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This morning I finished reading Carolyn Jessop’s Escape. I had encountered a few excerpts before but wanted to read in its entirety the book that so many people see as a credible account of FLDS culture. I have been a member of the FLDS Church for 60 years and a resident of Colorado City, Arizona, for 45 years. I have taught eighth-grade and high-school classes in public and private schools in the community for 40 years. Carolyn Jessop, Flora Jessop, Elissa Wall, and most of Merril Jessop’s older children are all former students of mine as are a good share of the parents, grandparents, and young adults living in Colorado City and at the YFZ Ranch in Texas.

 

Most of my teaching career was at the public high school in Colorado City, although when the FLDS people withdrew from the public school, I began teaching in one of the private schools in town. Carolyn Jessop claims in her book that “Warren didn’t want credentialed teachers teaching. He believed we had been contaminated by worldly knowledge. Anyone with an education was seen as a threat because we were too involved with the ways of the world.” 

 

After I read this statement, I asked my family to think of all the credentialed teachers they could who, as I did, became teachers in the various private schools that were formed in the community. We counted at least forty; in fact, there were very few of the certified FLDS teachers who did not move over into the private schools. Many of us even hold post-graduate degrees.

 

If the misinformation regarding education was the worst of Carolyn’s distortions, I doubt that I would even bother writing an article on the subject. But as I read her book I filled twenty-one pages of my notebook with one statement after another that I knew from personal experience did not give an accurate picture of FLDS culture. 

 

Probably the most serious misconception readers unfamiliar with FLDS people take away from this book is the idea that we are abusive toward women and children. There have been isolated instances of abuse, but they represented departures from our belief system and were the exception and not the rule. The following are a few of the outrageous allegations on this subject that pervade Carolyn’s book:

 

Women in the community wore dark glasses in public to hide the black eyes and mottled bruises.

 

Violence toward children was a part of the FLDS belief system. It was common to see a mother slap one of her children, sometimes very hard.

 

Beatings for children were an accepted part of the culture and were considered “good discipline.”

 

“Brutality toward children was the norm within the community, but there were different levels of tolerance among families about the level of violence that was acceptable.”

 

There were stories of physical and sexual abuse in other families, but no one ever tried to stop it. Anyone who reported to the outside would be considered a traitor.

 

Law enforcement under FLDS police consistently looked the other way when there was abuse.

 

In regard to some of these issues, I will mention a personal experience that illustrates the FLDS attitude toward abuse. A little over two years ago, an FLDS woman whose family was at the time living in a neighboring town came to me for help after learning that her husband had been molesting one of her young daughters. I was shocked by her story and told her that there was no way that this sort of thing could be swept under the rug but that however painful the process might be it must be reported and dealt with. I offered to accompany her to the local police station, where the officer who spoke to us was very supportive of the mother and referred her to the proper authorities in the neighboring town. I drove her and her daughter to the appointment and helped them file the complaint. The husband was arrested and prosecuted. The FLDS people have a zero tolerance level for such offenses.

 

During all the years I have been a member of the FLDS Church, husbands have been counseled to teach their wives through love and kindness. Parents have been taught to raise their children in the same way. When the job of raising children is done right, physical force is seldom, if ever, needed and is never administered in a fit of anger. 

 

Over thirty years ago the Prophet Leroy S. Johnson taught us the way to govern a family through love. The following quotations are from the published volumes of his sermons:

 

“One of the great stumbling blocks of the Celestial Law is when a man is not able to gather around him those that the Lord has placed by his side through the New and Everlasting Covenant, and teach and train them how to love him as he learns to love the Lord his God and keep His commandments. When we feel like we are going to bypass this high and holy principle by forcing our wives to love and respect us, I am afraid we are going to find hard sledding.” (LSJ 4: p. 1376)

 

“Men should love their wives whether they are obedient or whether they are not. They should be patient and learn to teach them to love the principles of salvation….” (LSJ 3: p. 807)

 

The teachings of Warren Jeffs both before and after he became the Prophet brought the gospel down to the level of our day-to-day living. He showed us the areas where we had fallen short and gave us both the understanding of how to do better and the faith that we could live on a higher level. The following quotations are from his sermon of November 17, 2002:

 

“As I witness some mothers in different families, they are the ‘get after mom.’ Their dealings with the children are to name the wrongs of the children, threatening them with punishment if they don’t do better. That is not how you traditionate children in the Celestial Law. Be inviting through gentleness. Instead of dwelling on their weaknesses and wrongs, be ahead of the children in thinking good….

 

“Teach them to serve one another. Instead of thumping the one who hit the other child, show them how to shake hands or give a hug, how to say kind words; and you love all the children.

 

“You overcome evil with good. When children are unruly and have struggles, it is so easy to voice the good they should do and help them do that good, rather than being harsh and naming their wrongs continually….

 

“When a mother raises her children with continual smiles, always inviting them through sweetness, then when a child won’t respond, so often that sharp reproof is a frown, just a look at the child that they don’t please you in that thing.

 

“You don’t have to strike the children all the time. Brigham Young says physical punishment should be used where it is needed, but it should be so rare, so long and far between, and not a constant discipline. A physical punishment will only take effect if a parent has developed the bond of love with the child….

 

“You love God, and you exercise His power, His love, toward all. He gives the increase. His love touches their hearts. Your commanding ability, your almighty rule in your home does not establish Zion. It is the sweet invitation of love. Priesthood power is the love of God exercised.

 

 

This is the man that Carolyn Jessop said thrived on brutality and as principal of Alta Academy pulled children out of their classrooms and beat them on an almost daily basis. In all of my observations, Warren Jeffs lives the principles he teaches.

 

The mothers and children taken from the YFZ community in April showed in action the teachings of Warren Jeffs and his predecessors. In her Day by Day Events of the YFZ Ranch Raid, Marie Musser tells her shocked reaction when she first learned of the account of the supposed “Sarah,” whose phone calls alleging abuse from her middle-aged husband provided the pretext for the raid:

 

“It made me sick to read that account. I want the world to know that that kind of grossness has no place in our religion. These kinds of things do not exist in our religion; and if anyone treated another person like that in our religion, we would not put up with it and would turn the offender in. Our relations are through charity and purity.”

 

At another point in her narrative, Marie recounts how she and several of the other mothers talked to CPS investigators about the type of women they are. This is one of the rare occasions where CPS workers seemed to realize, at least briefly, the high level of parenting skills these mothers exhibited even under almost unbearable pressure:

 

“We began telling them that it was against our religion to raise our voices at our children, and that we invite them to good works through love. I explained to them this example: ‘You know how you feel when your child does something right or makes an accomplishment—that sweet joyful feeling you have inside your heart?’ They smiled and said, ‘Yes.’ ‘Well, we are taught that when our children do a wrong thing, even something terrible, we must make sure we can still feel that same sweet joy and love that we do when they do right. That takes an effort of self control and a reaching for Heavenly Father’s love to flow through us to that child.’ One CPS lady’s face lit up, and she said, ‘I wish I could take this seed and go out from here and spread it everywhere.’ She said with tears in her eyes, ‘My mother was a druggy.’”

 

Carolyn’s book sounds believable because she weaves her narrative around a framework of real people and events. But through her exaggerations and often complete fabrications, she has unfairly stereotyped a whole culture and is hurting thousands of innocent people who become victims of her own bitterness.