I've just finished the book "Escape" by Carolyn Jessop, former Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (FLDS) member, who escaped with her 8 children, after many years of terrifying life with a man, who was one of the leaders in the FLDS.

She grew up in a polygamous household, and had to marry 50 year old man, being only 18 years old herself and becoming the forth wife. She was abused sexually, physically and emotionally throughout the marriage, not only by her husband, but by her sister-wives also.

Carolyn is the first top on the left, here with her husband and sister wives

The whole system of FLDS keeps the women as a subject to the men-powered world, which existence is based on perversity and control. They are degrading women's lives, by diminishing them to working slaves, playing with their minds constantly to keep them vulnerable and subjected to the men's wishes. Brain washed by the group's leader's, constantly abused, kept without educational opportunities, mentally tricked and emotionally drained, sooner or later, they become mentally unstable, depressed and mostly give up.

Carolyn found her strength by caring for her children, and was granted a full custody of her children after her escape from the brutality of the system, which promised heaven, but delivered hell on earth.

Very disturbing recollections of a young woman's journey from a total believer in the cult's religious teachings, to the world of freedom and reason.

Carolyn's position on the Texas court ruling (children returned to FLDS)

Read an interview with Carolyn in "Time"

Excerpt from the book

Video interview with Carolyn

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.

While I am convinced that the FLDS is the American Taliban, I have to agree...Texas messed up.

I think it has been accepted now that the call that started this whole thing was a hoax, which leaves 2 possibilities.  First, the woman who called up the hoax is a very messed up soul or, secondly, it was all a set up by authorities in Texas.  Personally, I believe the former is true.  So, operating on that theory, here is what I think Texas should have done:

1 - Obtained a search warrant for evidence that underaged girls were being married off.

2 - Search the YFZ ranch, collecting data and documenting their observations.

3 - Gone back to court with their findings and to receive authorization to remove those girls who were a) underage and b) pregnant or had children (and, if they had children, to remove those children along with the mothers and keep them together).

4 - Continued to investigate and gone on from there.

But no, Texas had to jump in a mess it all up.

What really gets me is that this should never have gotten this far.  I'm all for religious freedom--except when religions commit crimes.  Guess what!  Sexually molesting children is a crime!  Domestic violence is a crime!  Yet, the authorities in Utah, Arizona (where the two largest polygamous communities are located) and possibly Texas all turned a blind eye.

Carolyn Jessop writes in her book that it seemed to the women that they had no way to escape.  They couldn't go to the police because the police in the area where all FLDS and would just send them back home.  Obviously, states cannot NOT hire people based on their religion, but they can also hire people of different religions.  So, why were there no non-FLDS police in the area?  If the states knew that these sorts of things were going on in these communities, why didn't they locate agencies and such near the communities to help women and children trying to escape?

And then there is "bleeding the beast" which covers all manner of sins from embezzlement to tax evasion.  These communities were making money off the state and federal governments and little was done to stop it!  So, yes, our tax dollars may have been sent to Hildale, Colorado City or Eldorado.

And if that doesn't make you mad, what about this little tidbit?  It's true...Warren Jeffs didn't even need to steal money from the US Government.  They were paying him!

Disgusting!

There are actually two stories told in this book.  The first is Carolyn Jessop's own life story.  She was raised in a polygamous family, married at the age of 18 to someone 32 years her senior, who already had 3 wives, and went on to have 8 children in 15 years before fleeing polygamy.  The details of her life are sordid and, if I daresay unbelievable if the YFZ raid hadn't brought the FLDS (Fundamental Latter Day Saints) to the forefront of American media.  In fact, her horribly abusive husband is currently in the news as the leader for the YFZ ranch.

As disturbing as the details of her life air, the other story Jessop tells is far worse.  With an insight that few outside the FLDS have (and no one inside the FLDS will share), she details the rise of Warren Jeffs and how he has turned a culture that was once fringe to something akin to the Taliban.  For those who look at places such as Afghanistan and say, "That could never happen here in the US," you need to read this book.  She is even gives one of the most heartbreaking testimonies of the insidious power of cult behavior imaginable.  This is a bit of a spoiler, so you will need to highlight the next part if you would like to read it: [Her oldest daughter, who Carolyn brought out of polygamy when she escaped, chose to return to the FLDS when she turned 18.  At Warren Jeff's recent trial, Carolyn Jessop was a witness for the prosecution and her daughter, Betty, was a witness for the defense.]

Jessop is not a writer, but in a book such as this, the writer's style can be overlooked.  In fact, it is pretty obvious that she did write the book (as opposed to some "autobiographies" that are obviously written by ghost writers) and that lends even more integrity to this book. 

She does, however, paint herself as a bit of a saint among demons--as my friend, who loaned me the book, pointed out, "No one is perfect!"  But, I can see how Jessop may have unintentionally shown that she, too, was capable of the manipulation and mind games that run rampant in the FLDS.

This book is a quick read, moreso because it is almost impossible to put down.  I highly recommend it!

When she was eighteen years old, Carolyn Jessop was coerced into an arranged marriage with a total stranger: a man thirty-two years her senior. Merril Jessop already had three wives. But arranged plural marriages were an integral part of Carolyn's heritage: She was born into and raised in the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (FLDS), the radical offshoot of the Mormon Church that had settled in small communities along the Arizona-Utah border. Over the next fifteen years, Carolyn had eight children and withstood her husband's psychological abuse and the watchful eyes of his other wives who were locked in a constant battle for supremacy.

Carolyn's every move was dictated by her husband's whims. He decided where she lived and how her children would be treated. He controlled the money she earned as a school teacher. He chose when they had sex; Carolyn could only refuse-at her peril. For in the FLDS, a wife's compliance with her husband determined how much status both she and her children held in the family. Carolyn was miserable for years and wanted out, but she knew that if she tried to leave and got caught, her children would be taken away from her. No woman in the country had ever escaped from the FLDS and managed to get her children out, too. But in 2003, Carolyn chose freedom over fear and fled her home with her eight children. She had $20 to her name.

