Texas fires back with photos in FLDS case

Jessop and his wife said that if the state wanted them to move off the ranch in order to have custody of their children, they would. Asked why they would leave the ranch, Bradshaw said: "To get out of the way of CPS."

Pressing their case about a pervasive pattern of sex abuse within the FLDS culture, CPS attorney Ellen Griffith showed photos to Bradshaw, claiming that the girl in the pictures is 13.

"Is that (the girl) in that picture?" Griffith asked.

"Yes," Jessop replied.

"Who is that?" she asked, pointing at the man in the picture.

"The prophet."

"Warren Jeffs?"

"Yes."

Bradshaw said she had never seen those pictures before.

"Do you know whether (the girl) is married to the prophet?"

"I do not know for sure."

The photographs show Jeffs kissing the girls in a manner that CPS lawyers described as "how a husband kisses a wife."

Bradshaw's attorneys objected to the use of the photos in evidence, but CPS said they were presented to show the woman's state of mind and how she would protect her own children.

"It just happens to be Warren Jeffs in the pictures," Griffith said.

More photos, entitled "First Anniversary January 26, 2005" were also entered into evidence. The girl in those pictures is also kissing Jeffs. CPS lawyers did not elaborate on that particular photo, but suggested again that the girl is a minor.

On the stand, Jessop revealed that the girl in question was one of his sisters but he said he did not know if she was married to the FLDS leader.

Jessop was asked if he considered the photographs evidence of sexual abuse.

"I do not consider a girl kissing a man sex abuse," he said.

Rod Parker, a Salt Lake City attorney acting as a spokesman for the FLDS Church, told the Deseret News late Friday the release of the photographs is a public relations move on the part of Texas CPS officials.

"They don't have anything to do with Dan and Louisa Jessop. They have to do with somebody else," he said.

Jeffs was convicted in Utah of rape as an accomplice for performing a marriage between a 14-year-old girl and her 19-year-old cousin. He is currently in an Arizona jail, where he is facing charges accusing him of performing more child-bride marriages.

Bradshaw said as far as she is concerned, Jeffs is in prison for "unjust causes."

"Why is that?" Griffith asked.

"Because he is perfect to me," she said.

As shocking as the photographs were, attorneys for the couple tried to figure out what they had to do with Dan Jessop and Louisa Bradshaw.