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We tend to think of polygamy as an uncomfortable relic of our past, but for far too many people, it is still a tragic system of painful oppression. Flora Jessop helps us go from understanding polygamy as simply a theoretical hardship, to feeling the actual suffering continuing for hundreds of our fellow brothers and sisters today.
This one is worth listening to.
Links
Flora’s Book (I HIGHLY recommend, plus its FREE on audible!)
Amazon Link
Transcript
[00:00] Michelle: Welcome to 132 Problems revisiting Mormon polygamy, where we explore the scriptural and theological case for plural marriage. As always, I recommend listening to the episodes in order, at least getting a foundation for the scriptural scriptures that we have already gone over. The next two episodes are going to be a series of helping us understand the ongoing problems of polygamy today, really getting in and understanding life on the ground, what polygamy is like for people in the world today. I think most of us have a very theoretical understanding of polygamy or we think about it and imagine it. So we are going to talk to people, um, who actually deal with it on a day to. basis. This episode is with Flora Jessup, and her story is powerful and profound. I hope that you will all strongly consider buying, listening to, or reading her book. It is so worthwhile, and I think that the things that she has to share are things that we really, really need to consider. So thank you so much for joining us as we take this deep dive into the experience of plural marriage. Welcome to this episode of 132 Problems. I am so excited for this episode today to introduce you to truly a legend in the fight for human rights in our generation. This is Flora Jessup, and if anyone who has been following polygamy for the last several decades, as long as you’ve been following it, you will have seen Flora. She is one of the OG battlers of polygamy, right? And so Flora, I just, I want to give a really quick um introduction for you and then have you help me out cause I only know what I know from reading your book. Flora was born and raised in the FLDS, made a very, um, the, the horrors that she experienced there, she outlines in her book, and I’m sure we’ll go into a little bit. She made a daring escape and lived a rough life as so many people who are broken to that extent in their youth do, and then grew up to become someone who has given her life to saving other people is how it looks to me, to fighting what you see as such an awful situation that so many people are born born into and raised in and And anyway, I, Flora wrote a book, I think it’s called Church of Lies. I’ll put a picture of it. And I have to say that is a tough read but so valuable. It really goes into detail. I guess we should give a trigger warning for anyone who’s triggered by things like sexual abuse and And other kinds of abuse cause it’s really real and raw, but man, I found the value in that to be profound. It was so good. It was such a good read to understand what happens to so many people. So I highly recommend that book. I’ll have a link to it. And then we’ll talk as we go on about some of the other things that Flora has done. But really Flora, how long, how many decades have you been doing this work?
[03:17] Flora Jessop: Well, I got into seriously fighting for the women and children about. In the late 90s, early 2000s. Um, but honestly, I fought against this my whole life.
[03:33] Michelle: Your whole life,
[03:34] Flora Jessop: OK. You know, it’s polygamy is not. It’s not fun. It is, it is. There’s nothing good about it. There’s nothing good comes out of it. Um, as female and even as male, you have to lose your identity. You have no self if to live this lifestyle.
[04:02] Michelle: OK. So let’s, let’s go into this cause the the original reason I had reached out to Flora that I that I wanted to talk to you was. I, one of the main defenses of polygamy in the LDS culture or main defenses of that we have to believe in polygamy is the testimonies of women. They say you have to believe the women and so both and and Flora and I had a brief conversation before where I told her my changing altered perspective on Joseph Smith and I and I know that’s brand new to her and I, it’s you do not have to agree with me on that. We don’t have to go there. That’s OK. But, but even just to believe in polygamy that it’s of God, we have to believe that all of the women that testified of the truthfulness of it that was made known to them, and then also their testimonies of Joseph Smith is something else I’m looking into. So I’d wanted to talk to Flora about like, tell me what polygamy does to women, and if it’s true that polygamous women always tell the factual truth that we should believe them, you know, factually. And then as we got talking, I realized this conversation’s gonna go so many more places. So, um, to start out, can you kind of tell me some of your experiences growing up? And, and I will specify, we are talking about FLDS, and it’s easy in this day and age because we know about Warren Jeffs to say, well, the FLDS are the bad ones. There are so many better polygamist groups and Mormon polygamy wouldn’t have been like that. They’re just bad because they’re doing it when God doesn’t want them to. So as we talk about it. I want to really address some of the address some of these, I would say fallacies and errors of thinking. So can you tell us a little bit of your experiences?
[05:40] Flora Jessop: Well, the first thing I will say is coming out of the plural lifestyle as a child born into it. Um, I didn’t come out of it hating men. I came out of it hating women. Because, because women are the enforcers. And women are the brutalizer. The domestic violence in these homes is not from the men to the women. 99% of the domestic violence is from woman to woman, because of the jealousies that they are not allowed to address. Feel, um, you are not allowed to have emotion, you’re not allowed to have your own feelings. Those jealousies come out as violence against the other wives and against the other women’s children. It is not unheard of for. Me to take. Say it’s my mother’s birthday. He’ll take his other wife out and celebrate with her rather than my mother because it’s a way it’s a power trip. It’s a way of making sure that your emotions you don’t. It’s supposed to be non-favouritism, but there are so many layers of a hellish environment to this lifestyle that you can’t even fathom unless you’ve actually lived it. But For anybody that’s listening, if you think that this is a good thing. Close your eyes just for a moment and imagine what your life is right now. Imagine going to bed at night and listening to your husband through the wall while you lay in bed alone make love to another woman, your mother, your daughter, your sister, your best friend somebody you don’t know. Get up in the morning and be happy she’s part of your household. Could you do it?
[07:45] Michelle: Wow, yeah, you talk about that in your book in ways that are just incredible.
[07:52] Flora Jessop: It’s not, it’s not fun. It’s not easy, it’s not. There’s nothing about this that If this is eternity. Nobody, I guarantee you no one wants to live it, not the men or the women.
[08:11] Michelle: OK, so I like this that you’re making the point that it’s not that polygamy done well is godly, and it’s only when it’s done badly that it’s hell. Polygamy is hell. Polygamy is hell.
[08:24] Flora Jessop: You, you do not have the right to emotion. If you show emotion, you’re causing chaos in the home. Therefore, you must be punished for causing chaos. Therefore, it is your fault if you are sad or depressed or. Yeah, if anything, you the emotions are not acceptable, even happiness is not acceptable because it’s an emotion that is. A strong emotion. If you have happiness, the other side of happiness is sadness. Therefore, you can’t have happiness because then you have sadness on the other side of that. So no no emotion. You must smile. It’s we call it the keep sweet smile because it’s just a facade. That you have to show to the outside world or you are punished when you get home. You always must keep that smile on your face, so that people, it’s the person. Persona or the mirage that everything is fine in the family.
[09:30] Michelle: And, and people can’t be trained out of being themselves and out of their feelings. So what, what I’m hearing is, it’s not that you are so trained at keeping sweet that you just don’t feel anymore. It gets so buried that it comes out in toxic other directions against one another.
[09:50] Flora Jessop: You have to also realize that In shutting off emotion where your intimate life is. Centered In that direction, you’re also going to be shutting off emotion when it comes to your children. When it comes to anything in life. So it separates mothers and children from bonding. There’s a whole other dynamic that. And I think this is partly why the children and polygamy have such a hard time with with um Connecting with with people and feeling isolated a lot and feeling alone because they There is so much. Um, Isolation, if you will, the, the You’re taught from such an early age, we, we call it we were raised as calves in a stall. And trained to like the abuse. Because it’s the only thing you’re ever taught. Not only that, but I After I left home and I didn’t realize um There was so much about the dynamics of the culture that I learned after I left, like, for instance, when you, when I’d go back to town and I would see the families and you have 20 boys and 20 girls in this family, all the little boys, their hair is uncombed, their clothes are ill fitting, but every single one of those little girls are perfectly groomed with all their pretty little ruffle dresses. And they are paraded out little ducklings following their mommy. Um, down the street and it always hit me, uh. This is what the, the whole aspect of this is. Showing what I have to trade because they trade their daughters for wives. I have girls I can trade for your daughters, so that’s the whole ideology here. The boys mean nothing. The boys are labor force until they start getting interested in girls and then they’re kicked to the curb. Only the most um obedient. Most loyal to the prophet boys are kept within the group. So your children don’t even matter. And it reaches a point where The connection with your children is nonexistent. And you’re, you’re as, as young girls, I You’re in constant competition with every female there, it is a competition. Don’t think it’s not. I’ve seen knock down drag out fights with women over who gets to carry the dinner plate to their husband when he comes in the door.