Escape exposes a world tantamount to a prison camp, created by religious fanatics who, in the name of God, deprive their followers the right to make choices, force women to be totally subservient to men, and brainwash children in church-run schools. Against this background, Carolyn Jessop's flight takes on an extraordinary, inspiring power. Not only did she manage a daring escape from a brutal environment, she became the first woman ever granted full custody of her children in a contested suit involving the FLDS. And in 2006, her reports to the Utah attorney general on church abuses formed a crucial part of the case that led to the arrest of their notorious leader, Warren Jeffs.

Order Escape from Amazon for $9.99

Other Kindle Books of Interest
Under the Banner of Heaven: A Story of Violent Faith
Her Last Death: A Memoir
Hope's Boy
Manic: A Memoir
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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.

update : count of children is higher than 416- http://gosanangelo.com/news/2008/apr/22/judge-urges-case-by-case-considerations-new-more/

by Mia

...all totalitarianisms try to control sex and reproduction one way or another..the regime is busily exterminating nuns, Baptists, Quakers and so forth in the same way the Bolsheviks exterminated the Mensheviks...the free choice of a loved one — when denied by a regime or a culture — is going to happen anyway... I would like to congratulate the students, parents and teachers who have supported the use of my book in Advanced Placement courses. They have aligned themselves against the censors, book-banners and book-burners throughout the ages and have stood up for open discussion and a free expression of opinion — which, last time I looked, was still the American way, though that way is under pressure. -

Thus spake Margaret Atwood, writer of a novel which takes place in a dystopian future, in what has been described as a feminist novel, outlining the results of what many interpreted to be 'Patriarchy Gone Wild'. However, beyond the male/female dynamic that in this novel have been all but drive underground and repressed lies the idea of the Totalitarian State. Big Brother. Is it here already , Margaret?

