Escape: A Memoir

Escape is Carolyn's touching and sensitively told personal story: At 18, Carolyn became the fourth wife of a 50-year old man in Utah. This was in the 1980s. In 2003, when Carolyn was 33, she and her eight children escaped from her husband and the Polygamous FLDS sect, in the middle of the night. She had $20 to her name. Carolyn is the only woman to have escaped Polygamy, bringing all her children. The FLDS is the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. The FLDS is the radical sect that split off from the Mormon (LDS) church and is not to be confused with the mainstream Mormon church. Written with Laura Palmer, Escape is a best-selling book and a venture into a world of which many have never heard - this is an inside look at the horrors of the polygamous world of the FLDS. The FLDS was started after the mainstream LDS church no longer allowed polygamy in the late 19th century. Polygamy is the issue that divides the FLDS from the LDS. The FLDS sect in the twin city area of Hilldale, Utah/Colorado City, Arizona - is the sect into which Carolyn Jessop married. Carolyn grew up in polygamy, from 6 generations of polygamy on her mother's side. Many who grew up in Utah, such as myself, have such polygamy far back in our ancestry. In fact, virtually all of the original Utah Pioneer settlers had to have more than one wife. All my great and great-great grandfathers had at least two wives and one of my great-grandfathers had 6 wives and 54 children from the five surviving wives. But that was in the mid-19th century. Progress has marched on for many of us, but it was not so for Carolyn and those still in the FLDS today. During her childhood in the 1970s. Carolyn grew up with her parents, her father's other wives, and her siblings in Salt Lake, away from the FLDS community. Her mother was happy and her parents briefly had a Christmas tree and a coffeemaker in the house, both of which are taboo in the religion. Once Carolyn's parents moved to the Colorado City FLDS compound, her mother grew desperately unhappy. Colorado City was run by the then-Prophet Leroy Johnson (Uncle Roy). The Prophet was the leader of the FLDS and his word was the word of God. What the Prophet said was a matter of law. The Prophet was believed to speak directly with God. In her acknowledgements to the book, Carolyn describes the FLDS: "The FLDS is constructed on a scaffolding of lies. We were all brainwashed into believing that everyone in the outside world was evil." Referring to her life now after her escape, Carolyn continues: "Every Christmas, when I see the delight in my children as they unwrap presents from people they never met, I realize what a monstrous lie we were taught to believe." In her book, Carolyn describes her escape. "Escape. The moment had come. I had been watching and waiting for months. The time was right. I had to act fast and without fear. I could not afford to fail. Nine lives wee at stake: those of my eight children and my own." ..."At eighteen, I was coerced into an arranged marriage with Merril Jessop, a fifty-year-old man I barely knew. I became his fourth wife and had eight children in fifteen years..." "The first thing I did when I realized I might be able to escape was to go to my sister Linda's house to use the telephone. I couldn't call from my home because the phones were monitored. My husband's six other wives were suspicious. I had a reputation for being somewhat independent and thinking for myself, so the other wives kept tabs on me." ..."When I was growing up in the FLDS, our lives had not been as extreme as they were becoming under Warren Jeffs. The children attended public schools. But that ended when Jeffs took over. He felt that teachers I the public schools had been educated by `gentiles' [non-FLDS] and were `contaminated.' " So Carolyn's children attended the private FLDS schools. Warren Jeffs believed he was Christ incarnate, and spoke of moving the FLDS members to a walled-off area within the compound from which there would be no escape. Jeffs believed the FLDS were the `chosen seed of God' and that it was his duty to protect them from everything unclean, such as the `outside' world. Jeffs ordered all secular [non-FLDS] books to be destroyed. Carolyn had been a public school teacher before Jeffs took over. She had had more than 300 children's books, which were destroyed under Jeffs' rule. One night in 2003, Carolyn returned home but could not find her oldest daughter, Betty, who was then 14. Warren Jeffs was known to marry off girls to older men - girls as young as 14. Jeffs himself had dozens of wives - at least 70. [Since the writing of the book, Warren Jeffs was arrested, tried, and convicted of two felony counts of arranging under-age marriages of girls to older men. News updated November 10th include release of documents that Jeffs tried to hang himself in his jail cell in