Shattered Silence

Woman Overcomes Father’s Dark Past with Family, Gospel

Kedrik Hamblin – LDS Living

http://ldsliving.com/article/149821/Woman-Overcomes-Father%E2%80%99s-Dark-Past-with-Family,-Gospel

Melissa Moore was 15 in 1995 when her life changed forever.

Her mother sat her and her siblings down in their grandmother’s basement, where they had lived since their parent’s divorce, and broke the news. Their father, Keith Hunter Jesperson, a man who Moore remembers as generally well mannered, playful and gregarious, if sometimes odd, had been jailed for the murder of his fiancée.

But it didn’t end there. By the end of the investigation, Jesperson had confessed to eight murders in all over the course of five years and had been given four life sentences for the murders the court had tried.

Moore was devastated. As she tried to move on, she focused on school because it was the most structured thing in her life.

Greater stability came following high school, after an LDS friend invited her to a dance where she met Sam Moore. The two began dating in April 2000, and it was during that summer that Sam mentioned that he’d never seen her father. Moore decided to tell him about her father.

“He was really patient and understanding,” Moore said. “He didn’t shun me or judge me, which I found really impressive. So it gave us the foundation for me to start talking more about who my father was.”

In November 2000, she and Sam married, with his parents apprehensive to have their son marry a non-member girl and daughter of a serial killer.

At the wedding, though, Moore was impressed by the support a lot of LDS members gave them, even though she wasn’t LDS. Though she had never been open to learning about the Church, after the couple’s daughter Aspen was born, Moore began to question what religion her daughter should be raised in.

“At the time we were living next to some Mormon missionaries,” Moore said. “They were just so kind and friendly, and I decided one day when I ran into them that I’d ask them more about the Mormon faith.”

Moore invited the missionaries to visit and share more. She was resistant at first.

“I would listen to their discussions but I wouldn’t pray or read the scriptures,” Moore said. “I kind of took it half hearted until they got to the discussion where the missionary talked about Jesus coming to the ancient Americans and Nephites and showing him them his the marks in his hands. I remember feeling this burning in my chest and I felt that it was true, that Jesus loves all of humanity.”

When the missionaries left, they asked Moore to pray and ask if the LDS Church was true. She did, and she was baptized on Dec. 29 of 2002. The family was sealed on the couple’s wedding anniversary in 2004.

Being new in the church, she looked to the Relief Society sisters as mentors. “I would see how they would treat their children,” Moore said. “They were so kind and loving. They took care of their husbands and their households and still had time to do service. It was so impressive to me . . . I wanted to become like them.

“Overall I feel gratitude for the Church because … I didn’t have counseling, but the Church became that to me,” Moore continued. “I started to feel that I was of value. I knew that I was a child of God—that I had worth.”

Even though she was finding more meaning in her life, about a year and a half ago Moore decided that she was still missing something in her life.

“I felt that I really hadn’t dealt with my past. I felt so inferior to other Church members and to other people in society,” Moore said. “[One Sunday] I prayed that I’d be able to recover and move forward with my life.”

Not long after praying for help Moore came across an article in the Ensign by Elder Richard G. Scott titled “Healing the Tragic Scars of Abuse.”

“It gave me hope for the first time,” Moore said. “It said that scars need not be permanent. . . . I thought that I could never get over my past, until I read that article and then I knew . . . I could recover from my past.”

She also knew she needed more help when her daughter Aspen, who was seven at the time, came home from school and asked her where Moore’s dad was. While searching for a way to explain her past and come to terms with it, Moore was inspired to write a book. But she didn’t want it to be about the horrible details of her father’s life. She wanted it to be a benefit to other people.

“I said another prayer,” Moore said. “Soon after the thought came to me that if I shared my experiences . . . I could be proof that scars don’t have to be permanent.”

Moore is grateful for the gospel and how it has changed her life. She wants others to know that when life takes a tragic turn, it may not seem like life will get better, but it does. She said her situation has shaped her into the person she is today.

“I feel that it’s given me more compassion for others,” Moore said, “and it’s opened up my mind to seek opportunities to help other people, to try to comfort other people because I was such a young age and I was left uncomforted. . . . I want to seek and help other people now.”

Moore’s book, Shattered Silence, was released on Sept. 8. Moore will be appearing on The Oprah Winfrey Show Thursday, September 17, to talk about her story.

LDS Living, Inc., 2009. Photo courtesy of Melissa Moore (pictured: Melissa with daughter, Aspen, and son, Jake.)

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