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1613902/posts

FLDS: Government Hate Crime Victims

~~~~Mothers who brought babies and young children onto their own cots to cuddle and comfort were told to put them back in cribs, the women said. http://blogs.sltrib.com/plurallife/

The women said they learned from their attorneys yesterday that Walther had relented and asked CPS to let nursing mothers remain with their children. Velvet woke at 2 a.m. Thursday and began making a list of women who were breast-feeding. She gave the list to a lead CPS worker ''so she would know which children could stay with their mothers.''

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Like many people watching the news and trying to make sense of what I hear from a perspective not that of the mainstream, I was astonished at the speed and efficiency of which the raids on this ranch/homes were conducted. Having heard that there in all likelihood was no 'Sarah', a troubled teen living under the (albeit fictionalized) oppressive thumb of the FLDS , a teen who allegedly asked for help in order to escape- I can only come to some conclusions regarding why, during a time of war, illegal invasion and the dollar's decline, it is important to expend so much time , money and energy conducting a modern-day witch hunt upon fundamentalist Mormons. In general, people only work with what they are given, operating from a standard of "Well, what do the pundits say? The CNN anchorperson said X, it must be true, they must be right, because they are the bestowers of Truth as We Know it ". Don't trust TV. Think for yourself. Go deeper. Like the windows explorer, keep hitting the little folder with the 'up' arrow to take it to the next level.

I believe the reasons are not what the TV says they are. Now they are saying the call was most likely a hoax, "but there are girls there that fit the description", so that makes it OK. I suppose if I call up saying I am a 14 year old in the ghetto and my mom is on crack and leaves every night to turn tricks while I care for the other younger siblings, there would be a raid on Hunter's Point, San Francisco. Or I could say I was in the mountains of Appalachia, and had no shoes, and my mother was lying drunk in the railroad car we live in, and it wasn't just me, everyone was like this here. What is the difference between one group of similar people living together in close quarters and another? Children are in danger, are they not? But no, there will be no raids in San Francisco, the city that calls itself a sanctuary city for illegals. There are already too many of their children sitting in foster care as is.

They aren't worried about those people, as was evidenced by Katrina and the lack of/slow response, but we are supposed to believe that what amounts to child kidnapping in Texas resulted from a phone call. That none of this was planned , it all just sort of happened that week. As I said, don't believe the TV. Sure it is possible that it could have happened like that, and the government certainly has the resources, but why SHOULD you believe it happened as they told you, just because it is THEY who told you? This is not really a case of "What about the children?" I can hear in my head the predictable pap regurgitated down the gullets of college youth, who will parrot back in response:

" Yes teacher ,it is all about the systems of oppression of women and children, even when it really isn't them making the fake call for help. We must take a stand against abuse! We must rescue children from clean-living, well-taken-care of circumstances. We must stop them from wearing feminine Little-House-on-the-Prairie clothing. It's really about 'gender inequities'. It's about 'social justice' ,it's about freeing the cheeldrrun from their 'oppressively wholesome' ranch. Yes, they need to be in foster homes, away from their real mother(s), where they can eat Cheeto's and watch MTV and American Idolatry, and act like a Real American "

The White Male (and his family) is dead! Long Live The State!

These groups have been around a long time, the official split from LDS happened in the 1930's but they were living the same way they long before that. they were the original LDS. So, this leads me to ponder.. what criteria have they only now met to warrant these raids, the taking away of children from their parents? Are they being made an example, as in "Don't think you can get away with existing outside the mainstream, we will get you eventually." Or like the new CA homeschooling law requiring parents to have a teaching credential, is it Big Brother looking towards the future and seeing a threat down the road? Is it trying to STOP something or PREVENT something? Is it a coincidence a man with an LDS background ran for president? About now is when I will be accused of having a tin-foil hat, that nothing is related, that depriving parents of their rights, from schooling to even be parents of their children is going down the garden path and that path is not eh yellow brick road, but Red.

Things aren't exactly going swimmingly in America these days, in case you haven't noticed. We are entrenched in a war with Iraq, the dollar is declining, illegals are invading and causing hospitals to close, over-taxing social programs, property values are falling, banks are in trouble, kids are failing high school exit exams, weird diseases we thought were a thing of the past are coming back, like multi drug resistant TB, there seems no end to the drive-by shootings that pepper the streets of the inner city -the list goes on and on. How do we respond to this? Do we become more afraid, in the shadow of Big Brother flexing his muscle upon these people? Do we conform and become ever-quieter? In the words of the vilified FLDS, do we 'keep sweet' and take it?

First they came for the home schoolers, and I did not speak, because I was not a home schooler- then they came for the FLDS...

I can say it is likely most nationalists sympathize with the plight of FLDS, as we too feel we have been robbed of our own children's future, if not their present as these more than 416, I believe the count is up to 460 something- children have been . The freedom of association, the freedom to live with whom we wish, live as we wish, to accept or reject the mainstream, to practice whatever religion we wish. We see the loss of your children/women as a direct and symbolic distillation of the loss we feel in losing our country and what it once stood for. The loss of the freedom to believe as we wish, harming no one and raising our children the way we see fit, without government regulation and interference.

We see your loss not unlike suffering from a terminal illness and we are all sick with it. Does it hurt? Yes it does, it hurts us physically by  putting us under threat of violence and hurting the income earning potential of the head of households ,by illegals sucking up blue collar construction and white-collar  being outsourced, mom and pop stores being shut down by big-box competition. More people who shouldn't be here create more pollution, noise, garbage, illnesses we have long eradicated. It hurts us mentally, the stress of having to live around  people who have no concept of  quiet and privacy, of indoor and outdoor life , thinking disturbing others constantly is  just the 'thing to do', and 'hey, tolerate me or you suck, you're a hater.'  It hurts us  in every way possible- it is hurting us ALL, not only the FLDS, they are just an easy target to go after directly. Having to assimilate to THEM hurts our collective soul, makes  us sick, depressed, breaks our heart that the things that caused us to once develop new cures, create works of art, inventions, architecture- is being killed off- how do we find those things within ourselves to share with the world, when we have had the equivalent of a racial root canal-the living pulp scraped out and covered over with pretend patriotism, suicidal tolerance,  and obsessive-compulsive adherence to this made-up new bible called Political Correctness?

We watch not only our freedoms fall away, like the hair of a chemo patient- but we also are watching our possibilities of choice fall away- even if we play the game, pay our taxes, have a small amount of kids, spend every free moment earning and buying ,even the chance to do that has been usurped by all this untrammeled immigration and minority quotas regardless of merit, laws that try to be 'fair' but in actuality don't really help anyone, just by making things look 'equal' - looking isn't being. Just because someone says ., "Ok, I've waved my magic wand, now We , the Bestowers of Equal, have fixed it", does not make it so.Yet they do their best to force us all together , hoping some of our 'run-off' will help those further down on the totem pole will benefit. One presidential candidate, one talk-show host, these figureheads of 'equality' do not equal make.

