Remember Everything.

I LOVE THEM!!!!

She was quiet yet kind. I struggled with the fact that my father had married a girl my same age at sixteen and that I had to call her “mother Sheena”, but after a year or so we became friends. 

Sheena Roundy won the family’s love. She was a hard worker, loved all Warren’s wives and children, and lived a life of sacrifice and giving.

In 2013, when I was living in South Dakota with my husband Rich, I went to spend a morning with my sister Melanie at father’s house. Sheena came to Melanie’s room and told us that she had been feeling sick and confided to us that she had several lumps on her breast. She asked us what we knew about our mother’s breast cancer and how mother knew if she had cancer or not. I was very concerned and said, “You need to get looked at by a doctor.” Sheena said, “I wrote to father (Warren Jeffs) about it and he sent a message back for me to not worry about myself, but to focus on blessing others.”

Soon after I was sent to live in Short Creek and didn’t know how things were going for her. Months later, when my sister Angela came to talk to me she told me about Sheena:

Sheena’s sickness rapidly got worse in the spring of 2013. Her back began to hurt her, so much so it was painful to walk. The family had been told by Warren Jeffs that no one  should touch each other more than a handshake, but Sheena was in so much pain she asked some of her sister wives to massage her back. 

Warren Jeffs was informed of the massaging and he sent message that any of the women who had touched Sheena’s back, as well as Sheena, must go to live alone in different houses of hiding and repent. Sheena felt ashamed and believed she had done wrong in allowing her sister wives to massage her.

Within weeks of living alone Sheena was unable to walk at all. She told my uncle Isaac on a phone call that she could no longer take care of herself because she could not walk. Isaac told father in a visit to the prison about Sheena’s condition. Warren Jeffs finally said that she could go to a doctor near Short Creek. 

Sheena was diagnosed with terminal breast cancer. She was told that the cancer had crushed her backbone and that she would never walk again. Warren Jeffs then sent message to all of his family, including myself, saying, “Sheena has breast cancer and the Lord has shown me that because of her immoral thoughts and desires she will soon suffer death.” I was stunned. “Why didn’t he let her go to the doctor sooner?” I wondered to myself. Yet I knew. He didn’t really care about Sheena. He never had.

Sheena moved into a small house near uncle Lyle Jeffs’ home. Warren Jeffs told his wife Sheena that she was not allowed to go outside of her home, and that she should keep the blinds and curtains on the windows pulled shut at all times. He told her she was to hide for “his protection”. Two of her sister wives were to be at her side at all times to help take care of her needs. They were the only people that could see her and take her to her doctor appointments. 

My sister Angela and I figured out which house she was living at. We would go and  play our violins outside Sheena’s window so that she could have some kind of comfort and enjoyment. Sheena would ask one of her sister wives that were with her to open the window and inch or so so that she could hear us play. But we were not allowed to see Sheena at all.

In August of 2016 Sheena was still fighting to live. Warren Jeffs was angry that she had not died as he had predicted. He sent Sheena a message of reproof telling her that the Lord was displeased that she was taking the medications the doctors had prescribed to her to prolong her life. Warren said Sheena could no longer be a member of the Lord’s chosen people because of her disobedience and that she must live elsewhere.

Sheena died at the beginning of 2017, a quiet death, unrecognized, and without family. Her older brother quietly buried her in Short Creek and her death and grave is a symbol of shame to Warren Jeffs and his followers. 

My brother Ray recently went and found her grave and sent me this picture.