By Amanda Townsend
CNN
CHARLOTTE, North Carolina (CNN) -- When polygamous sect leader Warren Jeffs appeared in a Las Vegas courtroom last August, Kathy Jo Nicholson, a former member of Jeffs' sect, felt fearful even though she was only watching him on television.
"It devastated me. It elated me. It made me afraid. I looked at this man that was so powerful in my life ... and he was just so thin and pale," she said.
Today, as Warren Jeffs sits at Utah's Purgatory Correctional Facility awaiting trial, Nicholson has started talking publicly about her childhood in the church Jeffs led -- the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (FLDS). She hopes that by sharing her story she will help others struggling with similar issues.
***
Jeffs, whose approximately 10,000 followers practice polygamy mainly in Hildale, Utah, and Colorado City, Arizona, is charged in Utah with being an accomplice to rape by arranging the marriage of a 14-year-old girl to her 19-year-old cousin. He faces additional charges in Arizona. Video Go inside Warren Jeffs' world »
As a child, Nicholson had three mothers and 12 siblings. She considers it a typical FLDS home. At the age of 14, Nicholson started sewing her wedding dress in anticipation of getting married. She knew that at any moment she could be whisked away to meet her husband and that her future likely would include at least two "sister wives."
***
more:
http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/07/31/fleeing.polygamy/index.htmledit to add keywords to title