[12:46] Michelle: Wow, well, that’s one thing I wanted to add about your scenario of listening through the wall to your husband is. Often like a younger or more favored wife, not only is it the listening, it’s the next morning that wife sneering at you sometimes like, ha ha ha, we know who’s the favorite here, and using that power, there is so much power at play. And right? Like, like you’re constantly insecure, unsafe, in battle, filled with shame. It, it’s that hierarchy of where do I stack. If I’m at the top, I’m gonna demean the others and use that to my advantage. And if I’m at the bottom, I’m hopeless.
[13:35] Flora Jessop: Well, and there’s another aspect of that too, and that is always the fear of another new wife coming into the family because I tell, I tell women all the time, when you are the new wife that comes in. You have about Maybe 10 months, if you’re lucky, of favoritism with the husband. Before you get turned over to the other wives. And trust me, everything that you do in that 10 months is gonna come back to haunt you. Because Sickness is considered evil. You, you’ve allowed evil into yourself because that sickness comes from evil.
[14:19] Michelle: So you’re blamed if you get sick.
[14:21] Flora Jessop: Well, not only that, but he doesn’t want to catch whatever you have, so you’re left at the mercy of the other women. OK. So, you know, there’s a, there’s so many aspects of it. Not only that, but You know, They, they typically marry sisters to sisters to to one husband, or they’ll take a daughter who’s married to a guy and something happens to her, her father. So mama all of a sudden it becomes a sister wife. Well, now what’s the dynamic in this family, you know, who’s the boss and, and it just, it, it’s so chaotic. It’s such a nightmare.
[15:04] Michelle: Um, it is, it’s so strange because it grows out of this idea of family is the center, is the is central to God’s plan, and eternal families, and it could, it, it makes a mockery of the idea of marriage and family, cause there is no stability, there is no joy, there is no peace, there is no lasting sense of belonging and development. It, it’s just so evil.
[15:32] Flora Jessop: It, you know, it really is, um. The the the thing that comes out of polygamy, the only thing that’s, I think halfway. Decent that comes out of it is the kids tend to bond together. In a way that, you know, I don’t consider just my mom’s kids, my brothers and sisters. I consider all of my brothers and sisters my brother and sisters, you know, they’re all my family. Um, But at the same time, do I consider their mom, my mom? No. Um, she’s my aunt, you know, her, my mom and my other mom were sisters. But And I I think that it’s that way a lot in the families, that you have such so many generate like you have siblings that are so much older than the younger siblings and you have The older siblings are having babies that are the same age as your brothers and sisters. Well,
[16:38] Michelle: it’s even more extreme like that. There can be 30 and 35, 40 years difference, not even in a normal 20 year gap.
[16:47] Flora Jessop: Absolutely.
[16:49] Michelle: Where they don’t even know each other. Yeah,
[16:52] Flora Jessop: yeah, it’s, it’s crazy and you know, not only that, but it’s There’s so many. People that I’ve talked to inside of polygamist cultures and I know people inside in the Kingston group in the all red group, and all the different groups, you know, I’ve worked with. With families from many, many different groups. There is no difference in them. There is no really.
[17:20] Michelle: OK.
[17:22] Flora Jessop: But part of the dynamic that the women that I’ve worked with, with getting their children and stuff out, um, it’s interesting because I’ve had some of the groups come to me and say, you know, you’re just out to destroy polygamy and you just want to take the women away from me. And I’m like, Do you really think that these women wanted to leave the only lifestyle, the only family, the only community they’ve ever known?
[17:48] Michelle: That is terrifying and so traumatic.
[17:51] Flora Jessop: They’re driven out by you, by the other women, because you’re not supportive of if this woman’s in a domestic violence situation or an abusive situation, you don’t support her in getting out of it. It’s all about keeping the the male hierarchy, the priesthood intact and supporting the priesthood, so You turn on these women. And Enable these guys to take their kids away from them as punishment. They remove their children from their care and give them into these other wives’ care that where they’re being brutalized. Um, it drives.
[18:30] Michelle: The children are really used as pawns. Will you talk a little more about that, about how, how you can control people with their children. I know that one of the, like, if a boy is at all rebellious, he’s kicked out. If a girl is at all rebellious, she’s married off young to get pregnant so that they can try to control her. My understanding, I mean, and I again don’t want to speak universally. I know I’ll have people from some different groups reaching out, but this has been your experience, right?
[18:54] Flora Jessop: Yes. And the experience of many of the women that I’ve worked with.
[18:58] Michelle: Yeah, I’ve heard it so many times,
[19:00] Flora Jessop: yeah, as a, as a, as a woman, imagine that. A new young wife comes into the family. Well, I’ll just give, I’ll give you an example from my own family. So when I first started doing this work. I had a sister. That her husband got a new wife. She had, I think, 10 kids at the time. And he got a new young wife, and she became invisible. In the family, more or less. And so she contacted me and said, hey, I need you to come and get me and I said, OK, how many kids do I need to have? Are we picking up? I need, you know, I need to know these things. And she said, no, we’re not taking my kids. I want her to have to care for my kids. And I said, what? And she says, I’m leaving, but I’m leaving my kids here, she can care for them. And I said, I’m sorry, I don’t do that. And she’s like What do you mean you don’t do that? And I said, I don’t punish husbands. If they’re, if you’re in a situation that is so extreme that you are unsafe, that means your kids aren’t safe either. So if you’re going to leave, you’re going to bring your kids with you, or Why are you leaving? If it’s that unsafe for you to be there. Your kids aren’t safe there either. And she’s like, no, I just want to teach him a lesson, and I said, that’s not what I do. She still to this day has not spoken to me because of that. Because I refused to her. And you know, but. That and I’m OK with that, because that’s not what I do. I don’t punish people. You know, I’m, I’m helping people who are in serious dire need of help.
[21:00] Michelle: Right, you’re not getting drawn into the dynamics of the resentments and that, but I wanna say, oh, go ahead. Well,
[21:08] Flora Jessop: you know, it’s just there’s this whole ideal that I’m just, I hate all polygamy and I, I, you know, that I wanna just go in and destroy all these families and that’s not the case, you know, these women don’t wanna leave. They don’t wanna leave their family. They don’t wanna leave the only home they’ve ever known, but they would like some support instead what happens is. If she’s being abused and she’s and she starts speaking out about it and she wants help to get out of an abusive situation, her kids are being abused, she needs support and instead the entire community turns against her, and you have the other wives become passive aggressive in their abuse to where they will do things and cause situations where they will get these women so emotionally distraught. That they are out screaming out of control just not they’re they’re not thinking straight when they’re when your kids are constantly being abused and targeted and every time you turn around your kids are being harmed and things like that it there’s an emotional charge that comes on a mama. And when these things happen, what happens is they’ll take the, first of all, they’ll take the children as punishment and give them to the women who are abusing them. And that drives you insane right there because you know, and there’s nothing you can do to stop it. Um, And then what they’ll do, if that doesn’t work, then they are locking them up in mental institutions. As you know, until they can, and I have the documentation from one such institution that they were using here in Arizona. The release paperwork stated that this mom had to write a letter. Detailing her sins to Warren Jeffs, the prophet, in order to be released and write a letter to her sister wife telling her she was sorry for causing problems in the home.
[23:18] Michelle: OK, so many things here.
[23:20] Flora Jessop: Yeah, it was, it was such an egregious abuse of Power that the doctors are actually playing into the dynamics of these households, because it’s the men they listen to.
[23:36] Michelle: Oh my gosh. So truly, the victim is the problem because she’s making problems. A woman’s only choice is to be silent and sweet. And if you do anything else, no matter what is going on with you or your children, you are the problem, right, right? And this system like this, this makes just like just normal narcissism look like nothing, like the whole system is psychopathic and narcissistic to where I know I, I, I mean I’ve just, I just happened to be um listening to something this week and I did some more studying that women tend to have relational aggression, you know, they have all of these reasons looking at it from animals and And how it comes into human culture that men tend to be like just outrightly aggressive. They’ll just fight for what they need and then they can make up really quickly. This, you know, this is what the studies all show. Women have have different um methods and tendencies. Women, it’s generally not safe to be outwardly. Aggressive, so instead they are underhandedly aggressive and their enemy, their woman that’s an enemy, they destroy her social standing. Like there was a woman that um that was um that it’s a case study of a woman that was kidnapped or sold to some native community. And so she was, you know, and a girl came up to her with a present with some food and said you can either eat this or give it to someone else, you know, pretending to be friends. And so the woman took a tiny taste, it tasted awful, so she set it down. Someone else ate it and then died. And that new woman, they said, oh, it was her that put it down, so she was chased for her life out of the tribe, right? Like that’s a perfect female aggressive move. This new girl, this new woman is coming into my tribe. I’m feeling insecure, so I’m going to do something so I can falsely accuse her or just like you’re saying like I’m going to do. Um, was it in your book, or were we talking about the woman whose children were sick and the pets, was I talking to you about that or was it in your book? Yes, OK, so like. You’ll actually, so you think I
[25:56] Flora Jessop: had a baby with a feeding tube and the sister wife kept letting the animals in and they were looking around this feeding tube and it was constantly giving the baby an infection. And she begged him, please keep your cats out of the out of my part of the house, and she would open the door every day and let her cats in there to get on this baby and lick around that feeding tube. And so this woman finally loaded all the cats up into her vehicle and drove them out of town. And dropped him off out of town and um. So the sister wife ended up calling the police and stating that that that she was had tried to kill all the animals, so now she was going to try and kill her children, and that was the first time she got institutionalized.
