Banking On Heaven
CBS) The still-unfolding drama at the polygamist compound in Eldorado, Texas is focusing renewed attention on the world of polygamy. Some 200 women and children were removed Friday and Saturday from a compound built by polygamist leader Warren Jeffs after a 16-year-old girl complained of abuse. State troopers were looking for evidence of a marriage of the girl, who is said to have had a baby at 15, and 50-year-old Dale Barlow. Girls younger than 16 cannot marry under Texas law, even with parental approval. On The Early Show Monday, co-anchor Julie Chen spoke with Laurie Allen, who was born into polygamy and escaped at age 30. Her documentary, "Banking on Heaven," exposes the struggles women and children face in a polygamist sect. "(Polygamy is) a life where, as a female, you really don't think for yourself, you're basically told what to do.
You really are just a breeding machine to further the agenda of the male patriarchy," Allen told Chen. "This is what I experienced. "And it's just a very oppressive environment -- or repressive. You know, you don't get education. I never finished the fourth grade growing up. So, when you do finally get the wherewithal to get out, it takes about 20 years to really transition into the outside world and to discover your own identity, because you've been taught all your life to just do what you're told."
...Allen added that most of the people taken from the compound "will want to go back. And this is what's so amazing about it. They're so abused. They're literally slaves, yet they just can't wait to get back. I know many cases where they were -- the children have been on the outside, the females for several years, and the day they turn 18, they go right back to the cult."
Allen says it took her almost 20 years to overcome what she was taught and went through in a polygamist sect, she says, including "going ... back and forth. I escaped when I was 16, then I just kept going back. I just couldn't find myself in the outside world. Then I went back, I was married. I was a third wife. Then finally, I got out and went to college, and it just clicked one day."more here
You know survivors say the sect's grave yards are filled with dead children.
You really are just a breeding machine to further the agenda of the male patriarchy," Allen told Chen. "This is what I experienced. "And it's just a very oppressive environment -- or repressive. You know, you don't get education. I never finished the fourth grade growing up. So, when you do finally get the wherewithal to get out, it takes about 20 years to really transition into the outside world and to discover your own identity, because you've been taught all your life to just do what you're told."
...Allen added that most of the people taken from the compound "will want to go back. And this is what's so amazing about it. They're so abused. They're literally slaves, yet they just can't wait to get back. I know many cases where they were -- the children have been on the outside, the females for several years, and the day they turn 18, they go right back to the cult."
Allen says it took her almost 20 years to overcome what she was taught and went through in a polygamist sect, she says, including "going ... back and forth. I escaped when I was 16, then I just kept going back. I just couldn't find myself in the outside world. Then I went back, I was married. I was a third wife. Then finally, I got out and went to college, and it just clicked one day."more here
You know survivors say the sect's grave yards are filled with dead children.
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