Carolyn Jessop's Escape
Carolyn Jessop, who was once married to the man running the FLDS' YFZ Ranch in Eldorado, Texas, has written a book titled Escape about her life in the sect.
The book, which appears in bookstores tomorrow, is sure to be a big hit given its portrayal of feuding sister wives, fanatical prophets and a faith that makes fantastical demands on followers.
I have a story about it in tomorrow's paper. The book includes a few surprises, but also covers ground that will be familiar to those who've followed the FLDS saga.
First a capsule review: Carolyn spends much of her childhood in monogamous family that belongs to the FLDS faith. Her mom is depressed and beats her often. Her dad takes a second wife when she is 10. Things improve. Carolyn is married at age 18 to Merril Jessop, then 50, and life becomes a nightmare. Still, she completes a college degree and works as a teacher, Web designer and even in direct sales. More on that later. She has eight children in 15 years and finally bails out, assisted by family and friends.
The book bogs down in minutia at times and Carolyn gives only superficial accounts of some events. She leaves out any positive take on the community -- which she told me in an interview she regrets. More on that later, too. Her sister wives sound horrible, forming ever shifting alliances. But Carolyn doesn't seem like much of a peach in the plural family, either. She figures out pretty quickly sex is power and uses it to her advantage. Survival of the fittest, you know.
The book is a total character assassination of her ex-husband, who is a topdog in the FLDS hierarchy. You don't put just any one in charge of your temple grounds, after all.
Merril comes off as a complete cad who doesn't give a damn about his wives -- well, six of them any way. Carolyn estimates her former husband now has 13 wives and more than 100 children.
Carolyn levels all kinds of accusations against Merril. He is emotionally abusive and eats steak while the rest of the family is getting along on tomato sandwiches. He leaves her to fend for herself against a freaky drifter. He allows her to go on state assistance just before the birth of their seventh child. The boy develops cancer and Merril blames Carolyn's ''rebelliousness'' for it. The state picks up the tab.
''I had to go in and claim I was a single mom with no income and in a lot of ways I felt like I was telling the truth,'' Carolyn told me.
Merril disappears as she nearly dies after giving birth to their eighth child. I'm really glossing over the details here, but you get the idea.
So much for ''Big Love.'' More on that later, too. But Carolyn is definitely a determined, smart woman and many will find her courage inspiring.
Here are some of the surprises. As Carolyn struggles to provide for her children, she begins selling NuSkin products -- skin care as well as cosmetics -- to elite women in the community.
Her success -- some months she netted $1,000 or more -- was due to family connections. Seven of Merril's daughters were married to former prophet Rulon T. Jeffs, an octogenarian who had a total of about 60 wives.
"He's got all these young wives who wanted to look pretty and they're not having babies," Carolyn said in an interview. "Their lives [were] just about them mostly and their little teaching job or whatever they're assigned to do. And so they spent a lot of money on skin care."
And makeup, too. ''And because Uncle Rulon's family was using it and Merril's family was using it, wow, then it makes it OK for everybody else to use it. That's why I got away with that. It is because of who I was married to and who I was selling to.''
Status, after all, has its pluses.
Another surprise: After Carolyn moved to Salt Lake City, she hooked up with the creators of HBO's hit ''Big Love.'' She told them their first script was "a bunch of nonsense.''
She said the first scenario for the show pitted a group modeled after the FLDS against a more progressive group modeled after Centennial Park, a nearby polygamous community.
''I said, 'If you portray that this is about freedom you are going to injure some people badly because that is not what is going on.' And I really told them a bunch of stuff. I don't know that they listened to me, but they didn't come out with it the way they planned,'' Carolyn said.
The show aired two years later with a vastly different theme, she said.
By the way, she made a little money courtesy of ''Big Love.'' The show paid Carolyn $20 an hour to sew ankle-to-wrist undergarments modeled on those worn by the FLDS.
''It saved my life,'' she laughs. ''At that point, it was a really great thing. I was like, 'I'm glad these skills are going to come into use somewhere now. They sure are not going to come in use in [her new] life.''
The book, which appears in bookstores tomorrow, is sure to be a big hit given its portrayal of feuding sister wives, fanatical prophets and a faith that makes fantastical demands on followers.