[26:46] Michelle: OK, so, so this mother had special needs children, which you said are very high. Um, there are a lot of special needs children born in in polygamous communities because of all of the inbreeding, right? And so this baby, this baby, the doctor had warned, you have to keep this clean. This feeding feeding tube has to stay clean. And I think, didn’t you say the sister wife was having a hard time getting pregnant? So she was very resentful. So she was intentionally like letting The cats jump into the baby’s crib. Like, it’s not just you have a grown woman and the first wife working against you in your home in your desperate efforts to keep your child alive. And you’re given a pile of work to do and you have your other children, so you can’t, you can’t just spend all day protecting your child. So you think your baby is safe asleep in the crib, and the sister wife has let the cat has put the cats in the crib with your baby. Right? That was the situation, basically. And then When that woman finally lost it and didn’t they have just like the woman that couldn’t have as many children started collecting cats, right? And so it’s her own home anyway, so they drove the she, she, so the, the mother of the baby with the feeding tube ended up being institutionalized. Yes. Ah, because the sister wife was telling the husband she’s crazy. I don’t know. It’s just
[28:14] Flora Jessop: and because by the time the the police got there, of course the sister, the aggressive sister wife is calm as can be and she’s just like laughing behind her hand going oh look at her, she’s out of control. She doesn’t she is crazy. I’m telling you she’s crazy this is what I have to deal with all the time and this woman is just. Mad as hell and scared as hell for her baby. And emotionally distraught, so now all of a sudden it’s blows up into this whole thing of, you see how she’s act she acts like this all the time. So you have the calm of passive aggressive. Um, enforcer sitting there making Making it look like, you know, oh,
[29:02] Michelle: she the mother is just
[29:04] Flora Jessop: this is so they handcuffed her and hauled her to the institution. Oh,
[29:09] Michelle: and that leaves so her baby that she’s been desperately trying to keep healthy now goes to the sister wife that wants her dead like. Oh, see, that’s such a palpable example of what you’re talking about, that it’s like you can’t, you can’t turn your back for a second cause you don’t know what’s happening to your children, including much worse things like the sexual abuse, the rampant sexual abuse from fathers and brothers and
[29:39] Flora Jessop: You know, and, and when I first started fighting against or for the women and children. In 2 in the early 2000. The the age of the predator within polygamy that we dealt with at that point was an adult offender. When I Stopped Fighting for women and children up there about 3 years ago, the average age of the offender we were dealing with at that point was 6 years old. That is how embedded within the community. That the sexual abuse is. What happens is You have an adult that comes in and sexualizes children. Um, once that sexualization occurs, those children turn around and prey on younger children. And then younger children and then younger children to where now the average age of the predator within these communities is 6 years old.
[30:46] Michelle: How is it? I see it’s hard for me to call a six year old and a predator because they’re just doing what they’ve, they don’t even understand.
[30:58] Flora Jessop: But it’s the only way I know to state the facts of what it, what is happening. And can we help these kids? Absolutely. Absolutely we can. But we have to take the, the right steps and we have to do it. You cannot do it with secrecy. You have to expose it. You have to talk about it. You have to. Deal with it on a day to day basis, you have to recognize the The cycle that comes on these kids, and you have to openly deal with things. Um, and unless you do that, you’ll never break that cycle. But you can break the cycle. OK, you never will break it
[31:41] Michelle: because the cycle is, that’s what it thrives on. Secrets are what are the lifeblood of breeds
[31:48] Flora Jessop: abuse.
[31:49] Michelle: Mhm.
[31:51] Flora Jessop: And it always will. So if you have something that’s, you know, any kind type of abuse like this that you think that within your family, and you think it’s a better idea to not let everybody know because it’s such a shameful thing or whatever, you are helping him create victims for her. By keeping their secrets. Shout out to the.
[32:18] Michelle: It’s exactly.
[32:21] Flora Jessop: Yeah, tell everybody, cause that the the only way to protect victims. If if people know. That this person is capable of these these things. Please watch your children and don’t leave your children alone with them. So There’s a lot of cases where we, we know of sexual abuse that occurred where we have not been able to get convictions. Getting convictions is almost, it’s so hard to get a conviction. Especially if you have children, child victims. Because children The courts are The system has has become so Adept at re-victimizing victims.
[33:14] Michelle: OK, let’s talk about that. Like, share, share your story. There’s so many things I want to talk about, but you finally escaped, which is unthinkably courageous because these, you were raised being told they want to kill you, they’re Satan spawn, they’re demons, right? In addition, you have no one that no skills, no like you have like it’s this terrifying world that you have no idea how to function in. You things were so bad with your father, right, and your situation that you finally braved that and what happened.
[33:50] Flora Jessop: Well, I had reported the sexual abuse, um, Well, uh, let me, let me take a step backward. My maternal grandmother was, uh, my best friend, and she could tell something was wrong. She knew something was wrong, but it took her a couple of years to get out of me what was happening. When I finally told her about the abuse, um, she confronted my dad and was dead two days later. She was
[34:21] Michelle: on. Wait, your grandmother was dead 2 days after confronting your dad?
[34:25] Flora Jessop: Yeah, she was on kidney dialysis, and they put so much salt in her machine that it crystallized in her body when the solution went through her. Um, and then For years after that, my aunt would tell me how it was my fault that she was dead. If I would have just kept my mouth shut and kept God’s secrets like I was supposed to do, then my grandmother would still be alive, that I was that I was the one that killed her, blah, blah blah. And for a long time, I believed that I was responsible for her death, and That was really hard, and it wasn’t until years after I got out that I. Fully understood that there was no way as a child that I could. That I had any control over that, because I was 10, like I was 10 years old when she died.
[35:17] Michelle: This is a victim of sexual abuse, and the one person you had who could see you, who you felt loved by, was your grandmother, and you finally confided in her. She goes to bat for you. She’s killed and you’re blamed. Like that’s the, so they’re really prac I, I mean, blood atonement really is still how would people know, right? Because they have so much control, OK.
[35:45] Flora Jessop: So after that, then. Things got really bad in the home to the point where I ended up making a report to um out to Saint George, which is 45 minutes away from Colorado City Hilldale. Um, and got a and I was sent to juvie, to juvenile lockup rather than they didn’t arrest my dad, they took me down to juvie and locked me up in jail.
[36:15] Michelle: I cannot understand. I is it, no, those weren’t the polygamist, that’s not like the polygamous marshalls.
[36:23] Flora Jessop: This is a normal world.
[36:26] Michelle: And is it the best I can wrap my hand around it is like my head around it is we don’t know what to do, so we’re just gonna wash our hands of it. We have this kid, she seems angry, that same kind of gaslighting that maybe made you like, uh, help me, this is happening. And they’re like, OK, she’s she’s emotional. Let’s lock her up like
[36:44] Flora Jessop: she’s the problem because she’s the one talking, so let’s just get her out of the out of the situation. And I think that A lot of times in the plural families especially, that you end up with um. This dynamic where there was 28 of us kids. So what do you come and do with 28 kids? What, what is social services do with 28 kids? If they have to come in hundreds, 8 children, you know, then it’s overwhelming unless it’s like one or two kids, they’re overwhelmed with it.
[37:20] Michelle: So yeah, so it is, it maybe is
[37:22] Flora Jessop: it move him out of the home. And tell him he can’t come back. It’s let’s just take the child out and get that and get rid of them. Um, so that I think is the beginning of victimization of victims, not only just in polygamy but out in, in here, in, in our communities now. And it seems to be a typical response with social services is let’s let’s re-victimize the victim. And punish the victim for speaking out and seeking safety. Um, So then I got removed from my father’s home. And put into my uncle’s home where they walled off the end of a hallway and I spent 3 years in solitary confinement, wasn’t allowed to see my mom, my brothers and sisters without one of my uncle’s wives being present. Um, so I spent 3 years in solitary confinement, um, for speaking out against God’s commandments. Um, and every time I was molested, it was the scripture. Scripture was quoted to me because, you know, he, he was just weak in the flesh and, you know, men are just weak in the flesh, and I had these, and I was enticing him, uh, you know, cause, you know, all eight year old children know how to entice adult men to them. Um, so, It was my sin that was causing him who was weak in the flesh to do these things. So he would quote scripture to keep the demons from entering him while he did these things to me, blah blah blah. Anyway, so. That that in and of itself was. Traumatic because you know you’re now you’re taking God who is supposed to be all loving. You know, and Creating this situation where in the child’s mind is. The the sin is all inside of me. I’m the bad person. I’m the wicked person. How, you know, how does religion becomes um don’t talk to me about it or I’ll punch you in your face type of deal.
