Dan and Matilda’s Marriage Under Doctrine

This thread follows Dan and Matilda from a hopeful marriage into a household governed by increasingly coercive religious rules.

increasingBearing stren­gth in each eventdecreasing

A Marriage Framed as Revelation

A Marriage Framed as Revelation A sought-for answer After his mission to Scotland, Dan encountered Matilda at a missionary reunion. He had been urged by his father and Ron to marry, but earlier prayers about other women had left him uncertain. He prayed about Matilda and believed that he received a positive answer. Shared conviction Dan told Matilda that they should marry, expecting an awkward explanation. Instead, she said she already knew: she believed God had brought her to America for that purpose. Within three months, they were sealed in the Provo temple and moved to California with Matilda’s two young daughters. At the beginning, their bond rested on shared religious feeling and the sense that each had recognized the same divine direction. That mutual certainty would later be used in a very different way, as Dan’s interpretation of revelation became the basis for rules Matilda had not chosen.

A Promising Early Life

A Promising Early Life A family begins Dan and Matilda built their household in California while Dan trained as a chiropractor. Matilda’s daughters from her earlier marriage were part of the family, and she and Dan later had children together. Dan remembered these early years as happy and hopeful. A different kind of partnership Their domestic life changed when Dan began studying the history of plural marriage and found The Peace Maker. He came to treat the tract not as an obscure historical text but as a blueprint for family life. The change began to unsettle the balance between his own religious certainty and Matilda’s ability to make choices. The contrast between the hopeful start and the later breakdown is central to Matilda’s account. Their family did not begin under the restrictions that would eventually govern it; those rules arrived as Dan’s beliefs hardened and his authority expanded.

The Household Tightens

The Household Tightens Restrictions at home Dan forbade Matilda to drive, handle money, or speak with people outside the family when he was absent. He required her to wear a dress and withdrew the children from school, cutting them off from friends. He also rejected outside medical care and treated the household through prayer, fasting, and herbal remedies. Authority becomes discipline The family’s routines narrowed further: Dan turned off gas and electricity, banned publications other than church materials, and removed clocks and watches because he wanted them to keep time by the spirit. He spanked Matilda when she disobeyed, warning that she could be forced from the marriage without the children. The restrictions made religious doctrine an instrument of everyday control. Matilda remained in the home, but the available choices were being reduced until obedience and separation from her children appeared to be the only alternatives.

A Threat Within the Family

A Threat Within the Family A proposed plural marriage Dan announced that he intended to practice spiritual wifery. The first woman he proposed taking as a plural wife was Matilda’s oldest daughter, his own stepdaughter. The proposal brought the new doctrine into direct conflict with Matilda’s role as a mother and her duty to protect her child. A choice constrained by fear Matilda later described feeling that she had no real choices: she could leave and lose her children, or stay and accept what Dan demanded. She chose to remain. Her decision was shaped not by free consent to his beliefs, but by the threat that leaving would separate her from the children. This episode exposes the emotional coercion beneath Dan’s language of religious principle. The family’s closeness could no longer be separated from his claim that children belonged to the father and that he could determine the terms of marriage.

A Marriage Left Behind

A Marriage Left Behind Matilda names the collapse Matilda later testified that the marriage had begun with hope but disintegrated into what she called a hellish situation. She said she dreamed of Dan dying so she could escape. Her testimony gave the court a view of the household that Dan’s language of obedience and religious purpose concealed. The permanent separation Dan’s arrest and imprisonment ended his ability to direct the household in person, but did not restore the marriage. He remained devoted to the religious justification he had developed, while Matilda’s account emphasized what that devotion had cost her and the children. Their relationship’s trajectory runs from mutual spiritual certainty to a household where Matilda’s safety and maternal bond were used as leverage. The trial record made the divergence between Dan’s self-image and Matilda’s lived experience impossible to ignore.

After Dan returned from his mission and before their California move

The first years of their marriage in California

After Dan embraced The Peace Maker in California

After Dan announced his intention to take a plural wife

By the time of the 1996 retrial