Carolyn Jessop is a former FLDS Member and Co-Author of Escape.

Carolyn Jessop
Author of ESCAPE, and former FLDS member

Relief. Justice. Accountability. Those three words best express my reaction to the news that my ex-husband, Merril Jessop, one of the most powerful men in the Fundamentalist Church of Latter Day Saints (FLDS), has been indicted.

Merril, 72, is charged with conducting the marriage of an underage girl—his own daughter—to the FLDS “prophet” Warren Jeffs. I know her; she was 12 years old when she was forced to marry. Merril posted $30,000 in bail yesterday and is free. But he’s been charged with a felony and will stand trial.

Merril is in charge of the compound in Texas that’s home to hundreds of FLDS members and that was raided last April on accusations of marriages of underage girls. In fact, Merril has headed the sect since 2006, when Jeffs was put on the FBI’s Most Wanted List, fled the compound, and was later convicted on a charge related to the marriage of a girl to an older man.

I long ago worked through the anger I felt toward Merril, whom I was forced to marry at 18. I was his fourth wife and we had 8 children in 15 years. Five years ago I fled with all of my children in the middle of the night. The book I wrote about my life, ESCAPE, became a bestseller.

I knew I couldn’t stay silent when crimes were being perpetrated against so many women and children still trapped in the FLDS. I wrote ESCAPE to bring attention to the rampant degradation, humiliation and exploitation that was routinely done by the FLDS in the name of “God.”

I wanted men who perpetuated crimes against women and children in the FLDS held accountable and brought to justice. I wanted the crimes to stop.

So far, 12 men connected with the FLDS compound in Texas have now been indicted. But until this week, those charged had been underlings. My fear was that unless the top leadership was held accountable the less powerful would be forced to fall on their swords and cut deals to avoid having evidence come out in their trials.

But the latest round of indictments changed everything. Merril Jessop is one of the most powerful men – if not the most powerful man - in the FLDS now that the “prophet” is behind bars.

Merril’s indictment, along with that of Wendell Nielson, 68, who was charged with three felony count of bigamy, sends a powerful message to every member of the FLDS: your crimes will be prosecuted.

Truckloads of evidence were seized by the Texas authorities when the FLDS compound was raided. When these men go on trial, that evidence will be made public. Facts are facts. The FLDS always tries to discredit women who flee. But evidence collected from the compound will speak for itself.

Emotionally, I feel that a tremendous burden has been lifted from me. So much has happened to me this past year since the publication of ESCAPE and the raid on the Texas compound. But now I know that the key leadership of the FLDS is going to be prosecuted I feel a deep sense of peace. My thankfulness knows no bounds.

Carolyn Jessop is a former FLDS Member and Co-Author of Escape

Carolyn Jessop
Former FLDS Member

I was shocked when I heard the news of the Texas Appellate Court ruling this afternoon.
Waves of horror washed over me at first as I thought that the children might have to be immediately returned. But that's not going to happen. This ruling will be appealed. It's not a knockout punch, but the FLDS obviously gained some ground today.

If those children go back to the complete, unsupervised control of the FLDS at the Yearning for Zion Ranch it would be like throwing gasoline on a fire that's already burning out of control. It would send a message that the FLDS can get away with any level of crime which would reinforce what society, through its inaction over the years, has reinforced for a very long time. The pattern in the FLDS is, from my experience, that once its leaders can get away with one level of crime they move on to the next.

I know from my conversations with those close to this case that Texas authorities feel they have found a system of abuse within the Eldorado compound. Remember the dozens of babies that were left unattended in a nursery? Or the news this week that 100 kids didn't match up with any parents in the compound? There will be more information about the physical and sexual abuse of these children when criminal charges are filed. A lot of evidence was taken out in the raid that investigators are still piecing together.

I've also been told that in many cases the feeling is that the children now in custody are making steady, if not great gains, in their foster placements. Returning the children to the compound when they are just beginning to feel safe and stable would be catastrophic.

A lot of feelings came rushing back to me this afternoon. Until I won full custody of my children, I felt like the legal system was set-up to protect the perpetrators and not their victims. I didn't feel that I could get protection for my kids.