[39:35] Michelle: For sure, yeah,
[39:37] Flora Jessop: and I get to where I hated God. I hated God with passion, and after I left, you talked to me about God, I’d spit in your face. Don’t talk to me about God. I don’t want nothing to do with God. Because to me, God became so evil. That Why would anybody want to believe in in him or, you know.
[40:02] Michelle: And that’s a big part of why I’m doing this because I feel like the greatest evil is to do evil in the name of God. It really does,
[40:11] Flora Jessop: it’s the majority of religions out there because I’ve studied after I left, I got to where I went around and studied like a lot of different religions like Christianity, Catholicism, Judaism, Islam, Mormonism, all of it. I wanted to know. What is it? Which which church is right? What, what is it that draws so many people into believing something that is to me has been turned into something so evil, and I came to realize that religion. Is man’s way of controlling man. Men have taken on the role of God. To control mankind through religion. So you have men standing up at the pulpit stating, This is the way that you are supposed to do it, and if you don’t do it like this, then you are going to be punished. Instead of stating that, you know, Believe you don’t have to come through the church to believe in God. You have your own faith, your own relationship with God. Believe in that. Believe in the relationship you have, but we have religion that teaches you don’t have a relationship with God. The church does, and you must come through the church to get to God.
[41:33] Michelle: And, and I think that what you experienced is some of the most extreme versions of that. Cause I, I am sympathetic to community and to, you know, like
[41:45] Flora Jessop: community all the way. But I think that people need to stop thinking that church is what’s going to bring them to heaven, because right, church is just a place for like-minded people to gather. But it’s that religion has turned into You must go through me. You must bring your sins to me, your sins to me to heaven. Man It has control over the church. God doesn’t. Man is in control, you know, give me your money. I need your money because I need a huge house and fancy cars, and I need a bank account with $10 million in it or whatever it is. While you struggle to pay your bills and feed your family, then I need to have all of your money brought to me so that I can live a life of. Luxury.
[42:41] Michelle: Well, let’s talk about that because that seems to be a universal in polygamy and
[42:46] Flora Jessop: it’s like that’s across the board that’s not just that’s everywhere.
[42:51] Michelle: Right, right, but I think in, go
[42:53] Flora Jessop: ahead. That’s just all religions. It’s not, that’s not standard for any one religion. I think people need to go back to faith in themselves and their own relationship with God.
[43:05] Michelle: Yeah, yeah, but I do want to talk about it in regard to polygamy cause to me it was just fascinating when I started to see in the Book of Mormon King Noah and replication and they tax the people for their the the support of their wives and their concubines and their palaces and their brides. And and I and and you know, I haven’t yet figured out how Brigham Young is different from that with what he was doing and certainly the modern polygamists, the Kingstons, the Jeffs, I’m not as familiar with the abuses in The AUB, I don’t know what’s happening and, you know, the all red group or the Centennial Park Group or, you know, but some of these examples talk a little about kind of how you were raised. What I mean, you even just talk about the squalor, the smell, the unfinished electrical things everywhere with 28 kids and no food.
[43:56] Flora Jessop: I knew families that would go out and get gather the squat, the The gourds, the weeds, the blossoms off the gourd plants, and that was a feast to these guys because they had no food. Um, struggling to feed that many children is was just. It was, it was tough. Um, especially during winter months when food, you didn’t have the fresh garden and stuff like that, so. Um, well,
[44:28] Michelle: and you talk about having what, like 30 people living in a home with 1 or 2 bathrooms and how they are just filthy and black because there’s
[44:38] Flora Jessop: So bad, so bad, bathrooms were so bad. Um, yeah, it was, it, you have all these people crammed in together into these spaces. The houses are not finished. There’s no time, there’s no ability because what happens is When you’re given a wife, you’re given a plot of land to build a house on, but you still must be do tithing to the church. So now you have a wife and babies coming along, and so you slowly piece together this whatever cardboard house you can piece together, and some guys had more than others and was able to build nicer things or whatever, but For the most part. Um, the majority of what you, you had, you gave to the church, and then the storehouse would give you back what they felt like you needed. Um, So then they come down to the welfare system, which we all knew it was called bleeding the beast because we were taught that. Satan controlled the world outside of town, and so this being God’s people, God had set up the welfare system for us. To provide for God’s families, so. I know women that when they were first married, before they ever had a child, they started receiving benefits and they never filled paperwork out or anything. It was just automatically done for them. That’s how in the system they were they were so in locked into the systems out there. That women didn’t even have to fill out paperwork to become recipients of welfare benefits. I know women that had left the community, their children trying to escape the abuses and would get on food stamps and stuff after she left and had her food stamps transferred to her sister wife that was still inside the group numerous times and we ended up having a battle with the welfare officer on many occasions for these had left.
[46:52] Michelle: Oh my word. So there really are connections. Like, who knows who’s where pulling what strings. That’s just awful. And so, and did the women, my understanding is that often they just gave the welfare to the church, right?
[47:07] Flora Jessop: Like mandated that what they would do is the church demanded that they turn over, they would go down and do the shopping, go down to like Saint George or wherever and do the shopping. And then they would take their whatever they got. They were sometimes they were given lists of things that they needed to purchase, and they would take all those. That stuff that they bought with their food stamps and they would take it back to the storehouse and drop it off at the storehouse. Then the priesthood would decide what they could have back. Uh, So the food stamps weren’t even, I mean, I know guys up there that were collecting $30,000 a month in welfare benefits because each white claim they claim benefits of single mothers. It’s not. You know, so you have. Say 60 kids in the home, each mother is claiming benefits for her children as a single, as a single mom.
[48:08] Michelle: With no income,
[48:10] Flora Jessop: mhm, no cap. There’s no cap on the benefits for these communities like. I know here in Phoenix there there was a time when they they limited the amount of children you could collect welfare for and then they had the welfare to work program. Um, so I think there was a limit like you could collect for 3 children and then you can, even if you had 5 children, they didn’t give you more benefits than that. So These women were able to collect kids each. Um, so it is interesting because there was a cap on it. Which I don’t know, never did understand that.
[48:55] Michelle: I do. I find myself wondering cause listening to so many of your stories, I, I, I don’t know if it’s like it’s hard to make sense of. There’s something really, really wrong.
[49:05] Flora Jessop: It really is. And I mean, look at, OK, so look at when they had the big welfare. Blow up up there in Colorado City. They had these guys were buying new trucks. They had evidence. They had evidence of these guys on video going in and and well the welfare benefits coming out there and stuff. It was, it was crazy, hundreds of thousands of dollars they were buying. Trips to all over the place on welfare benefits. The fire department was involved. There was an egregious amount of money that was going. To all kinds of things and it was all under the guise of the welfare benefits, and it was this huge welfare fraud. And none of these guys did jail time. They did it was like maybe 6 months. And It it was crazy.
[50:00] Michelle: It’s almost like on the one hand, it’s almost like it’s such a big problem. We just don’t want to even look at it or see it just say to yourselves, we’ll return your children, you know, on the other hand, it’s almost like there’s some weird sympathy to it from the men, like a wink and a nod.
[50:16] Flora Jessop: Well, I guarantee you it was that there was more I would lean more toward there is some kind of We don’t wanna make waves with these people because they’re living what we should be living almost is what it seems to be like when you start fighting within the system, I spend more time fighting the system than I ever did the perpetrators. For the need out of there and that’s that sucks because the system that’s supposed to be there to provide for victims. Is actually the one doing the most egregious e to women when they leave trying to find them housing, you know, these women are coming out of there. They have nothing, nothing to their name except the clothes on the back.
[51:05] Michelle: And including no skills, no confidence, no ability, no like, like, worse than nothing. They’re not just poor, they are helpless.
