'The darkest time of my entire life'

ST. GEORGE — "Jane Doe IV" cried on her wedding day.

Not tears of joy but of despair over her situation. The 14-year-old girl was wed to her 19-year-old cousin in a quickie ceremony in a Caliente, Nev., motel that was presided over by Fundamentalist LDS Church leader Warren Jeffs.

"This was the darkest time of my entire life," the woman, now 20, testified during Jeffs' preliminary hearing here Tuesday.

After a day's worth of testimony in 5th District Court, the judge continued the hearing until Dec. 14, when two defense witnesses are expected to be called. Jeffs, 50, is charged with two counts of rape as an accomplice, a first-degree felony. If convicted, he faces up to life in prison.

Defense lawyers criticized the case against Jeffs as "religious persecution."

"Regardless of how one feels about arranged marriages or plural marriages, there was no rape in this case, and we believe Mr. Jeffs will be acquitted of these charges," lawyer Wally Bugden Jr. said outside of court.

In heartbreaking testimony, the woman described her whirlwind nuptials, the intense pressure by FLDS leaders on her to marry and her attempts to get out of the arranged marriage to her first cousin.

"I felt completely defeated and trapped," she said, sobbing.

Speaking with a shaking voice at times, the woman admitted to being "very, very nervous." She is also pregnant, acknowledging she is two weeks away from giving birth. Since leaving the FLDS Church, she has remarried.

The Deseret Morning News does not name sexual assault victims, nor is the newspaper disclosing the identity of the woman's purported husband in the case to avoid identifying her.

Throughout her testimony Tuesday, she made it clear she disliked her first husband, although she admitted she told police she didn't want anything to happen to him.

Arranged marriage

Growing up in Salt Lake City, the woman said she attended Alta Academy, a now-defunct FLDS school at the mouth of Little Cottonwood Canyon. It was run by Warren Jeffs, a man she described as an "authority figure" throughout her life. The FLDS Church has about 10,000 members and is based in the polygamous border towns of Hildale, Utah, and Colorado City, Ariz.