. With few exceptions, results show that men’s and women’s rights are vastly different in the FLDS, because women are treated as chattel, to be yoked and chained and traded like mere possessions and property.”
― Rebecca Musser, The Witness Wore Red: The 19th Wife Who Brought Polygamous Cult Leaders to Justice

“Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced.…”
― Rebecca Musser, The Witness Wore Red: The 19th Wife Who Brought Polygamous Cult Leaders to Justice

“I have the right to say ‘no’ to anything when I feel I am not ready, it is unsafe, or violates my values.” Just for breathing, I deserved the same fundamental human rights as everybody else—even men! For a woman from the FLDS, this was a huge awakening. This was Genshai.”
― Rebecca Musser, The Witness Wore Red: The 19th Wife Who Brought Polygamous Cult Leaders to Justice

“The audio was a recording of Warren molesting his young wife Merrianne Jessop Jeffs, who had just turned twelve, in the YFZ temple, in front of witnesses.”
― Rebecca Musser, The Witness Wore Red: The 19th Wife Who Brought Polygamous Cult Leaders to Justice

“In fact, Mormon temple ceremonies had undergone a series of changes within the past century, each time more deeply honoring an individual’s privacy. It was Warren who had taken something sacred and twisted it for his own pleasure.”
― Rebecca Musser, The Witness Wore Red: The 19th Wife Who Brought Polygamous Cult Leaders to Justice

“To follow blindly was to shut down our sacred voice of reason and deny the God that lived in each of us. I had to realize that everyone, even I, had the capacity to be a tyrant. And every one of us had the capacity to embody charity, love, and mercy. Nobody was all bad, and nobody was all good. We were human.”
― Rebecca Musser, The Witness Wore Red: The 19th Wife Who Brought Polygamous Cult Leaders to Justice

“Some urine tests have been conducted, but these women have been treated with more respect than they have by their own husbands. As far as the people, if they had just told the truth, none of this would have ever happened!”
― Rebecca Musser, The Witness Wore Red: The 19th Wife Who Brought Polygamous Cult Leaders to Justice

“We cried for all of these women, yet we were genuinely grateful to Texas for following through where Utah and Arizona hadn’t had the guts.”
― Rebecca Musser, The Witness Wore Red: The 19th Wife Who Brought Polygamous Cult Leaders to Justice

“First of all,” Doran told me, “that red Escalade was a new model 2007, worth at least $55,000, and had been paid for in cash. Second of all, they found at least $54,000 in bills in the vehicle, and more envelopes with more letters and cash from his followers. There was also a police scanner, fifteen cell phones plus walkie-talkies, laptop computers, credit cards, and keys to several other luxury vehicles with them. They had wigs and sunglasses and all kinds of accessories to keep them unrecognizable.”
― Rebecca Musser, The Witness Wore Red: The 19th Wife Who Brought Polygamous Cult Leaders to Justice

“During the spring of 2002, the following year, Warren and Winston had a great falling-out. Although they had been strong allies for quite some time, both were young leaders with greatly developed egos, and they had begun to battle for control of the church.”
― Rebecca Musser, The Witness Wore Red: The 19th Wife Who Brought Polygamous Cult Leaders to Justice

“Loyal families did not own their own homes but rather lived in them by special invitation of the church, which owned the land.”
― Rebecca Musser, The Witness Wore Red: The 19th Wife Who Brought Polygamous Cult Leaders to Justice

“Years later, Brian would lose his life, and it would break my heart to see his name added to the long list of FLDS boys and young men who had overdosed on drugs or taken their lives.”
― Rebecca Musser, The Witness Wore Red: The 19th Wife Who Brought Polygamous Cult Leaders to Justice

“What I saw were the wealthiest men giving the most money in tithes accumulating the largest number of young wives! Warren”
― Rebecca Musser, The Witness Wore Red: The 19th Wife Who Brought Polygamous Cult Leaders to Justice

