Polygamist Cult Leader Warren Jeffs’ Daughter Opens up About Her Father’s Sexual Abuse

Rachel Jeffs, the daughter of convicted polygamist Warren Jeffs, said her father sexually molested her “way more times than I could count” when she was just 8 years old.

Rachel, now an adult, spoke with NBC News’ Megyn Kelly about her experiences for an interview that aired on Dateline Friday. She talked about growing up in Jeffs’ Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints sect.

“I told my mother when I was about 10, after it was getting so bad I felt like I couldn’t handle it anymore,” Rachel told Kelly. “And I remember thinking, if my father is doing this and the world is wickeder, are the world’s fathers even worse than this? I remember thinking that I should be grateful that it is only this bad.”

Rachel says she was forced into an arranged polygamist marriage and left the church in 2015. She wrote a memoir, Breaking Free: How I Escaped Polygamy, The FLDS Cult, and My Father, Warren Jeffs, which Harper Collins is releasing on Nov. 14.

“I was very, very scared. I was shaken,” Rachel said of her arranged marriage. “The morning of the wedding, he [Warren Jeffs] said, ‘Rachel, come talk to me.’ And I went into his office and he said, ‘I want you to ask for a baby tonight. I want you to ask your husband for a baby tonight. I want you to get close fast.’ I had a hard time, and I was like, ‘Do I have to?’ and he said, ‘Yes, I want you to do this, promise me.’”

Rachel explained how much control Jeffs had over members of the sect. She said if he decided you were “guilty of sin,” you could be expelled or forced to “live alone for long periods of time.” Once, she was forced to spend “up to seven months at a time” away from her children.

She told Kelly that her crime was having sex with her husband while pregnant. The banishment was her “breaking point” and she fled the cult.

“I was very angry, very angry at father and I was angry that he would do that to my kids,” Rachel told Kelly. “And I felt that he was punishing me for what he did to me. Like he was trying to break me and make me feel like I was worse than him. And I wouldn’t let myself go there. I knew he had done wrong and I didn’t want to let him break me.”

Rachel was Jeff’s first daughter from his second wife. Jeffs had over 50 wives and the man Rachel was arranged to marry already had two wives before their wedding. Rachel had five children before she was banished.

The 61-year-old Jeffs was on the FBI’s 10 Most Wanted List. In 2011, he was sentenced to life in prison for two counts of child sexual abuse.

Since then, others have left the sect and wrote about their experiences. In 2013, Rebecca Musser wrote about her escape in The Witness Wore Red. Rachel also told her story to A&E in 2016 and CNN in 2015.

Photo Credit: Nathan Congleton / NBC / Getty Images