Escape, by Carolyn Jessop (Book Review)

Stumble It!

This is the second book I have read by a woman who has escaped from the Fundamentalist Latter-Day Saints (FLDS), a polygamist cult that was categorized as a hate group in 2005. Actually, I hope I will be able to read more stories from people who have managed to escape its grasp. It's a really scary group. This is a group that splintered from the Mormon church and is renounced by them.

Carolyn Jessop was 35 years old when she managed to do what most women in her situation would find unthinkable. She rounded up her eight kids and with them escaped from the home where they lived with her husband, Merril Jessop, and his other wives and their kids. By the way, these were kids who didn't want to go. She then became the first woman ever to win full custody of her kids in a contested suit involving the FLDS.

Most of Carolyn's 35 years in the FLDS cult were spent in Colorado City, AZ, a small town on the border of Colorado and Utah. She was born in 1968, into the sixth generation of a polygamist family. For the first few years of her life, her father had only one wife, her biological mother. Her mother suffered from depression and volatile mood swings and frequently beat her kids, but this is an accepted part of FLDS culture, as is wife-beating (I'm not going to call it spousal abuse here. It's wife beating). Her parents' marriage was not a strong one, with her father always criticizing her mother, especially when her mother actually, God forbid, wanted to have fun with the kids.

Carolyn's grandmother, Jenny, provided a buffer for her against her mother's volatility, and she explained the importance of plural marriage in their culture. In the FLDS faith, a man must have multiple wives if he wants to do well in Heaven. I think most of us on the "outside" think of Heaven as more of an end goal in itself, but in the FLDS faith, a man who does well in Heaven can become a god himself and get his own planet. It kind of reminds me of Greek or Roman mythology, but only the afterlife part of it, not the oppressive restrictions on earth. They also believe that men in Heaven have spirit wives and father spirit children. Those born into the FLDS believe that they are God's elite, and that they are better than anyone else in the world because of it. Carolyn felt special to be among the chosen ones.

Carolyn was more fortunate than many in her faith, especially those that were younger (as was Elissa Wall, whose memoir I reviewed in an earlier post). Carolyn graduated high school and actually got a college degree, which was almost unheard of.

Unfortunately, her college degree came with a price. She had wanted to go to school to become a doctor, but the prophet at the time (this was before Rulon Jeffs took over) wouldn't let her do that. He would let her go to college to become a teacher, but only on one condition--that she marry Merril Jessop.

Carolyn wasn't thrilled with the prospect. He was 50 years old while she was only 18. But she wanted to go to school, and she hadn't exactly been brought up to question the prophet or marry for love, so she became Merril's fourth wife.

They remained married for 17 years. Home was far from domestic bliss. Carolyn got some respite from it at first since she got to go to school, but the wives were jealous of each other, and one wife in particular wanted to dominate all the other wives, and Merril let her get away with treating the rest of them horribly, as well as beating the children of the other wives. Carolyn had eight children in 15 years, which was actually on the low end. Most would have had more like 12 or 13 in that amount of time. Merril controlled the money she earned as a teacher, the way her children would be treated, and their sex life. On top of everything else, one of their children was severely disabled, and Merril believed that this was because God was punishing Carolyn for being disobedient. I think he even hoped that their son would die to further punish her.

Life got stranger and stranger too as Rulon Jeffs and then his son Warren took over and made life more restrictive for everyone. They began to preach the apocalypse, and Carolyn feared that eventually there might be a mass suicide.

The story of how Carolyn finally managed to break free from her husband and the cult and then win custody of her kids is an amazing story of courage and hope. Carolyn is an amazingly brave and strong woman. Her story is one that everyone should read. It's scary to think that such a group, with its horrific treatment of women and children, could operate right here in the United States and get away with it. Carolyn pointed out that all the cops in her community were FLDS members, so it wasn't as though there was any place for domestic violence victims to turn to for help. Also many of the women drove cars with expired license plates, and while they wouldn't be stopped in the community, they would be if they tried to leave it.

I see the stories of those who have escaped the FLDS as serious cautionary tales. Religious freedom is one thing, but it's not okay if it involves mistreating others who don't have the freedom to walk away (I'm talking psychologically as well as in terms of the law). Even in the United States, we can't just take our rights for granted.

Stolen Innocence, by Elissa Wall with Lisa Pulitzer (Book Review)

In reading about Elissa Wall's experiences, it amazed me to think that this sort of thing goes on in America. I had heard of her case and other stories of polygamous sects, of course, but still.

Elissa is the child of Douglas Wall and his second wife. She is the 11th child of her mother, who eventually had 14 kids. Her father had more kids with other wives as well. In the household where Elissa spent most of her childhood (an abbreviated childhood due to her forced marriage at age 14), Elissa had two mothers, her biological mother as well as her father's first wife, Audrey. A third wife was added later as well. They belonged to the Fundamentalist Latter-Day Saints (FLDS), a group that broke away from the Mormom church. The kids all went to a private academy for FLDS kids. FLDS members wore long church undergarments that covered their entire bodies from neck to ankle, and the girls and women wore long pioneer-style dresses all year long, even in the heat of summer.

Elissa's was not a happy home. There was much discord, possibly because her father and his first wife had not grown up in polygamous families. Her mother had and knew they could work, but the discord worsened until finally the sect leader had her mother and all her mother's children placed with another man, as was the custom in the church. If there were problems at home, the man was blamed for not controlling the wives. There was no such thing as dating in the sect either. The sect leader would supposedly get a revelation from God about whom someone belonged with.

Elissa was very upset about having to leave her father. She did get to go to a public school for a year when she moved into her new father's home, and there she discovered a love of learning and a sense of life outside the FLDS. However, this was short-lived, as the sect leader Warren Jeffs ordered church members to take their kids out of public schools.

Elissa had a lot of rebellious siblings, which may be why Jeffs decided she needed to be married early, at age 14. Elissa did not want to be married so early and was horrified at his choice, her first cousin, 19-year-old Allen. She and her mother and some other family members tried to talk to Jeffs about it, but he wouldn't change his mind. After the marriage took place, Elissa had to endure repeated rapes at the hands of her husband.

It wasn't easy for Elissa to break free and find a life for herself outside the FLDS. She is a tremendously courageous individual who had to make some really tough decisions. She had to go against everything she'd been taught to believe in order to break free.

I found this book hard to put down because I wanted Elissa to escape the awful situation she was in already. The story was very interesting, though. Not exactly your typical American childhood. Elissa Wall is using part of the profits from this book, money from a lawsuit she brought against the FLDS system, and donations to set up a fund called the MJ fund, which will help former FLDS girls and women start lives for themselves.