Breaking Free
By Rachel Jeffs
This week's book is a bit late because I was reading it until today. I had been reading a couple of other books and I wasn't getting into them. You know that feeling when you can't put a book down. I know I am not that into a book when I am constantly looking at Facebook or Pinterest or whatever. I also find myself thinking about how far behind I am on quilting or something like that.
Anyway, this past weekend I was helping my sister box up some of her books. My brother in law and sister are avid readers. She gave me back a whole stack of books I had brought her and a few of the books stuck out to me. One of them was the sister wives book a read a few months back and another one was the 19th Wife. Both of these books are about plural marriage but are much different stories. Sister Wives is about modern people who have entered plural marriage by choice by their own free will and can leave at anytime. The 19th wife is about the history of the Mormon church and the compounds that are still around today where there are child brides and men that have dozens of wives which can't leave their situation. Both of these books convinced me that I should read a book I bought a few months ago called Breaking Free.
This book is an autobiography of Warren Jeffs’ eldest daughter, Rachel Jeffs. If you don't happen to know who Warren Jeffs is well he was (and for as much as I can figure out still is) the “prophet” of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. He is currently serving two life sentences for sexual assault on two of his child brides, but really he did much more than that. According to his daughter and the author of this week's book, he sexually abused her for years. I never thought of the fundamentalist sect of the Latter Day Saints as a cult. I thoughts of “those” people as like the Amish, living a life different than the norm, but not hurting anyone. I mean I have known Mormons and watched Big Love on HBO, heck I just explained I have read other books about this certain topic. But I will be honest, this group of people sound like brainwashed idiots. After the FBI really began cracking down on polygamy, their leader started telling them to move around the country. Everyone had to follow all their bat-crap crazy rules that he himself didn't follow. He would tell different disciples that God was punishing them for things they didn't even do. The author was married at the age of eighteen to a man she didn't really know and became his third wife. He was nice enough to her, but her sister wives were horrible to her. She ended up having five children with her husband and they were constantly getting severely hurt in a lot of accidents. She seemed happy enough in her situation being away from her sexually abusive father and falling in love with her husband, but then the FBI started to investigate her father and the child brides. I actually remember watching one of the raids at work while I was in college. At the time I thought I didn't understand what the big deal was. It seemed all these women who looked like extras on little house on the prairie were having their children taken from them and everyone was crying. After FBI cracked down, our author kept getting separated from her family and friends constantly due to her father punishing her for crimes she didn't commit.
We know she got out of that life, considering she wrote this book and the fact the book is titled “Breaking Free: How I Escaped Polygamy, the FLDS Cult, and My Father, Warren Jeffs” I'm not giving away how the book ends. I thought it was a good read and educated me about how it could be in that way of life. It showed me how people sometimes can be so ingrained in a way of life they can't see their way out. I am not saying that some people weren't happy in their situation, but I find it very hard to see how I personally could do with no free will. As a mother, I couldn't be sending my little girl off to be with a man she doesn't know at an age as early as twelve. Equally I couldn't share my husband with God knows how many wives. I would recommend the book if you are interested in this topic, it was very educational.
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