'Priest' with 78 wives found guilty of sex assault on girl

Published on Friday 5 August 2011 14:55

AS A prophet of his polygamist sect, Warren Jeffs documented everything he did, keeping track of every marriage he performed, every young so-called bride.

It was those meticulous records - including an audiotape of what prosecutors said was a sexual assault on a 12-year-old girl that he had "married" - that saw the 55-year-old head of a cult-like offshoot of the Mormon religion convicted on two sex assault charges yesterday.

Prosecutors hope the same records will help bring a life prison sentence to a man regarded by his followers in his Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints as God's spokesman on Earth.

The west Texas jurors who convicted him began deliberating his sentence yesterday.

Jeffs had 78 wives in addition to his legal spouse, and 24 of them were under age 17, said Eric Nichols, lead prosecutor for the Texas Attorney General's office.

Mr Nichols also said he would show that Jeffs committed six other sexual assaults and either witnessed or performed more than 500 polygamist marriages, as well as 67 other sect marriages involving underage girls.

Jeffs spent years evading arrest, crisscrossing the country as a fugitive who eventually made the FBI's Ten Most Wanted list before his capture in 2006. He excommunicated 60 church members he saw as a threat to his leadership, breaking up 300 families while stripping them of property and "reassigning" wives and children, Mr Nichols said.

All of that is separate from the criminal charges on which he was convicted on Thursday.

Jurors deliberated for three hours before finding him guilty of sexually assaulting two girls, ages 12 and 15, whom he had wed during what his sect considers "spiritual marriages".

Prosecutors cited DNA evidence to show Jeffs fathered a child with the older victim and played an audio recording of what they said was him sexually assaulting the younger girl. They played other tapes in which Jeffs was heard instructing as many as a dozen of his young wives on how to please him sexually - and thus, he told them, please God.

Jeffs' sect has more than 10,000 members nationwide who believe polygamy brings exaltation in heaven.

The mainstream LDS Church banned polygamy 120 years ago, but small pockets of extremists continue to embrace it.

Both victims entered into unions with Jeffs willingly, and did not participate in the trial against him. But Mr Nichols said in his closing statement that the crimes were so egregious that under Texas law, convictions did not require the victim to bring charges.

Jeffs went through seven lawyers in six months, then insisted on representing himself, turning the case into what felt at times like a surreal religious revival.He quoted God as threatening all involved with a Biblical scourge if the case wasn't halted immediately, then later filed an unsuccessful motion to remove state District Judge Barbara Walther from the case, saying the Lord visited him in his jail cell and said Walther was afflicted from a crippling disease that would soon kill her. The judge suffered polio as a child and walks with a limp.

Jeffs stood almost completely mute during his closing argument. He finally turned and looked toward prosecutors and the jury, most of whom avoided direct eye contact with him.

"I am at peace" he mumbled, then said no more.

Jeffs had claimed his religious rights were being trampled after police raided his sect's Texas compound, called Yearning For Zion, in April 2008. They found women wearing frontier-style dresses and hairdos from the 19th century and saw underage girls who were clearly pregnant.

Authorities found a small mountain of documents, including hundreds and hundreds of pages of Jeffs' personal journals, which he called his "priesthood record".