Review: Escape

Escape by Carolyn Jessop
My rating: 4 of 5 stars


This is the triumphant story of one woman's success and extracting herself and her children from institutionalized sexual slavery, servitude, and abuse and succeeding outside on her own. That itself would be enough of a story to hold my attention for a book. The backdrop is the story of the FLDS Church, one of the largest Mormon fundamentalist denominations and one of the largest organizations in the United States whose members practice polygamy. This history looks back to the government crackdown on polygamy known as the Short Creek raid, in 1953, in which all the FLDS Church members of Short Creek were arrested, including 236 children. This stopped nothing and only server to support a persecution complex and further insulate the community. This story tracks with rise and fall of Warren Jeffs and exposes him as more of a criminal than I knew: embezzlement, Hitler-worship, pandering/child prostitution masking as "assigned" marriage, persecution resulting in "lost" boys and other expelled community members, and more.

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