Polygamy hearing shown woman's account of abuse
Video affidavit 1 of 4 shown in Vancouver courtroom as part of constitutional case
Mackert was the first of 14 women and children who once lived in polygamous communities to offer videotaped testimony in a B.C. Supreme Court case examining Canada's polygamy law.
Mackert was born in 1953 in an area that later became known as Colorado City, Ariz. Her mother was the third wife of a man who went on to marry a fourth woman and whose family eventually grew to include 31 children.
'This is not about religious freedom. This is about abuse.' — Rena Mackert, ex-wife of polygamist
Sitting in her home in Anacortes, Wash., the 56-year-old told a B.C. government lawyer about being sexually abused when she was three years old.
"My father molested me for the first time that I know of," Mackert said in a calm voice, her eyes often closed or looking away from the camera.
"It was forced oral sex. I cried and begged and pleaded. He slapped me and pulled my hair. He slapped me and spanked me and told me what a bad girl I was, that if I told anyone what a bad girl I was, he would have to spank me very severely."
The abuse continued for more than a decade, said Mackert, and all the while she was convinced it was her fault after years of being "indoctrinated" that women must submit to men.
Women told they're responsible
"So, from the onset of the sexual abuse from my father, it was very clear to me that I was a bad, evil person and I'd done something to cause my priestly father to do those things," she said in the video affidavit, one of four shown in court on Wednesday.
The rest will be presented as the hearings in the constitutional case testing Canada's polygamy ban continue over the next two months.
"We were taught that a woman's responsible for a man's behaviour, sexually," Mackert says in the video. "If you dress in a way, tight clothing, clothing that shows your skin, and a man thinks evil thoughts, it's the woman's fault."
Mackert was born into the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, or FLDS. The FLDS is a breakaway sect of the mainstream Mormon church, which renounced polygamy more than a century ago, and it is the sect linked to the isolated community of Bountiful, B.C.
It was the failed prosecution of two religious leaders of Bountiful that prompted the B.C. government to ask the court to examine whether Canada's ban on multiple marriage is in accordance with the guarantee of religious freedom in the Charter of Rights.
Outside court, Mackert said her experience wasn't unusual among the polygamous families she knew, where women and children had no rights.
"This is not about religious freedom," she told reporters after watching her video affidavit in court. "This is about abuse. There was sexual abuse in just about every home."
Mackert's family moved to the Salt Lake City area when she was around seven years old, but she said the abuse continued until she was about 16 — a year before she was married.
Regained custody of children
Mackert was forced to marry her stepbrother, with whom she had three children. Five years later, they divorced when Mackert's husband declared he wanted out of the polygamous lifestyle.
She said she was told by the man leading the church at the time, Leroy Johnson, that she would be forced to marry a man in his 50s who was already married to her sister. She refused and also took it as an opportunity to tell Johnson about the abuse she had suffered.
"He demanded to know why I was lying about one of God's priesthood holders; he told me that I was a liar," she said in the video.
A few days later, she was ordered to leave without her children. She moved to California, where she met a lawyer who helped her return 11 months later and retrieve her kids.
It took her years to overcome the psychological scars of her childhood, Mackert said, and she hasn't completely healed. She struggled with drug and alcohol abuse into her 40s and said she still suffers from depression and post-traumatic stress disorder.
Participating in the B.C. case, she said, has helped.
"I got no justice for my father and the mistreatment, and though I am not getting justice here, my voice is heard, and it needed to be," she told reporters.
"I feel like I've been validated, the things I went through."