Is anyone watching Escaping The Prophet about FLDS?

Yes, I grew up in Utah, and my kids went to school with FLDS kids. Other than all those kids having the same last name, (at least 6 of them graduated from high school in one year). it was a pretty normal experience for my kids. My kids didn’t have any as friends though.

I’m just wondering if all of it can possibly be true. Locking parents up from their kids for disobeying, systematic rape and incest, forced abortions, regular physical beat downs for women, children and anyone disobeying. It’s like a police state, and they allow Jeffs to run it all from prison? I don’t understand why people are screaming to liberate these people who think this is normal.

Did those kids talk about home life with your kids? Or did you know any?

In general, it’s a very closed society, and they do not share personal stuff with strangers, probably less than other people would. I know that one family does so (to make money on the TV show), but mostly they don’t.

@snowberry Yeah, this lady says she’s from the cult and helps others escape, but they have to give up their families and all contact. They said that even when relocated two safe houses were firebombed because of their law enforcement contacts.

It just seems to radical to me, but then 19 kids and counting, and many other ‘shows’. I want to raise heck about those kids getting abused though!!

And every FLDS family is different. The one I knew of was very quiet. They ran a couple businesses in town and the kids all helped in the shops. As far as “locking people up” or beating kids and women, I don’t have a clue. There are autobiographies out there by people who have escaped polygamist life, and you could read them. If you want, when I get a minute, I could probably find one or two.

I am from a polygamist background. I have a grandfather who had 4 wives. Historically there has always been incest and physical abuse of every kind in such families, but of course, that never made it into the history books. LOL, but we all know it happened. It had to!

@snowberry I find polygamy fascinating as well, women all sharing and getting along in the same domain is a psychological nightmare for most of us to imagine. Most thing’s dealing with religion are interesting to me actually. The child abuse is something that I can get pretty worked up about though, for good reason.

I suspect the news stories we hear are from some isolated instances. In my opinion, most live in total obscurity because they have no such behavior.

It is also clear to me that children don’t have to live in polygamous families to be in danger.

@YARNLADY I don’t know, some people live in obscurity so no one sees what they’re doing and don’t interfere.

Of course you’re right about the danger, I didn’t mean to imply that it was only there or something.

In the frontier days, my grandmother’s grandmother was married to the same man her adult daughter was married to, at the same time.

Save me the Google: What does FDLS mean?

and why do you use so many acronyms?

Fundamentalist Latter-Day Saints (FLDS).

The Mormons are all about abbreviations.

I haven’t been watching this show, but I would if I had cable. I have a fascination with these groups as well. Got me through five seasons of Big Love, anyway.

I happened to pick up a book by someone who also grew up in a polygamist culture- Princess: A True Story of Life Behind the Veil in Saudi Arabia.

I know that this book has its detractors, but if you look at what she claims goes on in her polygamist culture and what we’ve already seen happen in the FLDS (try reading some of the “I escaped from polygamy” books I mentioned above), you will recognize the many similarities between them. Specifically I’m referring to child molestation, abuse, neglect, slavery, murder, and other criminal behavior. http://www.amazon.com/Princess-True-Story-Behind-Saudi/dp/0967673747/ref=pd_bxgy_b_text_z

Please don’t romanticize polygamy. You will miss the point.

@snowberry Hear, hear.

No, but I read Krakauer’s Under the Banner of Heaven – and it was fascinating.

@tom_g Funny, I was thinking about linking that as well.

Oh no, they got @snowberry!!

The reason for all the deviant behavior is that when you have dozens of children with multiple mothers and an essentially absent father is that they grow up with a very skewed understanding of what a real father or mother is. After all, how can they know? They’ve got to share the guy with so many other children that none of them know him, and their real mother is often one of many. Bonding often doesn’t happen, “daddy” often plays favorites with the wives, the children often engage in incest at an extremely early age, and as the boys grow up, there is no place for them in a polygamist society because the women are all taken or spoken for, so they are run out of town. These are the “lost boys” of the FLDS. http://www.childbrides.org/boys.html

I’m not saying this happens in every family, but with many of them, yes.