"Escape" by Carolyn Jessop

[Hildegarda]

this book is a fascinating read. It is also a necessary background for the presently unfolding FLDS saga.

The authorities have paid renewed attention to FLDS after Carolyn Jessop's escape. Her accounts told of the worsening conditions within the cult and of Warren Jeffs's rise to the heights of authoritarian power. This is what led the law enforcement to arrest Jeffs. Jessop's testimony in court was instrumental on convicting him on one count of facilitating rape (Jessop witnessed him forcibly marrying a 14 y.o. girl to her older cousin). After that, it seems, the authorities were only waiting for a formal reason to raid the compound. However, it appears that no well thought-out plan was in place.

During the evacuation of women and children from the ranch and their subsequent placement within the foster system, Jessop was working with social workers as a consultant, giving them tips on what to expect from, and how to approach, these kids:

With her once long locks now trimmed to her shoulders, Jessop's hands fluttered as she described some of the more arcane religious beliefs of the FLDS. Take down the plants and crosses on the walls, she advised potential foster care providers. Those will be seen as sacrilegious icons to children brought up according to the strict FLDS code. And watch your fashion.

"If you wear red, they will think you are mocking Christ because they are taught that the color red is reserved for Christ and Christ alone," she said.

Jessop recommended foster care agencies hire social workers capable of shrugging off criticism from the children they are trying to help. Some girls have gotten physically violent with their caretakers, Jessop told the group.


Scott Lundy, a licensed child care administrator with Arrow, said his staff members, who volunteered in the first days after the raid, struggled to take everything from contempt to racism from the sect's children. [Jeffs teaches his followers that black people descend from Devil himself]

It is this difficulty in reaching FLDS members that worries Jessop.

http://[..]www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/buzz/USNews/5797658.html

She commented positively on the operation until the state made a decision to return the children back to their families (motivated, no doubt, by the prohibitive costs of it all rather than any sense of fairness). She criticized that decision bitterly, saying that "We have just lost another generation".




Now, back to the book. From a popular Amazon review:

Escape is undoubtedly one of the most bizarre memoirs you are ever likely to read. It is small wonder that it quickly made its mark on the New York Times list of bestsellers. Written by Carolyn Jessop, a woman who was born into the Fundamentalist Lattery Day Saints (FLDS), the book describes what it is like to live as part of this cult which is distinctive primarily for its beliefs about polygamy. The FLDS, which emerged in the 1930s as a fundamentalist offshoot of the Mormon church, holds that God has ordained polygamy and not only that, but that it is a requirement for anyone who wishes to attain the highest level of heaven. Most men eventually have at least three wives, with more prominent members of the cult holding far more than that. Some of the leaders are believed to have fifty, sixty, or even one hundred wives. Women are generally placed with husbands at the whim of the cult's leader (who claims to receive divine guidance about which women belong with certain men). There are around 10,000 adherents to this cult living in the United States today.

Jessop was born into a family that eventually had two wives but one that, compared to others in the community, seemed almost normal. When she was just eighteen, though, she was assigned to become the fourth wife of a fifty-five year old man. While she was married to him he added two more wives and later went on to add five or six more. Through fifteen years of marriage, Jessop gave birth to eight children. Through her marriage she suffered constant abuse at the hands of her husband, his other wives, and other members of the community. Though for much of her life she believed the claims of the FLDS religion, she eventually began to see through its hypocrisy and decided that, for the good of herself and her children, she would need to escape from it.

Escape from FLDS is not easy. Their tight-knit communities have immense power and wealth. Even the local police officers are members of the cult and will not support a wife who seeks to emancipate herself or her family. Until Jessop, no woman had managed to escape the clutches of the cult with all of her children. Jessop, though, ran from the cult and fought against it in the courts, eventually winning full custody of her eight children. This was no small victory. In fact, it was worth telling in a book.

Indeed. It is even more worth telling because FLDS appears to be a very obvious example of pathology on a societal scale. This is true for both their ideology that literally turns women and children into chattel, in both physical and spiritual sense, to the kind of people that it propels to the top. The two factors are, undoubtedly, linked -- the ideology is so bizarre and absurd that it takes a special kind of person to be able to impart it to others. In this respect, I think Jessop puts undue stress on Warren Jeffs as a culpable figure in what was going on to FLDS. It is never "one man, and one man alone", as we know.

Her account of polygamy is also revealing. Some people have this idealistic view that such lifestyle is not w\o its advantages: people in extended family will help and support one another, women's friendship, this sort of thing. Not so, says Jessop:

I also realised the only way to protect myself in my marriage was by remaining of sexual value to him.

Sex was the only currency I had to spend in my marriage - every polygamist wife knows that. A woman who possesses a high sex status with her husband has more power over his other wives. If she becomes unattractive to him, she is on dangerous ground - usually winding up as a slave to the dominant wife.