[51:14] Flora Jessop: Yes, and the, the, the. Everything they’ve been taught is upside down and backwards. So They have to figure out that the world is completely the opposite of everything they’ve been taught, everything, and it, it puts you in a mind mental spin. For the longest time, um, I would say on average it takes about 3 years of your brain actually shuts down because it has to rewire itself. It is, it’s It’s a phenomenon that’s crazy to watch. Um, when the women and children come out of there because it’s like, They They don’t It’s almost like they’re infant children. That are trying to cope in a world that they’re supposed to be able to survive in. I’ve had these kids have complete mental breakdowns and be hospitalized in institutions where they’ve taken them to institutions, and then the doctors get a hold of us and tell us that they want to medicate these children because it’s obvious they’re in a drug psychosis. And I’m like, this, this child does not have any addictions. All children have addictions and if you do not permit us to give us permission to give them these heavy medications, then you are not gonna be permitted to see them and we will ask the state to step in. And it’s like, OK, you know what. Why? Why do we have to fight these kind of battles? These kids are not addicts, they’re not street kids. These kids are, I’ve had kids as big as my husband, young boys. Lay down in the middle of the courthouse floor and scoot around pushing themselves with their feet on their back at the judges is like, what’s going on? Is this kid OK? It looks like an adult man. And they are so overwhelmed that they act like a 2 year old. And but it’s, that’s where their heads at. You know, they’re, they don’t have the capability. Of providing for themselves for the first, I would say about 3 years after they come out. And then they start learning. How to survive, but and for that 1st 3 years it’s almost a complete mental shutdown because they’ve been raised as calves in a stall that they don’t know how to manage money, they don’t know how to, I mean. You gotta remember that to give you an idea of what how the depth of the training is that you are taught not to have critical thinking skills. You are taught not to think outside of direction. So Let’s say you take a child and you have a room, a laundry room that is filled, the floor is up to your knees with dirty laundry from all the people that live in the house, and you are told, go in there and I want you to wash all of the. Green shirts. If you pick up a shirt and wash any shirt that is not a green one, you are. Punished horribly. Because you are thinking outside of what you are told to do. This is how they train you.
[54:43] Michelle: And it’s a test. It’s, you’re tested constantly
[54:46] Flora Jessop: infancy. You are, this is what they do to you so that you do not think you are, you are programmed to, this is the directions you’ve been given, follow directions. You, it is not your job to think and think that, oh well, they’ll be, they’ll, they’ll be so proud of me if I do this extra bit. No, no, no, no, no. You don’t get to do extra bits. You get to do what you’re told. Mhm. So if you do outside of what you’re told, punishment is severe.
[55:18] Michelle: And so not only, not only have they not been trained with critical thinking, they’re terrified of critical thinking. It’s they have to first, like, like it’s like a life and death situation to think and now they’re put in a world where they’re expected to start thinking and
[55:36] Flora Jessop: survive and know how to do it and they can’t, and it’s horrible.
[55:41] Michelle: So anyone raised in a religion like LDS, many people, I think many of my listeners have experienced the same thing. I, I did an episode on House of Cards, which is like your cognitive structures collapsing when you realize things aren’t as you believed they were. What and and that’s so disorienting to us, you know, on just uh for just like your religion, your life is all the same, your family is all the same, you have your training, you have your, you know, you compare how destabilizing that is to have one relatively small part of your life deconstruct for these people. It is everything. The thinking structures, their family, their God, their life, how do I do this? And then the terror of how like you have no structure of any kind. It’s, it’s incomprehensible
[56:33] Flora Jessop: to understand the point that these women’s lives reach when they reach out to me because they had special classes about me up there. Because uh if you talk to her she’s she’s evil, she’s the devil, she’ll come and steal you from your home, you know, because they can’t. They can’t afford for people who leave that community to be successful or to show that they have succeeded in making a life outside of there, because if they show that success, That you can leave and be OK. Then it undermines their entire So It’s, it’s a It’s such a crazy thing. So these women reach a level of absolute. Just they hit the bottom of life is over with for these women when they reach out to me because it’s because they they have nowhere else to go.
[57:36] Michelle: They’ve already given up their exaltation. They know they’re going to be damned for eternity at that point, right?
[57:42] Flora Jessop: Right.
[57:43] Michelle: That’s how desperate they are.
[57:45] Flora Jessop: Yeah, and, you know, I know that I know women who have left, um, in not polygamy situations, but just in Mormonism who, if their marriage breaks apart, they go through kind of a, a mild, it’s like a mild case of the flu, I guess, where as the FLDS women where they feel like they there’s no resources, they’re they’re lost for a period because they’re fam. Their lives are so structured in their families and in the church and in the community and that type of thing to where when you separate from your husband and the church and everything and then everybody, the whole dynamic of it all, it’s kind of a like a very mild similar situation that women within the LDS community go through when they something like that happens within their lives. But it’s so mild compared to what the FLDS and the polygamous women go through. But it’s still a little bit of a comparative
[58:47] Michelle: to let you understand, right? And
[58:50] Flora Jessop: it’s
[58:50] Michelle: well,
[58:50] Flora Jessop: and it’s heartbreaking to me because the community should rally around victims. They should not. Punish a victim for not wanting because something didn’t work out, you know what? it doesn’t mean that they’re not good people. It doesn’t mean that they don’t want to be there maybe couldn’t be successful with someone else. It means that the people, the person that they’re with, they cannot, that’s not a safe situation for them anymore. We should support that they get out of those bad situations rather than perpetuate. Abuse across generations.
[59:21] Michelle: Absolutely, absolutely. It’s so hard to know how to address these problems. I wanna, I wanna ask you, because I brought up before this idea that we all are raised with. Well, of course, it’s, you know, a nightmare because God doesn’t want them living. Polygamy, so they’re doing it when they shouldn’t be like our ancestral polygamy was beautiful and godly, and they’re not supposed to be doing it. So I, yeah, I want to talk about that. I have thoughts too, but you go first.
[59:51] Flora Jessop: Let me throw a thought in here really quick. God never said, don’t live polygamy now. The federal government did.
[1:00:00] Michelle: Exactly, exactly right.
[1:00:02] Flora Jessop: The federal government came in and was going to confiscate church holdings, so they issued the manifesto that they would not live polygamy on the land until blah blah blah. That wasn’t God, I’m sorry. And I think he says it was, it was the feds coming in and saying we view this as a form of enslavement of women and children, which
[1:00:24] Michelle: it is,
[1:00:25] Flora Jessop: and we are going to confiscate all church holdings unless you stop doing this. Which is what happened. So God didn’t say don’t live it right now. So whoever, whatever that argument within the church dynamic is such a wrong.
[1:00:43] Michelle: You’re OK, thank you. That’s exactly right. First of all, if we look into the actual life situations of the polygamists in early Utah, it was a nightmare. It was a nightmare, right? My, I’ve told this story several times. Right from the beginning, my great great great grandmother experienced exactly what you’re talking about where the sister wives got together and got her husband Ant and call to kick her out, divorce her, they kept all of the children, and she was kicked out, right? It was never the the helpless girls were given away. They were, you know, it was always a nightmare. Our early history was a nightmare, and God never rescinded it. Joseph F. Smith or Lorenzo Snow, right, had Wilford. Woodruff. Oh my gosh, someone, I’ll write it on the thing. I think we’ll um Lorenzo Snow had the um impression of if we don’t stop this, it’s going to completely destroy the church. So they stopped it on its face, but they kept it going, right? They kept it going in secret. Right, because they thought that they, Brigham Young said both about um racism and about polygamy. If, if, if the church make it changes this, if you ever stop polygamy, it is not the true church anymore. It is not the church of God. It has to be carried on for eternity. God has restored everything for the final time, never to be taken off of the earth. It can never go away. So polygamy never for the leader’s perspective, polygamy was never ended. And maybe that’s part of the reason there’s a little wink and a nod.
[1:02:26] Flora Jessop: Polygamy began because somebody got caught with another woman when they were married. And so therefore we had to have the revelation. Just saying.
[1:02:38] Michelle: I think, well, you know what I think it is. I, I think what it is is men in particular, when they get to levels of power and wealth, right? Well, but and power mainly they shouldn’t have to have boundaries, right? Like I’m not bounded by anything, so why should I only have one wife? I do, right? Just like, and in the world, I’ve said this before, but I’ll tell you, in the world, the athletes, the politicians, the musicians and movie stars can have an endless supply of women. But when you’re in a religion, you’re bound by morality. So what is needed is a justified godly way to have
[1:03:19] Flora Jessop: the morality.
[1:03:21] Michelle: That that’s why I think, I think it grows out of I am in this position of power where I don’t want to have boundaries. So therefore, for the rich and powerful men, polygamy is godly. That’s what I think it grows out of every time.
[1:03:36] Flora Jessop: That’s exactly what happens. Guaranteed.
[1:03:40] Michelle: Yep, and then we look at the fruits that passed down cause really um what you are experiencing are still the fruits of Brigham Young and Utah of early Mormonism. And the sad thing is, is that the LDS, my church, we want to claim we have washed our hands of that, you know, but us keeping it in our back pocket as a belief validates what all of the polygamists are doing, keeps us from really getting involved, because really we should be on the forefront. Of helping women and children. This is our mess. This is our mess, and we’re the ones with the means, with the money, with the big name. We should be the very first ones helping people, redeeming people from this nightmarish false tradition that they’re still being born into, and we seem MIA like, where is my church in helping people.
