ST. GEORGE, Utah - The leader of a polygamous Mormon splinter group was convicted Tuesday of being an accomplice to rape for performing a wedding between a 19-year-old man and a 14-year-old girl.
Warren Jeffs, 51, could get life in prison after a trial that threw a spotlight on a renegade community along the Arizona-Utah line where as many as 10,000 of Jeffs' followers practice plural marriage and revere him as a mighty prophet with dominion over their salvation.
Jeffs, like his 15 followers in the courtroom, stood stoically as the verdict was read.
Prosecutors said Jeffs forced the girl into marriage and sex against her will.
The jury deliberated about 16 hours over three days. On Tuesday morning, the judge replaced a juror with an alternate for undisclosed reasons.
While polygamy itself was not on trial ? the couple were monogamous ? the case focused attention on the practice of polygamy in Utah, where it has generally been tolerated in the half-century since a government raid in 1953 proved a public relations disaster, with children photographed being torn from their mothers' arms.
Jeffs succeeded his father in 2002 as president of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. Former members say he rules with an iron fist, demanding perfect obedience from followers and exercising the right to arrange marriages as well as break them up and assign new spouses.
At the trial, widely different versions of the relationship ? and Jeffs' influence ? were presented by the woman, now 21, and her former husband, Allen Steed, 26.
At their wedding in 2001 at a Nevada motel, the woman said, she cried in despair when pressed by Jeffs to say "I do" and had to be coaxed to kiss her new husband. The woman testified that FLDS girls receive no information about their bodies or reproduction. She said she didn't even know sex was the means by which women had babies.
The woman said the couple were married for at least a month before they had intercourse, her husband telling her it was "time for you to be a wife and do your duty."
"My entire body was shaking. I was so scared," she testified. "He just laid me on the bed and had sex."
Warren Jeffs, 51, could get life in prison after a trial that threw a spotlight on a renegade community along the Arizona-Utah line where as many as 10,000 of Jeffs' followers practice plural marriage and revere him as a mighty prophet with dominion over their salvation.
Jeffs, like his 15 followers in the courtroom, stood stoically as the verdict was read.
Prosecutors said Jeffs forced the girl into marriage and sex against her will.
The jury deliberated about 16 hours over three days. On Tuesday morning, the judge replaced a juror with an alternate for undisclosed reasons.
While polygamy itself was not on trial ? the couple were monogamous ? the case focused attention on the practice of polygamy in Utah, where it has generally been tolerated in the half-century since a government raid in 1953 proved a public relations disaster, with children photographed being torn from their mothers' arms.
Jeffs succeeded his father in 2002 as president of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. Former members say he rules with an iron fist, demanding perfect obedience from followers and exercising the right to arrange marriages as well as break them up and assign new spouses.
At the trial, widely different versions of the relationship ? and Jeffs' influence ? were presented by the woman, now 21, and her former husband, Allen Steed, 26.
At their wedding in 2001 at a Nevada motel, the woman said, she cried in despair when pressed by Jeffs to say "I do" and had to be coaxed to kiss her new husband. The woman testified that FLDS girls receive no information about their bodies or reproduction. She said she didn't even know sex was the means by which women had babies.
The woman said the couple were married for at least a month before they had intercourse, her husband telling her it was "time for you to be a wife and do your duty."
"My entire body was shaking. I was so scared," she testified. "He just laid me on the bed and had sex."
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070925/...ygamist_leader
It's about time they get this dirtbag on something. Too many people doing stupid shit in the name of religion. As someone who's related to a whole lot of Mormons, it's hard enough to explain that polygamy isn't part of the Church anymore, without pricks like this running around.
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