September while awaiting trial, and also confessing to `immorality' with a `sister' and a `daughter.' His nephew, Brent Jeffs, is suing Jeffs for sodomy when Brent was an underage student in one of the schools and Warren was the principal. Jeffs is awaiting sentencing for the two felony convictions. He could face life imprisonment.] When Carolyn returned home one night to find 14-year-old Betty at a sleepover at Jeffs' house with other 14-year old girls, Carolyn knew she had to act fast: her worry was that Betty would soon be married off to an older man. ..."One by one, I put my children in the van and told them to buckle their set belts. I was frantic. I was also out of time. Harrison [severely disabled since birth] was the only one left...I strapped him into his car seat, turned on the ignition, and counted to see if my children were all there. Betty was missing." Carolyn found 14-year old Betty in her room but Betty resisted Carolyn taking her into the car. After a brief skirmish, Betty acquiesced and Carolyn left southern Utah in her van with her eight children, bound for Salt Lake City. On the escape drive, Betty saw that her mother had lied as to where they were going. "You are stealing us! Mother, you are stealing us! Uncle Warren will come and get us." "Betty, I can't steal my own children." "We don't belong to you! We belong to the prophet! You have no right to us." Five hours later, Carolyn and her children were in hiding in Salt Lake City, and her husband began to hunt them down like prey. Carolyn describes what it was like to move to the FLDS community in Hilldale in the late 1980s, and to learn that the sunglasses the FLDS wives often wore usually covered black eyes. Power was in the hands of the husband, and the wives and children's fate and rank within the family was determined by how obedient and subservient they were to him. The prophet Leroy Johnson had announced that he had a revelation that Carolyn should marry Merril Jessop - Carolyn had been planning on going to college to become a doctor, but her father knew that once the prophet spoke that he must act quickly and marry Carolyn to Jessop. There were no questions asked: Carolyn's family did what they were forced to do. Carolyn later learned she had been a pawn in a business deal between her father and Jessop. When Carolyn married Jessop - who was very high up within the FLDS priesthood - she, at 18, had never had a previous relationship with a man, had never dated (dating was forbidden) and she did not love Merril - she did not even like this man whom many others called cruel. On their wedding night, Carolyn was bound to wifely duty, as a possession of her husband. She cringed when he touched her, and she was relieved when he was not able to consummate their wedding night. She later learned to use sex as a safety weapon in the relationships with the other wives and children. Sex was the one power the younger wives had over a more powerful wife. Carolyn became Jessop's fourth wife - of the previous wives, only Barbara was still having sex with Merril, and Barbara was the wife to whom all other wives, children and Merril answered. Barbara made Carolyn's life miserable. Carolyn was watched wherever she went. Jessop was later to add two more wives to his plural marriage. Abuse against wives and against children was not only permissible, but a way of life. "It was preached at church that if you didn't put the fear of God into children from the time of their birth, they would grow up and leave the work of God. Abuse was necessary to save a child's soul." Encouragement was few and far between. One of the wives later approached Merril, and spoke up against him on behalf of Carolyn: "Merril, it's wrong for you to use your daughters against your wives and encourage them to be hurtful and mean to us and your other children." At one point, Carolyn realizes she missed an important step in the teachings and blessings of the FLDS religion: She had never received a Patriarchal blessing. The Patriarch is third in line from the top - the prophet, Council of 12 Apostles and the Patriarch - (third in line - similar to an Archbishop's rank in the Roman Catholic church). The importance of a Patriarchal blessing is that the Patriarch tells why you were put on this earth. When Carolyn did finally receive that blessing, she learned that she was born with the gift of discernment - that she could look at someone and know if they were good or evil. It was that gift of discernment, among her many other gifts and strengths, that gave Carolyn the strength to escape, and to finally find happiness and peace. Carolyn tells her gripping story in a matter-of-fact way that does not undersell the horror of the facts themselves - nor does it do short shrift to the beauty and the power of humanity that finally surfaces in her heroic tale. A must read. You REALLY do not want to miss this one.

