Linda Walker and Flora Jessop: "The Church, Child Abuse and the Law: Case Studies of Civil Complaints".
Flora Jessop (born 1969) is an American social activist, author, and advocate for abused children.
Jessop grew up in Colorado City, Arizona. She was raised in a polygamous family, with two mothers and twenty-seven siblings, all members of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (FLDS).
When she was sixteen years old, after years of abuse, including being impregnated by her own father and being forced to marry her first cousin, Phillip Jessop, she fled her family and faith.
After many years as a vagabond in Middle and Southwest America, Jessop gave birth to her first child, daughter Shauna.Jessop moved to Phoenix, Arizona where she soon met a man named Tim and created a family unit with him and their daughters, Shauna and Megan.
Tim's mother, Carol, would eventually reintroduce Jessop to Christianity. Jessop's divorce from her cousin Philip was finalized in 1995. In February 2001, Jessop and Tim married at the Church of the Valley in Phoenix, Arizona.
In April 2001, her younger sister Ruby was forced to marry her stepbrother, Haven Barlow. The ceremony, officiated by Warren Jeffs, would be the catalyst that turned Jessop into an advocate against child abuse in the FLDS community.
She helped, in a large part, to create the Child Protection Project. She is the cousin-by-marriage of Carolyn Jessop, another former FLDS member who wrote Escape, an autobiographical account of her upbringing in the polygamist sect and later flight from that community.
Jessop has been active since the early 2000s in anti-child abuse work particularly focusing on the plight of women and children in the FLDS.
She founded an organization, "Help the Child Brides" (later dissolved) and later joined "Child Protection Project" with fellow activist Linda Walker.
Jessop is the author of a book, Church of Lies, telling her personal story. "I live in Phoenix, Arizona with my husband and two children. Born in Hildale, Utah, I fought hard for my freedom, just as the children trapped today fight for their right to be free. After turning to the Department of Child and Family Services (DCFS) for protection, I was sent back to the polygamy compound, into the cult I asked them to protect me from. I was severely punished for running away and spent the next three years in seclusion, held hostage..."
Linda Walker is the founder of The Child Protection Project: I am particularly interested in how institutions, especially churches, ignore child abuse reporting requirements; and thus cause unnecessary suffering and pain to children and families.
Our religious institutions must be good corporate citizens because their mandate as tax-exempt beneficial, charitable organizations requires them to ensure that children entrusted to their care are safe.
Flora Jessop is the EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR.
For more information, their full statements and stories from above and on how you can help, please visit:
http://www.childpro.org/about.html?arr=lw
Thank you for all of your efforts in helping save and protect these innocent children, from these very destructive and Horrific influences and situations in the FLDS church.
