Woman Who Escaped Polygamous Sect Revisits Past

March 1, 2006 — -- Last summer was Laurene Jessop's first trip back to polygamist-run Colorado City, Ariz., since her escape from, what was, to her, an isolated and forbidding world 18 months earlier. She had no idea what to expect.

"I'm nervous," she said. "I want to be able to walk through town and not be handcuffed, and if the police officers decide to handcuff me, what to say?"

Laurene said she was taken by force to a mental institution three times for disobeying her husband. She finally got away with the help of an anti-polygamy activist, and won custody of her five children.

Laurene returned to Colorado City several months ago to prove to herself that the polygamist sect that runs this town no longer has power over her, and to confront the demons from her past, including sexual abuse by her father.

Even after all that, Laurene found it difficult to completely break free from her past life. Recently, her journey took a strange U-turn back to Colorado City.

People in Colorado City are taught from a very young age that outsiders are evil, Laurene said. They wear clothes from another century, and they run from "Primetime's" cameras as they documented Laurene Jessop's journey.

The people in Colorado City also submit fervently to the rules of Warren Jeffs, a man they call "the prophet."

Jeffs, a leader of the Fundamentalist Church of Latter Day Saints, is in hiding, wanted on charges of forcing underage girls to marry older men. FDLS is a breakaway sect of the Mormon Church of Jesus Christ Latter Day Saints. The Mormon religion banned polygamy in 1890.

Laurene's father had four wives and 56 children. She said it was an oppressive childhood, with the outside world completely shut out.

"I remember one time looking out the window just feeling like I was trapped and wishing that I was free," Laurene said, pointing to the house where she grew up.

At 19, she married Val Jessop, an older man the sect chose for her. Her sister, Marie, was already married to Jessop.

"I always felt like I was an intruder," Laurene said.

Laurene and her sister have eight children with Val Jessop --five by Laurene and three by her older sister.

But Laurene says Marie was bitterly jealous from day one, beginning from the time she and Val consummated the marriage. She said her sister was even present when they had sex.

"He invited her into our bed. She just hugged his back -- hugged him all the way through," Laurene said. "It was very strange ... painful. And I was very shy. I was scared. I didn't dare say -- like I should have -- this is our wedding night. We should go to a motel, or we should have our own privacy."