Betty Mahmoody

Betty Mahmoody (born June 9, 1945 in Alma, Michigan) is an American author and public speaker best known for her book, Not Without My Daughter, which was subsequently made into a film of the same name. She is the President and co-founder of One World: For Children, an organization that promotes understanding between cultures and strives to offer security and protection to children of bi-cultural marriages.

Her book Not Without My Daughter is an account of her experiences in 1984–1986, when she left Alpena, Michigan, to go to Iran with her husband and daughter for what she was promised would be a short visit. Once there, she and her daughter were held against their will. The book was made into a 1991 film starring Sally Field as Betty.

According to the book, she and her husband, Sayyed Bozorg Mahmoody, and her daughter, Mahtob Mahmoody, traveled to Iran in August 1984 for what her husband said would be a two-week visit with his family in Tehran. Once the two weeks were over, however, he refused to allow his wife and child to leave. Mahmoody became trapped in a nation that was hostile to Americans, a family hostile to her, and an abusive husband. According to the book, her husband separated her from her daughter for weeks on end. He also assaulted her, and threatened to kill her if she tried to leave.

She eventually escaped with her daughter. The book details her 500 mi (800 km) escape to Turkey through the snowy Iranian mountains, and the help she received from many Iranians. After returning to America in 1986, Betty filed for divorce.

Mahmoody compiled stories of other parents whose foreign spouses estranged them from their children in the book For the Love of a Child (1992).

Alexis Kouros collaborated with Mahmoody's ex-husband to create a documentary, Without My Daughter, to counter the claims in Betty's book. The documentary shows the amount of racism and hysterical Anti-Iranian measures taken by the media post 1979.

On August 23, 2009, Sayyed Bozorg Mahmoody died in Tehran, Iran, aged 70. The state news agency IRNA quoted his nephew, Majid Ghodsi, as reporting that he died in a hospital from kidney problems and other complications.

Mahmoody is a devout member of the Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod like her daughter Mahtob.