She Says.” the Information That Janice Continues to Be a Mormon Who
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my life,’ she says.”339 The information that Janice continues to be a Mormon who embraces the idea of polygamy implies that perhaps she was not captured after all, but made a reasoned decision based on the choices available to her. Moore-Emmett therefore frames Janices’s story in a way that undermines the validity of Janice’s continued religious affiliation. Moore-Emmett opens Janice story by explaining that Janice came from a long line of women with self-destructive addictions to abusive relationships; “Janice’s personal choices in life were different in that her addictions were religious.”340 In presenting Janice’s story in this way, Moore-Emmett removes Janice as an active agent in her religious choices. She faced “addiction,” a disease that caused her to affiliate with unsavory religious characters. Moore-Emmett’s introduction of Janice cuts off the possibility of Janice being anything other than a victim due to her hereditary addictive tendencies; Moore-Emmett thereby ensures that Janice’s story fits her model of captivity to religious dogma, rather than reasoned religious belief. Moore-Emmett heightens the salaciousness of Janice’s narrative by including extensive information on the LeBaron group, which gained widespread notoriety for violence in the late 1970s.341 For example, Moore-Emmett provides background on mental illness in the LeBaron family as well as their claims to priesthood; these two 339 Ibid., 123. 340 Ibid., 114. 341 Janice’s story is eight pages long. Three of those eight pages are given over entirely to providing background information on the LeBarons. For information on the LeBaron schism and violence, see Scott Anderson, The Four O’Clock Murders: The True Story of a Mormon Family’s Vengeance (New York: Doubleday, 1993); Ben Bradlee Jr. and Dale Van Atta, Prophet of Blood: The Untold Story of Ervil LeBaron and the Lambs of God (New York: Putnam, 1981); Rena Chynoweth with Dean M. Shapiro, The Blood Covenant: The True Story of the Ervil LeBaron Family and its Rampage of Terror and Murder (Austin, TX: Diamond Books, 1990); Irene Spencer, Cult Insanity: A Memoir of Polygamy, Prophets, and Blood Atonement (New York: Center Street, 2009). 163 .