Escape-Carolyn Jessop

Long story short.....I needed to get some community service hours completed to have a traffic violation deferred and removed from my record in 1 year....so after a HUGE debacle (not for this blog) I found myself helping out at the local library branch dusting. I think I dusted every section at least once. BUT with it came an unexpected surprise. Well, I guess it shouldn't be so surprising....but I kept finding all these BOOKS that looked so INTERESTING that I HAD to read! Fancy that....anyhow, while I was in the biography section I found this.

The little part on the cover says this:
I was born  into a radical polygamist cult. At eighteen, I became the fourth wife of a fifty-year old man. I had eight children in fifteen years. When our leader began to preach the apocalypse, I knew I had to get them out. 

I remembered the hype about Warren Jeffs and the Fundamentalist Church of Latter Day Saint's (FLDS). I knew OF the FLDS church before that because I am a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints-which is in no way affiliated with the FLDS, but the FLDS split off of the religious organization I choose to associate myself with. So I was curious. What I read was atrocious. Absolute perversion of what my church teaches-especially when it comes to the worth of a Woman. In my church, we believe that every female is a literal spirit daughter of God and that every male is a literal spirit son of God. That while our physical bodies are genetically linked to our physical parents, our spirit; our soul is divinely linked to deity. That being said, there are numerous teachings that are taught about the equality of man and woman and that either sex should NEVER exercise dominion over the other. That to reach divine potential, it was designed for men and women to help each other get there. That is NOT what is taught in the FLDS church-or cult-rather. However, I did get the idea that many things have been distorted along the way, to suit the leader of the time and that Warren Jeffs has been the most corrupt of them all and has controlled the information given to his followers (like the dystopian society traits I've mentioned before) to distort the truth to his favor. He has denied the right to education to everyone (another dystopian trait).

Anyhow, Carolyn Jessop is a very courageous woman and I am so glad that she was able to get out and live a life where she can feel safe.

I couldn't find the place to embed the youtube clip, but here is a 9 min interview with Carolyn Jessop that I found from another blog:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=V-NDJ_FeWao