353: Sons of Perdition - The Lost Boys of the FLDS Church Pt. 1
Mormon Stories Podcast
Dr. John Dehlin
4.5 • 5.7K Ratings
🗓️ 7 June 2012
⏱️ 52 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Sons of Perdition (the movie, produced by Tyler Measom and Jennilyn Merten) follows three boys after they leave their FLDS families and community in Colorado City, Utah. With limited educations and rarely a stable address, the obstacles are enormous. All the boys have big dreams - starting with the hope of attending high school - but what they want most is contact with their families. For one teen in the film, this means numerous attempts to help his fourteen-year-old sister escape before an arranged marriage. With unprecedented access, Sons of Perdition takes audiences on a three-year-journey into the lives of these remarkable teens, providing the inside analysis to make this intimate portrait a big story - a timely, critical look at faith, family and religious exile in mainstream America.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is Mormon Stories Podcast. I'm John Belin. On this episode of Mormon Stories I interview |
| 0:05.4 | Tyler Meeson and Jenny Lynn Merton, independent filmmakers and co-directors of the |
| 0:10.4 | documentary film, Sons of Perdition. Their film follows the Lost Boys, a group of young, poorly |
| 0:17.2 | educated outcasts from the closed communities of the fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of |
| 0:22.6 | Latter-day Saints, a polygamist sect led by the infamous Warren Jeffs. These are three boys who |
| 0:28.0 | are kicked out of Colorado City. They have very little education, very little knowledge of the |
| 0:31.8 | outside world, and they're told they're going to hell. And then they're thrust out into this world, |
| 0:36.8 | they know nothing about. And in the first, it's very titillating. It's just very much girls and |
| 0:41.5 | parties and beer and pop music and rap music and MTV. And they just, in and day, they throw themselves |
| 0:48.4 | into a point where it's dangerous to where they really suffer. And then they realize this isn't |
| 0:53.3 | something I want to do. They discuss the challenges of obtaining the trust of their subjects, |
| 0:58.0 | developing a familial bond while maintaining the necessary critical distance, efforts to help |
| 1:03.1 | family members and victims escape, confrontations with parents, and the general challenges of making |
| 1:08.5 | the film. Making this film was emotionally, spiritually, financially, trying in every single way. |
| 1:15.8 | It beat us down, it hurt, it was hard, it was exhausting, and I wouldn't trade any of it. |
| 1:22.4 | They also discuss the difficulty of leaving plug-in communities, the loss of family relationships, |
| 1:27.6 | and the spiritual consequences of rebellion. When these kids leave, it's to the |
| 1:31.7 | instigree that we Mormons can't fathom. I mean, yes, my parents were upset with me, |
| 1:36.0 | Jenny's parents were upset with her, but we still talk. These boys can't. They're completely |
| 1:40.4 | utterly cut off, and more so, they don't exist. And they discuss the overarching themes of the story. |
| 1:46.2 | In our religions, we say family is a value, then when you lose that religion or somebody moves |
| 1:51.2 | away from it, then we have to find a better way to negotiate, making those family values mean |
... |
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