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At the hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee on July 24, 2008, Dan Fischer, an ex-FLDS member misrepresented the FLDS Church in an outrageous manner. I hold no personal animosity toward Dan. He and I grew up neighbors in a suburb of Salt Lake City, and although I am a few years older than Dan, I still consider him one of my childhood friends. However, because Dan’s words and actions represent a direct attack on the Church of which I am a member and the people whom I love, I feel obligated to expose his hypocrisy and lies.

 

After graduating from dental school, Dan Fischer lived for years in the Salt Lake area with his three wives and fathered 16 children. In spite of his expressed concern for “lost boys,” Dan has been far short of an exemplary husband and father himself. In an affidavit of July 28, 2008, Dan’s third wife, Marcia Barlow refers to frequent fighting between Dan and his first two wives. “I would be asleep at night and wake to horrible screaming and banging on the floor upstairs,” she says. Then the next morning Leenie or Jean, his other wives, would hide in their rooms because they had a bruised face or a black eye.” 

 

Dan’s oldest daughter Melinda Fischer Jeffs describes in her affidavit the same fighting among her parents and says that as a five-year-old girl she remembers “wiping up the bright red drops of blood off the hard floor.” 

 

Miryam Darger, Marcia’s daughter, also refers to these fights in her affidavit. “Dan would get into screaming and fist fights with his first two wives, she says, “while their children sat by weeping and pleading, ‘Please stop, I wish they would stop.’”

 

The abuse suffered by Marcia appears to have been more emotional than physical. “Dan didn’t hit me or fight with me except one time,” she remembers, “when I hit him first in an effort to stop him from fighting with another lady. He told me to mind my own business. I had so constantly been told by one of the other ladies and by Dan himself that I was a liar and no good that I considered suicide, but I was not leaving my baby with them. I wanted to get out so badly that I thought the only way was for us to die.” 

 

Fighting among the parents was a continual thing, Melinda recalls. “Very often during a horrible fight we children would gather together in a downstairs room and cry. We could hear the screaming and the yelling going on upstairs. After one particular fight, Dad came into the room; and upon seeing all of his children’s tear-streaked faces, he sat down and cried. He said, ‘I have wanted so badly to give my children a different childhood than I had. I wanted my children to never see their parents fighting.’” On another occasion she says that Dan came into her room crying. “He related to me how he had just struck one of my mothers. He said, ‘I love her so much, but she just made me do it!’”

 

From the statements made by such ex-FLDS members as Flora Jessop, Carolyn Jessop, and Elissa Wall, one might assume that perpetual conflict is a normal adjunct of plural marriage. Carolyn, especially, refers to the FLDS lifestyle as a culture of violence and abuse. Such conditions, however, have always been the exception and not the rule. Those guilty of abusive behavior and immorality are excommunicated from the FLDS Church. Dan has severely criticized Warren Jeffs for separating certain men from their families, implying that this was done arbitrarily and for no good reason. Individual circumstances vary, of course, but there was always good reason. Had many of these families been living in mainstream society, the cases would have wound up in divorce court with the wife being awarded custody of the children. The FLDS people do not condone or tolerate the sort of abuse that went on in Dan Fischer’s own family. His daughter Miryam states, “Many of the lies he has spread are a reflection of his own family years ago.”

 

The example of Dan’s own father, Erwin Fischer, is a good illustration of a situation that has been grossly misrepresented. Dan made the separation of his father’s family the emotional crux of his presentation before the Senate Judiciary Committee and implied in his testimony that this was an arbitrary exercise of authority by Warren Jeffs and that there was nothing going on in the family to justify such drastic action. Dan’s daughter Melinda relates her recollection of this experience in some detail:

 

“In Dad’s recent statements he showed a great amount of emotion regarding his father, Erwin Fischer. His remarks shocked me because as long as I can remember ‘Grandfather’ was always such a bad word in our home. My mothers felt like he was continually trying to correct my dad and tell him how to run his family and his money. My dad disagreed with the way Grandfather got his 3^rd wife. Dad told his sister Mary that he knew Grandfather did not have Priesthood because of the way he courted that lady. We hardly ever came to Short Creek to visit my Grandfather’s family; when we did, my mothers greatly dreaded it.

