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	Young Bride Felt 'Numb, Dirty, Used' Girl, 14, Who Says She Was Forced to Marry, Gives Dramatic Testimony at Trial of Polygamist Sect's Leader By Daphne Bramham Vancouver Sun September 15, 2007 http://www.canada.com/vancouversun/news/story.html?id=959d6c57-52ef-470b-a931-c3604cc4d09b St. George, Utah - Jurors in Warren Jeffs' trial as an accomplice to rape have the whole weekend to consider the uncontested, dramatic and emotional testimony from the alleged victim, who they heard from Friday. The credibility of the witness is essential to the state's case against Jeffs and her testimony was so important that Utah Attorney-General Mark Shurtleff came from Salt Lake City to hear it. The woman, known as Jane Doe, described how she was forced at 14 to marry her 19-year-old cousin by Warren Jeffs, the prophet of the largest polygamous group in North America and how her husband later forced her twice to have sex with him. A few weeks after the wedding in April 2001, her husband told her it was time for her to be a wife. "I wasn't completely sure what he was doing. But I said, 'Please don't do this.' He just ignored me and came over and undressed me and undressed himself. . . . I was sobbing. My whole entire body was shaking because I was so scared. "He just lay me on the bed and had sex. It hurt," she said, trying to keep back the tears. "I so extremely hurt," she said, pausing between each of those four words. Doe said she didn't know what he had done or why he had done it. "It felt evil . . . . It was horrible. When he was done, he rolled over and went to bed. I was numb, shocked and I felt dirty and used." Doe (who is now 21) said she went into the bathroom and swallowed the contents of a bottle of Tylenol and a bottle of ibuprofen. "I just wanted to die. I didn't want to have to deal with [her husband] any more or with Warren or with the prophet or my mother or Fred [Jessop, her stepfather and the church's bishop]," she said slowly and emphatically with tears in her eyes. "I was so hurt by them." The pills made her sick to her stomach. A few days before the alleged rape, her husband had exposed his genitals to her one night in a park. "I turned away. I shut my eyes. I said put that away. I don't want to see it." Jeffs' lawyers have to wait until Monday to try to poke holes in Doe's testimony. Attorney Tara Isaacson indicated in her opening statement that they do not believe Jane Doe was raped or that their client had any part in it. However, if Jeffs is convicted as an accomplice for having encouraged her to marry and to have children, he faces a maximum sentence of life in prison. Doe said Friday that she didn't tell her mother about the pills or about the alleged rape. "I felt I was such a terrible person. I thought my mother would judge me. I felt I was a disgusting evil person for having done that." However, she also said she didn't know what the word rape meant. She thought it described physical, not sexual, abuse. After the first time, Doe went to Jeffs and asked that he release her from the marriage. Jeffs refused and told her to "go and repent," she said. "He said I was not living up to my vows. I was not being obedient, not being submissive to my priesthood head [her husband]. He told me I needed to go home and give myself to [her husband] mind, body and soul." A few days after that meeting, she said, her husband raped her again. As a member of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (which is not affiliated with the mainstream Mormon church), Doe had expected the prophet to choose her husband. Like all FLDS girls taught that getting married and having babies is the highest goal they can attain, Doe said she yearned, prayed and prepared for the day she would get married and have babies. What she had not counted on was being married at 14 and that her husband would be her first cousin, a man she said she hated. Doe protested the arranged marriage not only to her mother and stepfather, but to the prophet himself. That was Warren Jeffs' father, Rulon. After she had blurted out her fears and concerns to him through a veil of tears, Doe said Rulon patted her hand and said, "Follow your heart, sweetie. Follow your heart." But his son, Warren, told her she couldn't know her own heart. As her mother and sister frantically worked through the night finishing her wedding dress for the next morning, Doe testified that she sobbed almost non-stop. "I felt like I was getting ready for death." Jurors saw photos from the wedding and honeymoon. In some Doe is smiling, but she said was "robotic," smiling when she was told to. Still, some indicate she was clearly in distress. In one showing her being carried across the threshold, Doe's hands are over her face. She said she tried to laugh to mask the sobs. In another, she is buried in her husband's tight embrace; her hands are on his chest. She said she was pushing as hard as she could to get away from him. After Doe finished her testimony, the jury heard close to an hour's worth of tapes that Jeffs made to instruct "young ladies." They were recorded during home economics classes at the Alta Academy. (Some of those tapes are used in the B.C-government funded, FLDS-controlled, Bountiful elementary-secondary school.) "Success is to give yourself to your husband, mind, body and soul, so that the Lord will guide him right in teaching you," Jeffs said on one tape. In the other tape, from Nov. 21, 1997, Jeffs explains that a woman can never say that she is forced to marry. She has a choice, he says. But that choice is to follow "the prophet" or not. Having determined to follow the prophet, she accepts that "he knows the hearts of men better than any woman does." The trial continues Monday. Contact: dbramham@png.canwest.com
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