FLDS Lifestyle Separates Mom, Daughter
By: Gary Tuchman, CNN
Updated: January 15, 2009
On the Texas ranch owned by Warren Jeff's polygamist sect known as the FLDS, a ranch closed off to most of the outside world, is this young lady named Betty...and she hopes to be married some day soon. "Would you like to someday have a sister wife or two?" asked reporter Gary Tuchman.
"Yeah, that's a part of my religion," replied Betty.
Tuchman and his CNN crew had been invited to the ranch to do a story on the hundreds of children who had been returned after this past spring's police raid.
The day after they spoke with 19-year-old Betty, the crew drove 45 miles from the ranch to attend a book signing.
Carolyn Jessup says she was forced to marry a 50-year-old man she despised when she was 18. She has written a book called "Escape", in which she writes about her harrowing escape from the FLDS in 2003 with her eight children. But in 2007, one of those children, a daughter, decided to go back.
In the book, Carolyn Jessup writes, "when she left, she promised to call, but none of us have been able to reach her by phone since her departure."
That child, is Betty.
Carolyn's ex husband and Betty's father is Merril Jessop. He's charged with presiding over an underage marriage. Jessop has pleaded not guilty. Carolyn says Betty is one of his 54 children.
FLDS leaders say Betty is free to go if she wants. Carolyn says there's enormous pressure on her not to.
"Do you think you'll be together again someday?" asked Tuchman.
"I do. I really do. I love her," said Betty.
But Betty says that will only happen, if her mother comes back to her.
"if you could spend a week in the outside world again, would you?" asks Tuchman.
"No. I spent four years there," replied Betty. "That's enough."
Carolyn Jessup gave her daughter life, but she no longer shares it.