 

Dan’s third wife Marcia confirms the lack of closeness between Dan and his father. “During the hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee…,” she says, “Dan made it sound like he loved his father, but he didn’t. Dan’s father was not treated kindly at Dan’s home or by his family…. ‘Father Erwin’ was like a swear word in the home.” Dan’s brother Samuel Fischer asserts that Dan and his brother Shem brought a law suit against their father while he was in the hospital the day before he died.

 

Melinda continues her account as follows:

 

“I was in Grandfather’s home shortly after his family was separated from him. It was the Monday before Thanksgiving in 1999. He had recently made an appointment with Uncle Rulon, our Prophet. There he admitted that there were wrongs that he needed to be re-baptized for. He felt like he needed to be removed from the situation because he couldn’t handle it. The older children were shoplifting among other things. All the children were violent and hard to handle, especially for him in his elderly condition. I was told by Grandfather that it was by his own choice. Uncle Lorin took him into his own home and provided him with a nice bedroom until an apartment was finished for him upstairs. His children furnished it nicely. He never suffered for want of anything. Mention was made of Grandfather being forced to help provide for the children under Allen Steed’s care. Grandfather was never forced to help out with the expenses of caring for the children. Knowing him, he probably volunteered to help in any way he could.

 

“About two months before he died, I was privileged to sit next to my grandfather at a meeting. We had some time to talk. We talked about my dad and the bitterness he had over the separation. Grandfather said that Dad had offered to get him a lawyer. Grandfather told him, ‘No, I don’t need one; I have chosen to do this.’ Just then, Allen Steed’s family walked into the room. Grandfather beamed and waved at some of the children; they waved back. He said, ‘They are doing so well; I am so grateful to Allen. I love him so much. He is working with the children so well.’ I could tell he was very encouraged and grateful for where those children were.”

 

Dan’s brother Marvin Fischer gives a similar version of Erwin’s separation in his affidavit of July 29, 2008:

 

“Father confided in me six months to one year prior to the decision he made to separate from his wives. In that conversation he told me that due to some serious mistakes he had made in recent years with his family, that this decision to separate would be a possibility. He told me that he was telling me this because of his desires for me to always do right in my family and my life—to make sure I didn’t make the same mistakes. (After the separation, he still maintained his position as President of the family business and almost daily associated with several of his sons either in that business, the city power plant setup, or just in general. He lived with his son Lorin (in a finished room—Dan’s accusation otherwise is simply false) and had lunch almost daily with his son Leroy.)

 

“Dan called me one night shortly after Father did make that decision and asked me what I knew, if it was right, what we were going to do about it. He tried to convince me to interfere in it. Because of the hateful spirit Dan exhibited at that time, I did not tell him everything I knew, but I did tell him that Father had willingly made that decision, he had the right to do that, and I wasn’t going to interfere.”

 

Several statements in the affidavits make clear the fact that Dan’s family is not representative of the FLDS people as a whole. Marcia contrasts the conditions she grew up in with what she experienced after she married Dan. “It was against the way I had been raised,” she says, “for a father and the mothers to fight, scream, and hit. I never saw my parents fight or say ugly words to each other and never heard one mother make a derogatory remark about another.” Miryam, Marcia’s daughter, remarks, “Unlike the happy, peaceful life I live and love now, the first eleven years of my life was living hell. I along with my mothers, brothers, and sisters was greatly abused.” Melinda states, “When I got married, my dad put his arm around me and said with all sincerity, ‘Show your mothers that this way of life can be lived beautifully’…. My husband has never raised a hand to me or my children,” she continues. “If he did, I would not be with him. It is a tight line these men must follow. Do you think I would know if my husband is immoral? Of course I would; I’ve been married to him for 16 years. I would not stay married to an immoral man.”      

 

The physical and emotional abuse in Dan Fischer’s family extended to his children as well as to his wives. His daughter Miryam remembers the beatings administered both to girls and boys. “In a fit of anger the girls were beaten with his hand on their bare bottom,” she says, “and the boys with a leather belt on their bare bottom. My younger brother would be beaten time and again with a leather belt for simply wetting the bed.”

 

Miryam’s brother Alma also refers to these beatings in his affidavit:

 

“A particular memory I have of Dan personally was whenever I would wet the bed he would take me over his knee, bare my backside, and whip me with his leather belt. And wetting the bed was not a seldom thing for me. On at least two instances I remember he did this at his business, Ultradent, in front of all of his employees. After some time of this going on, mother would avoid telling him about it. Miryam and I learned to stick up for each other, in many cases to try to take the other’s punishment.”