I would say the 'magic' method of equality-believers has failed miserably. The Equality Spell hasn't truly helped those still 'left behind' , and has hurt (whites) us, who at least at one time, were the ones at the helm of this ship we call America. Big Brother does whatever it wants and calls it neat-o feel-good names in hopes that average people will also want to feel noble and good, whether the results work or make things worse. Has our lack of border control helped us? No, that's the bad kind of tolerance, yet we go after FLDS with a vengeance , as if they are causing us problems en masse, which they are not. Will Big Brother now take away their community land, build condos and then call the evicted FLDS 'terrorists' when they are unhappy with the new deal?

This group had won the 'opt-out' game and is being punished and made an example of for it. Big Brother is not worried about other groups besides various sections of Whites doing this- when it is those other groups living in little ghetto-y clusters, they are usually entirely dependent upon the government, which is obviously OK with Big Brother. I'm pretty sure none of these other groups who have the unwed, young mothers, drug dealing, prostitution, men having many kids they don't take care of and so on- they know those groups for whatever reasons don't have any kind of collective ability to to build anything of substance of tehir own-they can only swim by the big shark and hope little bits of plankton fall out of the sharks mouth. It is highly unlikely Manuel Pablo Enrico Vargas, an anchor baby will run for President here anytime soon. The 'token minority' presidential candidate, he was not from ex-slave class, White Guilt-provoking, chip on shoulder, malapropism-using, prison, drugs, guns, ghetto-dwelling, no-daddy-knowing background. That said, I am disappointed Romney supports '100 year War' McCain.

This despicable nightmare which the parents in FLDS are suffering through are victims of hate, this is related to what I wrote about a couple months ago re Hoarding Whiteness and homeschooling out here in CA, how the state is trying to take that right away from parents, and require parents to have the equivalent of a teaching certificate to educate their children. Can't keep that Whiteness on the ranch all by yourselves. Big brother will think you are building another Lebensborn. Can't have all kind of White kids being born and raised by their mothers . O.M.G. That is dangerous. They must be stopped. http://silentconsort.wordpress.com/2008/03/12/homeschooling-fight-thou-must-share-whiteness/

This is happening in America, the place that is supposed to be all about 'tolerance' and acceptance of differences- celebrate diversity no less. Well, this despicable nightmare in which the parents and children in FLDS are suffering is as hateful and intolerant as it gets, hence government Hate and Hypocrisy. Obviously , most of us were not raised on an FLDS ranch with more than one mother, Mormon or otherwise, but that is not the point. One doesn't have to approve or condone of their religion or way of life to see that these people were not harming anyone and it is just plain wrong to come in and take their children away. They didn't come in and ask the women and kids if they wanted to go, if they were being held against their will, if they felt oppressed or miserable or abused. This isn't about choice, get it?

In the case of the FLDS, it is now the sickness of mourning - separation from those we love, the pain of knowing we can never go back or fit in without sacrificing what we believe inside, the tears and ache of longing to be and live closely with whom we love in the way we wish to because the system sets it up to be nigh-impossible, and continually having any chance or inroad one does make stripped away. If one says the wrong things, believes the wrong things, or as the 80's self help book admonished , 'love too much' we lose it all, and can love no one. Don't tell me who I can love, who I do love, how many kids I can have, who I should live with ,where I can live and what that should 'look like', what religion is or is not acceptable, how my kids should learn and with whom they should play.

You are not my family , Big Brother Commie-Feminist-Multi-Culti-Pseudogod. GET OFF MY LAWN! LEAVE US ALONE.

The more they vilify us and kick us, hoping to keep us down if not by the amount of lithium in our drinking water (look it up) and by the droning salve of TV, liturgical rants of the pundits about terror, default corporate greed, enforced multi-culti at any price agenda- the MORE 'hate' and separatism that breeds, not less. We LIKE being who we are, we don't want to be racially, culturally, religiously, scholastically, mentally, and spiritually castrated, though they are trying to do their best to achieve this, sending our young men to die,taking a whole crop of young White kids out of the FLDS community to do gawd-knows-what with. Going to recruit them for the permanent war fixture in the middle east that we all know isn't 'just' 100 years, but forever? Going to try and turn them into the next prepubescent TV teen queens and pretty wussy boys? I'm praying not. I'm hoping the Texas DHS will get class-action sued over what looks to me what can only have been a set-up.

The things we grew up believing about this country are constantly being undermined and chipped away. We are grateful we may still have our family or at least our children, if they have not already been absorbed by the mighty machine of the government/media/indoctrination. We don't lose our children by government raids, we lose them insidiously, piece by piece by the systems that are set up that encourage them towards materialism, multiculturalism, television, loss of identity, religion, race, culture. We lose their future, as do they, and sadly , I do believe because of hose hell-bent on the destruction of Whites, we will lose not only the country, but all of the things that has made the entire world want what we have. We simply won't have it anymore. 'Land of the free..'should perhaps be marked with an * disclaimer that any and all rights are subjects to change, regardless of constitution.

We must ask ourselves, since it isn't about the false pretexts they are using to destroy these people, what IS it really about? And why now? why them of all people, it isn't like they are out there wrecking YOUR day-to-day life simply by existing, are they? Can one say that about other groups? White flight much? Watch it now, your hypocrisy is showing.

Hate Crimes Against FLDS

What this really boils down to is hate. People hate these American citizens for practicing their religion. People at Eldorado passed around hats with "ELDORADO: POLYGAMY CAPITAL OF TEXAS" on them.One person paraded around the entrance to the ranch in a grim reaper costume, and a song called "The Plural Girl Blues" has been written about the members in Eldorado. These things don't just sound like hate to me, but hate crimes. http://tiny.cc/c8WQY

Kyle Martin, who wrote the above, is correct. This truly is a real hate crime being perpetrated against the members of this particular branch of the FLDS. They are taking children away , separating mothers from infants- why? Are the children being burned with cigarettes, being put in microwaves, eating rocks of crack cocaine, being tossed out hi-rise housing project windows, being abandoned in dumpsters? No, they are not.

http://captivefldschildren.org/Videos.php

The government uses vague claims of 'abuse' and underage mothers as the pretext to destroy families and community. The same government doesn't care about underage mothers in the ghetto, whose children are living under much worse conditions, no fathers to be found to provide for, care for and raise their children, who are much worse off than FLDS kids, who have many healthy, strong , drug-free and loving women to care for them. By turn, these children are being cared for by mothers who share an investment in the children, the ones who are not directly their own being half-siblings or perhaps something akin to nieces and nephews. This cannot be said for the dual career yuppie couple, with all the toys, mortgage and SUV who are routinely featured on news stories having caught their nanny on secret cam letting their precious infants roll off sofas or being abused and neglected in various ways.

