Escape

the gripping first-person narrative of a woman's valiant escape to freedom with her eight children, and life inside a very conservative American religious group.

Carolyn Jessop was forced into an arranged marriage at the age of eighteen, with a man who was thirty-two years older than her. By now Merril Jessop had three wives. However, Carolyn's upbringing in the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (FLDS), an extreme branch of the Mormon Church that had established itself in tiny towns along the Arizona–Utah border, meant that planned multiple marriages were an essential part of her background. In the fifteen years that followed, Carolyn gave birth to eight children while enduring psychological torture at the hands of her husband and the wary gaze of his other wives, who were engaged in a never-ending struggle for dominance.

Carolyn's husband's whims controlled every decision she made. He chose her residence and the upbringing of her children. He had financial control over her teaching salary. He decided when they had sex, and Carolyn could only—and risked—refuse. For in the FLDS, a wife's standing in the household was based on how well she and her kids obeyed their husband. Carolyn had been unhappy for years and longed to escape, but she was aware that her children would be taken away from her if she attempted to do so and was discovered. There has never been a lady in the nation who managed to leave the FLDS and also free her children. But in 2003, Carolyn and her eight kids left their house because they preferred freedom over terror. She just had $20 on her.

Escape reveals a society that is akin to a prison camp, established by religious extremists who, in the name of God, brainwash youngsters in schools operated by churches, deny their followers the freedom to make their own decisions, and require women to submit to males in every way. In light of this, Carolyn Jessop's flight acquires an amazing, motivating force. Not only did she successfully flee a violent setting, but in a contentious lawsuit involving the FLDS, she was given complete custody of her children for the first time ever. Additionally, in 2006, her complaints on church abuses to the Utah attorney general played a significant role in the case that resulted in the arrest of their infamous leader, Warren Jeffs.