 

Even the very young children were subjected to almost unbelievable abuse. Dan’s daughter Melinda says that her father insisted that even the little children sit quietly during Sunday school. 

 

“If they cried, he would pick them up and tell them to stop crying. ‘Are you going to stop crying?’ he’d say in a threatening voice. If they didn’t, he would put his hand on their mouth with his thumb covering their nose so they couldn’t breathe. He would keep it there until they stopped fighting him or they would start to turn blue. Then he would pull his hand off, and they would gasp and scream. He’d say, ‘Stop, or I’m going to do it again.’ Sometimes he’d slap their mouth until their nose bled.”    

 

Perhaps the most shocking instance of child abuse in Dan’s family occurred when Melinda was 17. After she and her cousins had flirted with some boys on the telephone, Dan got wind of the situation and barged into her bedroom.

 

“My dad grabbed me and took me upstairs. He had my mother and Leenie come into the room and sit down. He started yelling at me and asking me questions, and when I didn’t reply the way he wanted, it enraged him. He grabbed me and pulled me across his lap and beat me. He yelled all kinds of profanity at me, calling me a slut and a whore. He would say, ‘If all you want is to be @#%!, I know 10 guys who I could get right now to come and do it to you!!!!’ First he beat me with my dress down, then with my dress over my head. Then, to my complete humiliation, he grabbed my underpants and pulled them down around my knees and beat me more as I was kicking and screaming. He finally stopped, and I gathered myself up as best I could. I was sobbing. Oh how I hated him! He continued yelling at me with extremely vulgar language, telling me how he might send my cousins away because I was such a horrid influence on them. Finally I was sent to my room alone. The next morning I was very sore. I went to the restroom, and, to my shock, I was black and blue from my waist to my knees. I felt unreal, dazed, hated. I wanted to die. I wanted Dad to suffer as I had. I decided to call the police. I had my hand on the phone ready to dial 911. I didn’t dare.”

 

In an interview subsequent to completing her affidavit, Melinda told me that she was so traumatized that she had not known how long the beating lasted but that in talking to her cousins she found that they were present in the next room and claim that she was beaten for over three hours.  They were horrified the entire time. 

 

Melinda also told me that she fears retaliation from her father because she has gone public with her story, stating that she has talked to her uncle, who warned her, “You know he’ll be coming after you, don’t you?” She said that because of Dan’s violent nature, when he becomes upset he vents his anger regardless of the consequences. Who would know better than she?  

 

Even to this day Melinda suffers the effects of her childhood experiences. She has recurrent nightmares and terrible bouts of insomnia, which medical professionals and gynecologists have assured her are a direct result of the abuse she suffered as a child. “At another time,” she says, “I was seeing a nurse practitioner because I was having difficulty enjoying an intimate relationship with my husband.”

 

“In describing the symptoms to her, she asked me, ‘Did you suffer any kind of abuse?’ I said, ‘You would not believe me if I told you.’ She said, ‘What do you mean?’ ‘I mean you would not believe it because of who my father is. He is very well-known. He is very successful. Whatever he sets out to accomplish, he accomplishes! He is extremely intelligent and successful. He is beloved by many.’ She said, ‘That doesn’t matter. We often see this aggressive behavior pattern in men that have that driving force to succeed.’ I had related to her my experience of being beaten and how if I ever showed a desire toward anything to do with boys I was made to feel dirty and immoral.”   

 

Others outside the Fischer family also are familiar with Dan’s violent outbursts of temper. Donna Bauer, a friend of Dan’s daughters Sara and Terra, describes in her affidavit being terrified by Dan when he returned drunk and carrying a wine bottle while she was present in the home with other friends at a slumber party. She says that he objected to the video the girls were watching, and repeatedly walked into and out of the room, waving his arms and cursing and swearing.

 

The plural lifestyle seems to have been an embarrassment to Dan. His daughter Miryam says that he feared it would hurt his business if it became known that he had more than one wife. The children of his third wife Marcia remember having to stay in their rooms when business associates called at the house. Miryam says, “My uncle used to say, ‘Everyone knows Dan Fischer has more than one wife except himself.’ This comment, no doubt, referred especially to Dan’s treatment of Marcia, who claims that she had no marital relations with Dan for the last nine years that she lived in the home. “I thought he hated me,” she says, “but now I think he was having extra-marital affairs and didn’t want me to know. He took his secretary, who was also his business partner, alone on several trips; and she later bragged to my brother that she had slept with Dan.”

