Carolyn Jessop fears for her life and the survival of her eight children. "Ugly realities" highlight her first-person account of a life inside a religious cult known as the Fundamentalist of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (FLDS).
•Members believe polygamy is a requirement for salvation.
•Sex is power in the FLDS.
•Sex is scheduled among wives.
•A woman without children has no power or status.
•Women are supposed to be in complete harmony with her husband.
•Wives can discipline another woman’s child.
•Wives are extremely competitive with one another.
•Women in the FLDS give birth in the local clinic.
•Women are expected to be perfectly silent during childbirth.
•Other wives are expected to be present during other wives’ childbirths.
•July 24, Pioneer Day, is the FLDS’s biggest Mormon holiday.
•The Harvest Festival is the FLDS version of a county fair.
•Birthdays are rarely celebrated.
•Working wives hand over their entire salary to their husbands.
•Many members receive government benefits.
•Members believe the second death happens in the afterlife when a spirit is killed off for the rest of eternity.
•In the FLDS, refusing to have siex with one’s husband is considered to be adultery.
•It is a sin for a woman to talk about abuse, if she is being abused, it is because she is not in harmony with her husband.
•Members are taught to fear the outside world.
•Men are not allowed to interfere in another man's family.
•Childhood immunizations are not allowed.
•Water is considered to be the devils’s doman.
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