Escape / 978-0-7679-2756-7 I bought "Escape", along with Stolen Innocence and Under the Banner of Heaven as part of an effort to learn more about the women who have escaped from the plural marriages of FLDS. I'm always very interested to read about cults and the people who have escaped from them, and I'd finished Seductive Poison and felt it was time to move on to something else. I was a little concerned, though, by the handful of reviews online that claimed that "Escape" was contradictory and poorly written. I shouldn't have been concerned. I started "Escape" in the evening and ended up staying up most of the night to finish it - I couldn't bring myself to set it down. The writing is some of the best I've read all year - gripping, candid, suspenseful, and flowing. It is impossible to not become immediately sucked into the situation that Carolyn has been born and raised in, and it is equally impossible to not respect her courage and determination. As for 'contradictions', I could find none, save for carefully highlighted differences between how members of the community are "supposed" to live and how they actually live in practice. This is not a light subject matter. It is deeply depressing to read how Carolyn and her children are abused - in many cases, throughout their entire life. She highlights the undercurrent of domination, control, and suppressed rage that runs through so many members of their oppressed community, and notes how that rage boils over into the lives of the innocent children, as they are repeatedly abused as an outlet for their parents' frustration. This is not a book to be read lightly, but Carolyn's prose quickly treads us over these painful incidents as we race to her harrowing escape. With careful detail, Carolyn brings home the realities of her situation, how difficult escape is, how hard it is to gather all your children together and leave, how the cars in the community are kept with almost no gas and expired tags so that police will pull over escaping women and take them back to their husbands. Ambulance drivers refuse to drive her intensely sick child to the hospital without her husband's permission; a permission he will not grant so that the child will die and Carolyn will repent for her 'sins'. Although Carolyn knows she can leave at any point, she is desperate to save all her children and cannot bear to leave even a single one behind. If you were to read only one book this year on FLDS and the horrors these women and children suffer in the name of spiritual submission, I recommend "Escape" most highly of all that I've read so far. The story is immediately intimate for the reader, and days after my rushed, sleepless read-through, I still recall the intense details that Carolyn so carefully highlighted. As this is a memoir, it is only the story of one person and it is a given that everyone will have different experiences, but this one woman's experience is such a compelling insight into a fundamentally broken and abusive community that it has a tale to tell to everyone. ~ Ana Mardoll

Escape is undoubtedly one of the most bizarre memoirs you are ever likely to read. It is small wonder that it quickly made its mark on the New York Times list of bestsellers. Written by Carolyn Jessop, a woman who was born into the Fundamentalist Lattery Day Saints (FLDS), the book describes what it is like to live as part of this cult which is distinctive primarily for its beliefs about polygamy. The FLDS, which emerged in the 1930s as a fundamentalist offshoot of the Mormon church, holds that God has ordained polygamy and not only that, but that it is a requirement for anyone who wishes to attain the highest level of heaven. Most men eventually have at least three wives, with more prominent members of the cult holding far more than that. Some of the leaders are believed to have fifty, sixty, or even one hundred wives. Women are generally placed with husbands at the whim of the cult's leader (who claims to receive divine guidance about which women belong with certain men). There are around 10,000 adherents to this cult living in the United States today. Jessop was born into a family that eventually had two wives but one that, compared to others in the community, seemed almost normal. When she was just eighteen, though, she was assigned to become the fourth wife of a fifty-five year old man. While she was married to him he added two more wives and later went on to add five or six more. Through fifteen years of marriage, Jessop gave birth to eight children. Through her marriage she suffered constant abuse at the hands of her husband, his other wives, and other members of the community. Though for much of her life she believed the claims of the FLDS religion, she eventually began to see through its hypocrisy and decided that, for the good of herself and her children, she would need to escape from it. Escape from FLDS is not easy. Their tight-knit communities have immense power and wealth. Even the local police officers are members of the cult and will not support a wife who seeks to emancipate herself or her family. Until Jessop, no woman had managed to escape the clutches of the cult with all of her children. Jessop, though, ran from the cult and fought against it in the courts, eventually winning full custody of her eight children. This was no small victory. In fact, it