“Stories began running rampant among the FLDS about Jesus’s mother Mary being twelve when she became pregnant. In a very twisted way, it became almost a sign of “holiness” to justify a wedding for one so young. With hundreds of these girls being married off, I could not help but feel dread and horror. Some”
― Rebecca Musser, The Witness Wore Red: The 19th Wife Who Brought Polygamous Cult Leaders to Justice

“Many did, however, take money from the government via welfare, Medicaid, and food stamps, especially Celestial wives and their children. Not considered legal wives, they used their maiden names to apply for benefits. Subsidies accounted for millions of dollars—much of the community’s income.”
― Rebecca Musser, The Witness Wore Red: The 19th Wife Who Brought Polygamous Cult Leaders to Justice

“With very little education and nowhere to turn, their futures were very dim. We called them “sons of perdition,” but we heard that the outside world had begun to call them “the lost boys.” That made me mad. People on the outside didn’t understand. It wasn’t like Peter Pan, who didn’t want to grow up. These lonely boys came from a culture where God and family meant everything, literally everything, and once kicked out they had neither. They weren’t lost; they were abandoned.”
― Rebecca Musser, The Witness Wore Red: The 19th Wife Who Brought Polygamous Cult Leaders to Justice

“The term “Latter-day Saints” was coined by the early Mormons over a century prior, because they had felt they were experiencing the “last days.”
― Rebecca Musser, The Witness Wore Red: The 19th Wife Who Brought Polygamous Cult Leaders to Justice

“Our eighty-nine-year-old Seer and Revelator had prophesized to us that he would live for 150 years and be present to give the keys of the kingdom to Christ himself.”
― Rebecca Musser, The Witness Wore Red: The 19th Wife Who Brought Polygamous Cult Leaders to Justice

“To an FLDS man, if a woman was in any way rebellious, the solution was to get her married and keep her pregnant. Then all of that rebellion would be “bred” right out of her.”
― Rebecca Musser, The Witness Wore Red: The 19th Wife Who Brought Polygamous Cult Leaders to Justice

“Over the next seven years, Rulon would take on forty-six wives after me.”
― Rebecca Musser, The Witness Wore Red: The 19th Wife Who Brought Polygamous Cult Leaders to Justice

“fathers.”
― Rebecca Musser, The Witness Wore Red: The 19th Wife Who Brought Polygamous Cult Leaders to Justice

“Zola and her father had a strong testimony of the mainstream Mormon Church, which had shunned polygamy and extremism. She divorced him, refusing to join Rulon in the Work. He never saw his first wife again.”
― Rebecca Musser, The Witness Wore Red: The 19th Wife Who Brought Polygamous Cult Leaders to Justice

“Hers are pretty good!” he said, and proceeded to grab my breasts and begin fondling them. I pushed his hands away, trembling with shame and embarrassment, as everyone else at the table erupted in laughter. Weren’t these the same men who in conference on Sunday had been condemning people for their immoral desires? And yet my husband, the great “man of God,” had publicly humiliated me. I was sickened by the double standard the powerful benefited from.”
― Rebecca Musser, The Witness Wore Red: The 19th Wife Who Brought Polygamous Cult Leaders to Justice

“Once during Priesthood History, Mr. Jeffs asked us to raise our hands if we thought women should have the right to vote. Immediately I raised my hand—and realized I was the only one to have done so. My principal berated me. How could I possibly think that a woman could have the faintest idea of how to vote, or what the country would need more than her husband? “The only reason a woman should vote,” he said, “is to give more power to her husband and the church.”
― Rebecca Musser, The Witness Wore Red: The 19th Wife Who Brought Polygamous Cult Leaders to Justice

“Like Brigham Young, I don’t like whiny women! Just like him, I tell ’em, ‘Leave! I’ll replace you in an instant with another wife, and she will serve me the way a woman should serve her Priesthood Head.”
― Rebecca Musser, The Witness Wore Red: The 19th Wife Who Brought Polygamous Cult Leaders to Justice