A&E's “Secrets of Polygamy ”Goes Inside Religious Sect's Dark Secrets — and Woman's Daring Escape

Faith Bistline left the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints at age 19

Faith Bistline was born into a difficult life. Growing up as a girl in the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, she faced the likelihood of being placed in an arranged, polygamous marriage from a young age.

When Bistline was 19, she made a brave decision. She left the church, knowing that her family — 27 siblings and three mothers — might never speak to her again.

The church, commonly known as FLDS, is a fringe fundamentalist Mormon sect infamous for its practice of polygamy and history of child sexual abuse. Warren Jeffs, the self-styled prophet of the church, is a convicted child sex offender who has been serving a life sentence in Texas since 2011, though he continues to give orders to his followers from prison.

A new A&E series aims to expose the dark secrets of FLDS and similar sects, and tells the stories of some survivors.

Bistline is one of the survivors featured on Secrets of Polygamy, which follows investigator Matt Browning as he seeks to shed light on the abuse committed by the leaders of the fundamentalist groups.

Initially hesitant to participate in the documentary series, Bistline eventually decided that it was important to come forward to set an example to girls in the church who might be afraid to speak up.

“I realized that it's because they do not know how to use their voice and they don't have an example, and they don't know anyone who's done that,” Bistline tells PEOPLE. “So that's what made me decide to go ahead and [appear on camera].”

Jeffs was arrested when Bistline was 13. Since Jeffs was the only one who could perform marriages in the church, she avoided being placed into one before she eventually left the church in 2011.

“Otherwise, I probably would've been married sooner than age 19, just depending on my worthiness,” she says.

Leaving a church like FLDS is extremely difficult. Followers are told from a young age that those who are not members of the faith — a group referred to as "gentiles" — are going to hell. And if someone does decide to leave, they are disowned and their families are told never to speak to them.

That became the fate of Bistline, whose father was kicked out of the church by Jeffs, who didn’t give an explanation. Growing up, she and her siblings were forbidden from talking to outsiders.

“When I left the FLDS, I was shunned,” she says. “We believed that when someone left the FLDS, that their genetics and their blood physically changed to where they were no longer related, and you're the worst of the worst if you leave. So when I left, I knew that that was coming and I was cut off from all of my family members at that point.”

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The transition was difficult for Bistline, who had to learn a whole new way of life outside the church, and eventually realized that she no longer believed in the teachings of FLDS.

“It was almost like my brain opened up,” she says. “All these possibilities are suddenly possible. And it was exciting and it was new, and it was, ‘Oh my God, I don't have to be stuck in the same situation my whole life.’”

More than a dozen of Bistline’s family members have followed her path and left FLDS in the years since. Her oldest brother, however, has not left the faith. Rather, Bistline says, he began following the beliefs of a man named Samuel Bateman.

Bateman is an FLDS member who started his own sect by successfully convincing a number of church members that Jeffs was actually dead and that he was the new prophet. Last December, authorities charged Bateman with child abuse, alleging that he had multiple child wives, including his own daughter.

Related: Arizona Polygamist Leader Had More Than 20 Wives, Including His Own Child, FBI Says

In May, Bateman was indicted on charges of having illicit sexual contact with minors, according to the U.S. Attorney for the District of Arizona.

He has pleaded not guilty to the charges against him.

Bateman, like Jeffs, is one of the focuses of Secrets of Polygamy, which also features Rachel Jeffs Blackmore, one of Warren’s daughters, who has previously spoken about living in an arranged marriage and the sexual abuse she suffered as a child at the hands of her father.

The series features hour-long episodes. Browning, the show’s central figure, interviews several former FLDS members and investigates the whereabouts of the missing children of parents who have left the church.

Bistline, who today works as a nurse in the Phoenix area, hopes her participation in the show helps bring awareness to the church’s practices and the secret-shrouded abuse suffered by its members.

“I hope that people will be more aware of what's going on behind closed doors and what's been hiding in secret,” Bistline says. “And the reason why sexual abuse against children is happening is because it's able to be done in secret.”

Secrets of Polygamy premieres on Monday, Jan. 8 at 10 p.m. ET on A&E.

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