She had a blazing mane of bright red hair and a smile that reached across her freckled face from ear to ear. In the outside world, she would have been a sixth grader. When she was only nine, Warren Jeffs commanded her father, his loyal lieutenant Merril Jessop, to fetch the girl to R-17 in Texas, where she could mature and begin receiving “trainings” on becoming a “heavenly comfort wife” for the prophet. Now the time had come, and Merrianne was summoned by her mother, Barbara. She was told to hurry and clean up, because something important was about to happen. After a shower, she put on a fresh set of the long underwear required by her religion and slid into baggy sweat-suit pants before adding stockings up to her knees. Her best dress, a simple garment with a pretty crocheted collar that buttoned modestly around her neck, came next. Her mother brushed the girl’s long hair and fixed her plyg-do. Now, clean and dressed and with her hair appropriately styled, Merrianne was escorted to a place she had never seen before: the inside of the temple of the YFZ compound, where she would be “spiritually placed”