was worth telling in a book. While the book is a definite page-turner (as both my wife and I can attest) it is not always easy to read. The descriptions of life in the FLDS are at times horrific. There were several areas that I found particularly interesting. Jessop is frank (though not vulgar or graphic) in her discussions about sexuality within her plural marriage and well she needs to be, for sex plays a strange but crucial role in these marriages. Though the women generally hate their husbands, they still want to have sex with him--not for the sake of love or intimacy, but because sex is power. The wife who gains sexual favor with her husband is the wife who can use him to further her own desires. Often these desires pit her against the other wives. It is an odd situation where wives who hate their husband seek to have sex (which they hate) with their husband (whom they hate) so they can further their hate-filled plans towards each other. So much, then, for the idealized content of "sister wives" that the cult seeks to portray to the world. This book and its description of life within plural marriage shows that marriage--marriage as given to us in the Bible--serves as protection for women. When people ignore biblically-ordained marriage, women immediately lose the protection it affords. They quickly become subservient to men. The women always lose out. Perhaps the most shocking thing to remember while reading the book is that it takes place in twenty-first century America. This is not fundamentalist Islam in the Middle East; this is not the earliest days of Mormonism. This is happening in the very heart of America--women are treated like cattle, used to breed children and bought, sold and traded like so many goods. In America. It is almost unbelievable. While the FLDS is hardly an accurate representation of average religion and bears little resemblance to Christianity or even to Mormonism, this portrayal is increasingly what people think of when they think about religion. More and more people are becoming convinced that all religion tends towards extremism and a book like this may just fuel those fires. This story is awful to read, but it is written well and is for some reason quite fascinating.

It has now been nearly three years since I became a Board Certified Expert in Traumatic Stress (BCETS) and two years since becoming a Fellow of the American Academy of Experts in Traumatic Stress (FAAETS). I have, however, never read a more poignant description of the physical and psychological consequences of recurring trauma at such a profound personnel level (and I have read several hundred!) This biographical offering should be required reading for any student of abnormal psychology. It traverses from gender; to gender role; to biological, psychological, and sociological foundations of personality development; to locus of control (perceived control a person feels he or she has on the outcome of life events; to sociopathic ontology; to Acute Stress, PTSD, and comorbid disorders. The work not only describes the psychological consequences of childhood and adulthood traumatic stress, but vividly describes the current and future manifestations Carolyn might expect; such as increased physical and neurological problems, such as autoimmune disorders, fibromyalgia, and chronic pain -- symptoms not readily associated by the sufferer or medical professionals with intense trauma or prolonged stress. The book also provides an excellent insight into sociopathic disorder, antisocial personality disorder. Unfortunately, though not described by Carolyn, such extreme trauma might also result in Dissociative Identity Disorder (formerly known as multiple personality disorder). More importantly, Carolyn's description of her daughter, Betty, greatly furthers Dr. Jennifer Freyd's pivotal works on betrayal trauma, in which victims often repress or minimize the abuse at the hands of important others in order to preserve the relationship until such time as the relationship is no longer needed or viable. In essence, the victim undergoes a type of traumatic amnesia. However, PTSD research has well documented the compounding effects of repeated trauma. Betty well demonstrates a wide body of research that the coping strategy of women centers on a biologically, psychologically, and sociologically derived "tend-and-befriend" rather than the "fight-or-flight" coping strategy of men. Carolyn's insight into years of abuse, however, lends credence to the suggestion that, rather than merely viewing men and women on a bipolar masculine or feminine level, psychological and sociological reinforcement might amplify or attenuate biological predisposition. In essence, Carolyn demonstrated not only the tend-and-befriend coping strategy, she also demonstrated a fight-or-flight coping strategy when she realized in order to ensure the survival of her children, befriending her sister wives was not sufficient or viable; therefore, she had to rely on fight-or flight as a coping strategy. Perhaps the most fascinating aspect of Carolyn's book centers on locus of control. Conceptualized by Julian Rotter, locus of control measure the extent to which a person believes the outcome of life events is the consequence of his or her behavior, the behavior of others, or even serendipity. In the environment Carolyn describes, a researcher