As I wrote in Escape, there were times on weekend visitations their father would force my children to fast and pray for my death. I don't know if I have ever endured a more shattering experience.
Merril Jessop, my ex-husband, is now the most powerful man in the FLDS and running the compound in Texas.

Copyright © 2007 by Visionary Classics, LLC From the book Escape by Carolyn Jessop, co-author Laura Palmer, published by Broadway Books, a division of Random House, Inc. Reprinted with permission.

Carolyn Jessop
Former FLDS Member/Co-Author with Laura Palmer of ESCAPE

Editor’s Note: Child Protective Services (CPS) in Texas this week reported that 41 of the young children removed from the compound of the polygamist FLDS sect in Texas had had broken bones, nearly 10 percent. That’s far higher than the 1 percent among children in the US general population. An FLDS lawyer questioned the CPS report and called its release "unethical." However, Carolyn Jessop, who was married to the man now running the sect, says corporal punishment of children in the FLDS was common and sometimes severe enough to break bones, and access to doctors was strictly limited. Here is an account from her best-selling book:
 
                                             
One night after we were both asleep, Merril called prayers. Our children were pulled out of bed and ordered upstairs to pray. Wendell, Cathleen’s son, who was not quite two, was asleep in his crib. He was cranky and fussy after he woke up. Merril told Barbara to take Wendell into the next room and discipline him.   

Barbara took Wendell into the room where she had beaten Patrick and let him have it. When Barbara beat a baby she would typically spank him until he was blue in the face from screaming. Then she would stop, order the baby to stop screaming, and start beating him again when the hysterical child continued to scream. Eventually the baby would collapse from exhaustion when he was too weak to cry. 

Wendell’s pitiful screams went on into the night. Everyone at prayers was required to wait until Barbara returned. But when she didn’t return, Cathleen’s other children were ordered to bed. None of them dared wake up Cathleen to tell her what was happening to Wendell.   

Barbara took Wendell into Cathleen’s bedroom and laid him beside her.   

Cathleen awoke when she heard Barbara’s voice. “Wendell will grow up and do what his father needs him to do. Wendell will be a good man some day.”   

Cathleen bolted up in bed and asked Barbara what she was doing.   

Barbara continued stroking Wendell and saying, “Good night, Wendell, you will learn from these lessons how to be a good man.”   

Then Barbara left the room.   

Cathleen looked at her small son and saw how battered and bruised he was. His clothes were still soaked from his tears and sweat. Cathleen awakened her other children and asked them to tell her what had happened. At first they were too terrified to tell. But she persisted and heard about the call to prayer and the attack on Wendell. Her children told her they saw Barbara take Wendell into another room and heard him screaming after she shut the door.   

Cathleen walked into Barbara’s bedroom where she was relaxing.   

“Don’t you ever touch one of my children again,” she said.   

Barbara sat up in bed and shot back. “Cathleen, you are out of order and you know it. I was only doing the will of my priesthood head. For you to question is pure rebellion.”   

“Barbara, we have nothing to communicate about. I’m warning you that you had better never touch one of my children ever again.”   

Cathleen left and locked herself into her bedroom. Her room connected to her children’s nursery. She locked the door that led into their room, too.   

Barbara went immediately upstairs to Merril’s office and told him what Cathleen had said. She returned to her bedroom. Merril stood outside Cathleen’s room and began pounding on her door.   

Cathleen did not respond.   

Merril was shouting outside her door. “You’re in serious trouble and if you know what is good for you then you will open this door before I break it down.”   

“Do whatever you want. I’m not going to talk to you,” Cathleen replied.   

Merril went and banged on the door to the children’s nursery. Cathleen’s children were too terrified to refuse their father’s commands. They opened the door.

He barged into Cathleen’s bedroom and ordered her into his office. “Cathleen, if you are going to challenge Barbara when she acts on my orders, then you will have to face consequences.”   

Cathleen refused to get out of bed.   

“Merril, I’m not going anywhere with you. You better leave now.”   

Merril grabbed Cathleen and threw her on the floor. Her son, Johnson, was sleeping in her recliner and woke up screaming.   

