Escape

Erin Moriarty Reports On A Daring Escape From The FLDS And The Fallout That Followed

(CBS)  So on April 6, 1999, Laura took matters into her own hands and helped the girls escape under the cover of darkness. Clutching her belongings, Sarah was the first to be whisked away.

"And tears just ran down my face. I was just like 'She's such a child, how could she be a wife?'" Laura remembers.

Then it was time to pick up Sarah's best friend Kathy.

"How would you respond if someone said ‘How dare you take these teenagers from their parents?'" Moriarty asks.

"How dare these parents raise their children so isolated and restricted! No one should start their life that crippled in mainstream society. No one should," Laura argues.

Sarah and Kathy were hidden away in safe houses, but would need to go to court to make it official. In the meantime, the teenage girls started to experience the simple pleasures of being teenagers.

"According to them we are going to hell anyway, so we might as well have fun before we do," Sarah remarked at the time.

They began to shed every part of their old lives. "When he spun me around, I didn't recognize myself in the mirror. It didn’t occur to me that it was me," Sarah says, recalling seeing herself after her very first trip to a hair salon.

It was a life-transforming moment, says Sarah today. She is now 26 years old and living in the Northwest.

"That was a really tough decision for a 16-year-old, don't you think though? To walk away from your siblings, from your parents?" Moriarty asks.

"Yeah, it was my whole life," Sarah says. "And I knew that walking away that there was a possibility that I would never ever, ever see them again."

Asked what it was that led her to make that huge decision, Sarah says, "One of the big things that we kept hearing over and over and over again was they had to break my spirit. I laughed too much. I was too happy. If I would have stayed there, I wouldn't have survived."

But Sarah's escape would cause tragic consequences for the sisters and brothers she left behind. "If I would have known what was gonna happen with them, I don't know that I would have left," she says.

Later, Laura would soon learn about the steep price that Sarah paid for her freedom, and the fate of Sarah's best friend Kathy.

[gaye5]

I have read taht they are saying that these children shouldnt have been taken from their families that no crime has been committed...
WHAT ROT, polygamy is a crime and some of these men had many wives, shove them all in jail and leave them there, they have massively broken the law, yet I dont hear anyone saying that they have broken the law by having more than one wife..everyone just seems to be concerned that the children are getting got at, and it is obvious that they have so that is crime number two, stick them in jail and throw away the keys.. Pedophilia under the guise of marrying them young..

[cyberus-2009]

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Sarah says her mother was reassigned to "Uncle Fred" - Fred Jessop, a FLDS church bishop then living more than 200 miles away in Hilldale, Utah
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As far as I am concerned the *reassignment* of wives completely removes any claim of this being based on religion and makes it a *** ring run by a few perverts. Even if someone points to various parts of the bible supporting multiple wives nowhere does it say you get to swap them around like party favors.

[darnedsocks]

THIS IS SO SICK! LAWS SHOULD BE IN PLACE TO PROTECT CHILDREN "BEFORE" THEY ARE ABUSED!

"So when Laura got a call begging her to help Sarah and Kathy, she couldn''t refuse. "The girls said they had one week before their marriages would be performed. Sarah''s mother was making her wedding dress," Laura remembers.

Because one of the grooms was said to be in his 40s, Laura first tried to get Utah children''s services to intervene. "I was like, ''If 16-year-old girls are facing an arranged marriage in polygamy, can you help them?'' He said %u2018Not until they''ve had unwanted *** with an older man,''" she remembers. "

[rowdywicca]

What is the use of a CPS that says, ''We can''t do anything until you are forced into having *** with a man you don''t want to?'' Isn''t someone telling you that their right of choice is being subverted enough? Especially a 16 year old girl being forced into marriage with a 40 year old pervert?

What kind of sick law do wew have in this country that will allow this to happen to a young female?

[mommakat64]

These women and children live a religious "third world". No wonder the kids that make it out sometimes fall into drugs and *** and street life...until they can get their feet under them again. And Michael Savage just thinks this is such persecution...WHAT? The kids in foster care will get into drugs and ***...yeah, because they''ve been filled with such self-destructive lies, Michael. All they really need is to get out, be taught and believe that they ARE NOT tools of the self-aggrandizing men in their CULT. Michael, you are wrong, but you won''t listen to accounts of statutory rape and wife-swapping...sadly.

[gal50]

Every time a victim''s story comes out, it is far worse than what we could imagine. The forced marriages, the underage marriages, the abandonment of the boys, the reassignment of the families, the lack of education, the isolation of those who leave are all woven into a single story. Just as we start to think the reason people stay in the FLDS is brainwashing, we get hit with another reality which is that people stay because they don''t want to force those they love to suffer punishment.

It does sound like Nazi Germany. In the United States we have all of this freedom and yet there is a group that is severely controlled and denied many of these freedoms. I sure hope the federal government can step in and help.

And to Utah CPS, you should be able to take custody of girls when there is an intent to victimize them through a criminal act. Either you are misinformed or your laws are out of whack and need to be strengthened.