“I was beyond caring about Merrill Jessop,” recalls his former wife Carolyn as she watched her husband walk out of the delivery room with another wife. “I knew my marriage to him was completely over.”
Carolyn had just given birth to her seventh child — her husband’s 53rd. Merrill Jessop would go on to father more than 100.
Contemporary polygamy is something of a joke, the subject of a television drama. Outsiders wonder why, if the women are unhappy, they just don’t leave. The answer is in “Escape,” a riveting account of Carolyn’s life as a plural wife in the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (FLDS), presided over by the infamous Warren Jeffs, recently convicted of rape for ordering a 14-year-old girl to marry an older cousin. Polygamous marriage is a “live-animal trap,” Carolyn claims.
(The FLDS church is not connected with the larger LDS church, and any Mormon who practices polygamy is excommunicated.)
FLDS conditioning begins at a young age, when children are taught the outside world is evil, says the author. Instead of hide- and-seek, children play apocalypse. Girls learn they’re worthless and must blindly obey their husbands, most of whom are chosen for them. Women are admonished to “keep sweet,” to stay in harmony with their husbands, who are their priesthood heads and whose will they must not only obey but also anticipate.
Their salvation is at stake. A woman gains eternal life only through her husband, and at his whim, she lives in paradise as a goddess or spends eternity as a servant to his other wives. Little wonder more antidepressants are sold in southern Utah and northern Arizona, where the FLDS is based, than almost anywhere else in the country.
Still in her teens, Carolyn was ordered to marry her classmates’ father, Merrill. He asked for her in hopes the marriage would keep Carolyn’s father from suing him over a business deal. Later, Carolyn learned that Merrill wanted to wed her prettier younger sister, but he got the names mixed up.
The marriage was a nightmare for Carolyn. Merrill loved only one wife, Barbara, who dominated her three sister-wives as well as a dozen others who later married Merrill. Barbara handled finances, and while she and Merrill ate in steakhouses, the rest of the family came close to starvation. She disciplined the other wives’ children, beating Carolyn’s 4-year-old son until he was unconscious. The boy was so afraid of Barbara that he waited nine years to tell his mother about the attack.
Theoretically, the wives are sisters, caring for one another’s children, sharing household work, stepping in when others were sick. But in reality, the women are vicious competitors, Carolyn claims, ready to rat each other out to their husband.
Sex is their only commodity. “A woman who possesses high sexual status with her husband has more power over his other wives,” she writes. Conversely, a woman who loses her physical attractiveness ends up a virtual slave to the dominant wife. Outsiders know who’s in favor by who gets pregnant. When one of Merrill’s wives disobeyed him, he refused to sleep with her, and the woman, who had only one child, was forever disgraced. A woman without children has no status in a polygamous society.
The early years of Carolyn’s 17-year marriage were filled with hardship and abuse, but life for her and other FLDS women became drastically worse when Jeffs took over the church. A brutal man, he encouraged other men to follow his example, Carolyn claims. She relates that Jeffs once grabbed one of his wives’ long braids and twisted it, forcing the woman to her knees and ripping out her hair. He told an audience of gaping boys that this was how obedient their wives should be to them.
Jeffs excommunicated faithful male church members, some 300 of them, without giving reasons, assigned their wives to new husbands; one woman who was forced from marriage to marriage referred to herself as a “priesthood prostitute.”
Jeffs excommunicated young men, too. Poorly educated and with few survival skills to cope in the outside world, they are known as the “lost boys.”
It was even worse for women. Any abused wife who complained to Jeffs was ordered to obey her husband. When Jeffs dismissed her accusations against Merrill, Carolyn plotted her escape. Her only ally was her sister, who presided over an underground coffee klatch for rebellious women.
Escaping was dangerous, especially since Merrill was a church leader. A sister-wife exposed Carolyn’s plan, and a caravan of FLDS men chased Carolyn and her eight children to Salt Lake City. Years of child-custody battles followed, with Merrill alternately ordering and pleading with Carolyn to return. She was the highest-ranking wife to leave the church, and at times, Carolyn feared for her life.
“Escape” is a mesmerizing, if sometimes repetitious, story, filled with dozens of examples of the cultlike behavior of the FLDS members. (One story, unfortunately, is a recycled Reader’s Digest anecdote; you hope the rest are legitimate.)
It’s hard to believe such a culture exists in the United States, and harder yet to believe that so many Americans think polygamy is harmless. That could change, thanks to Carolyn Jessop, who puts the lie to the idea that polygamy is a victimless crime.
Sandra Dallas is a Denver novelist.
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NONFICTION
Escape, by Carolyn Jessop, with Laura Palmer, $24.95
