International Journal of Cultic Studies ■ Vol. 1, No. 1, 2010 93
Although shows like HBO’s Big Love tend to
romanticize polygamy by showing week after
week how love and strong bonds keep the
protagonist family together through hardship,
attacks, exposure, and so on, popular mass-
media renderings rarely depict the much darker
side of polygamous communities. For example,
absent is the number of deaths in closed groups
like the FLDS, related to a genetic disorder that
handicaps and kills many children early in life.
According to Brent Jeffs, this phenomenon is
consistently denied within the community it
results from generations of inbreeding,
reinforced by the fact that the cult rarely recruits
outsiders. Making matters worse, under Warren
Jeffs’ reign, these birth defects came to be seen
as a curse and a sign of sin. Brent also mentions
that 50 percent of births are male, leaving boys
in not such a privileged position in an
environment in which the elders like to practice
“sexual variety without guilt” and want the best
pick of the female crop.
Unfortunately for Brent and many others (boys
and girls, men and women), as time went on,
successive generations of FLDS leadership
instituted a more regimented, Spartan, and harsh
lifestyle. Isolation and change in leadership led
to corruption and abuse. Life in the community
became more difficult to cope with yet, all the
while, members tended to “go along with”
leadership demands. In relation to this, Brent
discusses the significance of the church
command to “Keep sweet”—a perfect example
of Lifton’s “thought-stopping cliché,” used in
this context to enforce the members’ “happy”
submission to an abundance of rules and
leadership wants and whims. Brent also explains
this apparent submissiveness as emanating from
family loyalties, family history, and
brainwashing. Not only is the fear of losing
everything they know quite overwhelming, but
also being ignorant of the way the rest of the
world works helps to keep members compliant.
When the author was young, his Uncle Warren
was principal of the Alta Academy, an FLDS
school. There, during school time and church
sessions held in the building, Brent describes
horrific sexual abuse of young boys, typically
ages 5 and 6, perpetrated by Warren Jeffs,
whose unquestioned power and rising stardom
gave him free reign. Brent believes that the rape
of one of his brothers, Clayne, by his uncle when
Clayne was 5 years old led to Clayne’s troubled
life and later suicide. Another of Brent’s
brothers died of a drug overdose. One important
insight that Brent mentions is his recognition
that his experience of attending “regular”
kindergarten (that is, not within the confines of
the cult), exposed him to non-FLDS adults and
children, planting a seed in Brent that not all
outsiders are bad. This realization helped him as
he grew older and confronted life in mainstream
society. In the early years of his life, Brent
experienced and witnessed more harshness than
any human being should have to. His life goes
from being considered part of the FLDS elite to
being the ostracized son of an apostate after his
father is excommunicated. From there, Brent
eventually becomes one of the exiled “lost
boys” and, in this memoir, he expresses clearly
the fear, paranoia, and confusion of that life. It is
always a wonder to me that these brave young
people survive with such a strong sense of life,
goodness, and compassion. It truly bears witness
to the concept of resilience—and the power of
self in the face of truth and freedom versus
deceit and harm.
In Lost Boy, written with Maia Szalavitz (author
of the excellent boot-camp exposé, Help at Any
Cost: How the Troubled-Teen Industry Cons
Parents and Hurts Kids), Brent Jeffs shares
some of the best and worst of his young life. He
offers readers a detailed and heartfelt look at a
world most people know nothing about: a world
that is too often allowed to carry on with
exploitative practices and abuse, a world that we
all should be concerned about. This is an
important book, on a par with Not Without My
Sister (reviewed in Cultic Studies Review, 2008,
7[3]) and should be read by all.
Although shows like HBO’s Big Love tend to
romanticize polygamy by showing week after
week how love and strong bonds keep the
protagonist family together through hardship,
attacks, exposure, and so on, popular mass-
media renderings rarely depict the much darker
side of polygamous communities. For example,
absent is the number of deaths in closed groups
like the FLDS, related to a genetic disorder that
handicaps and kills many children early in life.
According to Brent Jeffs, this phenomenon is
consistently denied within the community it
results from generations of inbreeding,
reinforced by the fact that the cult rarely recruits
outsiders. Making matters worse, under Warren
Jeffs’ reign, these birth defects came to be seen
as a curse and a sign of sin. Brent also mentions
that 50 percent of births are male, leaving boys
in not such a privileged position in an
environment in which the elders like to practice
“sexual variety without guilt” and want the best
pick of the female crop.
Unfortunately for Brent and many others (boys
and girls, men and women), as time went on,
successive generations of FLDS leadership
instituted a more regimented, Spartan, and harsh
lifestyle. Isolation and change in leadership led
to corruption and abuse. Life in the community
became more difficult to cope with yet, all the
while, members tended to “go along with”
leadership demands. In relation to this, Brent
discusses the significance of the church
command to “Keep sweet”—a perfect example
of Lifton’s “thought-stopping cliché,” used in
this context to enforce the members’ “happy”
submission to an abundance of rules and
leadership wants and whims. Brent also explains
this apparent submissiveness as emanating from
family loyalties, family history, and
brainwashing. Not only is the fear of losing
everything they know quite overwhelming, but
also being ignorant of the way the rest of the
world works helps to keep members compliant.
When the author was young, his Uncle Warren
was principal of the Alta Academy, an FLDS
school. There, during school time and church
sessions held in the building, Brent describes
horrific sexual abuse of young boys, typically
ages 5 and 6, perpetrated by Warren Jeffs,
whose unquestioned power and rising stardom
gave him free reign. Brent believes that the rape
of one of his brothers, Clayne, by his uncle when
Clayne was 5 years old led to Clayne’s troubled
life and later suicide. Another of Brent’s
brothers died of a drug overdose. One important
insight that Brent mentions is his recognition
that his experience of attending “regular”
kindergarten (that is, not within the confines of
the cult), exposed him to non-FLDS adults and
children, planting a seed in Brent that not all
outsiders are bad. This realization helped him as
he grew older and confronted life in mainstream
society. In the early years of his life, Brent
experienced and witnessed more harshness than
any human being should have to. His life goes
from being considered part of the FLDS elite to
being the ostracized son of an apostate after his
father is excommunicated. From there, Brent
eventually becomes one of the exiled “lost
boys” and, in this memoir, he expresses clearly
the fear, paranoia, and confusion of that life. It is
always a wonder to me that these brave young
people survive with such a strong sense of life,
goodness, and compassion. It truly bears witness
to the concept of resilience—and the power of
self in the face of truth and freedom versus
deceit and harm.
In Lost Boy, written with Maia Szalavitz (author
of the excellent boot-camp exposé, Help at Any
Cost: How the Troubled-Teen Industry Cons
Parents and Hurts Kids), Brent Jeffs shares
some of the best and worst of his young life. He
offers readers a detailed and heartfelt look at a
world most people know nothing about: a world
that is too often allowed to carry on with
exploitative practices and abuse, a world that we
all should be concerned about. This is an
important book, on a par with Not Without My
Sister (reviewed in Cultic Studies Review, 2008,
7[3]) and should be read by all.