“Leave now, Merril. Get out of here.”   

Merril threw her back on the floor, but this time even harder.   

Her children were screaming from the nursery, “Go with Father, please, please.”   

Merril grabbed Johnson from the recliner and threw him into the nursery and locked the door. Johnson was a shy child who had always been terrified of Merril. Merril berated Cathleen for upsetting her children. Cathleen’s daughters were screaming in the nursery. Wendell, who had fallen asleep, started whimpering again.   

Cathleen knew she was out of options. “Merril, if you will allow me to take Wendell to Sara, I will go to your office.” Sara was Cathleen’s eldest daughter.   

Merril screamed at her for hours in his office. He told her that she was never, under any conditions, to sass Barbara. The next morning when Cathleen awakened me for coffee, her eyes were swollen and red. She told me everything her children had told her about what happened to Wendell the night before.   

“Carolyn, Merril can batter me and berate me. But I am not going to allow Barbara to hurt my children. I’m going to see Warren.”   

I warned her against that. I told her about the seventeen-page letter I had given to Warren Jeffs documenting Merril’s abuse. I explained how Warren had discounted my charges because I failed to confess my own sins of immorality.   

Cathleen latched on to that in the wrong way. She suddenly thought that if she confessed her sins to the prophet, then he would help her.   

I felt sick. “Cathleen, that was only an excuse. Warren needed a reason not to help me. The reality is he never intended to. He will do everything he can to cover up Merril’s abuse.”   

She was unshakable in her conviction that if she told Warren the truth about her sins, he would respond to her honesty with help and protection.   

“I’m going to ask Warren for help. I do have sins.” And she proceeded to tell me about a wrong that she had committed.   

I begged her not to confess that wrong to Warren Jeffs. “Cathleen, don’t do it. He will eat you for lunch. If you really want to confess, confess to things like not picking up paper from the floor. Don’t give him anything to use against you.”   

But Cathleen was still a true believer. “If I want his help, I need to be honest.”   I knew she was doomed. There was no way she would get any help from Warren Jeffs. Confessing to a sin like that would give him power to condemn her to hell.   

Cathleen made an appointment to see Warren. He heard another of Merril Jessop’s wives talk about his abusive behavior toward her.   

Cathleen didn’t say much when she came back. She looked spent. She became more obedient to Barbara. Merril told her there would be no forgiveness for her rebellion and instructed her to turn over her small yellow truck to him. She would not be allowed to have her own transportation again. (Some of us had our own cars and vans, but most of us were not allowed to register them and they had no license plates. So if we left the community, we could not travel far without being stopped by the police. Cathleen needed her truck to go back and forth to Page, so hers was one of the few vehicles that was registered.)   

Merril also ordered Cathleen to turn over all her paychecks to him. But she told me later she had no intention of doing that. “There is no way I’ll put myself at his mercy financially,” she said. But I knew Barbara would insist that she did.   

Cathleen told me that she was going to make amends to Barbara by working on a project with her: cleaning Merril’s office. This was the way they were to learn to love each other again as sister wives. 

Carolyn Jessop
Co-author with Laura Palmer of the bestseller ESCAPE, a personal account of life in the FLDS 
 
Sickened but not surprised is my reaction to the news that 41 of the boys removed from the Eldorado compound showed signs of having had broken bones. Some of them were “very young,” according to child protection officials.

I was married to Merril Jessop, who now runs the compound in Texas. Physical abuse was not uncommon in his household. I saw boys hit or kicked hard enough to result in fractures. I remember seeing a boy kicked so hard he flew across the room. I’ve seen boys hit with large boards.

It’s not just the abuse.

When my son, Patrick, was six years old, he fell off a bunk bed one night. I was sure he broke his arm. Merril refused to let me take him to the doctor. He said his arm was not broken. I sat up with Pat all night. I gave him pain medication. He was in agony.

I was not free as a mother to take my child to the doctor unless I had Merril’s permission. I waited for three days until Merril went out of town. Pat was unable to use his arm. I took him to the local clinic. His arm was broken and needed to be set.

Neglect is abuse, too.