http://www.wral.com/news/local/story/2561722/ Yuppie couples employ women such as these to care for their twin infants,so that they can work and have all the toys,clothes, etc that they think will be important for little unisexually named progeny #1 and 2, but that is OK, while having more than one actual mother, is not.

FLDS are descendants of people who settled this country, they are citizens. Illegal aliens are breaking the law here, yet they are not separated from their children, let alone often deported. No one is conducting raids in mexican neighborhoods, either worried about underage mothers rampantly breeding anchor babies without the benefit of marriage , or about their lack of citizenship, or under what conditions the children are living in- young babies being cared for by 8 or 9 year old siblings, while the parents work crappy under the table jobs, or unofficial 'day care' homes, where none of the children get loving , personal attention- and collect food stamps and rent vouchers and head to the ER every time there is a health problem for free care. Leaving young children under the supervision of other children IS illegal, is it not?

How many stories can be found simply by typing in the word 'baby' into google news search. Here we find a multitude of horror stories featuring either murderous or neglectful mothers and mostly live-in step-father. Is that kind of thing happening on the FLDS ranch? Not by a long shot. Are these children being starved or denied medical care or living in foul, unhealthful conditions? No, this is not true either. Are these mothers in FLDS headed out to 'da cluub' to meet a boyfriend and leaving children home alone, sometimes for days whilst they are on a drug bender? Not a chance. So what are they doing that is so horrible they must be punished and their families and larger community destroyed?

That same question is being asked all over the blogosphere:

So, the question that needs answering, is why these three women are being kept from their children? What evidence is there they are unfit mothers, that they have abused their children? Texas doesn't’t appear to have any such evidence. The only rational conclusion one can draw is that these women dress funny, they belong to an extremely unpopular religious movement, and they shun the modern cesspool we call American pop culture. So, since they are so powerless and unpopular Texas has seen fit to kidnap their children, hold them hostage and subject them to what likely is the most abusive environment yet–the 'protective 'care of the Texas Child Protective Services.

http://messengerandadvocate.wordpress.com/2008/04/14/texas-abuse-of-the-flds-children-and-mothers/

We have already established it isn't the underage marriages, it isn't horrible abusive conditions, it isn't alcohol, drug or sexual abuse. So what is it that has made them a target? The above blogger has one thing especially correct- these people reject mainstream culture. Here are some of the reasons I believe have attracted the attention of Big Evil Government.

1) Race (the other groups live in non-traditional familial/marital arrangements and have rampant rates of underage childbearing, and no one conducts raids, but rather accepts it, and even apologize for it citing 'cultural and religious differences'. FLDS is White, therefore FLDS must be Evil, Bad and Wrong.

2) FLDS cannot be said to be mainstream Judeo_Christian. Beliefs not in line with mainstream Christianity

3) Self-determination , free agency, self-sufficiency- While they may or may not accept help from the state/gov as far as welfare/food stamps, they have certainly created communities, housing, religious structures, etc. They live apart from the mainstream, and until this latest debacle, seem to have done well by it.

4) Patriarchy- The system, though on the day to day level is kept functioning through vast networks of women, at the top are men. This would be one reason the globalist/new world order/feminists etc would be against this system, it is headed by exclusively White men.

5) Rejection of System: Homeschooling , rejection of traditional judeo-Christian beliefs, unable to be absorbed by same, unable to fit into mainstream modern day LDS belief structure, whilst regular LDS struggles to discern whether Smith was correct in his beliefs and they are wrong in rejecting what they call 'the principle' or that if he was incorrect, then their entire foundation is built on ignoring that fact, and sweeping it conveniently under the rug- either way, FLDS gets shunted away to aunties, like an illegitimate child, though how they live is representative of the original, early LDS.

6) Rejection of Consumerism/pop-culture- Rejects contact with pop culture brainwashing: MTV, Prozac, face piercing, skanky clothes,celebrity obsession, not appearance obsessed, no TV, magazines that promote all kinds of unhealthy things- hence they are not good consumers because the TV tells you what you lack and what you should buy and be.

7) Marital Arrangements Unacceptable - So let me get this straight. Unwed ghetto teen mothers are OK, unwed teen illegals are OK, swingers are OK, politicians who pay hookers 5000 an hour are OK (well, they don't have their children taken away) , serial relationships and/concurrent affairs are Ok, that other 'poly', polyamory is OK-even if all live together as if they are married and may or may not co-share/parent children is OK, gay marriage is Ok in at least a couple states, transgender parents are OK, adopting kids from other countries while being unmarried and/or polyamorous and/or gay is OK, but not FLDS.

Tolerance and Diversity People say these is OK , even for any parenting arrangement, but not this .

Do you see the Hypocrisy of 'Tolerance' ? Yeaahh, 'tolerance' is kind of a drag when it's a one-way street. You tolerate me, or I sue or claim some kind of discrimination and get laws passed to make you tolerate me, and include me, but me tolerate you? Not a chance.

The Hypocrisy of 'Tolerance', kind of like :

US/Mexico border fence- Israeli border Wall

Sometimes 'tolerance' and 'diversity ' is good , sometimes it's not. Is that how it is? Some people , 'We' the people, will be told what kind of 'diversity' is OK and an Officially Licensed Product, and which kinds are not. You are a 'good guy' if you agree with Big Brother, and a dangerous, subversive element if you don't.

8) Organization. A structure that not only includes all of the things America won't abide in its Hypocritically- Correct belief system, but that owns land, properties, churches, businesses,infrastructure.

9) Religion. Not modern day judeo-Christian friendly.

10) Possibly at least sympathetic to other ostracized cultures not on the Officially Approved as Acceptable American Political Belief System list.

Mormons, Muslims forge close ties

They see in each other a religion viewed with suspicion in U.S. and share an emphasis on the family-

"As the church grew into a global faith," Green wrote in a 2001 essay, "its posture toward Islam became ... more positive" until, today, "the two faiths have become associated in several ways, including Mormonism's being called the Islam of America."

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/04/13/MN0410197R.DTL&hw=mormons&sn=001&sc=1000

Granted, not all FLDS may feel as this professor does, but this statement may be taken as some kind of a threat to approving of the never-ending war in Iraq, or the entire middle-east mess we have gotten ourselves into.

BYU professor Noel Reynolds :

“…there are many important elements of Mormon thought in which we feel closer to the followers of Muhammad than to the contemporary Christian culture in which we have been located since our beginning” (Reynolds quoted by Spencer Palmer, Mormons and Muslims

http://blog.mrm.org/

I am hoping writing about the hate crime by the US government against FLDS will bring more attention to the matter, and has helped the reader to explore other angles and explanations, get people to question and see the hypocrisy that is glaringly obvious in how the government operates and who they select to take down.

Sources:

http://blogs.sltrib.com/plurallife/ covers poly life in Salt Lake city

http://deseretnews.com/user/comments/1,5150,695239852,00.html

http://texaspolygamy.blogspot.com/ Texas blog

http://www.principlevoices.org/ site by women

http://www.sltrib.com/ci_9054895

http://polygamynow.blogspot.com/ modern-day

http://pluralmarriageman.blogspot.com/2008/04/is-constitution-dead.html man asks: Is the constitution dead?

http://166.70.44.68/multimedia/2007/0920jeffs/index.html Jeff's trail slide show and narration

http://www.nccg.org/ezion_geber/warning.html Christian , not Mormon, similar beliefs

http://www.cbc.ca/cp/world/080418/w0418112A.html Canada