[1:04:36] Flora Jessop: I have all of the years that I have been doing this, I have never had any success in getting help from any of the Mormon um senators. Senator Orrin Hatch had many conversations there. Nothing. He, he says, show me an abuse and and polygamy and I’ll get involved. We’ve brought him tons of it and according to him that’s not abuse and it’s, it’s just. Disgruntled housewives. Uh, oh, To, um, I remember as a child going up to Cedar City to the Sugarloaf Cafe in Cedar City with my uncle who was the bishop of the FLDS, and going into the back room, they had this back room that they had those. Accordion curtains they could pull across the doorway and sitting in the back room and meetings with my with the leadership of the FLDS and Dixie Levitt, Mike Levitt, um, all those guys used to get Orrin Hatch, you name it, they all sat back in there. have a big meetings between them, um. That was Twice a month when I was growing up. These meetings. Oh, there’s super duper connections. Um, there’s, I remember Orrin Hatch coming to Colorado see him preaching in our church service at one point when I was a child, you know, I mean, there’s, there’s super connections there of these guys are living it what we believe we’re going to have to, but my question is this. These women are so sad and depressed and forlorn and you know, their lives suck. They’re, they hate the life that they have to live. But they think it’s going to magically become. Utopia when they get to heaven. What makes you think that things are gonna change and everything is gonna be beautiful when you get there living this? It makes no sense to me. Of why you think it’s such a nightmare, hellish nightmare to live in this life, but it’s gonna be beautiful when you get to the hereafter. What is going to change? What is magically gonna change because you’re gonna be there with the same people. Doing the same things. So explain to me how it’s magically going to be a beautiful thing.
[1:07:06] Michelle: That’s such a good point. Yeah, that, that critical thinking, don’t think about it, Flora, that’s your problem. You think, don’t think.
[1:07:15] Flora Jessop: That is my
[1:07:15] Michelle: problem. Well, and one thing that was interesting in watching, um, so, so Flora was involved in an excellent series called Escaping the Prophet, and it’s available, I think you can rent it on Amazon or YouTube. It’s like $499 to buy the one series that was made. I was just talking to her about why it was, why it stopped because it is so good. It’s the best one, and that’s part of why it was stopped. It was too, it was it painted polygamy too honest of a light.
[1:07:44] Flora Jessop: It was causing problems for them normalizing polygamy through the Sister Wive show on TLC. Um, it was causing issues with their concept. Of trying to normalize plural marriage to Americans. And so when you show the reality of what’s happening in these households, it kind of undermines that this is not always so happy and everybody should live it type mentality and understanding what’s really going on behind closed doors because then there’s gonna be problems in the home.
[1:08:20] Michelle: Well, I really, really recommend renting that. I think it’s buying it. It’s 499, you know, I wish I could just let everyone watch it, but it’s worth, it’s worth watching those episodes. One thing I want to talk about that does come across in those episodes and that I have seen in my own life with tragic experiences with some friends. The children, how they are raised, they are taught. So if a woman complains or goes to authorities, she’s filled with demons and her children. So when you are sent away to an institution or removed from your children for any length of time, or even they have influence um influence with their father, the other mothers, the church leaders, they are taught that you are filled with evil spirits, that you’re filled with demons, that you are wicked, that you are dangerous to them. So your own children turn on you to where you had a story of children abusing their mother, right? Like the teenage, like, and then also, so that’s one thing that I that I have seen like the parental estrangement is so extreme in these situations, it’s heartbreaking. And then the other thing is kind of the difference between how the boys and the girls are raised. There is this like. I don’t know what the word is, this snotty, arrogant, I’m smarter than you. I’m just gonna sit and ask questions to try to turn you in circles, thing that you see come out in these boys who are being raised to be dominators, that is. Incredible to behold. I can’t imagine being married, being powerless and coming up against that. Like, so you can talk about those two things, the parental alienation and then also kind of the training that boys and girls get.
[1:10:03] Flora Jessop: Right. Well, the, the, uh, one of the things that Warren just implemented, um, In the more recent years when he was still out of prison and in control, was he took the kids and had them going to classes that their parents weren’t permitted to know about. And it’s, it’s, what’s interesting about that is I’m seeing. In today’s schooling situation in public schools, it almost feels like I am witnessing. Jeff’s ideologies and the way he started doing things in the latter years in our public school system and that let’s change it all the way around what we’re teaching these kids so that it’s something completely different than what their parents were taught. So the parents don’t understand it. And at the same time, parents aren’t permitted to come in and see what’s more teaching. Um, but like, to give you an idea,
[1:11:03] Michelle: every totalitarian playbook is the same. That’s every totalitarian does the same things,
[1:11:09] Flora Jessop: right? So to give you an idea, I one of the 16 year old girl family with moms and stuff that came down. And she was telling me about the classes and she failed the class because she wouldn’t slit the cow’s throat. So the girls were being taught that in the end days then all the men would be gone with all their weapons and stuff. They would be gone fighting God’s war in the end days so the women were gonna be left to feed their children and they wouldn’t have any way to kill the animals except with the kitchen knife because that’s all that they would have left. So they had to learn how to kill animals with kitchen knives. Um, in order to feed their children, so they were teaching classes on things. And so they had to learn how to slit a cow’s throat with a butcher knife. And she couldn’t do it, so she failed the class, and I’m just sitting here going, oh my good lord. So Then the boys were put into like it was almost like a Hitler youth regime classes where they were marching and doing these uh scary trainings um for the prophet becoming God’s army. Um, But The boys are taught from a from about age 12. The boys become. Higher in the church than their mothers, so mothers are subservient to their voices at age 12, and you must obey all their demands and what they tell you, and it creates this situation where I had one mom with 5 children. Her oldest boy was 14, and he was um one of the lieutenants in the little army that was um Warren’s army. But when she brought the children down to Phoenix here. Boys were told that they were to and make sure that mother and the sisters. Maintained the dress style with wearing the car. Um, all of these things and bring them back to the prophet. So mom would wake up in the middle of the night with this oldest boy, if he’s standing behind the bed, he would just be breathing really fast and, and he would have a knife in his hand and he’d just be standing there staring at her and and so. It, it, he was at one point he lay crawled up in her lap and laid his head on her shoulder and he said, Mom, just make me be a boy again. Make me be a boy so I don’t have to do this. And Um, it was, you know, so it was a really tough situation. It was really hard. So I ended up telling him, you know, you can come to my house and stay with me until we can get you through this particular hurdle that we’re dealing with. He says, I’ll I’ll cut your throat while you’re sleeping. And I looked at him and I said, honey, you’re gonna have to catch me sleeping. You don’t scare me. Wow, and you know, but it was, it was so hard because they’re like little babies trying to be. Trying to obey orders they’ve been given. Um, that is their job to kill their mother and their sisters if they don’t maintain the orders of the prophet. They have, they must blood on them. And so trying to get them and work through this whole ideology and help them understand that that’s not your job, and you, you know what, when you love, he at one point he says, say you care about us, but you really don’t because you’ve never hit us. And I looked at him and I said, So if I care about you, then I hit you. He says, well, yeah, that’s what you do when you love somebody. And I said, well, in my world, you don’t hurt the people that you care about. He says, well, your world’s just weird. And but you know, it’s just getting them to start thinking a different way. Than what they’ve been taught and you and you know, you can’t come, you don’t come in and tell them everything you’ve been taught a lie, that’s a lie, prophet’s a liar because they’ll just turn on you. They, they, at that point, you’re never gonna get through to them. So I would just I mean, he would just be so frustrated and stuff and and would just bang his head on the wall, and there were times when The house they lived at was close to one of the freeways here in Phoenix and to give you, and I don’t know, this is to me this is like so spiritually profound uh. Yeah, uh. Things that were happening. On a spiritual level, so he would go out, take off and I would be over there every single day till. The sun came up, dealing with crisis after crisis. Um, the 10 year old little girl used to tell me that. One of these days I’m gonna open the front door and it’s gonna be Colorado and they’re gonna shoot us in the head and kill us because we we have that just shoot they expected that that was just the normal in life and they expected this, and they, you know, this is just this was reality to them. Um, they would fit, they would, uh, not call me in the middle of the night freaking out because they know that they saw Mother so and so who was super abusive other mother. I saw her in the car drive by the house. Please, please get over here and hurry before she hurts us, you know, so I would have to go sit at the house all night long. So they could get a good night’s sleep, so they could go to school or whatever. I’m just, this is the type of Things that would happen constantly. Boy, he would go out, he would jump over the fence, get out on the street, but lay down on the white lines in the middle of the road. This is a massive busy freeway here in Phoenix. And he would lay in the on the white lines in the middle of the freeway and Just say, God, send a car run me over. I don’t wanna be. I would go out there in lines with him head to head, just, and I would say, God, please don’t send any cars to run us over. And it was the weirdest thing because the entire time we would lay there on that road. No cars would come down that road. And I don’t know how that is even possible because there’s so many so much traffic on the road, and he would finally get up and he, we did this maybe 4 times. Before he just stopped doing it, but he would get up and he’d go to the side road. I don’t understand that. How come God answers your prayers and not mine, and I said maybe you’re praying for the wrong thing. And the minute we get off that freeway. Cars would be whipping past and he’d be like, I don’t understand any of this, and he would just get so frustrated because. He, why doesn’t God care? Just make help me die, you know, I just wanna die, and I can’t even lay there’s no cars come and I’m just like, I don’t know, babe. God doesn’t want you. God has money for you, I guess, but things just. Certainly happened and then their dad would get with them and stuff sports. I will say the courts for the first time that family really did try to do the the right thing with custody of the kids. But they made the mistake of giving mom the supervising power for dad’s visits. She gave dad the end back into mom’s side. And Sun that right around on its head, so it’s like. It was good It turned into a That, you know, it ended up her being taken back into the group. Which I will say that it was good for the fact that the children got to spend dad ended up having a heart attack a couple of years later. And passing away, so I was happy that got to be with their dad. Um, but at the same time, it was, you know. Created a situation for the families.