Today Rod Parker, the attorney for the FLDS, said in response to the reports today of the boys with broken bones, that if it were true, the boys would have been taken to hospitals for treatment.

He doesn’t know what he’s talking about. That might be what would happen in a normal family. It was not what happened in Merril Jessop’s family. I know. I was part of it.

Another way boys are abused is that they are forced to work construction jobs from the time they are young. They have no choice and are forced to quit school.

Merril Jessop’s son, Johnson, who’s 16, and was living at the compound at the time of the raid, told my children a few months before that he’d been in a severe accident while working construction recently and almost had to have his leg amputated when it was trapped under scaffolding.

The boys work from sunrise to sunset. My son Arthur was forced to quit school at 12. He would go to work at 5am and come back at dark. 12-16 hour days were not unusual.  Men in the FLDS use their sons as slave labor to make money off them in their construction businesses.

When we escaped five years ago, Arthur hadn’t been in school for three years. He resisted returning. There were two occasions early on when he had to be taken to school in handcuffs.

Fast forward to today: When Arthur graduated from high school he was awarded the prize for the student who overcomes the most obstacles. He completed a two-year junior college and starts university this fall.

Now Arthur has earned his private pilot’s license and now is working towards his commercial license.

As his mother, I could not be more proud.

Copyright © 2007 by Visionary Classics, LLC From the book Escape by Carolyn Jessop, co-author Laura Palmer, published by Broadway Books, a division of Random House, Inc. Reprinted with permission.

By 1995, Warren Jeffs was becoming a subtle and more powerful presence in our daily lives. This struck me as odd because there were many other men who were more powerful in the FLDS than he. But he was Uncle Rulon’s favored son, and the prophet would often say that Warren spoke for him.

Warren spoke in other ways. He began teaching special priesthood history classes in Salt Lake City where he still worked as the principal at a private FLDS school. The classes were taped, and Tammy’s sister came to our house one day enthusiastically talking about how much information they contained. I wondered why anyone would care about whatever Warren Jeffs had to say. Tammy’s sister said that these tapes were not available to just anybody. Only the privileged could purchase them.

Once the tapes gained exclusive status every family in the community wanted a set. Some people who heard them found them disgusting and said they were little more than Warren’s racist rants. He claimed that the black race was put on earth to preserve evil.

I decided to listen to them myself. Warren based his talks on foundational FLDS. doctrine. He spoke in a strange, trance-like voice that seemed deliberately aimed at hypnotizing the listener. One set of tapes described how God would destroy everyone on the North and South American continents. Then he went on and recited a lengthy list of things a person would have to do before he or she could be lifted off the earth.

Anyone who hoped to ascend had to live with a burning in their chest at all times and that burning was the spirit of God. The tapes were becoming so popular that there was a frenzy among those who were trying to get them. There exclusivity gave them great status and everyone wanted to get hold of a set.

Warren spoke at church and elaborated on how the burning in our chest would presage being lifted from the earth. Those who didn’t have it would be destroyed along with the wicked.

It was around this time when Warren banned the color red. He announced that it was inappropriate to wear the color red or have red items in our home because it was reserved for our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. He preached that when Jesus Christ returns he’ll do so in a red robe and wearing that color prior to the second coming is unholy.

He made the pronouncement one Sunday in church and those wearing red went home immediately and changed clothes. Other families got rid of every red item they owned. This was a hardship for families without much money. Children lost a lot of clothes, coats and boots. Women with red in their dresses had to get rid of them; for some this meant throwing out a sizable percentage of their wardrobe. Some families adapted to this with a more moderate approach; when the red clothes, toys, or household items wore out, they would abandon them. The more extreme families discarded all red items immediately.

One teacher told her students red wasn’t a bad color, it was beautiful. The students reported her rebellion to their parents. The parents complained and asked that the teacher, who was not a member of the FLDS, respect their beliefs and asked that red be removed from her classroom.

Merril had always liked red. In our family we went through the closets and eliminated most of our red clothes. That evening I watched the sunset - a blaze of orange and red. If God wanted red preserved for Jesus Christ alone, did he spread it across the sky in such abandon?

