Some of the subject matter in this podcast is difficult, including suicide and sexual abuse of adults and children.

While the more graphic details will be left out, the specifics can be triggering.

Please take care when listening.

I hate that man. I will go to hell for hating that man because I'm supposed to forgive and I can't. I can't forgive that.

He ruins so many lives.

Arvin Shreve. The so-called prophet and leader of the Zion Society spent years committing innumerable heinous acts

of sexual abuse against women and children. I would like to introduce you now to one of the

children who survived that abuse. Meet Amber, a gifted painter and performer. She is loudly

passionate, wears her heart on her sleeve,

and has a bohemian aesthetic that mirrors her kaleidoscopic life.

A life that has proven Amber's resilience since the very beginning.

My real mother, she drops me off at a head shop when I was three days old

so that she could go and rob a bank to get some money to turn her heat on.

A head shop, for those who may not be familiar, is a store that sells pot smoking paraphernalia as well as other counterculture accoutrema.

Bongs, incense, blacklight posters, that kind of thing.

And she was caught and she went to prison.

So the people that owned the head shop, they was caught and she went to prison.

So the people that owned the head shop, they decided to go ahead and keep me.

Because at that time, Mormon missionaries had showed up at the head shop, which I don't know why missionaries are going to a head shop anyway, but they did.

And my parents became mainstream Mormons. And at that point, they closed down this head shop

and they moved our whole family to Utah. But Amber's adopted father had difficulty staying employed.

He couldn't keep a job because he would fight with everybody over anything, mostly religion.

...