Carolyn Jessop: Crimes of "Religion"-1/6
- 13 years ago
“ One of the issues with polygamy is that it's looked at as just an alternate lifestyle, another way to live, big love has glamorized the lifestyle, and perhaps in some settings maybe it is just a big, glamorous love affair with three women and everything's just wonderful. That's not what I experienced growing up in this lifestyle. What I experienced was something far different than that, and I believe, personally, that by driving the lifestyle into secrecy, it feeds the crime.”
Carolyn Jessop is a former member of the radical polygamist FLDS cult. Working with the Utah attorney general on church abuses, she was crucial to the arrest, conviction and sentencing of FLDS leader, Warren Jeffs. Ms. Jessop’s memoir Escape traces her life, born into the sixth generation of polygamists and forced at 18 to become the 4th wife of a 50 year old man who fathered her 8 children in 15 years. She is the first woman to be given full custody of her children in a contested suit involving the closed world of the FLDS, Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints.
Carolyn Jessop is a former member of the radical polygamist FLDS cult. Working with the Utah attorney general on church abuses, she was crucial to the arrest, conviction and sentencing of FLDS leader, Warren Jeffs. Ms. Jessop’s memoir Escape traces her life, born into the sixth generation of polygamists and forced at 18 to become the 4th wife of a 50 year old man who fathered her 8 children in 15 years. She is the first woman to be given full custody of her children in a contested suit involving the closed world of the FLDS, Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints.