A triumphant story of escape from tyranny

REVIEW
Triumph
by Carolyn Jessop, Penguin, $40
This book is, in a word, disturbing.
Not a one-sitting wonder but a chapter by chapter account of tragedy, terror and abuse that I needed to read in instalments.
This is author Carolyn Jessop's second book, one where she comes face-to-face with her past again and how escaping an extremist Mormon sect, the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (FLDS), was the best decision she ever made.
Triumph is her account of a raid at one of the cult's ranches in America, where the "prophet" Warren Jeffs had relocated the sect's most worthy members.
Triumph is in part Carolyn Jessop's decision to testify in court against those who had previously inflicted all manner of wounds upon her and her children whom she smuggled out.
She is at times persecuted by those of her ex-faith, her past family and occasionally the society she ran to for help.
However, in the midst of the inadequacy she feels while speaking out, Carolyn Jessop comes to grips with the need to relate her experiences while in the cult; the mind games, physical abuse and gender inequality - to put it mildly.
Most of all, her heart is for the children being bought up in the FLDS with no way out and nowhere to turn if they choose to.
The harrowing accounts of girls as young as 13 made to marry men three or four times their age; the polygamy and hierarchy of wives; the teenage boys evicted from the cult so they couldn't compete with the older males for virginal brides-to-be.
This is a story that doesn't seem right or true, but the witnesses who have put their hands up and echoed Carolyn Jessop's testimony are many.
The thing which concerned me the most while reading Triumph was the reverberating thought, "If this is what's happening in America, and was for so long undetected, how much more could something like this be going on in New Zealand."
EXCERPT
THE DRAMA UNFOLDS
The place felt like a command center in a war zone. The FLDS (Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints) had always been a law unto itself and when Texas seized the children from the ranch it was tantamount to a declaration of war. The FLDS is one of the largest closed polygamous groups in the United States with tentacles throughout the western United States and into Canada and Mexico. They don't see themselves as being subject to the laws of their country. They had no qualms about taking on the nation's second largest state. I knew all this but doubted that the people working the crime scene did.
I was starting to feel numb but even so, I could not entirely block out the intense emotions that penetrated the atmosphere. An officer approached me and asked me to follow him to a room in the rear of the civic center. He introduced me to Brooks Long, the Texas Ranger in charge of the raid.
Long was a tall and rugged-looking man who apologized for his appearance, saying he'd been working around the clock since the raid began almost four days earlier. He'd been told I had relatives in custody and wanted to know if I'd be willing to answer a few questions. Without elaborating, he told me that because of what they'd found when they initially broke into the temple they now needed to go back to the judge for another warrant to search a room they'd been unable to get into with the first warrant.
Long asked me about my relationship to those living at the YFZ Ranch. I explained that I had been married to Merril Jessop for 17 years and had eight children with him. Long was stunned. "I am talking about Fredrick Merril Jessop, the man in charge of the ranch," he said. "Is he the man you are claiming you were married to?"
"Yes, he was my husband. I was married to him, along with six other wives."
"When did you leave him?"
"I didn't. I escaped with all of my children nearly six years ago."
"How did you get away?"
"It's a long story. Mark Shurtleff, the attorney general of the state of Utah got involved and helped me eventually get custody of my children."
Long was calm, but intensely focused. "If you were married to Merril, there are some things I need to know from you. Were you ever involved in a setting where you had an intimate relationship with other people watching?"
It was my turn to be shocked. I told him I'd never heard of anything like that ever happening when I was in the FLDS.
The questioning continued and I could tell they'd found something in the temple that had set off alarms. Long asked me several questions about the reason I was married to Merril. Then he said, "You know when you get a search warrant to look for pot, and find crack cocaine, methamphetamines, and other illegal things you didn't have the warrant to search for, it's still all evidence of a crime even if that wasn't what you went in looking for."
Long stopped for a few seconds and then shook his head. "How can I help these poor people? How can I get them to tell me the truth so I can protect them?"