 

He began living with his second wife Leenie, whom the L. A. Times of June 30, 2008, called “the one he truly adored.” After years of abuse and neglect, Marcia realized that Dan had abandoned her, and she and her children left him in 1993. He did not want his first wife Coral Jean to divorce him because of the probability that his property would be divided in a divorce settlement; however, she did move from the Fischer home and later agreed to a divorce settlement that left most of the property in Dan’s hands.

 

Both Marcia and her daughter Miryam claim that after they left Dan’s family he never offered any financial assistance. Marcia further states, “At one time I was declined for state help with food and medicine because the Medicaid office checked with the IRS and found records that two $13,000 checks from stock in Dan’s company had been cashed in the name of my two children, but we never received the money.”   

 

Dan Fischer left the FLDS Church in 1995 and since that time has become increasingly bitter and has used much of the wealth accumulated from his successful dental products company, Ultradent Products, Inc., to fight the people he was once a part of. Dan Fischer’s professional background has given him a credibility which he does not deserve. In common with Flora Jessop, Carolyn Jessop, and Elissa Wall, he has lied to justify his own actions in abandoning his former faith. (See “The Unreliability of Apostate Narratives”)

 

A statement by Dan’s younger brother Nephi Fischer emphasizes this point:

 

“[W]hen people destroy their own moral lives, and debase their own perception of themselves due to the truth which they know about themselves, they are miserable and seek to destroy those who have the peace and joy they no longer are able to enjoy or be a part of.”

(http://voicesforthechildren.org/viewpetition.php?id=3&page=7#signatures)

 

Dan has a vested interest in vilifying the FLDS Church to maintain a steady flow of donations for his Diversity Foundation. Part of his concern for the so-called “lost boys” likely is the result of a need to compensate for the manner in which he has abused his own family. His daughter Miryam says that she “witnessed him in a fit of temper drive his own son and daughter out of his home.” But Dan’s involvement with the “lost boys” goes far beyond any altruistic motives. Of all the former members who have turned against the FLDS Church, Dan is probably the bitterest as well as the most powerful. He also is the most cunning in maintaining a professional distance and in manipulating others into making direct attacks. He has bribed many of these boys to make false and misleading statements regarding their parents and their former religion. (See “The Truth about the ‘Lost Boys’”)

 

The above article barely scratches the surface in presenting the information contained in the affidavits I have already collected. PDF files of the notarized affidavits may be accessed at the following links:

 

Affidavit of Melinda Fischer Jeffs
Affidavit of Marvin Fischer
Affidavit of Marcia Barlow (Broadbent)
Affidavit of Miryam Darger
Affidavit of Alma Broadbent
Affidavit of Donna Bauer

 

 

 

The following are statements about Dan Fischer from his mother and his brother:

 

Rachel Zitting Fischer  Jul 21, 2008 1:39 pm 
Hildale, UT 84784-0445

I believe in justice and liberty for all, as long as they don't take the rights of others. Some have worked up a hate against people to the injury of those people.
Dan was sweet and obedient as a child. He later let bitterness into his heart, and it grew. Dan Fischer has not told the truth, to the hurt of the FLDS People, including the Prophet.

His Mother, Rachel Zitting Fischer

Resume:
Age 79, mother of 12 natural born children and mother of many more. After raising the family, I taught elementary school for 12 years and taught home school for 3 more years. My first love was family. (http://voicesforthechildren.org/viewpetition.php?id=3&page=9#signatures)

 

Samuel Fischer  Jul 20, 2008 8:46 pm
Plainview, Texas

I am a brother to Dan Fischer, I have known him all my life. There was a time that he was a very caring person devoted to the same religious beliefs as the FLDS people. He got his feelings hurt with some of the leaders of this people and since that time has pursued a course that is both hateful and vengeful. It has become a passion with him to do whatever he can to hurt or bring malice upon this people to justify the position he has taken. Everyone has the right to believe the way they choose, as I feel to extend to him, but when a person uses their means, time and resources to persecute and try to bring harm on another then there is something wrong with their actions and motives. He and another brother brought a lawsuit against their own father the day before he died. His grandfather spent his time, effort and means to try to help the persecuted and driven people back in 1953, while Dan is using his to destroy them and bring the misinformed and misled public feeling against the FLDS. I believe if a person is honest in heart the Lord will tell them in their heart what the truth is. (http://voicesforthechildren.org/viewpetition.php?id=3&page=12#signatures)