would firmly expect Carolyn to demonstrate a highly external locus of control - survival was the result of the whims and behavior of Merril. However, she repeatedly reflects a highly internal locus of control - survival was directly the consequence of her own perception, cognition, and behavior. This elucidation greatly supports a strong biological component to locus of control. Carolyn's work was so compelling and well constructed that I couldn't stop reading from start to finish. I would strongly encourage her to write a sequel to help medical and mental health professionals better understand the psychological and physical manifestations of her and her family and the therapy she finds most effective. The environment that Carolyn describes that shaped her past is unlikely to disappear. In fact, it is likely to only become more prevalent. Researchers are not permitted to engage in research that elicits such responses. It is only through the brave, unsensationalized works of Carolyn Jessup that we in the mental health community can develop better preventative and interventional programs and the criminal justice community can enact better laws to protect the potential victims. As a lifelong researcher, I am certain the mental health community would leap at the opportunity to participate in development and employment of programs to assist in prevention and intervention. Alan Hensley, PhD Candidate, BCETS, FAATS.

So they wear old-fashioned clothes, oddly elaborate hairstyles, and share a husband among "sister wives," why should we care? It's their choice, right? Astonishing to learn of the hatefulness and abuse inherent in this misogynist society. Young girls are married off with little notice and without their consent; little boys work long hours in sometimes dangerous conditions, then are banished for imaginary "sins" before they reach adulthood so all the girls can be "assigned" to a select few old men. Wives are sexual slaves, work horses, and baby factories, frantically competing for position in the home, shunned to a back bedroom when younger wives arrive. They dare not leave; they are brainwashed from birth that their very salvation depends on their compliance with the will of the "prophet." They also have few skills, little education, no money, and risk losing their children; as well as being cut off from their parents, families, and lifelong friends, banned by the community as apostates who have rejected the Heavenly Father. Although most comply with their own abuse (can you say "Stockholm Syndrome?"), some, like Carolyn, must be coerced. Basic necessities are withheld or their children abused unless they cooperate. Carolyn's son was literally denied shoes until she adopted the required pose of being "sweetly compliant" to her "priesthood head." Wives and children are rewarded for spying on each other and gain favor and status by reporting misdeeds for punishment. Child and spousal abuse keep everyone in line. And we pay for it all, as only the first wife is legal; the others are unmarried "single mothers" who are not supported by their kids' dad (despite having a child by him every year), and collect welfare and free government-paid medical care for their enormous broods. Men take the money and rule the roost; no competition or weird clothes for them. The favored wife is elevated; others are condemned to raising the many children, endless cleaning, sewing, cooking, laundering; while performing unpaid labor for the husband's businesses, working the fields, even tearfully facing the media when directed (a la YFZ Ranch in Texas), while the men kick back and live it up on our dime. Any wife who doesn't like it is replaced, her children assigned to another mother. Despite being a 6th generation polygamist, Carolyn Jessop has the intelligence to see behind the veil and the courage to break free from the abuse. Only a teenager when she was forced to become the 4th wife of 50-year old Merril Jessop, Carolyn describes her abuse by the other wives (he eventually has 13) and being ignored and disdained by her husband, except when he regularly forces himself on her to keep her continually pregnant, thereby raising his status in the community. She bears 8 of his 50+ children, nearly losing her life in the process. Like other FLDS women, her worthiness is measured *only* by constant childbearing, backbreaking labor, and submission to every whim of her husband, who, she later learns, only married her to circumvent a lawsuit Carolyn's father was considering after Jessop crossed him in a business deal. Since the FLDS self-proclaimed "prophet," Warren Jeffs, is serving a long prison term for accomplice to rape (regarding an underage girl he forced into marriage), Carolyn's former husband, Merril Jessop, runs the YFZ Ranch in Texas; some feel he may be the new leader of the FLDS. Find out what he's really like, the tyranny, abuse, violence, disorder and hatred within his own home and the community he leads, and what is happening to the many women and children trapped in this life with no freedom, no education, and eternal damnation unless they obey. Carolyn Jessop's book is a page-turner, fast-paced and fascinating. You will be rooting for her, amazed at her audacity, amused by her cleverness, and thrilled when she and her children finally break the cycle with their daring escape to freedom.

