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	Polygamist Prophet a Pimp: Prosecutor By Daphne Bramham Vancouver Sun January 28, 2009 http://www.vancouversun.com/news/Polygamist+prophet+pimp+prosecutor/1227540/story.html ST. GEORGE, Utah - Polygamist prophet Warren Jeffs is nothing more than a pimp &madsh; a pimp for God, perhaps &madsh; but a pimp just the same. That's the position the state of Utah is taking in a case against Jeffs, the 50-year-old leader of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, a breakaway sect of the Mormon church. Using precedents from other cases involving polygamy and others involving forced prostitution, Utah prosecutors argue that Jeffs &madsh; who FLDS believe is God's spokesman on Earth &madsh; married a 14-year-old girl to a 19-year-old man, instructed them to have sex and produce many children. Jeffs's defence lawyers frame it completely differently. They say it is a case of religious persecution. "It is nothing less than the State of Utah condemning a culturally different religion. It is a continuation of 165 years of intolerance for a people who engage in different cultural and religious practices," attorney Walter Bugden said Tuesday after the preliminary hearing was adjourned until Dec. 14. "There is no rape in this case. Officiating at a wedding ceremony does not make Mr. Jeffs an accomplice to rape." Jeffs is charged in Utah with two counts of rape as an accomplice. Once this case is dealt with, he will then be transferred to Arizona to face five counts of sexual conduct with a minor and one count of conspiracy to commit sexual conduct with a minor. Jeffs was arrested Aug. 28 in Las Vegas after spending nearly four months on the FBI's 10 Most Wanted list alongside Osama bin Laden. The state's key witness is a young woman who is now 20 and two weeks shy of having a baby. She says she was forced into a religious &madsh; not legal &madsh; marriage with her 19-year-old first cousin, a boy who used to taunt her, calling her Tubby-Tubba. Over several hours of testimony, the young woman described how in April 2001, as a Grade 9 student, she was dumbfounded when her step-father told her she would be married that week. "I was so scared, I didn't have any place to go," she said, pausing to wipe her eyes. "Everybody who I respected, every leader made me feel like I was defying God. "My salvation was in jeopardy, my family, I knew nothing else. I was scared of the outside world and I loved the people there so much. I felt if I didn't do it I would forever pay the consequences and my salvation was in jeopardy and I would never go to heaven." The FLDS believe that plural marriage &madsh; polygamy &madsh; is the way to the highest realm of heaven. The young woman and two of her sisters testified that they were taught from birth that girls must be obedient to their fathers, the priesthood or church leaders and the prophet, who gets revelations from God. They are taught not to question, not to defy and not to disobey. They are told always to be sweet and submit to the commands of men. The victim described how when she refused to say "I do" during the wedding ceremony, Jeffs asked her mother to stand up and hold her hand. When she refused again, she said she could feel Jeffs' eyes drilling into her. "The silence was unbearable so I finally said okay, yes." To cheer the girl up, her sisters, mother and friends decorated the bedroom in her step-father's house as the honeymoon hideaway where the newlyweds slept on their wedding night. Photos were taken of the smiling couple &madsh; photos that became evidence Tuesday. Still, the young woman called the marriage "the darkest time of my entire life and one of the most painful things I've ever been through. I have always tried to forget it and I've just wanted to move on and forget it ever happened." Her entreaties to her step-father Fred Jessop (whose influence in the church was such that before his death he was a trustee of the church's school in Bountiful, B.C.) were ignored. She suggested that he had made a mistake and it wasn't her but one of the older girls in the household of more than 40 children (and at least 15 mothers/sister-wives) who was to be married. She was told to go, pray and prepare for her placement marriage. She then went directly to Rulon Jeffs, who had married one of her sisters when she was 18 and he was 83. Jeffs by this point was enfeebled by a stroke. The soon-to-be-child-bride knelt down beside him as he ate lunch and told him she was 14 and not ready to be married. Jeffs turned to her and said, "Sweetheart, I didn't hear you, could you say it again." At that point, Warren Jeffs jumped in and told his father that she was questioning the placement marriage he [Rulon] had decided on. She said, "Rulon looked at him kind of weird and said, 'Just follow your heart, sweetheart,' "and went back to his lunch. But Warren set her straight. He told her that her heart was in the wrong place and that the prophet had decided the marriage was her mission and her duty. The couple didn't consummate the marriage for nearly two months. A few weeks into their marriage and on her husband's 20th birthday, he exposed his penis to her in a park in their hometown of Hildale, Ariz., where close to 12,000 FLDS members were living at the time. She had no idea what a penis was or what it looked like. She ran home shocked and embarrassed. She had always been told it was wrong for people to see each other naked. When they finally did consummate the marriage, her husband answered her pleas to stop by telling her that sexual intercourse was what married people were supposed to do. Even though she said there was a period of between nine and 12 months when she tried to be an obedient wife submitting to her husband's demands, on at least four other occasions, the young woman went to Warren Jeffs for help, asking to be removed from the marriage. He did allow her to leave Hildale for several months in late 2002 to visit her sister, Theresa Blackmore and her husband, Roy Blackmore (a nephew of former FLDS bishop Winston Blackmore), in Bountiful. During that visit, the young woman found out she was pregnant when she began to bleed profusely and later miscarried. But Jeffs's attorney Tara Issacson picked holes in the testimony, getting her to admit that she never directly told Jeffs or anyone else that she had been raped. Issacson got into the record that the victim also has a civil suit against Jeffs and that the state has paid her expenses to relocate. It has paid her rent and even paid for her lost wages. Issacson tried to discredit the alleged rape victim by getting her to admit she had sexual relations with another man in late 2003 while still married and that when she eventually left Hildale, the FLDS and her husband that she was pregnant with the other man's baby. The man is now her husband. He is on the defence team's list as a witness and will be heard when the preliminary hearing resumes on Dec. 14. Issacson also questioned why anyone should believe the young bride was trapped and unable to escape when she had a truck (which she says she slept in to avoid her husband), a driver's licence, and went snowboarding with friends and off to parties. "You didn't make any effort to leave," Issacson asked. "I didn't. I couldn't. But I wanted to." As Loni Deland, a local criminal defence attorney, told the Salt Lake Tribune, "The theory of their [the state's] case is treat him like an ordinary pimp. But he said: "The state has a particularly heavy burden where he is the leader of a religion and is simply advancing the principles of that religion and the gospel as they know it ... as opposed to renting a motel room and saying 'Go do it, that's an order.' " Contact: dbramham@png.canwest.com
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