Witnesses shed light on life of polygamists

ST. GEORGE — Testimony offered Thursday during the first day of the Warren Jeffs trial offered a rare public glimpse into the insular workings of a polygamous sect and its leader.

The state's star witness in the case, now a 21-year-old woman, testified she grew up as a member of the Fundamentalist LDS Church and considered Jeffs to be an authority figure in her life.

Jeffs routinely taught lessons on the FLDS priesthood history, current church doctrine and other topics to students at the Alta Academy in Salt Lake City where she was a student, she testified.

Faithful members of the FLDS Church consider Jeffs to be their current prophet. Jeffs' father, Rulon Jeffs, was the previous prophet, a man who "was as God to us," the key witness testified. Many of Jeffs' lessons were recorded and often played during the home economics class attended by the young girls or during other classes.

"We were taught that obedience to our leaders must be complete, with willingness and sweetly, without question," the woman testified. "They (the prophet and church leaders) would lead us into the Celestial Kingdom, or heaven."

Those who did not obey the prophet were told they would lose their chance at salvation, she said.

Washington County Attorney Brock Belnap told the jury of seven women and five men that they would hear about the woman's childhood and a 2001 marriage at age 14 to her 19-year-old first cousin.

"When she told him she wasn't old enough to marry, he (Warren Jeffs) told her to do it anyway," Belnap said during the prosecution's opening statement. "When she found out (the marriage was to be) to her first cousin, she pled to Warren Jeffs, can't it be someone else?"

Belnap said she would testify that after the marriage, conducted by Warren Jeffs at a motel in Caliente, Nev., the young bride cried. Belnap displayed a photo of an unsmiling girl wearing a white wedding dress, taken the night before the ceremony, on a large screen in the front of the courtroom.

"You will see some photos of her smiling, but when she talks to you, you'll understand the pictures don't show what was in her heart," he told the jury.

During the defense opening statement, attorney Tara Isaacson reviewed the charge facing Jeffs: two first-degree felony counts of rape as an accomplice.

"Although Warren Jeffs is sitting in the defense chair, what happened between these two people (the girl and her then-husband) is central to the case," Isaacson told the jury.