A good read . . .

Last night I finished Escape by Carolyn Jessop and I'm more distubed than I have been because of a book in a long time. Carolyn was a member of the FLDS and wife #4 of Merill Jessop, one of the high-ups in the Colorado City sect. The book is about her life as a polygamist wife and how she finally escaped from the awful abuse she endured for nearly 17 years. Oh my word! You hear stories about these women and children who endure so much believing they are doing "God's will" but geesh!

I am seriously surprised beyond belief about how bad it all is. The competition between all the wives, trying to protect your kids from being abused by the other wives and all the other children is a full time job, not having the ability to call the police or an ambulance without the permission of your husband because the authorities are all FLDS wouldn't do anything without that permission. She almost died in her last three pregnancies and her husband didn't care, wouldn't let her go to the clinic for help and left her alone as she was practically bleeding to death. Who does that?! He wouldn't let her get treatment for their son with leukemia, saying that the illness was punishment for her wickedness and if the boy died then she would learn a lesson. She went anyway and just endured being punished for being disobedient.

In the book Carolyn talks about Warren Jeffs and all the crazy, crazy rules he put into place, like no one was allowed to wear or use anything that is red. I'm now really glad this dude is in jail because the absolute insanity of what he was doing is just unfathomable and the fact that some people actually believe(d) he's God's servant is incredible, too. He gave husbands permission to abuse their wives if they felt they weren't submissive enough-- this includes beating, raping, starving, etc. It's amazing that this type of life is going on in the US and it's so tragic that for so long everyone on the outside has just turned a blind eye. It's just disturbing how a small group of men can control and ruin the lives of everyone around them-- making women leave their husbands to be reassigned to another man, taking husbands away from their families because they need to repent, sending teenage boys into the world with no schooling because ... well, just because the young women wanted to be with young men and not married to men 60+ years older than them.

It's AMAZING how she escapes and the hope she has in the last few chapters when she is finally happier than she could ever imagine makes this book very worthwhile to read. The people who help her once she gets to SLC are saints, to be sure. I'm amazed at what people can endure and what they can do when they have no choice but to change their lives.