"I'm elated," she said, trying to catch her breath. "I'm so proud of those girls."

Tyler is the director of the HOPE Organization, a Washington County-based group that helps women fleeing abusive situations within the FLDS enclaves of Hildale, Utah, and Colorado City, Ariz.

Jeffs' faithful followers, who sat in the courtroom daily, left without speaking to reporters. One woman had a grim smile as she held her husband's hand and tried to make her way through a sea of news cameras.

Wall tried to reach out to the FLDS faithful, giving a message to her mother and sisters who are still in the polygamous sect.

"Mother, I love you and my sisters unconditionally. I will go to the ends of the Earth for you. I understand and respect your convictions, but I will not give up on you," she said. "I have very tender feelings for the FLDS people. There is so much good in them. I pray they will find the strength to step back and re-examine what they have been told to believe and follow their hearts."

Utah Attorney General Mark Shurtleff said he hoped the verdict sent a message to other child abuse victims in the closed polygamous societies.

"They can be protected. There is justice for them, and they don't have to take that kind of abuse," he told the Deseret Morning News in an interview from his hospital bed, where he is recovering from injuries suffered in a motorcycle crash.

Arizona Attorney General Terry Goddard echoed similar sentiments.

"We may never know how many young women have been abused in Colorado City and Hildale," Goddard said in a statement. "But (the) verdict sends a message that forcing girls under the legal age of consent to 'marry' older men is not only unacceptable, it is illegal."

More charges

Jeffs left the courthouse under heavy security. A Utah Department of Public zSafety helicopter ferried him from the 5th District Courthouse to the Purgatory Jail, where he remains in isolation. Deputies are also checking on him frequently to make sure he is OK.

"We're going to take care of him and make sure he gets to Arizona to face the charges there," Washington County Sheriff Kirk Smith said today.

In Arizona, Jeffs faces similar charges accusing him of performing more child-bride marriages. Mohave County prosecutors said they are preparing their cases.