How a Cult Programs You to Stay in the Trap: Escape Chapter 1 (Part Two)

In our last installment of Escape by Carolyn Jessop, we got a taste of the depression, despair, and abuse Carolyn lived with in her FLDS community. Today, we’ll see how her childhood conditioned her to fear the outside world, and accept her lot as an abused wife pumping out endless babies in a loveless plural marriage.

Colorado City, AZ and Hildale, UT are communities where children literally run screaming away from strangers. It isn’t because of stranger-danger or regular, if exaggerated, fears. Carolyn tells us she and the other kids

were taught that outsiders were “agents of the devil” who wanted to kidnap us and take us away. They were seen as evil people who wanted to destroy the work of God. If they could get access to the children of God’s chosen, then they would try to hurt or destroy us.

And the kids believed it because they were kept so isolated from the world around them.

Carolyn explains that FLDS members believe polygamy is the most important doctrine of all, and if a person proves themselves worthy through their polygamous marriages, they will become gods and goddesses in the afterlife. They’re taught to see plural marriage as a “special blessing,” and that they are “better than everyone else in the entire world” on account of their faith. All the suffering their lifestyle causes is a sacrifice “to preserve the work of God and prove worthy of the celestial kingdom of God.” And women are taught that their “sole purpose on earth [is] to have as many children as possible.” It’s a doctrine designed to prevent people from rebelling, from exploring, from living their authentic lives.

Polygamy is illegal, of course, but it wouldn’t be cause for concern if it wasn’t for the forced marriages, rampant domestic violence, and other forms of spousal abuse so common in these communities. Child abuse is endemic – Carolyn states that “Violence toward children was incorporated into our belief system.” But when the authorities try to act, they feed into a persecution complex. People are so lost down the rabbit hole that rescue looks like an attack, and they’ll fight to stay with their abusers. The story of their brave resistance to the enemy is passed down the generations, reinforcing the feeling of specialness and destiny that keeps them chained.

Carolyn’s grandmother loved to tell her grandchildren about the raid on Short Creek* that happened in July of 1953. That raid was a PR disaster for Arizona authorities, who were photographed prying howling children out of their distraught mothers’ arms. People are able to overlook all sorts of abuse and danger to kids if the families seem sympathetic – even today, we get sucked in by a good sob story. And our legal and social systems aren’t prepared to deal with hundreds of indoctrinated children and fanatical adults. The Arizona authorities hadn’t prepared, didn’t gather the evidence they needed to convict, and Carolyn says they lost on an arcane point of law that was trumpeted as a victory from God among the FLDS folks.

Image shows Johnson, a thin and balding old man in a suit, talking to many male reporters in ten gallon hats and other caps, scribbling in notebooks.
FLDS Prophet Leroy Johnson used the Short Creek raid to seize greater power over his flock. Here he’s spinning the raid to the press. Public domain photo courtesy L. MacKay Phelps.

The raid caused the sect to retreat further into secrecy and fundamentalism. Women, who before may have tried to break away to the outside if the leadership went too far, now didn’t trust outsiders to help them escape. So the male leaders gradually took away their freedom to marry whom they wished. The cult leaders forbade them from wearing pants, and micromanaged their appearance right down to their hair styles. They had to obey completely to be saved.

What can we learn from this? We need to be much more prepared to successfully prosecute the leaders and fully support the followers. We can’t let child abuse, domestic violence, and other serious crimes pass. But we do have to be far more careful about how we act, lest we make all the problems worse, and cause a backlash against the people who are trying to rescue the abused.

And we need to remember that we, too, have “swapped [freedom] for security.” It’s something humans do. We need to be more wary of that tendency, and compensate for it.

Our own experiences with that tradeoff should make it easier for us to empathize with Carolyn and her FLDS friends and family. We’re not quite as different as we might wish to believe.

That concludes the first chapter. Next, we’ll get to see the kinds of games FLDS kids play. Adjust your reading space to accommodate outrage in safety, my darlings, because you’re about to be utterly horrified.

