Surviving My Father: Rachel Jeffs Story Premieres Oct 4 on Lifetime

Lifetime’s new made-for-television film Surviving My Father The Rachel Jeffs Story premieres Saturday, Oct. 4 at 8 p.m. Eastern, dramatizing the life of Rachel Jeffs and her escape from the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. The biopic, based on Jeffs’s 2018 memoir Breaking Free How I Escaped Polygamy, the FLDS Cult, and My Father, Warren Jeffs, follows her departure from a heavily guarded polygamist community and her efforts to rescue her children.

According to her memoir, Rachel Jeffs was raised in the FLDS community led by her father, Warren Jeffs, a leader of the sect who has been convicted of crimes related to his practices. The book and the film recount years of psychological manipulation, isolation, and what Jeffs describes as purity tests and abuse. She says she was married at 18 and that she escaped the community in a covert operation in 2014, leaving with five children and later returning to retrieve the rest of her family.

Lifetime describes the film as “a powerful story of resilience,” and the network says the production chronicles Jeffs’s path from victim to advocate. The movie stars Kaitlyn Bernard as Rachel Jeffs, Michael Eklund as Warren...