Escape | 
 enlarge | Author: Laura Palmer
Publisher: Broadway
Category: EBooks
List Price: $17.95
Buy New: $9.99
You Save: $7.96 (44%)
Rating:  304 reviews
Sales Rank: 969
Format: Kindle Book
Media: Kindle Edition
Pages: 432
Number Of Items: 1
Dewey Decimal Number: 289.3092
Publication Date: October 16, 2007
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
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Product Description
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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| Customer Reviews: Read 299 more reviews...
 Hell on earth or hell in the hearafter, or both. September 28, 2008
W. Walker (westminster md)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
This book provides a graphic documentation of how tyranny, masquerading as religion, can create some of the most pathological societies imaginable, defeating laws and mores that prohibit simultaneous polygyny, slavery, extreme physical and mental child and wife abuse, arranged marriages, nepotism and cronyism, among other abuses. Through a combination of incessant brainwashing and bullying, a few old men run the lives of everyone in these communities of FLDS(Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter Day Saints), in which women and children are considered and treated like mere chattel. Children are considered inherently devilish, thus justifying constant physical and emotional abuse to beat obedience into them. Women have virtually no say in whom they marry, most being married to men 2,3 or 4X their age and forced to remain pregnant for most of their reproductive lives. Thus, the long term domination strategy of this cult is to outreproduce the rest of the world, aided by occasional God-induced holocausts that spare them. The hypocritical leaders try to enlist state and federal financial support for their huge families by claiming they aren't actually married to these women, when it is convenient to do so. If women attempt to escape this cult, they are hunted down like escaped slaves. Nontheless, a few do attempt, and a very few succeed in escaping. The author's sister did escape before being forced to marry an old man, but was forced to marry a young man she did not love who helped her retain her freedom against great odds. This experience dissuaded the author from making a similar attempt until 15 years after her forced marriage to a powerful psychopathic older man, emboldened by her mother's escape a few days earlier. It was only the ascension of an extremely tyrannical man to the position of chief prophet(and profit), and the ever escalating demonstration that her husband had no regard for her except as a baby-making machine, that induced these 2 women, as well as others, to try to escape this cult, knowing they would be severely punished if they failed.
A few reviewers have complained about poor writing and editing, boringly repetitive stories, contradictory statements and too many people to keep track of. Well, with umpteen competing wives per man and umpteen children per wife, the latter criticism is hard to avoid. If the other criticisms have some validity, I did not find them noticable and they were more than outweighed by the nitty gritty description of the deplorable psychological conditions in this pathologically xenophobic community and by the description of how the author's escape finally brought national exposure to the insanities that ruled this community and which began the unraveling of the hold of the power elite over this community.
One of the most memorable revelations was the incident involving the sadistic elementary school principal who heard the commotion from a teacher-sanctioned party in a room. Without even consulting the teacher, he began kicking and otherwise brutalizing the children. The teacher was too cowed to explain the situation. Because of his family connections, this principal retained his position despite strong protests from the parents. Another of the unbelievable stories was the reponses to the 9/11 attacks and the later Southeast Asia tsunami. These were cheered as the beginning of an attack by God on the wicked of the world(everyone not a member of FLDS), which would ultimately result in the destructiuon of everyone except FLDS members.
Totally unbelievable in America September 27, 2008
Charles P. Garvey (Hastings, Mi. USA)
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
Can't believe abuse sexually and emotionally such as this is happening today in America. Makes me angry that women can be under attack this way in the name of religion.
Disturbing, enganging memoir September 21, 2008
K. E. Jhung (San Diego, CA)
This memoir gripped me from the first page. I applaud Carolyn Jessop's courage in leaving the oppressive, violent FLDS cult, and am disturbed this type of lifestyle can thrive in the 21st century.
Thank you, Carolyn, for sharing your harrowing tale.
 Carolyn Jessop IS an "exceptional" woman September 21, 2008
Silver Numina (Upstate SC)
You can never know how hard it is to break free of fundamentalist conditioning unless you've had to do it yourself. I have (though not specifically as a Mormon, "just" as a fundamentalist Christian). Carolyn Jessop IS an extraordinary, exceptional woman and this story is a reminder that even in the so-called "land of the free," some people are prisoners--if "only" to the brainwashing they have received at the hands those who manipulate and steal from others and call it "god's will." Thank you, Carolyn Jessop, for your caring and your courage.
Enthralling September 21, 2008
B. Fowler (Denver, CO)
Read the book. Couldn't put it down. Yes it drags in places, but what memoir doesn't? Yes the writing could have been better, but she isn't a literary author.
She is a woman who has been through hell on Earth and wanted to tell her story.
The amount of abuse and neglect in the FLDS is amazing, and more than once I wanted to slap some sense into Merril, Barbara and the rest of the brainwashed community. I'm sure if I had been in Carolyn's place, I would have killed someone. To know this stuff is taking place just draws to the fact that even in the United States we can't control everything.
Warren Jeffs is an idiot and should be imprisoned for the rest of his life. I don't wish death on him, because I'm sure he believes he's going directly to heaven - it would only make him happy. At certain points I wanted to walk away from the book due to the constant abuse and just blatant denial everyone experienced or took part in. A cult, yes, but a religion they are not. And the amount of hate Carolyn's children had for her when she escaped made me more surprised than anything else.
I certainly wouldn't be surprised if at one point there is a massive suicide. I hate to say it, but the world would be a better place without the likes of Merril Jessop.
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