From Deseret News archives:

Ex-husband of accuser testifies

Man gives his version of the couple's sexual history at trial

Published: Thursday, Sept. 20, 2007 12:07 a.m. MDT
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ST. GEORGE — Testimony in the trial of polygamous sect leader Warren Jeffs concluded on Wednesday after the jury heard intimate sexual details from the man accused of raping his teenage bride.

Jeffs, 51, is charged in 5th District Court with two first-degree felony counts of rape as an accomplice for conducting a 2001 marriage between an unwilling 14-year-old girl and her 19-year-old cousin.

The girl, now 21, testified she grew up a member of the Fundamentalist LDS Church and that Jeffs was an authority figure in her life. The FLDS practice plural marriage and believe the prophet, Jeffs, arranges the couplings after he receives a revelation from God.

She testified last week that she despised her cousin, did not want to marry him and even begged her stepfather, a high-ranking church leader who first told her she would marry, to allow her to marry someone else.

The girl said she met with then FLDS prophet, Rulon Jeffs, who told her to "follow your heart." But Warren Jeffs, Rulon's son and first counselor in the FLDS Church, said her heart was "in the wrong place."

After the ceremony, conducted by Warren Jeffs at a Nevada motel, the couple returned to Hildale, Utah, and moved into her old bedroom, which had been redecorated as a "honeymoon hideout."

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Sexual intimacy between the young couple did not occur for about three weeks, both the girl and her former husband testified. Each person testified they never received any sex education, never dated or courted and had been raised to stay away from the opposite sex until marriage.

But that's where their stories begin to collide.

She told the jury that her husband forced her to have sex and would not take "no" for an answer. He testified he tried to go slow and that she was the one who initiated the first real sexual encounter between them. Up until that night, he said, there had been hugging and kissing in private, but very little in public.

Jurors heard from two of the girl's sisters, both of whom are ex-FLDS members, who said Jeffs could have stopped the wedding but refused. Complaints the girl made to Jeffs that her husband was touching her in places she didn't like fell on deaf ears, the sisters said.

On Wednesday, the girl's former husband, Allen Steed, testified he wrote his new wife love letters and sought counsel from his religious leader, Jeffs, to "see what I could do to make things better" between them. Jeffs' advice, he said, was for the couple to "pray together, play together, do things together and learn to love each other."

Recent comments

If consenting adults want to be in a polygamous arrangement, that is...

Star | Sept. 29, 2007 at 11:55 a.m.

THIS IS A PRIME EXAMPLE OF WHERE PEOPLE NO MATTER BELIEVE THAT MAN IS...

TAMARA | Sept. 21, 2007 at 8:10 a.m.

No, polygamy is not legal in Utah. That was a condition of...

Lee | Sept. 21, 2007 at 3:27 a.m.

Image
Douglas C. Pizac, Associated Press

Allen Steed, who was married to the woman suing FLDS leader Warren Jeffs, testifies Wednesday in St. George.

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