Image is the cover of Escape, which is photo of Carolyn Jessop on a black background. She cradles a framed picture of herself as an FLDS teenager in her hands. She is a woman in her thirties with chestnut hair and blue eyes.

I’m reviewing Escape chapter-by-chapter. Pick yourself up a copy if you’d like to follow along.

*The FLDS name for Colorado City and Hildale.

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How a Cult Programs You to Stay in the Trap: Escape Chapter 1 (Part Two)
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6 thoughts on “How a Cult Programs You to Stay in the Trap: Escape Chapter 1 (Part Two)

  1. rq
    1

    Got my book. I’ll probably read ahead even further, but I had to take a break after the next chapter. She writes an excellent book, but the material is just. so. EVERYTHING BAD.
    It’s so difficult to believe that it really is as bad as she writes – and I think that’s part of what leaves even authorities unprepared to deal with these people on a legal footing. Plus they’ve all done their research (the prophets, etc.), so it’s no surprise that it’s the obscure bits of law that get pulled out into the light,
    Just like it’s all kinds of obscure bits of scripture that keep their minions enthralled and unable to realize their own abuse.

  2. 2

    “About to be utterly horrified”? It gets WORSE? Oh my.

    I think I’m going to have to order the book, assuming its available on Kindle, and take a break from my Pratchett Project.

  3. 3

    Another must-read on this same subject: Sam Brower’s Prophet’s Prey. The author is a private investigator who became one of the leading outside experts in FLDS culture in the process. As far as what you know of the FLDS, it gets worse. Much, much worse.

  4. 4

    I know a guy who’s an LDS, whose relatives were involved in the Short Creek incident. He’s completely drunk the Kool-Ade* and — while otherwise a fairly rational-seeming sort, believes the whole thing about how he and his wife are someday going to have their own planets to manage, and whatnot. It’s batshit.

    (* I use that expression fully cognizant of the reference)

  5. 5

    Hi Dana,
    I read Escape. I couldn’t put it down. It was horrible, but I was drawn to it as some people are to the gore of train wrecks and accidents and war. I then read her follow-up, “Triumph,” and then Jon Krakauer’s “Under the Banner of Heaven.” That one is also a heart stopper.

    There is a small mansion across the street from my humble house on a rural road. It is occupied by a local Mormon poo-bah. They had seven children, most of whom are married and gone. He is a strange obsessive sort, and whenever I speak with him he always dismisses my verbiage and asks “What does your husband think?” It pisses me off. There are a lot of Mormons up here and I am now more afraid of them than I was. I was contemplating starting some sort of freethinker’s group, but now I am hesitant. Would it be dangerous? This more intimate knowledge I’ve gained about Mormons and taken a sizable bite out of my enjoyment of living on a mountain in a forest.

    I read Lynna’s posts in the Lounge but they haven’t impacted me emotionally as much as these books have.
    Fucking cults.

  6. 6

    The regular Mormons we were surrounded by in Page were sweet ol’ things who would give you the shirt off their backs, let you drink all the beer you wanted in front of ’em, and were all about the neighborhood get-togethers, even with the dirty heathens. I had Mormon best friends, even, and never felt judged or unsafe. They mostly left any soul-saving up to their missionaries, which meant we could relax and have fun! Good thing, too, because considering their religion was started by a con artist and went downhill from there… DO NOT WANT.

    FLDS and the more extreme sects are terrifying, but mostly harmful to the people within them, from what I’ve seen. The scary ones mostly kept themselves to themselves and were content to abuse their own.

    Your neighbor sounds like a patriarchal, misogynist asswipe. I think there are Mormon Quiverfull families, and I’m sure the men in those are every bit as awful as the Christian Patriarchy fuckwads. Sounds like he might be one of those. Or, y’know, just an abusive jerk. I wonder if his head would explode if you brought your husband out to talk to him, and your hubby answered everything this jackass said by turning to you and asking you to answer for him.

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