Escape

By Carolyn Jessop and Laura Palmer

Carolyn was born into the FLDS church, the Fundamentalist Church of the Latter-Day Saints. Her family and her ancestors were polygamists. She was raised to believe the teachings of her church and she believed wholeheartedly in its teachings. She was, in fact, proud of her heritage. even as she began to find it rather constricting and stifling as she grew up.
Like most women in her small community, she was not given a choice in who she was to marry. Her parents arranged for her to marry a man who was more than thirty years older than she, Merril Jessop.
Jessop already had three wives and many children, some perhaps as old or older than Carolyn herself. But he was greedy for more. And he continued to acquire wives through the years, selecting younger and younger girls as his brides.
Being a younger wife in a family with three older wives was not an easy position in which to be. Carolyn soon realized that Merril's first wife was the wife of his heart and this woman's word was the law in the family. Carolyn also figured out that the only way to achieve and maintain status in the family was to have lots of children for her husband. A wife's ability to bear children and her sexual attractiveness to her husband were her main badges of status within the family and within the community.
Their religion taught that women were subservient to men, little more than property. A man's wishes were the law and abuse was rampant, both physical and sexual. Women and girls were required to be "sweet" and not question or rebel and to obey and submit. And this is what Carolyn tried to do, through the years, until the rise of Warren Jeffs.
Jeffs began to institute a kind of religious dictatorship. He began to pass all sorts of new rules, restricting the community's access to the outside world. He set up rules for how to dress, how to wear your hair and he told the people to remove their children from public school. Women began to find their already constricted world even more constricted than ever.
But it was only when Jeffs started marrying off younger and younger girls to old men that Carolyn started to think it was time to quit the FLDS and get away before her young daughters were given away into sexual slavery. But Jeffs' and Jessop's influence and reach were wide spread in their part of the world and they were known to be vengeful and remorseless in pursuit. How in the world would Carolyn manage to spirit her eight children away with no money and no help that she could trust? And how would she support her children if she did manage to escape? Not to mention that one of her kids was just an infant and the other very disabled and requiring medical care? Could she count on the states of Utah and Arizona to give her the help and support she so desperately needed? As far as she knew, no woman who had fled the FLDS had managed to retain custody of her children. But she didn't let that stop her and she went on to be the first escaped wife to defy the FLDS and her abusive husband and gain sole custody of her eight children.

This is an amazing and totally engrossing account of one woman's experience in a polygamous society. She starts out totally committed to the precepts of the religion but gradually begins to rebel when she admits to herself that she is tremendously unhappy and that her children are at risk of ending up in similar miserable situations. It was quite a journey, living it with her and sharing her story.

Under the Banner of Heaven

By Jon Krakauer

In 1984, two brothers, Ron and Dan Lafferty murdered their other brother Allen's wife, Brenda, and their baby daughter, Erica. According to the Laffertys, Brenda was a bad person and her baby was a bad person too because she would grow up to be just like her mother.
Ron Lafferty hated Brenda because his wife turned to Brenda for advice and eventually left her husband. He blamed Brenda for this and claimed he had a revelation from God that Brenda, Erica and some other people needed to be killed. The other people were also people that Ron was angry with.
Ron and Dan belonged to the Mormon religion and were fundamentalists. One of the tenets of their religion, as I understand it, is that individual men can have valid revelations directly from God. In fact, I think the head of the Mormon church is regarded as a prophet. So when Ron became angry, he claimed he had a revelation from God saying his particular enemies must be killed. So he and his brother, who, from what I have read about him, is a bit of a lunatic, along with two other men, drove over to Allen & Brenda's place, and burst in on Brenda at a time when Allen was not home. Ron beat Brenda to a bloody pulp and Dan cut Brenda and Erica's throats, nearly decapitating the two victims. All this because one hate-filled, resentful man mistook his anger for divine revelation and talked his gullible brother into joining him in a terrible crime.
Ron and Dan were raised Mormon and the author makes the case for the Mormon religion as a co-conspirator in the murders. Apparently, Mormonism has a bloody and violent history and a persecution complex that, along with any man can have a divine revelation teaching, encourages the kind of extremism practiced by the Lafferty brothers and others of their ilk like Brian David Mitchell, the man who kidnapped Elizabeth Smart and forced her to become his second wife.

This was a very interesting story. Although the actions of the Lafferty brothers is the framework of the story, it is really about Mormonism and delves into the beginnings of it and of the schisms within it. After reading this book, I can't help but feel that Mormonism has many things in common with Islam and the potential to become as dangerous as Islam, given the right circumstances.

A review by The New York Times: http://www.nytimes.com/2003/08/03/books/thou-shalt-kill.html?pagewanted=all.

