Juli Bongiorno | Executive Editor

She fled in the middle of the night with her eight children. Fearing for her life if anyone caught her, she only told her sister about her escape plan. “We belong to father, you have no right to do this,” her kids screamed. She had less than $30 to her name because she was forced to turn over her weekly paychecks to her husband. She was fleeing abuse, religious fundamentalism, marital rape, and years of pain.

Carolyn Jessop did not wear a burka nor did she live in a Third World country, she was fleeing Colorado City, Utah. She was simply a member of the Fundamentalist Church of Latter Day Saints, a polygamist Mormon sect.

The April 7 raid of the YFZ or “Yearning for Zion” ranch stirred up controversy and relief for many across the country as the Texas authorities took away nearly 500 women and children. While the women were recently released, the 400 or so children will remain in state custody because of abuse claims. The FLDS argues that this is an assault on their religious freedom, but this fight is far from God’s realm.

Escape, a book written by former FLDS member Carolyn Jessop, outlines the abuses which women and children face within this community. Children are used as pawns between “sister-wives” to get in favor with their common husband. The children are manipulated, beaten, and sometimes starved depending on the favorability of their mother. She describes an incident where her son was beaten because Jessop was too sick to attend prayer:

“I knew I would be disciplined. But I didn’t care. I didn’t know she would target [my son] Patrick…He was shaking visibly when Barbara came and grabbed him and threw him into the metal bars at the foot of the bed…She slammed him into the bed again and again. He was crumpled in a heap. When he made an effort to stand, Barbara, who weighed nearly 200 pounds, kicked him in the stomach.”

In addition to the abuses children face, women have virtually no rights. Their cars have expired license plates or no license plates at all, to prevent the women from escaping. Wives are forced to have sex with their husbands, traded to other men and separated from their children, and beaten frequently. They are told to be completely subservient to their husbands so that they will be rewarded in the afterlife.

Does this behavior echo a few countries with internationally recorded human right’s abuses? Jessop grew up and lived in Colorado City, Utah. Shortly after her escape, the FLDS began transferring families, including her ex-husband's family, to the YFZ ranch in Texas. So why didn’t the authorities go after the sect when it was based in Utah? And why did it take so long in Texas? Jessop explains:

“Mark Shurtleff [Utah Attorney General] is a Mormon but has no ties to fundamentalism. He later told me that for years people had come into his office complaining about polygamy. But state officials had always warned him that if he went after polygamists, it would cost him his career. Even though polygamy is a felony, he would be perceived as persecuting religion.”

Not only did the government know about the abuses occurring within this sect, but it was complicit. Since when has this country been afraid to push boundaries and test the ends of our constitution?

Our country is currently fighting wars in the Middle East against fundamentalism, and it's not because those countries practice Islam. We fight because there is a danger to fundamentalism, no matter what religion it belongs to. We believe in the principle of liberty, which is free from abuse and neglect. It is high time that we address this very same issue within our own borders.

The Fundamentalist Church of Latter Day Saints entitles these rights solely to men. This raid was an opportunity to restore freedom to the women and to prevent it from ever being taken away from their children. Religious tolerance does not grant sects like the FLDS to take the law and reshape or obliterate it. The First Amendment protects people in two different ways: it protects their right to choose a religion, but it also protects the people from religion. Texas authorities are not violating anyone’s rights; they are in fact delivering these women and children their First Amendment right: they are liberating them from their abusive religion.

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