Triumph: Life After the Cult--A Survivor's Lessons

by Carolyn Jessop

  I have never understood why homeschoolers are so defensive. If you are educating your children well, why fear accountability?

  Texas has barely any standards for homeschooling. The Texas Home School Coalition requires homeschoolers to use a curriculum, but it doesn’t have to be approved by the state. Homeschools in Texas are classified as private schools and not subject to state regulation. Public schools in Texas must be in session 180 days a year, and students cannot miss more than ten of those days. Students in Texas private schools, by contrast, do not need to register with their local school district, and there are no requirements for attendance or minimum length of the school day. Texas also does not require private school students to pass any mandatory or standardized tests to ensure that they’re learning. It’s hard to see how that protects the caliber of the education that Texas children receive.

  Public schools operate with a myriad of checks and balances; these are absent when homeschools don’t have to be accountable. Only when a child goes into the job market or tries to go to college does an inadequate preparation become apparent.

  Homeschooling parents love their children and undoubtedly want the best for them. But as a teacher, I know that parents aren’t always the best judges of how their children are learning. Teaching is both a skill and an art. Not everyone can teach, and certainly not everyone should. Great teachers have not just knowledge but passion and commitment. Highly accomplished and talented people can be terrible teachers. And experience matters. The longer I taught, the better a teacher I became. My college degree provided a foundation, but my students kept me learning, growing, and inspired.

  One of my friends in the FLDS was also a certified teacher with a college degree. She had three handicapped children and tried to care for them and homeschool her other five kids. She soon realized this was too much and let her children join other FLDS homeschoolers. It was a disaster. The teachers were so unskilled that the woman’s children didn’t learn. So she went back to teaching them herself. Even with fewer hours of “school,” her kids learned more from her because she was a trained teacher.

  I also know from my teaching experience that not everyone can handle every subject. Homeschoolers are often taught all subjects by the same person. This aspect of homeschooling deeply concerns me. I was a superb reading teacher and did well in math and science, but I felt less proficient in subjects like social studies and music. Part of what I think is invaluable in public education is that children learn from a variety of individuals.

  In addition, homeschooling parents often teach three or four of their children at once. It’s extremely demanding, even for a trained teacher, to teach different ages simultaneously. My colleagues and I all brought additional material into our classrooms. But we were doing it for a single grade level. It’s an enormous undertaking to put several lesson plans together every day for several subject areas and several grades.

  Children also learn a tremendous amount from the social interaction that takes place in school. Children who behave inappropriately are usually called on it by their peers, and the interaction among the kids helps them regulate themselves. Children also learn from school how to navigate around difficult personalities. Since these types inevitably show up in the adult world, why not get kids acclimated earlier?

  Parents often are in denial about the academic problems or learning issues their children have, which compromises their ability as teachers. The sooner kids get help in areas in which they struggle, the more quickly they turn around. Public schools, while far from perfect, have resources to draw on that help children succeed, including learning specialists, tutors, classroom aides for kids with special needs, individualized learning plans for children with challenges, and sometimes even medication for kids with serious hyperactivity or attention issues.

  The public school system can seem unresponsive and inadequate, but I firmly believe it succeeds more often than it fails. I watched my second graders learn social skills they’ll use for the rest of their lives. Also, it’s a rare child who does not know how to manipulate his or her parents in some way. Homeschooled children are no exception; they’re equally capable of trying to “work the system” to get what they want.

  It’s also easier to hide cruelty or neglect when children are kept out of public schools. When a child comes to school every day, a teacher can pick up on the physical or behavioral changes that signal abuse and can take appropriate action.

  For some children, homeschooling unquestionably has value, and many, many homeschooling parents are extremely conscientious. My greatest concern is with individuals and groups like the FLDS that use homeschooling to indoctrinate and control their members.

  There is another, sometimes overlooked, factor in the public-versus-homeschool debate: public schools prepare children to get up every day, get dressed, and get somewhere on time. Since discipline is crucial to any kind of success, children need to acquire this life skill. Homeschoolers can sleep in if they’re up late the night before or if their parents have other things to do. Lunchtime can be whenever. Children also need to learn to separate from their parents and see themselves as distinct individuals. This transition, I think, is harder to make in the homeschooling environment.

  As for homeschoolers’ complaints about public school curricula, I have long felt that if parents are concerned about controversial ideas or a damaging environment at school, the best way to cope is by becoming involved in their child’s education. I always encourage parents to volunteer at their children’s school and to help out in the classroom. Children love it when parents engage with their education. Some of the children I taught, especially those from big polygamous families, felt like king or queen for the day when their moms came to the classroom.

  I remember a group of mothers who were concerned both about their children’s behavior and about what the kids were being exposed to at the school where I taught. They took turns babysitting for one another’s younger children so that they could volunteer in their kids’ classrooms. These moms stayed actively involved until their sons and daughters were in junior high school. That’s when kids typically become too embarrassed to have their moms in the classroom, so these women sought out ways to help in other areas of the school. It was win-win. The children understood that they had moms who were on top of their behavior at school, yet they had the latitude to be who they were and get a good education. And for me, having parents in the classroom supporting my work was a godsend. It meant I could focus more on the children who needed extra attention. The children knew that and were proud that their moms’ help enabled me to help someone else.