[1:19:55] Michelle: Yeah, well, it’s almost like we need a completely different system. Like I know when you are dealing with narcissistic abuse in your marriage or your family, if you go to a counselor that’s if you go to a counselor that’s not trained specifically in that, they often make it worse because they don’t see, they don’t know what to look for. So it’s almost like we need a whole series of training just for this issue, just to go, this is not. You know, 21st century stuff that you’re used to. This is, uh, you need a completely different kind of training and you need to like, like
[1:20:26] Flora Jessop: you need to be like
[1:20:26] Michelle: Laura
[1:20:27] Flora Jessop: mission with these families every time these kids went counseling. I would end up on the phone for an hour after each session, counseling counselors because they were so. I don’t know. I, I mean, they would call me in tears going, I don’t know what I’m doing this stuff. I can’t handle this stuff. It’s too much. I don’t know how to talk to these. I don’t even know how to respond to some of the stuff these guys are saying because it’s so far foreign to me, and I would, you know, you do what you can. So I would end up counseling the counselors for an hour after after every session. It was it was insanity. But it is OK.
[1:21:08] Michelle: So I have a question for you. So, um, when the raid happened in Texas, yearning for Zion, right, and they had the mothers out crying and these children have never known abuse until now, right? And they, they had us all convinced, right? We were all much more angry at the state than we were at the polygamists at that point.
[1:21:32] Flora Jessop: What propagan.
[1:21:35] Michelle: Yes, yeah, it wasn’t until after you learned those weren’t even their children. They had been taken from other families, they had been, and these women were told what to do and what to say, right? So I guess this is my question. If Warren Jeffs came to one of his wives and said, I need you to claim an angel came to you, or I need like, is there anything a woman wouldn’t say if their prophet husband told them to. Nothing.
[1:22:07] Flora Jessop: Nothing, whatever they have to say to survive. OK. But not only that, but it’s If they do not say what they are supposed to say. The punishment, they’re giving up their eternal salvation. They’re giving up their children, their children will be taken from them. Um, you name it, that will happen.
[1:22:39] Michelle: So they’re terrorized in this life with the threat of being terrorized in the next life for eternity. So they are that
[1:22:47] Flora Jessop: there was one there was one woman. That originally came out and she was, her name was Kathleen. And she was speaking, wanting the children back, she was, but she started talking about, well, we saw there’s some abuse, but that’s OK, we’re dealing with it and and you never saw her again. So then they figured out the same.
[1:23:13] Michelle: I just watched that clip. Was that an Anderson Cooper clip? and she said we’re not talking about that.
[1:23:18] Flora Jessop: She was great gray hair. Um, yeah.
[1:23:23] Michelle: So because she acknowledged that there was some abuse, she was disappeared.
[1:23:29] Flora Jessop: So, that raid have what people don’t realize about that raid. and it’s the full story has never come out because I’ve never disclosed a lot. What’s happened? But that rate. Because the FLDS has is here in County in Arizona against some of their guys. One of the women who was supposed to testify against Tyson in Arizona had twins. The FLDS had taken one of her twins and was holding that baby hostage on that. He wouldn’t testify. Oh. So what,
[1:24:14] Michelle: say that. I’m, I’m, I want people to hear this, your sound is coming in and out a little bit, so I wanna make sure
[1:24:19] Flora Jessop: sure to block a call, so sorry.
[1:24:22] Michelle: OK, no, that’s OK. So she had twins and they were holding one of her twins hostage, one of
[1:24:26] Flora Jessop: the babies and took them to Texas and was holding the baby on that compound. So that she would testify here in the Arizona case. She was living in Colorado at the time. Now the person who supposedly made the phone call to got that got that grade going. I lived in Colorado. It’s a black woman in Colorado. He I was doing 3 way calls with this girl, and let me tell you, I knew something was off. I’m telling you she had it the lingo down she knew about. She knew what houses they live. She had so much detail, but there’s still something that I couldn’t put my finger on and this three-way and law enforcement, everybody, those calls, but let me tell you. The reason why she had so much information and detailed information. was because she was in counseling sessions. Child, that’s how she knew so much.
[1:25:28] Michelle: Say that again. She was in counseling sessions with with who?
[1:25:31] Flora Jessop: With the mother of that child.
[1:25:33] Michelle: Oh my word.
[1:25:36] Flora Jessop: So that raid happened off of somebody who had no connection to the FLDS in Texas. Which, and she told the story. Which wasn’t her story to tell, but it was a story that somebody that was real. That did that was being silenced because child’s life depended on.
[1:26:03] Michelle: Oh my gosh, that makes so much sense cause it has been like, why in the world would someone just randomly choose to do this? But, but she was trying to help this other woman. Is that
[1:26:13] Flora Jessop: to help this woman, she they they they were obviously both in crisis. They were both in counseling. They were in group counseling sessions together. And she figured, I. And so she And when they told me, I was on the phone with her when they arrested. And when they told me that this black lady with ghetto consent from I’m like, there’s no way. There is no way, and I’ll be damned if it was, so true.
[1:26:51] Michelle: Wow, well, but it turns out unless I’m mistaken, it turns out to be a really good thing she did it cause that’s how we put Warren Jeff away. That’s Jeff’s away
[1:27:01] Flora Jessop: like it maybe come out of it, however, I will say the kids that are that were a part of that, um. There were there were probably 900 case workers from the Department of Child and Family Service. A year after the raid, I personally went to Texas and traveled 1000 miles around the state. And I visited all the homes they put these kids in because I wanted to know why you send them all back what was found. I was hoping I guess all that uses. A lessened. I took kids to. That was not the case. Found out was the abuses got 10 times worse than Colorado. These kids were Abuses were horrifying, and the homes that they had to put these kids. The caseworkers. Shut their mouths and
[1:28:04] Michelle: say that again. I lost it. The caseworker said what?
[1:28:06] Flora Jessop: The caseworkers were told to shut their mouths and send these children back no matter what the abuses.
[1:28:15] Michelle: You’re kidding me, because it was such a PR nightmare. They just needed to put the ketchup back in the bottle.
[1:28:20] Flora Jessop: What’s funny about that is at the point of that raid, the person that the head of Department of Health Services Federal. Which is the parent company of DC in all states was none other than Mikelet.
[1:28:39] Michelle: Oh my gosh.
[1:28:41] Flora Jessop: Oh, we were, we’re able to track the orders directly back to his office.
[1:28:47] Michelle: Say that again. You were able to track what
[1:28:50] Flora Jessop: the orders to send all back no matter what they’re stuff back to his office.
[1:28:57] Michelle: Oh my gosh,
[1:28:58] Flora Jessop: and the case workers shoved across the room while they begged them not to make them go out. And there was nothing.