I have a story about it in tomorrow's paper. The book includes a few surprises, but also covers ground that will be familiar to those who've followed the FLDS saga.
First a capsule review: Carolyn spends much of her childhood in monogamous family that belongs to the FLDS faith. Her mom is depressed and beats her often. Her dad takes a second wife when she is 10. Things improve. Carolyn is married at age 18 to Merril Jessop, then 50, and life becomes a nightmare. Still, she completes a college degree and works as a teacher, Web designer and even in direct sales. More on that later. She has eight children in 15 years and finally bails out, assisted by family and friends.
The book bogs down in minutia at times and Carolyn gives only superficial accounts of some events. She leaves out any positive take on the community -- which she told me in an interview she regrets. More on that later, too. Her sister wives sound horrible, forming ever shifting alliances. But Carolyn doesn't seem like much of a peach in the plural family, either. She figures out pretty quickly sex is power and uses it to her advantage. Survival of the fittest, you know.
The book is a total character assassination of her ex-husband, who is a topdog in the FLDS hierarchy. You don't put just any one in charge of your temple grounds, after all.
Merril comes off as a complete cad who doesn't give a damn about his wives -- well, six of them any way. Carolyn estimates her former husband now has 13 wives and more than 100 children.
Carolyn levels all kinds of accusations against Merril. He is emotionally abusive and eats steak while the rest of the family is getting along on tomato sandwiches. He leaves her to fend for herself against a freaky drifter. He allows her to go on state assistance just before the birth of their seventh child. The boy develops cancer and Merril blames Carolyn's ''rebelliousness'' for it. The state picks up the tab.
''I had to go in and claim I was a single mom with no income and in a lot of ways I felt like I was telling the truth,'' Carolyn told me.
Merril disappears as she nearly dies after giving birth to their eighth child. I'm really glossing over the details here, but you get the idea.
So much for ''Big Love.'' More on that later, too. But Carolyn is definitely a determined, smart woman and many will find her courage inspiring.
Here are some of the surprises. As Carolyn struggles to provide for her children, she begins selling NuSkin products -- skin care as well as cosmetics -- to elite women in the community.
Her success -- some months she netted $1,000 or more -- was due to family connections. Seven of Merril's daughters were married to former prophet Rulon T. Jeffs, an octogenarian who had a total of about 60 wives.
"He's got all these young wives who wanted to look pretty and they're not having babies," Carolyn said in an interview. "Their lives [were] just about them mostly and their little teaching job or whatever they're assigned to do. And so they spent a lot of money on skin care."
And makeup, too. ''And because Uncle Rulon's family was using it and Merril's family was using it, wow, then it makes it OK for everybody else to use it. That's why I got away with that. It is because of who I was married to and who I was selling to.''
Status, after all, has its pluses.
Another surprise: After Carolyn moved to Salt Lake City, she hooked up with the creators of HBO's hit ''Big Love.'' She told them their first script was "a bunch of nonsense.''
She said the first scenario for the show pitted a group modeled after the FLDS against a more progressive group modeled after Centennial Park, a nearby polygamous community.
''I said, 'If you portray that this is about freedom you are going to injure some people badly because that is not what is going on.' And I really told them a bunch of stuff. I don't know that they listened to me, but they didn't come out with it the way they planned,'' Carolyn said.
The show aired two years later with a vastly different theme, she said.
By the way, she made a little money courtesy of ''Big Love.'' The show paid Carolyn $20 an hour to sew ankle-to-wrist undergarments modeled on those worn by the FLDS.
''It saved my life,'' she laughs. ''At that point, it was a really great thing. I was like, 'I'm glad these skills are going to come into use somewhere now. They sure are not going to come in use in [her new] life.''
Labels: Big Love, Carolyn Jessop
7 Comments:
"Shattered Dreams-- Another Novel of Monogamy Abuse"
Follow the trials and tribulations of Jane Doe, yes she has to use an alias due to the danger that still threatens her since she left the cult of monogamy.
Children raped, murdered, abused, wives slaughtered and tortured, fantasy? No reality in the cult of monogamy!
Could help be on the way?
Join with the brave women of Tapestry Against Monogamy, if it saves one wife's life!
"I cried reading this book, it rang all too true"
Reader in Centennial Park, UT
"Monogamy is just flat out evil"
Fire Chief, Big Water, Utah
"Now the dirty rotten underbelly of monogamy is exposed for all to see, when will the government save us from monogamy and its evils?"