  Homeschooled kids tend to be isolated from different ideas and ways of seeing the world. Their views can become extremely limited as a result. Children who never set foot in a classroom miss out on so much. They rarely meet children from homes with a different culture or perspective on life. Exposure to those differences can plant seeds that nurture intellectual growth. Curiosity and an open mind are essential if a child is to reach full potential.

  Homeschooling is on the rise. In the past eight years, by one estimate, the number of homeschooling parents has jumped 44 percent nationwide. In 2007 homeschooled children numbered approximately 1.5 million, according to the National Center for Education Statistics. According to the center’s research, there are three main reasons for homeschooling: in 36 percent of the families, religious reasons drive the decision; in 21 percent, it’s concerns about the school environment; in 17 percent, it’s unhappiness with the academic instruction their children are receiving.

  I believe the homeschooling movement should stop being shortsighted and should encourage more government oversight. But that is unlikely to happen because religious fundamentalism drives so many of the decisions to homeschool. Responsible homeschoolers have nothing to fear from being held accountable.

  Many of the “lost boys” who were kicked out of the FLDS are unable to read much beyond a first-grade level. They are victims of educational a
buse. Many argue that the public school system produces children who can’t read, and sadly that is sometimes true. But in my experience, severe learning disabilities are almost always the underlying problem.

  In 1998 the three of my six children who attended public schools were forced to leave them and enroll in FLDS “schools.” This development seriously alarmed me. I was powerless to protect my children even from an action or philosophy that I was adamantly opposed to. As a teacher, I knew that the education they’d be receiving would be a joke. I wanted my children taught by accredited teachers, like myself, who were dedicated and committed to education, not to religious indoctrination. My children’s futures were on the line. How could I acquiesce to a change that would have an enormous and defining impact on them every day for the rest of their lives? I wanted my children to be educated to their fullest potentials, and they were about to be robbed of this legally protected right.

  The only way to guarantee this right for FLDS children is to regulate homescooling more closely. Ultimately, I think, this issue will attract enough heat that stricter regulations will have to be implemented. We need laws that contain reasonable checks and balances to protect children from abuse not only in the homeschooling environment but in all educational venues. And the homeschooling movement itself should take a leadership role in insisting that the privilege of homeschooling not be undermined or abused by cults and sects whose agenda is to indoctrinate and brainwash believers’ children.

  Tuning In to Self-Respect

  By the summer of 2000 all FLDS children had been taken out of public schools, and our access to the outside world through media and newspapers was essentially shut down. Children were sent to “religious” schools, and only Warren Jeffs could approve the curriculum. (Although Rulon Jeffs was still alive, his son was effectively running the FLDS.) Parents were not allowed to have any other educational material in their homes. It was around this time that the large collection of children’s books I’d been amassing for years was destroyed.

  But I had a radio. It had been a gift from Merril on our first wedding anniversary, the only one he ever gave me. Little did he know that it would become my source for a radical and liberating view of my role as a woman, mother, and wife.

  I became hooked on the Dr. Laura show. I first heard her on my car radio. Then I started listening to her in secret after I came home from the hospital with Bryson, my eighth child, having nearly died in childbirth. I kept the volume low and locked my bedroom door so no one in the family would walk in unexpectedly and catch me listening. Her show was on in the afternoon, when the young children were napping, the older ones were in school, and Merril was usually out. The house was quiet. The family rarely helped me with Harrison, so I could count on uninterrupted time when I was in my bedroom caring for him.

  Dr. Laura Schlessinger eventually became quite controversial for her incendiary comments about homosexuality, with which I disagreed. But I learned important lessons from her about setting boundaries and holding myself accountable. I also learned that my passivity helped make Merril’s crimes possible. This idea was new to me.

  Dr. Laura affirmed unequivocally that I had rights as a woman and value as a human being. No one had ever told me that before. Nor had anyone ever challenged my religious beliefs as she did. She urged women to think and be responsible for themselves. It began to dawn on me that one of the rights I had was the right to protect my children. This view put me in direct opposition to Merril. I was walking a fine line that led straight to hell. Hell was a bedrock belief in the FLDS and terrifying to contemplate. That was the point: the greater the chokehold of fear over our lives, the more easily we were controlled. And even though I hated the FLDS and the tyranny of Merril Jessop, the threat of hell was still all too real for me.

  Dr. Laura made me question that, too. I began asking myself, How much worse could hell be than the life I was actually living? I concluded that I must have already been handed over to the devil when I was forced to marry Merril. In the FLDS we believed our husbands determined where we went in the afterlife. If Merril was abusive on earth, why would he stop in heaven? Being stuck with Merril for eternity—now that would be pure hell.