When some of us gathered for coffee later that week at Linda’s the topic of having a burning in our chests as a proof or righteousness came up again. Jane, my high-spirited cousin I played “Apocalypse” with as a child, kicked off the discussion. “Ladies, I have one question. What the hell is this burning in your chest all about anyway? I always thought that burning is mastitis.” (Mastitis is an infection common to nursing mothers.) Everyone laughed. Someone asked Jane how she dared question the requirements about being lifted up. “Well,” she said, “If I have to have a breast infection to be lifted up, then no thank you! I would rather die with the wicked!”

The discussion then became more serious about what felt like a new extremism taking root in the community that felt more radical than anything that we’d known in the past. One of the women recounted a harrowing story about one of the police officers in the FLDS.

(All of the police officers in our community were FLDS members which complicated matters if a woman tried to escape, because she’d get no help or protection from police. It also made reporting domestic violence almost meaningless because the police would always side with the husband.)

I had rarely ever heard a story as disturbing as I did that morning. The FLDS police officer wanted to take his wife up to the Steeds ranch to teach her a lesson in obedience. He put her in a pen with a bull and then tied a rope to the neck of the bull. He told his wife, who was pregnant, that she had to control the bull with the rope on orders of her priesthood head. She tried to hang on to the bull but he ran off and she ended up being dragged until she let go of the rope.

Her husband got into the pen and handed her the rope again and told her she had to hold on. But the bull pulled away from her and her husband became enraged. This time he took the end of the rope and tied it around the neck of the bull and told her she better hang on this time. But it was impossible. The third time he tied the rope to her so she could not let go. She was dragged around the ring again and so badly injured she lost the baby - which then became her fault because she was so disobedient.

When I heard it I told the group I had a burning sensation in my chest—I wanted to kill the guy. The others agreed and we talked about what we’d do if he ever pulled us over. The story was well -circulated in the community because the man’s stepmother became aware of what he’d done to his wife and was so incensed that she started talking about it. No one went to the authorities because we knew the woman would deny the whole thing. We all knew we were powerless when it came to protecting ourselves. I feared that it was an example of hysteria that was manifesting itself in extreme ways. This police officer had carried the notion of "perfect obedience" to a criminal level.

The obedience Warren preached was a woman’s complete submission to her husband. He said women should not work outside the home and should not even leave home unless allowed to do so by her husband.

We’d always kept our coffee meetings quiet, but now we knew we had to be even more careful. We began to be much more circumspect about what we were doing as changes swept over our community. As women were required to leave the workforce because of Jeffs’ new doctrines, it became harder for some families to make ends meet.

The changes Warren Jeffs mandated were obeyed because it was believed he was the voice of the prophet, Uncle Rulon. People did not resist the more oppressive policies he advocated. Instead, it was widely believed that we were being called to a higher way of living the gospel. This wasn’t oppression, this was grace. God was giving us a new and better way of being more faithful to him via the prophet and his mouthpiece, Warren Jeffs.

People who feared these changes and sensed danger, like me, kept quiet. It wasn’t safe anymore to talk about what you were feeling. Women now were not even supposed to go into town without the company of a man. Our husbands were our lord and supreme master who held exclusive power over our lives. It was seen as no longer acceptable for a woman to enter into the same room as her husband without first saying a personal prayer asking God to put the same spirit on her as her husband’s.

I saw this as a real dilemma for because most of the time when I entered the same room as Merril he was usually in a very bad mood. If I had the same spirit that he had one of us might get hurt. This doctrine was one I decided to ignore.
 

Carolyn Jessop
co-author of ESCAPE, her memoir of life in the FLDS and her escape from it

One of the aspects of my former life people are always curious about is the clothing women in the FLDS wear. Sometimes the media refers to it as “pioneer-style” clothing or “Little House on the Prairie” attire. With their long dresses, long underwear and hair piled high on their heads women in the FLDS look like they are racing headlong into the 19th century.

It looks bizarre to me now, but I wore clothing like that for 35 years. This all started after the disastrous Short Creek raid in 1953. That raid is a focal point in FLDS history. Arizona officials raided the polygamist community and tried to break it up. But they failed when wrenching pictures of mothers being separated from their children were published in newspapers and there was a huge public outcry.

