page_title: Stolen Innocence
section_title: Legal proceedings
hierarchical_section_title: Stolen Innocence / Subsequent events / Legal proceedings
context_page_description: Stolen Innocence: My Story of Growing Up in a Polygamous Sect, Becoming a Teenage Bride, and Breaking Free of Warren Jeffs is an autobiography by American author Elissa Wall detailing her childhood in the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints and subsequent later life outside of the church. It was first published by William Morrow and Company in 2008.
  Wall was born into a polygamous family in Salt Lake City and grew up attending the FLDS-run Alta Academy. She describes her living situation as tense; familial relations were further complicated when her mother was reassigned to marry another man in Hildale, Utah. FLDS leaders orchestrated a marriage between Wall, then 14, and her 19-year-old cousin, Allen Steed, an arrangement she vehemently opposed. During their four-year marriage, Steed abused her sexually and psychologically, and Wall eventually began an affair with Lamont Barlow, a 25-year-old former member of the FLDS. Barlow later persuaded her to leave the church and to press charges against Steed and Warren Jeffs, the FLDS "prophet" who performed the wedding ceremony.
context_section_description: Warren Jeffs' prison life has been tumultuous. At Utah's Purgatory Correctional Facility, he suffered from infected ulcers on his knees, which resulted from praying days on end during solitary confinement. He attempted to commit suicide by hanging himself at one point. In August 2008, Jeffs went into convulsions after banging his head against the walls of his cell repetitively and had to be taken to a hospital by helicopter.
  On July 27, 2010, the conviction of Warren Jeffs as an accomplice to Elissa Wall's rape was overturned because "instructions given to jurors were erroneous." State authorities considered retrying Jeffs in Utah, though the matter was complicated when Wall was accused of fabricating a key piece of evidence during the first trial; Wall's attorneys had used medical records for proof of a 2002 miscarriage, and thus proof of intimacy in the marriage. Michael Piccarreta, Jeffs' defense attorney, interviewed Jane Blackmore, Wall's midwife at the time of the miscarriage, in November 2010 and alleged that Wall had requested that she recreate the detailed records when she could not find them. Wall's attorneys responded that she had only "unwittingly" replied to Blackmore's questions during a phone call.
  In 2011, Warren Jeffs was convicted in Texas on sexual assault charges unrelated to Wall's case and sentenced to life in prison plus 20 years. Since Warren Jeffs would therefore be 100 years old by the earliest time he could be released from prison, Utah decided to drop the retrial.
  Elissa Wall's cousin and ex-husband Allen Steed was charged with first-degree felony rape after Jeffs' first conviction in 2007. The rape charges were later dropped in favor of Steed entering a plea bargain by confessing to the charge of engaging in sexual relations with a minor. As a result, he would serve 30 days in prison and three years on probation as well as pay $10,000 in fines. Wall was pleased with the outcomes and commented, "This is a good day. I'm grateful for where we're at."
caption: Warren Jeffs
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