So although I hated Merril touching me, I knew I had to make myself attractive to him, even though there was no chemistry between us and our sex life was always perfunctory. In fact, throughout our 17 years of marriage, he saw me naked only a few times, and the bedroom was always completely dark.

Nevertheless, I did bear him eight children - all of whom were regularly beaten by their father. The only way I could stop Merril beating my children was to have sex with him.

http://[..]www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-559132/Forced-marry-50-year-old-wives-just-18---One-womans-harrowing-tale-escaping-Texas-polygamist-sect.html

In her particular case, the "dominant wife" -- one of her husband's older wives -- appeared to have had clear psychopathic tendencies, and have made everyone else's lives miserable. That woman's tendencies had fed the narcissistic and dominating tendencies in the husband, too. There was no way to hold either of them accountable because the religion and the norms of community life were stalked against any woman who thought of complaining. "Keeping it sweet", i.e., not getting angry over a mistreatment, turning the other cheek etc, was viewed as a supreme virtue in the community. No wonder that up to a third of women in the cult were taking antidepressants, according to Jessop.

Most of the stuff in the book is so far out, it's very hard to keep in mind that all this is happening in the 21st century America. Yet, in reality, it isn't THAT far removed from the experience of life of women, children, and commoners during MOST of the European or Asian history, directed by the religious dogmas of the monotheistic triad. In fact, a lot of people from mainstream religions can relate to the FLDS experiences even now:

After I left my husband and underwent two years of domestic violence counseling, I came to understand what most people don't: Abuse takes place in many forms, even within reputable, out-in-the-open institutions such as marriage and the church. And within these institutions, unattainable standards are set up as the norm.
http://[..]www.womensenews.org/article.cfm/dyn/aid/3583

The book also gives a very good idea of how hard it is to disabuse oneself of one's programming. Its akin to coming up from 100 feet under, gasping for breath -- and after that, you still have to learn to swim ASAP!! Jessop's account of her life after the escape emphasizes that point.

The book is written in an easy-to-read, almost simplified language that you would expect from a mainstream bestseller. Still, the sheer atrocity of the facts recounted by Jessop, and also the fact that it is easy to connect them to everything else we have been reading and talking about, make it a very useful book for Work, IMO.

A local library will sure have a hardback copy; also, a paperback is coming out this summer.

 

[go2]

The following link on sott.net will add to the background for this tragic story.
http://www.sott.net/articles/show/157896-Polygamists-Kids-in-Their-Own-Private-Gitmo

During the evacuation of women and children from the ranch and their subsequent placement within the foster system

I wonder if evacuation and placement are the correct words to describe the forceable removal of children from their mothers and homes and forced placement in a ponerized foster care system. I am bewildered, after your agreement with John Taylor Gatto's scathing critique of the school system in the
United States, that you would seem to advocate this same state being the solution to the complex problem of the children born into a cult, which seems to me to be the case for most of humanity. Do you advocate that the children would
be better parented by the cold and heartless state system, than by their own parents? I haven't read the book you think might be of use in the work, but could
it be that Carolyn Jessop has simply been reprogrammed by the current politically correct view of state educated therapists? Could her agenda be a violation of the free will of many other human beings, enforced by the police powers of the state?
Is physical violence part of all the polygamist marriages, or just Carolyn Jessop's abusive marriage?

The Texas Courts ruled that this forceable removal of the children was illegal.
http://edition.cnn.com/2008/CRIME/05/29/texas.polygamists/index.html

 

[Hildegarda]

I am bewildered, after your agreement with John Taylor Gatto's scathing critique of the school system in the
United States, that you would seem to advocate this same state being the solution to the complex problem of the children born into a cult, which seems to me to be the case for most of humanity. Do you advocate that the children would
be better parented by the cold and heartless state system, than by their own parents?

Where did I say that I AGREE with it and ADVOCATE it?? Perhaps it wasn't clear when I said that the return of the children was motivated by "prohibitive costs rather than the sense of fairness".

The sense of fairness IMO would have required the following:

1) treat the original phone call as an alert of domestic abuse rather than child abuse, going by the information that the girl was 16 and has married at her parents' consent;

2) keep children with their mothers; remove mothers together with the children, place them in family violence shelters;

3) Treat both mothers and children as victims, offer psychological help and various options of work, life etc.

That would also make it possible for the social workers and psychologists to develop relationships with the mothers and win their confidence, so that some of them could be encouraged to testify against abusive husbands.

Now they are returning the children simply because the cost is breaking the state, and both the community and the public are alienated against them (there are even calls to impeach the judge who has ordered the removal).

