Child bride wanted to preserve 'eternal salvation,' court told
From Amanda Townsend
CNN
ST. GEORGE, Utah (CNN) -- A reluctant child bride told a Utah jury Friday that she was trying to preserve her "eternal salvation" when she obeyed a command by polygamist sect leader Warren Jeffs to marry her cousin at age 14.
Referred to in court as Jane Doe, the young woman was married in a 2001 religious ceremony officiated by Jeffs to the cousin, then 19. She said she disliked him because he once had sprayed her with a water hose on a freezing day.
"I preferred to stay away from him," she said.
Later, miserable in her marriage, she testified she sought a meeting with Jeffs, and she told him she couldn't see herself having a family with her husband and "could not do what they expected me to do." She begged to be released from the marriage, she said.
But Jeffs told her she needed to repent and to "go home and give myself to [my husband]," she testified, and he gave her a book of teachings.
Afterward, she said, she was extremely depressed, saying Jeffs "was the only one who could get me out, and he wouldn't."
Jeffs, 51, who leads the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, is charged with two counts of rape as an accomplice for using his church authority to coerce the unwilling juvenile into marriage.
About two dozen followers, mostly men in Western-cut suits, crowded into the courtroom, about 50 miles from the sect's base in the twin border towns of Hildale, Utah, and Colorado City, Arizona.
While they slowly rose from their seats as ordered when Judge James Shumate entered the courtroom, the followers popped up unbidden when a shackled Jeffs was brought in. Watch the trial get under way »
A jury of seven women and five men is hearing the case. Testimony began late Thursday afternoon, and Jane Doe was the first witness. Dressed in a business-like skirt and jacket, she took the stand for about an hour and returned Friday.
Her testimony provided a snapshot of a childhood spent in the sect, also known as the FLDS. It splintered from the Mormon church more than a century ago over the practice of polygamy; the Mormon church now repudiates the sect.
Regarding Jeffs, she said, "I've known him since my earliest years." Jeffs, she added, taught at Alta Academy, which she attended from the first through sixth grades. Jeffs later became headmaster at an FLDS-based school in Salt Lake City.
The young woman testified Friday she was given less than a week's notice of her impending marriage. She found out when the groom-to-be sat next to her at a family gathering, a level of intimacy not permitted among young unmarried people.
At her wedding, held in Caliente, Nevada, she testified, Jeffs told the couple to "go forth and replenish the Earth." Afterward, she said, she locked herself in a bathroom. "I cried and cried and cried," she said. Despite her reservations about her new husband, she said, she then tried to follow Jeffs' counsel to submit to him "mind, body and soul," although she had no knowledge of sex.
Photos of the girl's wedding day and afterward were entered into evidence. In some of them, she looks happy -- and she testified that she knew she should be pleased about her marriage.
"In this community, this is what we live for," she said. "This is everything a woman in this society can achieve."
When the couple returned from Nevada, she testified, she found the girlish bedroom she shared with a sister had been redecorated, a queen bed taking the place of twin beds. The bed was decorated with chocolates and cookies, she said, and had signs around it -- one saying, "Honeymoon Hideout."
The girl testified that she enjoyed her honeymoon to Mexico and Colorado, but once back in Hildale, "Every day felt like an eternity. He was continuing to touch me. I couldn't stand to be in the same room, much less 10 feet away from him."
But, according to prior testimony in the case, she did not have sex with her husband until about two months after the wedding. She testified that she was "petrified" of sex and would hide in her mother's room to avoid her husband.
When the couple did first have sex, she testified she told her husband, "I don't know what you're doing and I'm really uncomfortable, so please stop." However, he did not, she said, adding she "felt dirty and used" afterward. She swallowed two bottles of over-the-counter pain medicine, but threw it up, she testified.
She said she remained in the marriage until 2004, but avoided her husband as much as possible.
The girl testified that when she was growing up, tapes of Jeffs' 1990s lessons and sermons were played constantly on her family's home stereo or on her portable cassette player. Four of those tapes were played Thursday for the jury. Hear Jeffs' words (Caution: Content may be offensive) »
In them, girls were counseled to obey their husbands, who they were told were their ticket to heaven. "Give yourself to him," one tape said. "Be obedient to the principle [of polygamy]." Another directed, "Be committed and do as directed as a 'keep sweet' attitude."
Another tape, dated March 13, 1998, states that young women should pretend there is a wall of bars between them and the opposite sex until they marry. "That one man, your husband -- do the opposite," Jeffs lectures. "When you marry, let the bars drop."
The defense maintains that Jeffs never commanded his female followers to submit to sex.
During a 1999 sermon, defense attorney Tara Isaacson said in her opening statement that Jeffs told followers that a "man should only have marital relations with a wife if she invites it."
Jane Doe might not have liked being married to her cousin, but "being unhappy is different from being raped," Isaacson told the jury.
She also noted that Jane Doe's marriage was not polygamous. The issue of the sect's polygamy has cast a shadow over the case.
Jane Doe testified she has sued the United Effort Plan -- the trust that owns the land on which FLDS members live -- hoping it will "give young girls the options and protections that I did not have."
Jeffs has led the FLDS church since his father's death in 2002. If he is convicted as charged, he would face a sentence of five years to life in prison.
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