http://messengerandadvocate.wordpress.com/2008/04/14/texas-abuse-of-the-flds-children-and-mothers/

http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Atlantis/2430/CPM-HP-Index.html European site

http://blogs.sltrib.com/plurallife/2007/08/flds-women-and-their-dresses.htm on clothing

The villagers are happy, their elders are wise, and they all speak in a charming olde-worlde brogue. But they have a fear. A fear that prevents them from ever leaving their village. A fear so ingrained that it goes unquestioned.

The villagers believe that terrifying monsters live in the forest surrounding the village. Their co-existence is tenuous - the monsters tend to leave the villagers alone most of the time - and the villagers must always be on guard against the monsters' displeasure or incursion into their village. The colour red is forbidden in the village, called the 'bad colour' because it attracts the monsters.

Shyamalan reveals at the conclusion of the film (spoilers ahead, if you care) that the village is actually situated in the 21st century - a throwback to 'simpler times', created in the midst of a vast nature preserve by a group of friends who were disillusioned with the modern world (they became the elders of the village). To maintain their illusion, the elders had to prevent their descendants from seeing the outside world, and so created monster suits with which they terrorised the other villagers into submission.

If you haven't seen the film, it unfortunately ends with the illusion of the village intact. This irked me. If Shyamalan didn't seem so sympathetic to the cause of these village elders, The Village might have been an excellent indictment against the way separatist religious sects operate.

Which brings me to the point of this post - the problems posed by separatist religious sects to the societies in which they exist. I'm going to focus on two cases, from the US and Australia.

Yearning for Zion
The issues surrounding the case of the recent raid on the Yearning For Zion sect (part of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints), has knocked me into a bit of a tailspin. It's no secret that I am not a fan of religion. When I first heard about the allegations of abuse made against the sect, and that the children of the sect had been removed into state custody, my initial reaction, coloured by my negative opinion of religion generally, was that removal of the children was the best scenario. Better to remove the alleged/potential victims from that cloistered environment while investigations are carried out.

But some people, including the American Civil Liberties Union, are worried that the raid on the ranch and the removal of the children was a breach of civil liberties. From the ACLU website:

A representative of the ACLU of Texas is in San Angelo observing the custody hearings currently underway concerning the children of the Fundamentalist Church of Latter Day Saints (FDLS), in front of Judge Barbara Walthers of the 51st District Court.  The hearings are part of a standard fourteen-day process mandated by the Texas Family Code, at the conclusion of which the court must return a removed child to the custody of his or her parents unless the government provides sufficient evidence that the child’s physical health or safety is in danger and, despite the government’s reasonable efforts to enable the child to return home, there is substantial risk of continuing danger if the child is returned.

 The ACLU is concerned that:

government may not be complying with the Constitution or the laws of Texas in the execution of its mandate, from how the raids were conducted to whether the current process protects basic rights...The government must ensure that each mother and each child in its custody receives due process of law in determining the placement of the children and other matters regarding the children’s care.

The custody hearings, then, are part of the usual process in suspected cases of child abuse. So what is it about the raids that worries people? As far as I can tell, people are concerned that the government raided the ranch without sufficient evidence of abuse. The phone call that sparked the raids may have been a hoax.

Even if it turns out that the government raided the ranch under a fraudulent report of child abuse, I don't think the people who authorised the raid are completely at fault. The secretive nature of the sect, their (known) practices concerning marriage at a young age and polygamy, and the previous conviction of their prophet Warren Jeffs for being an accessory to rape, would strain the impartiality of most people. If the sect claims the accusations against it are unfair, then I say it has stacked the deck against itself.

Fear of monsters
Like the village elders in Shyamalan's film, the modus operandi of groups like the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints is to use fear to keep their members submissive. The fear of hell, and of the evil forces laying in wait to lead the pious astray, can be used to coerce impressionable sect members into complying with pretty much anything. The testimony of Warren Jeffs' nephew about the abuse he suffered at the hands of his 'prophet' uncle gives us a glimpse into the mindset of a young sect member:

When I was a little boy, around 5 or 6, just attending the regular Sunday school, even when my grandfather was the prophet at the time, behind closed doors, Warren was sneaking around behind and would come down and escort me down the hall and into the bathroom and molest me as a kid. Threatening me with eternal damnation if I did not do exactly what he said.

The children of the sect have no access to the internet, television, radios, newspapers or anything else that might conflict with, or call into question, the teachings of their prophet. The sect has its own doctors and teachers, all on-site at the ranch. The sect members spend their entire lives at the ranch. There is no contact with anyone from outside the sect. Members are told that the outside world is full of evil, and contact with it is a sure way to end up in hell.

As former sect member Carolyn Jessop said:

They were born into this. They have no concept of mainstream society, and their mothers were born into it and have no concept of mainstream culture. Their grandmothers were born into it.

And you couldn't dream this stuff up: just like in The Village, and just as arbitrary, wearing red is forbidden (in this case, because Warren Jeffs claims that colour belongs to Jesus).

I would say that all this amounts to psychological and emotional abuse, but those things are hard to prove.

Ultimately, the total control the leaders of the sect have over their members leads others to question what they are capable of doing with that control.

If old men have their pick of young women who are brainwashed to believe they are doing their duty by marrying and bearing children, is it such a leap to imagine they might take advantage of that? And in a closed polygamous community, where marriageable women are no doubt in short supply, is it such a leap to imagine that the wife-hungry men (Jeffs teaches that each man must have a minimum of three wives to get the best place in heaven) will reclassify increasingly younger women as 'marriageable'?

What happens if a young woman decides she doesn't want to have sex with her 50 year old husband? 

But this post was not written to resolve exactly what goes on at the ranch - it is about the problems the raid on the ranch has posed to the larger society in which it exists. Was the raid constitutional? Were the civil liberties of the sect members breached? Did the Texas government persecute a community for their religious beliefs?

Freedom of religion does not equate to freedom to justify illegal acts in the name of 'belief'. I don't think too many people are arguing against that point. But what if the beliefs of a group include complete opacity of their practices to the rest of society? Governments cannot judge if allegations of illegal acts are true if they are unable to penetrate a community. If that community has prior connections to illegal activity (as the FLDS sect did), it is understandable that the government would err on the side of caution. I think it is understandable that the Texas government raided the Yearning For Zion ranch.

I'm going to leave Part 1 there. Part 2 will go into a bit more detail on how the actions of separatist religious sects are not self-contained, but have implications for larger society.

___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Tomorrow: When separatists aren't so separate - The Exclusive Brethren in Australia, their involvement in Australian Federal elections...

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.