What if your salvation depended upon your complete obedience to, and the good will of, a profoundly evil human being? Escape, by Caroline Jessop begs the question; is the FLDS faith fundamentally flawed in its core principle that spiritual redemption is reached through plural marriage, and for women, by the grace of one’s husband? Furthermore, how does such an oppressive and inequitable hermit kingdom exist, not only in the modern world, but within a nation that imagines itself to be among the most freedom-loving on the planet? I found this book to be unstoppable. Written in a breathless, adrenaline pumped, yet conversational style, every aspect of Carolyn's life in the FLDS was exquisitely interesting, from her childhood to her marriage to her eventual liberation. Jessop describes many of the FLDS principles in detail, making sense of a system of beliefs that at times seem harsh and alien, unfair, even bizarre when compared to the experiences and beliefs of a majority of Americans. She explains in detail how those principles came to pass, how they defined the community and the various groups within it, what they meant to her personally, how they shaped her as an individual, and how they applied to her life within the community and impacted the family dynamic in her home. Every word of this narrative grips the reader. Sometimes heartbreaking and often hard to read in its raw honesty, still, one can't stop turning page after page. Despite years of removal from the community her detailed descriptions of the atrocities she and her children suffered, her process of self-discovery and shedding of her FLDS identity, and her escape were clear, precise, and completely captivating. Even Jessop’s legal struggles, assimilation into mainstream America, and family dynamics after her escape manage to fascinate. This is by far one of the strangest memoirs I have ever read, in my limited experience; Carolyn Jessop’s Escape is comparable only to Escape from Camp 14, which is set in a North Korean prison labor camp. It is difficult to imagine Jessop the narrator, an intelligent, strong, outspoken and compassionate individual living amongst such backward thinking and under such oppressive leadership; and unthinkable that such a place should exist in the United States. Jessop’s journey from fourth wife to free woman is absolutely astounding. Overall, I was left with the firm resolution that I would never forsake this life for the promises of exaltation in the afterlife, that no man will be the master of my salvation. That contract remains between me and my maker. If I relent that the only path to the celestial kingdom is through obedience and submission to a spiteful husband, have I not forsaken both my freedom in this life and my soul in the next?

This is a very good book that keeps the reader reading and doesn't allow you to think much, but I would like to point out some issues I had with the book. Carolyn Jessop, gives the reader a glimpse into the Fundamentalist Ladder Day Saints (FDLS) and polygamy. Most importantly on how it was to live both outside and inside a community that was religious based. We follow the author through childhood, adolescents, and young adulthood. We walk through her life of being married to not only to one man but several wives. We see how she lives in detail. From her bedroom to the very house she lives. In our mind we begin to understand the structure and the psychological implications and consequences of living in such a lifestyle. For some it is comfortable living, where a woman doesn't have to take care the children alone, cook all the time, and surely not worry about how she will be financially supported. But there is another side that Carolyn presents of being abused, manipulated, and completely overwhelmed if one did not have the right frame of mind in this kind of relationship. The reader gets a good idea what happens in a home that is divided against oneself. Carolyn clearly shows that the wives could be the strength or the barrier to a marriage and family. With one man if he is not who totally secure & stable, to be used, misused, and abused in the process. Plus if he is not a good man as Carolyn presents, then this could make for bigger problems such as neglect, psychological harm, and/or even death. I really enjoyed the little tibits and her knowledge of the FDLS and polygamy. There is not a question in my mind that she didn't lived this life. You see many areas of conflict within herself, her children, the wives, and those around her. I would have like to read more not only her own struggles, but her own contribution towards some of the problems. Not to say she is responsible for being abused or married to someone she didn't know. But how