Teen Escaped a Cult After a Forced Marriage to a Stranger. Her Husband Did Too — Then They Fell in Love
Published By admin with Comments 0
Angela and Cade Johnson were married at a laundromat in 2003 when she was 16 and he was 19.
They exchanged vows not by choice, but because the notorious polygamist cult they grew up in — the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints — forced them to do so.
The cult Angela and Cade were born into made headlines when its infamous “prophet” and leader Warren Jeffs was accused by numerous young victims — including his own children — of molesting them.
Named one of the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted after fleeing the cult to avoid arrest, Jeffs, now 69, was finally taken into custody in Las Vegas in 2006. He was convicted five years later of two counts of child sex abuse and sentenced to life in prison.
Because of the tumult in the church at the time, “We didn’t have too much to do with him,” Angela says. “But if you’ve ever met him, he’s just a creep. Full of arrogance.”
She didn’t like how girls and teens in the cult were forced to wed men they didn’t know. One man she knew had 24 wives.
“Getting married young was everything you were raised to do your whole life,” Angela, now 38, who grew up in British Columbia, Canada, where one branch of the sect is located, tells PEOPLE. “They didn’t even let girls go to school further than 10th grade because they saw no reason for them to get an education.”
Angela and later Cade, who grew up in Hildale, Utah, in the twin cities of Hildale and Colorado City, Ariz., where another part of the cult was located, left the church — and each other — living separate lives until they reconnected several years later. Today, they are happily married with three children, ages 18, 15 and 3. Both have careers. Angela is a labor and delivery nurse and Cade is a helicopter pilot.
Content retrieved from: https://people.com/teen-escaped-cult-forced-marriage-husband-did-too-later-fell-love-11700741.
