She wants the world to know that her father was wronged by Obiang. He had her father shot to death, and then he disposed of the body, she says, and he had many other people killed. His soldiers killed her twin sister, set fire to the family's house, put the surviving family members under house arrest, and tortured and raped her, she says. His soldiers killed her aunt and uncle and all their sons. The reason that the United States likes Obiang, she says, is that "everyone is blinded by the oil" that has since been discovered in Equatorial Guinea. If you want to see how bad Obiang's regime is, she says, look at all the people who have sought political asylum since he took office.

Her father was baptized into The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in 1960 on one of his trips to the United Nations to discuss independence, she says. She joined the LDS Church on trips to Spain, which she says she was allowed to visit for the birth of her children.

In 1997, with the help of friends in Spain, she and her family were able to flee her country. The escape happened so quickly one night — and was partially aborted by suspicious neighbors who alerted the police — that she had to leave nine of her children behind.

"There was no decision of who was going to be staying, it was a matter of who was in the right spot to go. In a situation of life or death, where you have to save your own life, how can you even choose who stays and who goes?" she explains.

This might be a good point to mention that Empress Bella Syttam Macias has given birth to 19 children, beginning when she was 13. She prefers to not publicly divulge her current age. "Every time someone asks me how old I am, I say 500 years," she explains. "I want to be seen as the old woman."

Among the nine children left behind was Fina's twin sister. Fina, a lovely, reserved young woman, mentions this fact quietly, then goes silent. Because she is not allowed any correspondence to Equatorial Guinea, Macias says, she does not know the fate of any of the children who remained.

She and the other children arrived in the United States in 1997 on fake passports. In the Atlanta airport, Fina says, the family was detained because officials didn't believe that Macias was old enough to have teenage children. The passports, though, passed muster, and the family eventually was allowed to board a plane to Salt Lake City, where they knew no one. Before long, LDS Church members offered assistance, and the family eventually ended up in an inner-city church ward.