  Even so, the thought of cutting myself off from the faith that was my one connection to God was terrifying. I had no alternative vision. My beliefs were like walls inside me. Now I know that these beliefs severed me from reality, but I couldn’t see that then. The mind control I’d been raised with made me believe that anyone who left the work of God would be punished forever. The cost of sinning might be AIDS, rape, addiction, or prostitution. If God’s spirit was removed from my life, according to the FLDS, I could go insane, commit suicide, and would never be happy again. Without any chance of salvation, my soul was condemned to rot in hell. I’d never have another man in my life, and I’d always be impoverished. In the FLDS we believed in Armageddon, and when the final battles were unleashed, who would protect me and my children?

  But I kept listening every afternoon. I was learning about a world beyond anything I could have ever imagined. I’ll never forget the woman who called in and said she wanted to divorce her husband because he bought her a car that was the wrong color. Dr. Laura was not sympathetic to her; she was against divorce when it was for selfish reasons, especially when children were involved. But for me, the idea that a woman would even consider leaving her husband for something like that was mind-boggling. I was not used to women feeling they had the right to exercise that level of control.

  Women called in who were frustrated by their husbands’ refusal to help with housework or child-rearing. These women felt entitled to have genuine partners, and Dr. Laura agreed. She validated their feelings and encouraged women to stand up for their needs. She was adamant in her support for women who were in abusive relationships or who worried that their children were in danger of sexual or physical abuse. I’d never heard anyone take such a strong stand against violence toward children. Nor had I ever heard someone say that a mother who failed to protect her child was negligent. This was a radical notion of parenting but one I identified with immediately.

  All my experience in the FLDS centered on the need to use harsh discipline to mold a child. The prophet Rulon Jeffs once said, “If you have not taught your children obedience by the time they are three years old, you may lose them.”

  The idea of allowing a child to grow and flourish creatively contradicted every FLDS notion of parenting. This attitude of control and domination over children goes right to the heart of the religion. Brigham Young, the founder of the Mormon Church in the nineteenth century, said, “I would rather see every child I have go into the grave this day than suffer them to rise up and have control over me.”

  Dr. Laura’s ideas would be considered heretical in the FLDS, but they were welcome to my ears. The outside world that I had been taught to believe was evil was sounding exactly the opposite. But could I really reject the FLDS? I took seriously my birthright of six generations in polygamy. I still believed I was a special spirit who’d been chosen in my preexistence to come to earth to do God’s work. (The FLDS believes that spirits live before they are handpicked to incarnate into human bodies with a mission to fulfill. There is also a belief that in the afterlife a couple like Merril and Barbara can create “spirit children” who will then populate a planet that Merril will be God over.) For generations my mother and all my grandmothers had sacrificed their personal feelings in order to live the gospel. Wasn’t I obligated to have as many children as possible to provide bodies to those waiting in the preexistence to come to earth and work on their salvation?

  I listened to Dr. Laura regularly for almost a year. She helped give me the confidence I needed to begin to make serious plans to escape with eight children. I worried about how we would make it out safely, and I felt guilty about tearing my children away from the only life they had ever known. But I wasn’t about to leave anyone behind.

  The gravitational pull I felt toward the Dr. Laura show was i
ntense. I had to keep listening to her. I knew I could not survive forever as a captive of the FLDS. Hearing Dr. Laura say day after day, in one way or another, that as a human being I had the right to protection was like a healing rain on my withered soul. I felt valued. The callers’ direct questions and Dr. Laura’s no-nonsense answers were penetrating the walls that I felt unable to scale. At that point I saw no way out of my prison, but every afternoon something vital slipped through the bars.

  When she said that it is not only a mother’s right but her obligation to protect her children, she was voicing something I felt intuitively but could never express. Likewise, I always believed it was wrong to physically hurt a child. But in the FLDS children were routinely beaten as a way to instill obedience to God and to offer proof of a righteous mother. A woman who beat her children in rage, frustration, or desperation could honestly believe she was being devout and faithful.

  When my daughter LuAnne was ten, Lorraine, one of Merril’s wives, took her out to the garden and beat her with a willow stick. Afterward LuAnne told me it hurt worse than being beaten with the garden hoe, which she’d also experienced. (The garden was where children were often taken for beatings, and a hoe was often used.) I was furious when I found out and let Lorraine know. From then on I turned my back on her and refused to hug her after evening prayers when all the wives were supposed to embrace. It was one way to stand up for my daughter, even though it went against all my religious traditions.

  I told Merril what had happened to LuAnne. He said I had absolutely no right to believe a child’s story over the truth from one of his wives. He insisted that Lorraine had not been involved in anything that went against his wishes and that LuAnne had not been hurt. According to Merril, my accusations were what injured my daughter. I had been standing up for my children for years and had gained practice in becoming more assertive. From the moment my first child was born, I had followed my heart about protecting my children. But I lived in a world that insisted I do the opposite, and consistent feedback told me that my actions were wrong. Dr. Laura was very logical, and her logic matched my heart and my instincts. I knew I had been right to follow my conscience. This was the first affirmation I had ever been given in my life that I was doing the right thing in protecting my children. I continued to make it clear that anyone who touched my children would be held accountable. I drew boundaries. It might sound simple to someone who’s always had that power in her life, but for me it was a radical new step and one I owe to Dr. Laura.