The Secret Lives of Saints - Child Brides and Lost Boys in a Polygamous Mormon Sect

"My name is Flora Jessop. I've been called apostate, vigilante, and crazy bitch, and maybe I am. But some people call me a hero, and I'd like to think they're right too. If I am a hero, maybe it's because every time I can play a part in saving a child or a woman from a life of servitude and degradation, I'm saving a little piece of me, too.

I was one of twenty-eight children born to my dad and his three wives. Indoctrinated to believe that the outside world was evil, and that I resided among the righteous, I was destined to marry a man chosen for me by the Prophet. I would then live in harmony with my sister-wives, bear many children, and obey and serve my future husband in this life and throughout eternity. But my innocence didn't last long. While still a child, I understood that the church of the righteous was nothing but a church of lies.

When I was eight years old my father sexually molested me for the first time, raping me when I was twelve. I tried to kill myself. Beaten, molested, taunted, and abused by family members alleging they only wanted to save my soul became a daily routine, I ran from this abuse more than once in my early teens--even attempting to cross the desert on foot. My family hunted me down. I thought government agencies would provide me safety if I reported my father. Instead, police and social services colluded with the FLDS to return me to my family and I ended up back inside polygamy, right where I started."

Flora goes on from there to tell the dramatic true story of how she ultimately escaped and has been fighting against frustrating obstacles with hard fought successes in rescuing women and children from the FLDS. It's a story you can't put down.

Though Sophia (Kristyn Decker,) wasn?t entirely aware of it until she began writing this book, she had always been on her way out of polygamy. It started with baby steps?from early years of neglect, molestation, and abuse?to giant steps, after marrying at seventeen and then eight years later encouraging her husband to take another wife?and further onward. To avoid feelings of anger, jealousy, and pain, Sophie graciously kept a sweet smile plastered across her face and became a numb but ?righteous? workaholic.

During many tumultuous years as a polygamist wife, mother, leader, teacher, and passionate person, most of her questions and concerns were never fully answered. Her heart struggled with what were deemed God?s commandments and his myriad of puzzle pieces that never quite seemed to fit. Her flight from polygamy truly began to soar when a friend rescued her from years of self-loathing and suicidal depression. Propelling her onward was Sophie?s plight to get her sixteen-year-old daughter off the streets and off drugs. As her daughter began receiving court-appointed therapeutic help, Sophie began to discover herself?a woman she now loves and honors.

After five decades of anguish and lies?of watching herself and others fail a commandment fraught with impossible rules and threats of heaven or hell, Sophie chose heaven.

This is her story.

Please visit her website, fiftyyearsinpolygamy.com