[1:29:09] Michelle: Oh my word. And we were told such a different story. That’s what was happening behind the scenes. It’s heartbreaking. So, OK, this is putting a whole new level on the damage that is being done by us as members of the church continuing to believe that polygamy was ever of God, because it enables the worst abuses in the name of polygamy to continue
[1:29:34] Flora Jessop: because the protection of ideologies. Is what it all comes down to. It’s we’ve got to protect the priest and the dogma that is attached to the polygamy revelation. And you know, it’s like. I don’t know. There’s just, there’s always been kind of subtle. From the mainstream church. To these groups, and it. Um, especially when it comes to. I’m trying to get out of the situation. Just men. So. You know, I’ve gone on that ship in the health myself. Oh, you have, OK, I have recorded meetings with Jeffrey R. Holland, um. All of that that I’ve never released to the public. Um, But the church has always said there’s nothing that, you know, every woman I know that’s ever tried to leave a polygamist. Group and gone to the main search for help. The minute the ship finds out that they are marriage, they are shut down. I’m sorry. This meeting is over with, there’s nothing I can do. Return home and be a wife, uh,
[1:31:03] Michelle: oh my gosh, so if they come to the church for help in and like not even just wanting to join the church but for help with this is what I’m dealing with, they’re told to go submit because they’re a polygamous wife every single
[1:31:16] Flora Jessop: time so frustrating. And so that’s asking them why, why, what’s the problem? What do we need to do to get these women some help? These women don’t want to leave their homes, so why can’t we help them? That’s what we do with
[1:31:34] Michelle: efforts. Say that last part again. That’s what we do. What that
[1:31:39] Flora Jessop: is not what this church does, and good luck with you and helping them.
[1:31:44] Michelle: So you do it. That’s the same thing I heard recently on another story. You, you, you do the work, that’s not our domain.
[1:31:52] Flora Jessop: Don’t have resources for that type of stuff, so. You know that’s so hard. It’s hard, you know, I guess these women should be able to their church. out and so Any woman should be out. But you know, it seems like the priest did it. checking the priest of the hierarchy is more important than supporting. And that want out of situations they feel like they can stay in. Mhm. And across the board, it doesn’t matter whether you’re polygamist or Mormon. It seems to be. A common denominator. Within the high mark.
[1:32:36] Michelle: So many things are coming to mind when we had um well like in North Korea and or what is it South, which is the bad one, North Korea, and when the North Koreans escape and they make it to China and the Chinese send them back, right? Or what if we have the Dred Scott decision. In the US, when slaves would escape and flee north and we passed the laws that said, nope, you send them back. That’s kind of the situation we’re in. We have this horrible totalitarian abusive slave system that is as bad as any form of. Say that again,
[1:33:11] Flora Jessop: and it’s 2023 we know more than it was 100 years ago.
[1:33:17] Michelle: Right, right, we’re in the same situation again. We’re replaying it again. We have this horribly abusive slavery totalitarian system of abuse that we can’t even imagine because we have some hope. There are resources, you know, there are ways to help people being abused in our communities. These abusive systems, someone goes to the depths it requires to go get help and we send them back. I, I just can’t, we’re doing it again, so. OK, I’ve got, I’m gonna follow up with more episodes letting people know, um, what they can do to try to help. I know it’s a mess. It’s a mess. It’s a giant mess. I’m tempted to want to call. I, I’m tempted to want to like call for a day of fasting and prayer to find solutions. This giant mess that was started, in my opinion, by Brigham Young and the early leaders in Salt Lake City is still terrorizing people. It is still wreaking its. Awful havoc in people’s lives and we have, it’s gotta be, there’s gotta be a way to clean it up, to stop it. It’s just awful.
[1:34:24] Flora Jessop: Well, you know, I, I tell people all the time, I, it’s not my job to come and change your church. It is up to the people that belong to that church to make the changes they they make. I could, I guess I join the church. I don’t know if they
[1:34:47] Michelle: you have to do a special interview with the one it’s someone at the very top to get permission, right?
[1:34:51] Flora Jessop: I’m sure I would. But um. It’s not, you know, I can’t change. Cause I see things happening that are that are not OK for people. that can change the and demand change in the leadership is the people that belong. So it’s up to the people to make changes as they see fit. Well, and you asked a bit ago of well what organizations I was associated. I’m not associated with any organization. I had they just try and come in and the states come to hire me like that. I refuse to work for any of the organizations and any of the organizations that have grown very big. Victims of polygamy and stuff like that. With support of get or churches and things like that. Are there are red tape. Rules that are applied and attached to the. That I refuse to accept. As when red tape drops support what we do is we read them.
[1:36:14] Michelle: Oh, it’s just so harsh. It’s so painful.
[1:36:18] Flora Jessop: Right, well, you know, the government agencies have, it seems like that we end up with more victimization by the agencies that are supposed to support victims than not, so. It’s hard for me to get with and work with any of these organizations because it’s. Am I re-victimizing just like they they have done systemically? So.
[1:36:43] Michelle: Yeah, yeah, it’s so hard. So I guess, and, and when you were saying only the people in the organization can change it, I do have to acknowledge that as members of the church we have very little power to change the church. I was just talking to
[1:36:56] Flora Jessop: more power than you think, Darla.
[1:36:58] Michelle: Well, what we do have power is to change ourselves and to affect our community and then to take personal action as we feel inspired to pray for inspiration and to take action, and that’s what we can all do. Absolutely that’s. That’s what I hope people will do. I really, Flora, I hope people, I hope you will listen to Flora’s book. I think it was free on Audible, if you’re a member, but it’s, it’s, it’s, it is an important book to really understand so much more.
[1:37:28] Flora Jessop: I strongly recommend it’s not necessarily about lygamy as it is about abuse and what it does to the person who is abused. And it was important for me that people understand what victims of abuse suffer because the system has isolated victims to the point where they feel alone in their hurt. And so the healing process never gets fully accomplished because we are so isolated in that abuse, so it was important for me that other victims feel connected or know that they aren’t alone. And that’s the was the reason that I wrote the book.
[1:38:09] Michelle: That’s so good, and I will say really these isolated polygamous communities can carry out abuse and can victimize like few other few of us can imagine, right, cause there just isn’t any help and there’s and everyone there is isolated. Everyone is. to feel that you’re not even just like we talked about, the child always assumes that it’s their fault and they’re to blame, but in these communities, they are actively taught that from every person at every level. They’re taught that by their siblings, their mother, their father, their church leaders, their community, right? You are completely isolated and blamed. So it’s, it’s a really good way to understand abuse because it’s intense extreme abuse. And so. Yeah, so, and then I do really recommend those 4 episodes, even if nothing else, to be able to see. Flora’s sincerity, the way that you work with these people with just matter of fact, love and genuine, I care about you, so what are we gonna do here? Yeah, you know, like you meet them where they are and you just love them with nothing fancy but so much genuine. You’re just so real and that’s the best way I can think of to be able to help anybody, is to just be real.
[1:39:31] Flora Jessop: They’re just people, they just need acceptance like all of us do.
[1:39:36] Michelle: Yeah, yeah, and you know what? I think I love what you’ve done cause I think our natural instinct is they’re weird. Uh, I’m gonna step away, you know,
[1:39:45] Flora Jessop: to me. Yeah,
[1:39:48] Michelle: right, and then like you said, and then it’s like it somehow there’s something on some level that reminds us of our messy past, so they’re weird and they do some weird guilty thing with us, you know, so we want to look away. But I think it’s essential that we really look and
[1:40:07] Flora Jessop: and you just start seeing human beings as human beings and part of our whole family we’re all part of this. World together,
[1:40:16] Michelle: right, right, and these are our close cousins. They’re that we don’t even just have shared humanity in common. We have shared Mormonism in common. It’s a lot, right? There’s a lot there. So, so thank you so much for bringing your story and your wisdom and compassion
[1:40:32] Flora Jessop: talking anytime. We can, we can go over there’s so much more we could talk about.
[1:40:38] Michelle: Well, do you know what? I think maybe we should. Let’s plan another time and we will, we’ll talk again and maybe we could go visit with some people and, you know, do a road trip. I think it would be,
[1:40:48] Flora Jessop: we can do that.
[1:40:50] Michelle: Well, thank you, thank you, Flora. I really appreciate it. This has been so valuable.
[1:40:56] Flora Jessop: Hey, thank you. And God bless everybody, have a wonderful fantastic day.
[1:41:03] Michelle: I hope you found that discussion as valuable as I did. As I said in the conversation, I originally reached out to Flora to ask the question of what we should do about the testimonies of women, what influences there are in polygamist women’s lives that might make them feel inspired to say things that aren’t factually true. And I feel like we got so much more than that. I think she answered that question. But what I really came away with was this deep awareness of the ongoing pain that is still there and our responsibility to help. So I’m so thankful we got to have this conversation and thank you for sticking with us and, and I hope that you will listen to the next conversation where we will get a lot more information about some of the things we can do to help. I think that each of us prayerfully. Doing what God inspires us to do, have the potential to do so much good in the world and for these people who so desperately need to know the love of God and need to find truth. So thank you again and I will see you next time.
