Betty Mahmoody

Betty Mahmoody is an American author and public speaker. In 1984, during a visit to Iran with her husband and daughter, he refused to let them return to the United States, holding them captive in Iran and subjecting them to constant abuse until she escaped with her daughter to Turkey in 1986. After she and her daughter returned to the US and after her divorce to Moody, she garnered media attention in 1987 when she published Not Without My Daughter, a memoir recounting her captivity in Iran. MGM-Pathé Communications adapted her memoir into a film in 1991.