Same exact thing happened back in 1953 in Arizona, as Jessop details in her book. That operation was known as the Short Creek raid. Same ting: wholesale removal of children,. breaking up of the families, the whole works. Pretty soon, the sect's prophet has summoned his attorneys and has built a counter-case against the state. There was a great public outcry, which strenghtened the sect's position. Most children were returned to their parents. Those who weren't and had grown up in a foster care system -- among the people who they had been raised to believe are evil -- had a very hard time adjusting, and many had returned back to the cult when they reached legal age.

Pretty soon everything was back as before, but even more restrictions were put in place. Prior to the Short Creek raid, women were allowed to work and wear pants, and also women could choose themselves whom to marry (of course they chose the younger man). After the raid, the traditional full-cover clothes came on, and the marriages began to be arranged by the prophet, who assigned young girls to older men.

So you'd think the government would have learned that this exact kind of operation doesn't work and even makes matters worse. But instead, they went on seemingly w\o any planning, even though they were laying in wait for months. Why?

There were a couple of small new items relevant to the case. One is this one:

http://www.sott.net/articles/show/157606-Lost-Boys-drop-FLDS-lawsuit

Six young men who sued the Fundamentalist LDS Church and its leader, Warren Jeffs, are dropping their lawsuit. [..] the young men succeeded in helping to separate the FLDS Church's real estate arm, the United Effort Plan Trust, from the polygamous sect. In 2005, a judge took control of the $110 million trust amid allegations Jeffs and other top FLDS officials had mismanaged it.

"Doing this was critical to protect the FLDS people, who live in church-owned homes and are dependent on staying in the church's good favor for their housing," plaintiff Richard Gilbert said in the statement.

Hoole said the "Lost Boys" have also helped law enforcement obtain evidence to investigate and prosecute Jeffs, who appeared in an Arizona courtroom on Wednesday to face criminal charges. [..] A sexual-abuse lawsuit filed against Jeffs by his nephew, Brent, also is being dismissed.

"I have no interest in getting money from Warren or the church," Brent Jeffs said in the statement. "What has been accomplished is far more important than that."

"Lost boys" are the older children and the young men who were forced away from FLDS for bogus reasons, with the underlying goal of preserving the gender disbalance that enables poligamy.

AS you see, right before and while all the hoopla was going on around the YFZ ranch, the law enforcement has quietly accomplished two goals:

1) "Beheaded" the sect, incarcerating the authoritarian leader Warren Jeffs, and
2) Undermining the financial power of the cult over its members

Those, frankly, are IMO the only goals that were reasonable enough to reach while staying within the law. It still stands that people cannot be prosecuted for their religious beliefs, therefor, there is really no way to break up the FLDS, whether the authorities like it or not.

It's worth noting too that in both of the above cases the dirty work was done by other people and not by the state prosecutors. Both by Carolyn Jessop and others who willingly testified against Jeffs, and the Lost Boys who have chosen not to make right on their personal grievances and opted to settle a larger issue which happen to help in a crackdown against FLDS.

Going back to the issue of removal of children:

I don't think that whoever planned this has ever intended to remove the children and keep them in the foster care system. It was a red herring, to throw people off other things that were going on -- and possibly also to give a scare to FLDS top brass to make them more compliant to whatever other inquiries will be going on. There probably were some negotiations going on about it back stage, as there were in the Lost Boys lawsuit: you give us this if we drop this, etc. Another reason was to accomplish a community wide DNA testing of the kids while they werecall rounded up. That can be useful in establishing paternity and proving child abuse allegations against some FLDS members in the future.

Which, IMO, is a pity. As bad as life is elsewhere in the US and in the Big Blue Marble, the brainwashing in FLDS was markedly worse, as everything that's coming out about FLDS seems to show. The way the operation went, however, nobody was immediately helped. On the contrary, it traumatized plenty of people, and many folks in FLDS were likely reinforced in their beliefs that the evil world is against them, the Righteous Ones, and the return of the children is another confirmation that the faith and obedience to the doctrine prevail.

As for Carolyne Jessop, I think she sincerely tried to help people who, like her, were suffering there. She seems to respect the idea of free will and choice: one of her daughterschose to return to FLDS upon turning 18, and Jessop has accepted it.

She could have been a great asset in reaching out to those people, building and outreach effort, letting them know about other life options and providing for them -- making it easier for people to leave, if they wanted to. Sadly, she may have been used as pawn in a larger game instead.

 

[shellycheval]

"Escape" by Carolyn Jessop

I just finished reading this book . . .

It reveals a model of a completely Psychopathic social system--one that may well foreshadow a Pathocracy to come should the Pathocrats in power maintain their current strategies. The FLDS are as frighteningly abusive and without human empathy as anything one hears about Taliban, Nazis, Zionists, and Satanist groups. Read it to see what a complete pathocracy looks like and to get a visceral account of the enemy of real human beings. Become outraged while you still can!
shellycheval