did she feel she could make life easier or better for her if any? Did she try to connect and make a happy home? I don't mean cooking, cleaning, and saying hello. I mean real contribution. I often wondered why she never spoke to Barbara face-to-face? Woman-to-woman? Carolyn is clearly not weakminded and not entirely fearful; and at times quite expressive and independent. So why not? What could she loose? I wondered what made Merril allow her to go to school for her degree? What made Merril continue to sleep with her? And why didn't she have more power since in the book she states that a woman's currency and power was sex? I understand she continued to have sex to be left alone. But why not use the very thing to work on her husband and first wife? Sometimes in the book, which I believe it could be due to editing Carolyn's writing was a bit off- especially staying in the hear & now and shadowing to the past. Sometimes I felt it got mixed up. For example, she was speaking about applying for benefits for her children and how she was unable to do so because Merril had not claimed her last son as his. But had for the other children. Then suddenly, we are reading about this elusive plan of her sneaking in the house after 2am to get the forms. I wasn't sure if this happened before she escaped or after. As I said could have been a editor mistake. I was also curious about Barbara's story. It was obvious that Carolyn never had any sort of relationship or connection with her. She stayed away from her and maybe rightfully so, but it would have been nice to understand Barbara more. We get such a clear picture about everyone else but not Barbara. She was explained as this ruthless woman, who was spoiled, domineering and who had all this power to command and control the kingdom. Also that she wanted Merril all to herself, and pretty much did not have a say in her husband's choice of a wife, but what was the real story behind Barbara. Since Carolyn has so much information about everyone else- why not her? Some point in the book I started to become annoyed. She repeated herself a lot. Or she would be speaking about something and suddenly veer off and start talking about something else over series of pages. She would finally get on track but I really didn't enjoy this. I kept thinking, "Stay focus, stay on track, and let's keep it moving." But I would not allow these little things I raise to say the book wasn't good. It was very good- riveting, but had a few clitches that could be revised. I recommend this book for those curious about polygamy and the FDLS. All and all a decent read. 4 stars for a good book with some editing problems.

The FLDS is a cult where men rule everything around them, including women and children. One where having more than one wife and hoards of children are part of "keeping harmony with your husband, the priest head." For the FDLS, harmony is answering to prophets with names like Uncle Roy, working like a slave, and engaging in incorrigible acts such as child abuse and domestic violence. This was the strange world Carolyn Jessop had to escape from once Warren Jeffs became prophet. For Carolyn and many others, Warren Jeffs' leadership began to border into Jim Jones' territory-no dancing, internet, tv, or newspapers. Free thought and higher education resulted in excommunication. The most insidious practice of all was Warren Jeffs' foray into pedophilia, with him taking wives as young as 12. Fed up with the cult and Worrying that her 12-year old would be one of Warren Jeffs' next wife, Carolyn Jessop escaped. With the help of her family and organizations assisting those who are fleeing polygamous cults, Jessop is the only person known to leave the FDLS with her all her children. Carolyn Jessop's story was disturbing, but its written format leaves the reader discombobulated. It's hard to wrap your head around a cult as strange and as bizarre as the FLDS. A cult where women are dressed like intergalactic visitors from Little House on the Prairie, circa 1865. The backbiting nature of the "sister bitches and hos," who compete to have sex with their husband and who work at being highly favored to him. The casting of less favored wives into serfdom, the abject poverty, and abuse. The throngs of pathetic kids, and a whole community of people who are either mentally handicapped or mentally ill. The FLDS isn't about god or being faithful. It's a contortion of the Mormon faith so men have power over women and can have sex with children. There. I said it. Escaoe could have easily been edited by 100 pages. It reads like a diary, and many parts of the book were just dragged on. "Escape" is a harrowing tale wrought with a fair amount of courageousness along with ad naseum.