Rachel Jeffs, Author of BREAKING FREE

The Total Tutor Neil Haley will interview Rachel Jeffs, Author of BREAKING FREE.

As Warren Jeffs, leader of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (FLDS), serves a sentence of life plus 20 years in a federal penitentiary in Texas for child sexual assault, he still has an iron grip on the notorious polygamous cult. With seventy-eight wives and fifty-three children, the self-proclaimed prophet’s control of FLDS extends wide and deep, and many of his followers remain silent about his shocking transgressions. Rachel Jeffs, one of his many daughters, is not among them. In a courageous personal memoir of resilience and redemption, BREAKING FREE: How I Escaped Polygamy, the FLDS Cult, and my Father, Warren Jeffs (Harper; on sale November 14, 2017; $27.99), Rachel chronicles the shocking details her singular life, from her insular childhood to her eventual liberation, for the first time revealing the facts about her father’s sexual abuse, which began when she was eight years old.

 “The most important rule in the FLDS religion is this: Never question the Prophet,” Rachel writes with the hindsight and strength of a survivor. Since that self-appointed prophet was her father, Rachel grew up not questioning the unconventional daily realities she lived or the personal ordeals to which she was subjected. Her closest sister was also her cousin, their mothers sisters. Living in rural poverty, often with little to eat, the children were raised through indoctrination and humiliation. Rachel was singled out by her father for “special time” in his office that led to years of sexual abuse. When she revealed what was going on to her mother, nothing changed.