A reader in Short Creek
Escape? What a joke! Portraying it as if she was in prison, or a slave. She could have left anytime. And apparently should have. Why did she wait so long?
She's just another one of the millions of women who have left their husbands, or children who have left their families, or or or. Why isn't there a cry to ban monogamy? Parenthood?
If a few words were removed here and there, one could just as well read her words as those of a woman leaving her monogamous home. All monogamous men are abusers and terrible fathers, right?
James
James, apparently you didn't read the book. You
should have, BEFORE you posted.
After reading Escape, Shattered Dreams and His Favorite Wife, I can't fathom any women putting up with that way of life. It's a nightmare. That it still continues boggles the mind.
It's a lose/lose situation.
The flds beliefs are insane. Cult mentality rules. From the time children are born, they
are brainwashed.
P.S. The word is polygamy (plural), not monogamy (single).
Carolyn's book, ESCAPE, isn't a bestseller because she was on Oprah, it's a bestseller because Carolyn's story is so amazing and the book is so well written. If Brooke married a polygamist and learned the truth, then Brooke could write a book, too, and would quit defending polygamy. Brooke currently gets her information from lunch meetings with miserable wives in Centennial Park who put on a good face for the press.
BANKING ON HEAVEN . COM
Brooke Adams is obviouesly a dyed-in-the-wool FLDS apolgist and supporter. Her so-called critique of the book is a pathetic and thinly veiled attempt to villianize, discredit and demean a victim of abuse in order to glorify and defend polygamy at its ugliest. Unfortunately, defending the wholesale physical, sexual, and emotional abuse of children and women has become commonplace by fanatics from various religions. Taunting Carolyn Jessop by saying that she should have included more positive experiences of her life in a debasing, tyranical, and violent cult shows stunted intellectual and emotional growth. (A big suprise coming from a cult devotee.) Victims of repression can have positive experiences through sharing stories and experiences with each other, but that does not excuse or justify their repression! It is a crime that local and state governments are complicit in keeping women and children stranded in isolated cults and compounds. Women without financial or legal resources or outside contacts willing to open up their homes and lives, those afraid to risk losing their children and starting their lives over from scrach, or just too beaten down, are stuck. Instead of sneering at Caroln Jessop, she should be commended for her moral strength and courage that enabled her to escape.
Perhaps I come too late in this blog posts to even have my comments read as the last one is a couple months ago. But I must say this. I literally just finished reading Escape minutes ago. I have been an avid watcher of Big Love since the time it aired. Seeing her book at my library's best seller table, I was drawn immediately to it. For most of us in this country, the polygamy "cults"(I actually dont prefer the word cult because cult usually represents negative, and Im sure not every polygamist is negative)leave us confused and we unknowingly condemn. After her reading her book, I do think that alot of the freedoms we so commonly take for granted are stripped down from these people. The ability to get up every morning and say "I think Ill wear my hair like this today because it makes me look better" is not even an option to these women. The ability to openly and lovingly hug our children constantly has been stripped from some. And unfortunately, most are too devoted to their faith to walk away when they are unhappy and the others who question their faith still couldnt just walk away due to the fear that was instilled in them . Now onto Carolyn not mentioning the "goods" of her polygamous life. First off, it is very well conveyed that it is a tight and caring community, provided you are a true believer and follower. We can clearly tell that while it is not our idea of caring and love, it is there. If she were to go into all details, both good and bad, this book would never be able to be carried home from a store or library. Im sure there is more "evils" that she did not include in the book. I think she is a wonderful author, and a wonderful, strong woman, who drained courage from a well she thought long empty to improve her life. She shows concern for the tons of wives left behind. But never once does she condemn them for continuing to believe in their faith. She is an amazing woman. I think even those who do not agree with her still should give her the credit she deserves for fighting her battles.
wow. just wow.
this brooke person is a journalist? like, you mean, at a recognized journalism outlet?
i live a thousand miles from utah, so my perspective may not be creepy enough to be understood by some -- but on the other hand, i have been in utah, so i know that not everyone there is completely insane.
odd, perhaps. pasty white, to be sure. but not absolutely insane.
Post a Comment
<< Home