Church of Lies

By Flora Jessop and Paul T. Brown

This is the true story of Flora Jessop. It is a shocking and disheartening tale of polygamy, sexual abuse, virtual slavery, and religious coercion with threats of damnation for disobedience.
Flora was born into the FLDS cult, or the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. The religious beliefs of this bizarre cult are strange and numerous and, not being an expert on the beliefs, I will not go into them in detail. Suffice it to say that every thing is run by the men, with females relegated to child bearing, child rearing, home care and obedience.
If I were to describe this religion, I would call it a form of sexual slavery disguised as religion. Women are required to be entirely subservient to the demands and desires of the men. And young men are required to be subservient to the demands and desires of the old men. All the power resides with the old men and, naturally, such an out-of-balance situation leads to abuses.
Flora herself was abused throughout her childhood by her own father, eventually resulting in a pregnancy in her early teen years. She tried to appeal to the state authorities for help but was simply returned to her family. She tried to appeal to her mother, but her mother was too worn out and downtrodden to stand up to the male authority figures. The mother was also captive of her own beliefs, namely that disobedience results in eternal damnation.
After Flora was forced to abort the baby, she was held captive by one of the cult's elders and eventually forced into marriage with a cousin. And, although it was a forced marriage, Flora realized it could be her ticket to freedom. So she agreed to the marriage, and with her new husband's cooperation, left him and the cult. He was a nice young man who liked Flora, and, for her sake, let her go.
Her new life in freedom got off to a rocky start. Never having been permitted freedom, she went off the deep end, using drugs and drinking too much. Her life was unrooted and she drifted from place to place and from man to man.
But one day she realized what she was doing to herself and got herself straightened out. She met a nice man, Tim, and they settled down in Phoenix, Arizona. And that is when she began to seriously try to help other cult fugitives escape from the FLDS.

This was a moving and terrifying story, incredible that this sort of thing is allowed to continue in the United States in the name of religious freedom. Flora is a courageous and energetic woman who was able to conquer her abusers and her own inclinations for self-destruction. It is hardly surprising that some one raised in those conditions would end up in a downward spiral. But Flora rose above all that and now helps other desperate children, women, and even men
escape from a cruel and destructive religious cult.

Shattered Dreams: My LIfe as a Polygamist's Wife

By Irene Spencer

This is Irene's story of her experience as the second wife of a man who eventually had 10 wives. Both Irene and her husband were members of a fundamentalist Mormon sect that believes in the polygamy espoused by the founders of the Mormon religion. It is a pretty far-out doctrine which I find amazing that anyone would ever believe came from God and not from the unbridled lusts of a bunch of dirty old men. According to the author, Brigham Young claimed that there are spirits in the universe that need bodies to inhabit and that it is the duty of righteous men and women to provide these bodies and the best way to do that is through polygamy. They also were taught that men could become gods if they married at least two women (although seven or more is better) and had as many kids as possible. (Never mind that the ratio of men to women is about 50/50 so if one man has 10 wives then nine men must have none. Irene's man proves the ratio: he had 29 sons and 29 daughters.) As for the women, they could only become goddess if they help their man have as many wives and children as possible. They were also taught the "law of purity" that required abstinence from sexual relations before marriage and after becoming married during pregnancy, lactation, menses and after menopause. Of course the real reason for the purity law is to take some of the pressure off the man who is trying to service his herd of women and give him a break from his sexual duties. In Irene's case, she and her man only had sex to get her pregnant. She had thirteen kids with him and probably had sex with him less than thirty times in the more than two decades they were together.
Irene was raised in this strange sect and when she turned seventeen she decided she wanted to be a polygamist's wife. So she married her half-sister's husband. Right away she was miserable. Seems like her new man had neither the time or resources to spend on his new wife. Also the first wife didn't like sharing. But so what? That didn't stop him from going out and getting new wives over the course of the years. He ended up with 58 kids before he died at the age of 51. When I read he had died young, I figured it was from exhaustion. (It wasn't, he died in a car crash.)
This man dragged his wives and kids from place to place, from shack to shack, always short of money, making his families live on beans and little else, dozens of them crowded into one small house, living without electricity or indoor plumbing or even running water. Everyone worked like dogs trying to raise food and earn money to support the herd. It was never enough. Every time they would get a little ahead, he lead them off to another and usually worse place.
Even though Irene wanted to live the polygamous life, she found she didn't really have the temperament for it. She always felt neglected and very lonely. She longed for intimacy with her man and rarely got it. Every time he brought a new women into the herd, it tore Irene up. Her life was one of constant deprivation and labor and bearing so many babies nearly wrecked her health. She wanted to do what she thought was the right thing but she became so depressed she longed to die. Still, she stuck by him, even though, towards the end, she longed to escape.

This is an amazing story of Irene's journey through polygamy and fanatical religion and out to sanity and peace of mind and spirit. It is a story of love, hard work, endurance and survival. It is also an enlightening look at how people can be controlled and ruled by beliefs that seem silly to outsiders looking in. I felt sorry for Irene, but I couldn't help thinking that she only got what she wanted. She wasn't forced into polygamy. She saw how miserable it made her mother. She bought into the fantasy but she sure did bruise herself on the reality.

Review by Kirkus Reviews:   https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/irene-spencer/shattered-dreams-2/.