Mother Jones – July-August 2019

JULY / AUGUST 2019 | MOTHER JONES 37

driving trucks. But he does remember
exorcising an apartment by burning a
CD case with a picture of a deformed
baby on it. “We never had no problems
after that,” he says. He was strict, he
admits, and sometimes he disciplined
his daughters with a belt. Nevertheless,
he insists that they “had a very good
childhood...We had fun.”
Lori remembers it differently. “We
were supposed to be perfect little sol-
diers and stand in a straight line and
just accept anything that came along,”
she says. “We were taught [that there
was] the world of Jehovah’s Witnesses
and there was the world outside of it.
Everybody in the world outside of it was
in league with the devil, but anybody
within the religion was your best friend.
It did not matter who it was.” This,
Lori believes, is partly how she and
Samantha came to be sexually abused

by a member of their extended family.

Samantha and Lori’s father says he

wasn’t aware of the abuse at the time,

but says, “It breaks my heart that I did

not protect my daughter.”

When Samantha was 16 or 17, she ran

away with a twentysomething sailor

she’d met online. Her father found her,

brought her back to Arkansas, and told

her, “I can do anything I want with

you. If I want to go and get my gun and

shoot you, I can shoot you.” He says he

never intended to act on this threat, but

he wanted to frighten her out of head-

ing down a dangerous path. She mar-

ried her boyfriend anyway. Her dad told

Samantha he thought the guy was going

to beat her, but “if that’s what you want to

do, then that’s what you get.” Samantha’s

dad, sister, and a childhood friend recall

that her husband physically abused her.

Samantha divorced her husband and

fell in love with an Iraq War veteran.

Her life appeared to be falling apart.

Lori remembers seeing Samantha one

night looking “beat to hell.” She also re-

calls that some gang members punched

Samantha in the face several times in

front of her boyfriend and then raped

her. Afterward, Samantha and her boy-

friend went into hiding. (He did not re-

spond to requests for comment.)

Samantha gave birth to Michael and

split with the vet. In 2011, Samantha told

Lori she wanted a new start. Lori told

her to join her in Indiana, where she

could set her up with a job with her in-

laws’ international shipping company.

But Lori warned Samantha: Stay away

from her brother-in-law Moussa.

Lori worried that Moussa Elhassani

was exactly the type of guy Samantha

would fall for. He was young and hand-

some. He had a “silver tongue,” liked

Religious inscriptions in Raqqa after

isis was driven out of the city