Carolyn Jessop was born on January 1,1968 and is an American author and former Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints member who wrote Escape, an autobiographical account of her upbringing in the polygamist sect and later flight from that community.
20 Facts About Carolyn Jessop
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Carolyn Jessop is the cousin, by marriage, of Flora Jessop, another former FLDS member and advocate for abused children.
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Carolyn Jessop is a sixth-generation descendant of a polygamous family, all of whom were faithful members of the FLDS church.
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Carolyn Jessop is a relative of Winston Blackmore, leader of a Canadian polygamous group and a relative of his American-born Uncle John Horne Blackmore, first leader of what became the Social Credit Party of Canada.
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Carolyn Jessop's father became a polygamist when he married his wife's niece when Carolyn was a child.
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Carolyn Jessop describes her relationship to her parents as emotionally distant, with her father dominating her mother, and her mother taking out her anger on the children with such regularity that the children soon devised a strategy to get their beatings "out of the way" in the mornings.
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Carolyn Jessop spent most of her childhood in Colorado City, Arizona.
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Carolyn Jessop graduated from high school at the age of 17.
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Carolyn Jessop intended to attend college and then go to medical school to study pediatric medicine; instead, she was forced into an arranged marriage to Merril Carolyn Jessop at age 18.
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Merril Carolyn Jessop was 32 years her senior and already had three wives and more than 30 children, several of them his new wife's age and older; some had been her classmates.
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Once married, Carolyn Jessop did get to attend college, but her husband decided that she would study elementary education, not medicine.
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Carolyn Jessop had eight children with her husband, the last four after her doctors had warned her against further pregnancies.
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The final pregnancy was life-threatening and required an emergency hysterectomy, during which time, as Carolyn Jessop maintains, her husband and his family regarded her condition with disinterest.
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Carolyn Jessop contends that the resulting freedom from pregnancy helped her escape from her abusive marriage and volatile home situation.
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On May 4,2010, Carolyn Jessop released Triumph: Life After the Cult, a Survivor's Lesson, the autobiographical sequel to Escape.
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Carolyn Jessop reveals the various sources of strength and resources on which she has drawn as she overcame the obstacles to achieving success after a lifetime of trauma living inside a cult.
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Carolyn Jessop stated her opinion that the action in Texas was unlike the 1953 Short Creek raid in Arizona.
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Carolyn Jessop has been involved in several legal proceedings arising from her departure from and knowledge of the FLDS community.
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In 2009, Carolyn Jessop won a child support judgment against Merril Jessop in the approximate amount of $148,000 for support Merril Jessop failed to provide his children between 2003 and 2009 after they fled the FLDS community.
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In several criminal trials in Texas resulting from the April 2008 seizure of evidence at the YFZ Ranch, Carolyn Jessop was called as a witness for the State.