But the raid turned out to be a huge plus for the FLDS because so much sympathy was generated. After the court case was tossed out, people came home and continued the polygamist lifestyle but became even more secretive.

That’s when the clothing changed drastically for women—but it wasn’t the only thing. Women lost a lot of rights in 1953. They no longer had any say in who they could marry nor could they choose how to dress. The way this was spun was that since the community had come through the raid so successfully, it was now ready to practice a higher form of God’s law. (God is always the explanation when things get more restrictive; change is presented as a prize for being righteous and faithful. We were always told we were worthy of a higher law.)

The new rules forbid women to wear pants, short sleeves, or low cut necklines. Hair had to be worn long; trimmed, but never cut. It had to be worn up on the head, nothing short, convenient, or easy to manage.

In those first years, women could wear prints, plaids or any color they chose. But every ten of fifteen years it seemed things got more restrictive. (Men had restrictions, too. They could not wear short sleeves and were not allowed to roll up their cuffs.)

Thankfully, when I was growing up, I did not have to wear long underwear. That change came in with the prophet Rulon Jeffs. We were told it was preparations for the sacred underwear we might one day wear as Temple garments.

A lot of us hated the long underwear. It was hot, uncomfortable and made us look like big blobs. When Warren Jeffs took over, even children had to wear long underwear as soon as they were potty-trained. Warren also banned the color red. He prohibited us from wearing bright purple or any florescent colors.

One thing the dresses did was set us apart. It made us outsiders. People made fun of us. We’d be called “polygs.” I was one of the rare women of my era to go to college and I remember the cruel stares of strangers and how bad that made me feel.

The clothing also desexualizes women. Our chests are flattened out and any natural shape is hidden.

We were always told by Warren Jeffs when the dress and choices became more restrictive that is was a sign that “God loves you so much he wants you to be more like him.” (We believed Warren received direct revelations from God.) What we were losing were rights and any sense of control over our lives and all individuality.

For several years, a small group of women in the FLDS had a secret coffee club. We bitched about the long underwear. We’d say we didn’t need to diet; “all we have to do is take off our long underwear and we’ll lose 30 pounds!” We hated that our breasts were so squished we looked like boys.

The clothing we wore was like a fence drawn around us that made us untouchable.

One woman in the coffee club was more rebellious than most. She cut her long underwear off at the knees to make it more comfortable. When she had her period she refused to wear it at all. Her husband reported her to the prophet—then it was Uncle Rulon.

He had other complaints; he said she wouldn’t turn over the money she made to him and she wouldn’t fix his dinner. She also had stopped having sex with him because they only had one bedroom and she didn’t want to have sex in the same room with their kids.

The prophet said she could lose her husband and her children if she didn’t shape up. The threat to a woman is always that her kids will be taken away from her if she doesn’t behave. This woman’s husband bought her new pots and pans to make him dinner. She stayed for another six years before she finally found a way out of the FLDS.

I escaped with my eight children five years ago this month. It’s been astonishing how much our lives have changed. It was really hard at first. We spent a month in a homeless shelter and I went on welfare. For a time I was even sewing underwear for “Big Love” when it was just getting started.

I had to go into hiding after I escaped because my then-husband—Merril Jessop–who now runs the compound in El Dorado, Texas, had a posse of men hunting me down immediately. A friend of a friend hid us in her home.

One of my sweetest memories of my children is from that first night. I was exhausted and told to go and rest. My friend gave my children a bath while I napped and got them ready for bed. (In 17 years of marriage, that was the first time anyone helped me get my children settled down for the night. Never ever did I have help—not even when I was sick and pregnant nor when I was overwhelmed in caring for my handicapped son.)

On our first night of freedom, Merrilee, my five year-old, had her first bubble bath. She had been given a nightgown to wear and panties with rosettes. When she saw me she pulled up her nightgown and squealed, “See the roses!!!!” She was elated and discovering the joys of being a little girl for the first time in her life.

I wrote about this and so much more in my memoir ESCAPE which I, of course, hope you have a chance to read.