Instagram Andrea Brewer and Jessica Christensen, two of the women featured on Lifetime's Escaping Polygamy, grew up in a polygamist group in Salt Lake City known as "The Order."
Andrea Brewer and Jessica Christensen, two of the women featured on Lifetime’s Escaping Polygamy, grew up in a polygamist group in Salt Lake City known as “The Order.” Both women share Daniel Kingston as their father, and both managed to escape the polygamist group and the abuse they endured.
Several years after Andrea and Jessica escaped the Order, they began filming the docu-series Escaping Polygamy, which documents the women meeting with others who are trying to escape polygamist families.
Jessica is the oldest of 12 children to Kingston and his sixth wife, Heidi Mattingly Foster. When she was just 14-years-old, she was courted by her 42-year-old uncle to become his third wife. She was able to run away before she she was married to him with the help of her aunt, who helped both Jessica and Andrea escape by calling the police and filing a protective order against Kingston. You can read more about Jessica’s story below, courtesy of Lifetime:
During a nationally covered custody battle, Jessica was placed in foster care. Eventually, the court found Daniel and Heidi were abusive and neglectful and they relinquished their parental rights to both daughters. Jessica was then adopted by a family the day after her 18th birthday. Finally free of The Order, Jessica has spent the past few years of her life helping other people escape the horror of a life she once knew. Today, she is married with three daughters and is currently pursuing a master’s degree in social work.
Andrea was 12-years-old when she escaped. Unfortunately, Andrea and Jessica were separated in foster care, but the sisters remained close throughout the years and teamed up to help others escape the same lives they once lived. Today, Andrea is a lawyer in Seattle, Washington, and Jessica is married with three daughters and is currently pursuing a master’s degree in social work, according to Lifetime.
Besides her career in law, Andrea continues to speak out against polygamy on her Twitter account, and is usually happy to answer any questions anyone asks her about her old life. Her bio says she is a Civil Litigation Attorney and an advocate for polygamy survivors. She is also one of the founders of Hope After Polygamy, a non-profit that “awards scholarships & uses existing resources for life skills that those from #polygamy are deprived from.”
seeking mental health after leaving polygamy, in the beginning, is often in the form of our own research through “self-help” books that help us process our traumatic pasts. Click the link to see some of the books that helped us
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Next to raising her family, Jessica continues to fight polygamy alongside her sisters Andrea and Shanell DeRieux. Jessica’s Instagram account features dozens of pictures of her family and has a link to her blog in the bio, which highlights the abuse she survived as a child and her experiences with polygamy, as well as her life after she escaped, including when her “forever” family adopted her and when she had her children.
On her Instagram page, she shared a picture of herself, Andrea, and the other women that feature on Escaping Polygamy, writing “As always thank you for your support, it means alot [sic] to me and those in the raw vulnerable experience of leaving the life they’ve known for a future of unknowns.”
Tune in on Mondays at 10/9c to catch the Escaping Polygamy.