I usually take news stories with a grain of salt realizing that they're partially fact and partially sensationalism made up to improve ratings.  Even if you downplay todays reports coming out of Eldorado, it's still enough to make you ill.

The newest reports are saying that the police have removed many many boxes of documents, to include family bibles, showing evidence of various marriages (spiritual) and births.  These documents were removed from homes, from the temple, from safes and anywhere else that they could find them.  The reports say that the documents show girls under the age of 17 (the legal age in Texas to be married), some as young as 12, being married to men over the age of 17 (and sometimes much older).  There is also documentation of one 16 year old already being the mother of 4 children.

What was also reported, and I find to be the sickest part if it's true, is that there is a bed inside the temple where a bride is expected to consummate the marriage immediately after.  When the bed was found, the sheets were rumpled and they investigators found what appears to be a hair from a female in the bed.

Now, I have no problem with Polygamy.  It's not for me, not at all, but I could honestly care less what anyone else does.  I have a limited issue with arranged marriages.  There are many societies today that still have arraigned marriages and they work fine for them.  I have a huge issue with the abuse of children, of girls being married off to family (the compound is said to have a very narrow gene pool, not to be rude), and of children getting married.

My newest questions?

1) Two of the charges against the compound is marriage of girls under the legal age (17) and plural marriage... however, the marriages are all "spiritual", is Texas recognizing these marriages based on "common law"?  If not, what basis do they have for saying that anyone from the compound who didn't have a formal marriage, license and all, is legally married?

2) How is CPS going to establish who the younger children belong to?  Are they going to use DNA?  If so, does the inter-family marriages/procreating pose a problem?

3) What is CPS going to do with almost 440 children terrified of the outside world?

4) Does Texas have the right to seize the land from the FLDS?

If Texas does have right to seize the land, it seems to me that the best thing to do with the children would be to move the mothers and children back onto there with supervision from CPS, therapists and foster parents... the surroundings are familiar to the children and it would give them some comfort while they're being acclimated to the outside world.  Once they're more stable, they could be moved off of the compound.

5) Where are the boys?  It seems that there is an extremely disproportionate amount of girls to boys.  I'm afraid we're going to find out that the numbers of lost boys is much higher then anyone suspected.

I think it's clear that there are very young girls having babies on the compound, girls who have been "bound" in a "spiritial marriage" to men that may be their age or may be years older then them. But how is that really different then what happens in mainstream society? What about Jamie Lynn Spears who's pregnant at 16 ( and it's speculated that she doesn't know who baby-daddy is at all) and Keisha Castle-Hughes who had her daughter 4 months after turning 17 (and shortly after playing the Virgin Mary in The Nativity Story ironically enough) are two child stars that I know of off the top of my head that have been pregnant before 18. I can only imagine how many celebutants have been pregnant and it's been "taken care of". How many of us know a teenager that ended up pregnant while still in highschool? Part of me says that at least the teens in the FLDS compound are married (if only spiritually), they know who the baby's father is and the child is wanted - no one has to worry about a baby being born alive and flushed down the toilet and killed.

So what about the abuse that happens every day, all around us? A two year old beaten to death with a video game controller while her mother listens from the next room, a father having sex with his 15 year old daughter to rid himself of daemons, a wife allowing her husband to have sex with a relative who was 11 at the time, or how about a man raping his 4 year old daughter? We read about abused children every day on the internet, each of us knows at least one child that has had a child - ill prepared and without the resources to give the baby the life it deserves. A large portion of the generation coming up has very little in the way of a moral compass, bracelets are used to advertise what they'll do sexually and birth control is an after thought, if it's a thought at all. The children who live on the compound have an incredibly strong moral compass. The girls who are married and have children are responsible for those children - they have life skills, cooking, cleaning, sewing, that most of the outside world teens are lacking.

Really, who are we to go in there and tell them that their way of life is wrong and that they must change? Now, I'm not saying for a moment that we should ignore abuse that's going on or that CPS and the police shouldn't have stepped in. I want to know who is the judge that decides that neglected and abused children next door are ignored and the children on the compound must be taken away because those of us on the outside don't get it. Are we really that right with our material neediness, our lack of family dependency, our children with loose morals, little discipline and no sense or purpose? Are they really that wrong?

The children who live at YFZ (Yearning for Zion) ranch live their lives afraid of the outside world, constantly afraid of the outside world walking into their town and taking them away from their families, their fathers, their town, and that's exactly what's happened - right or wrong.

It all started (according to the news reports) with a phone call from a 16 year old to Child Protective Services.  The girl (who is yet to be identified, and it is currently being questioned across the internet whether or not she really exists and whether this phone call actually took place) reportedly was forced to marry Dale Barlow and has had his child - although the legal age of marital consent in Texas is 17.

The Texas authorities have since removed a reported 401 children, and approximately 150 mothers (the mothers have left of their own volition and are welcome to come and go as they wish) off of the premises and are keeping the men on the compound pending further investigation.

I have to wonder how much CPS really knows about the situation, and how prepared they are to deal with it - these kids (some of which, at 15 or 16 years old and are mothers to the smaller children themselves) have rarely been off of FLDS property and are ill-equipped to deal with what they're bound to find - how overwhelming they must feel, not the mention how threatened they have to feel.  Their religion, their very lives are being threatened by the people that they've always been told their parents are "protecting" them against.

Hopefully these children (and everyone involved) will be addresed with the respect and dignity that they deserve.  Their way of life isn't for everyone, it isn't for me, and I'm not saying it's right, but it's all they know.

Within every religion there are zelots and extremists, FLDS is no exception, just as Catholicism, Baptists and every other religion have their extremists - however most Catholics and Baptists have knowledge of the world around them.  The people of YFZ don't have that knowledge (perhaps the wrong word?) to use when trying to deal with a situation like this.  To them, the evil sinner has taken them away from their fathers, husbands and priesthoods.   Not a good situation for them to be in.  Honestly, I don't know what the "right" answer is here.

My first impulse is to joke about it. When I recall my days as a bartender, I remember the sheet-metal workers and the plumbers talking about the wife and kids. Part of the routine was that they got to kvetch to one another about how their wives' over-spending and their kids' over-screaming drove them crazy. It was clear that they wouldn't have it any other way; these were family men in every sense of the word. But it was also clear that one wife and maybe two or three kids was more than enough to prevent them from escaping to Wisconsin for a little bass fishing and maybe a clandestine trip to a Northwoods strip club.

