Escape
by Carolyn Jessop, Laura Palmer
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Book Summary Information
Author: Carolyn Jessop, Laura PalmerEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2008-12-30
ISBN: 0767927575
Number of pages: 448
Publisher: Broadway
Book Reviews of Escape
Book Review: Escape reads like Nazi Occupied Europe rather than the United States!
Summary: 5 Stars
Carolyn Blackmore Jessop is an amazing woman. There is no doubt about it. She was forced into a loveless, abusive marriage to Merril Jessop, one of the leaders of the FLDS cult. She was his fourth wife and he would marry many times over. Carolyn begins her book by writing about her opportunity to flee the cult of Colorado City with all eight children with her. It's under difficult circumstances.
Warren Jeffs who is imprisoned for his role in arranging underage brides to marry older men is still very much in charge even from prison. During Warren's reign of terror, he has isolated and abused his followers and members to the point of devoiding emotions and under-education. Carolyn was one of the few who was lucky enough to get a college degree and was able to teach in the community.
At one point, she had helped form a plan to open a charter school which was given consent by the state but not by Warren Jeffs. Jeffs' rule was more a totalitarian dictator and cult leader along the lines of Jim Jones but much worse. Unlike most of Jones' followers, Carolyn and her community were all born into this community. None of them knew what life was like outside and they were taught to fear outsiders like ourselves including fellow Mormons who don't practice polygamy.
Carolyn was told and preached that she was living God's will with Merril and having his children. But along the lines, she was slowly realizing her brainwashing had imprisoned her and others from the freedoms to enjoy life rather than work and slave away under Jeffs' command. Carolyn's escape is well-written and powerful to explain the years of abuse and rational for staying with an abusive husband and his wife, Barbara.
Carolyn loved her children more than anybody else and she was seeing how Jeffs' isolation and ruling to further them into a concentration camp from the outside world would prohibit escape. Wives like Carolyn were treated worse than property and the children in this community witnessed dogs being killed, sexual abuse, physical abuse, psychological abuse, etc. Carolyn believed that she would go to heaven upon death but this hellish life in this community isn't worth it and above all her children.
Carolyn had slowly realized that she needed to escape with all of her children and not leave one behind. Upon her escape which reads like European Jews fleeing the Nazis at times, she is hounded, stalked, harrassed, and spied on even by her own children at times who feel loyalty to their father. She wanted to give her children freedom and risked her own life to do it. Unlike Elissa Wall's book, Carolyn and her children had plenty more obstacles to survive upon their escape like lawyers, courts, and the system which failed to protect the children from the abusive practices of Merril Jessop.
To my horror, I keep thinking about how the FLDS despite it's own prejudices and brainwashing are really at the mercy of the powerful men like Merril Jessop who is still in control to this day. I worry about all of them including the men, women, and children still in this terrible environment in the Yearning for Zion Compound in Texas isolated from the world and cut off from modern conveniences.
I believe Carolyn wrote this book to help other women in the same abusive situation. There is nothing worse than staying with an abusive spouse. This book details her own ignorance at her own basic human rights as a person. In her community, women weren't viewed as nothing more than breeding machines and housekeepers. They weren't allowed to have voices to speak their minds. I encourage everybody to read this book and voice your minds.
Cults like FLDS are still with us and practicing the immorality of polygamy and brainwashing. For the record, the FLDS are not members of the Mormon Church or Latter Day Saints because of their polygamy.
I thank Carolyn for writing this book and showing courage and bravery to defy the odds against her during her court battles. I pray that Betty comes home to her one day.
Summary of Escape
The dramatic first-person account of life inside an ultra-fundamentalist American religious sect, and one woman?s courageous flight to freedom with her eight children.When she was eighteen years old, Carolyn Jessop was coerced into an arranged marriage with a total stranger: a man thirty-two years her senior. Merril Jessop already had three wives. But arranged plural marriages were an integral part of Carolyn?s heritage: She was born into and raised in the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (FLDS), the radical offshoot of the Mormon Church that had settled in small communities along the Arizona-Utah border. Over the next fifteen years, Carolyn had eight children and withstood her husband?s psychological abuse and the watchful eyes of his other wives who were locked in a constant battle for supremacy.
Carolyn?s every move was dictated by her husband?s whims. He decided where she lived and how her children would be treated. He controlled the money she earned as a school teacher. He chose when they had sex; Carolyn could only refuse?at her peril. For in the FLDS, a wife?s compliance with her husband determined how much status both she and her children held in the family. Carolyn was miserable for years and wanted out, but she knew that if she tried to leave and got caught, her children would be taken away from her. No woman in the country had ever escaped from the FLDS and managed to get her children out, too. But in 2003, Carolyn chose freedom over fear and fled her home with her eight children. She had $20 to her name.
Escape exposes a world tantamount to a prison camp, created by religious fanatics who, in the name of God, deprive their followers the right to make choices, force women to be totally subservient to men, and brainwash children in church-run schools. Against this background, Carolyn Jessop?s flight takes on an extraordinary, inspiring power. Not only did she manage a daring escape from a brutal environment, she became the first woman ever granted full custody of her children in a contested suit involving the FLDS. And in 2006, her reports to the Utah attorney general on church abuses formed a crucial part of the case that led to the arrest of their notorious leader, Warren Jeffs.
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