When I imagine a man with more than one wife, I can't help but imagine him hen-pecked to the nth degree. That's because I'm used to the contemporary Midwestern concept of marriage: one or both spouses work; one or both spouses wrangle the kids; one or both spouses bitch about money, sex and free time. I'm used to women being in a position of equal social standing.

I don't think that's how it goes in polygamous marriages. Let's start from a position of total ignorance. When I consider the possibility of one man working to support his family and a group of women working cooperatively at home (on the compound), I can imagine an idyllic scene almost reminiscent of some kind of hippie commune in Vermont. Cherubic children; home-made fruit preserves and a life-giving heap of compost to spread over the family's vegetable garden. There's no jealousy! It's a big old love fest, and there is one happy guy in the midst of all that.

Nowhere in that imagining is the vision of Warren Jeffs conducting a pageant of fourteen year old girls to parade before middle-aged men hoping to pick their latest wife.

While, in theory, I'm tempted to say live and let live! Let the polygamists do what they want! I've come to understand that, especially from the perspective of the Fundamentalist Church of Latter Day Saints heavy-hitters, polygamy means money.

Polygamy is illegal in all fifty states, but it's usually tolerated by the state because the man is typically legally married to only one woman. The other marriages are of a "spiritual" nature, therefore do not impinge on any laws. In my research, I've come to understand exactly why much of mainstream society feels such anger and intolerance towards these plural families, and it's not simply because many of the marriages are arranged with minor females, because women are treated as chattel or because women and children are often subjected to mental and physical abuse.

The reason is because, according to the Apologetics Index, polygamists often use the abundant production of children to "obtain social security benefits." This is a practice Carolyn Jessop, a polygamy escapee, calls "bleeding the beast." Apparently, it's good fun for the powerful men in the upper echelons of the FLDS to laugh at the rest of us poor schmucks laying out tax dollars to line their church coffers. All they need to do is keep the machine moving. That is to say, all they need to do is continue to keep women powerless and pregnant. One almost has to respect the subversion and decidedly un-Christly finagling of the system. Somehow I don't think spirituality is priority number one in the highest levels of the FLDS.

Carolyn Jessop has been working hard to expose the frightening underbelly of the FLDS. I saw her today on another morning show, but I don't feel like plugging this particular hostess. Instead, I shall refer to the Time magazine interview where she reveals that at age eighteen she was told she was going to marry a middle aged leader of the church. She wasn't happy, but she was young and powerless. To refuse would be excommunication at best, physical and emotional torture at worst. She declined to describe in detail what happened to her sister when she tried to escape, but she did say that it successfully discouraged her from the idea of running away for many years.

"Your salvation, basically, depends on whether your husband wants you in his life or not." She goes on to explain how the wife that the husband favors most sexually is the dominant wife, which should surprise no one. Also unsurprising is how that dynamic creates often untenable jealousy amongst the wives. How does that kind of tension translate into child-rearing? The favored wife's children have better shoes and clothes? The ill-favored wife's children look on in envy and bitterness as the head of the house gives and takes as he sees fit?

Dominance and control. Money. Sex. Power. Violence. These are the recurring themes in all of the literature I've read on the subject. While I have seen and read polygamous or plural families extol the virtues and claim that their family works for them, I don't buy it. Not for a second. This is a construct that seems born to breed dissent and unhappiness.

I don't claim to know much about anything, but I know I don't want to share my husband with another woman. Sometimes the men even choose to marry sisters, you know, keep it in the family. I think if my sister and I were married to and breeding children with the same man, there might be some psychological shrapnel, even if he weren't abusive or domineering.

Please read Carolyn Jessop's interview in Time:

http://www.time.com/time/arts/article/0,8599,1675126,00.html

I respect and admire her for succeeding in escaping such a powerful and frightening world. She's lucky. As I sit here typing, not afraid that my husband will bitch-slap me for my lackadaisical housekeeping, there are twelve, thirteen and fourteen year old girls being groomed to breed for men old enough to be their grandfathers. There are young women being forced to marry their own family members. There are women in our own country who are enslaved and see no way out. Women like Carolyn Jessop deserve to be heard. Maybe then we can help those who can't raise their voice.

John Safran - utklädd till mormon - köper underkläder...

Att mormonerna bär särskilda underkläder är inte så många som känner till.

Det som utomstående brukar nämna är att det är tillåtet med månggifte.

Mormonkyrkan tillåter inte officiellt månggifte längre - men det finns subkulturer som tillåter det - tex FLDS - Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. Nyligen dömdes sektledaren Warren Jeffs för att ha tvingat en 14-årig flicka att gifta sig med en äldre kusin.

Den före detta medlemmen av FLDS - Carolyn Jessop - har skrivit en bok om sekten och sin flykt från den - Escape. Boken har blivit en försäljningssuccé i USA. Mormonerna är mycket hemlighetesfulla - men här finns en möjlighet att få inblick i verksamheten.

Intervju med Carolyn Jessop i tidningen TIME om sekten, äktenskapet och den nye ledaren Warren Jeffs.

Carolyn Jessop berättar om flykten från sekten.

Carolyn went on to have 8 children while in an abusive marriage. Not only was she abused by her husband Merrill, but she was constantly abused by the other wives and often by the children of Merrill.

Her will to survive served her well over the years, allowing her to do desperate things like use her body to make her husband happy so that she could offer safety to her children. Often times there wasn't nearly enough food in the house to feed the family, medical care was well below sub-par, and she and her children often did without. Despite her hardships, and there were many, Carolyn was able to obtain her degree in Education and became a teacher.

Escape tells Carolyn's story of doing what no one else had done before her, escape from one of the most powerful men in the Fundamental Latter Day Saints, with all of her children, including one who has physical and mental problems, out of Colorado City, Arizona to safety.

This book is at times heart breaking but it is often heart warming. It shows that when there is a will there is a way.

Klancy de Nevers, speaking on the Japanese internment camps of World War II, not only offered insights into the plight of the Japanese Americans imprisoned there, but also drew our attention to the military mindset behind the creation of the camps. The rhetoric used (and later classified and denied) is frighteningly similar to rhetoric used in the War on Terror, making The Colonel and the Pacifist not only a good historical study but a timely reminder of the mistakes made on behalf of national security. Those readers who enjoyed Snow Falling on Cedars will appreciate this one as well.

This Is What I Did is Ann Dee Ellis's first novel, addressing issues of abuse, identity, and friendship for young adults. Ann Dee has nailed the teenage voice; her reading provoked laughter, nods of recognition, and appreciation from all of us. And, while the teen genre often seems split into the just-plain-fluffy or the just-plain-angsty, Ann Dee has found a balance that tempers the serious with the light-hearted. A great book for teachers and parents as well as young adults!

Escape needs little introduction -- Carolyn has been on quite the media tour, from Larry King to the O'Reilly Factor to Oprah and who knows what else. The book is, last I checked, #11 on the New York Times Bestseller List and has been flying off our shelves at an astonishing rate. For someone so recently come to fame, Carolyn was down-to-earth and quietly endearing. The story of her escape from Colorado City and the FLDS is astonishing, and hearing her talk and read about it was a wonderful experience. This is a great holiday gift, and we have a stock of Signed First Editions for you to give (or to keep!).