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Child bride describes traumatic marriage
Child bride describes traumatic marriage - CNN.com
ST. GEORGE, Utah (CNN) -- A reluctant child bride told a Utah jury Friday she knew nothing about sex when she entered into an arranged marriage at age 14, as commanded by polygamist sect leader Warren Jeffs.
Jane Doe, as she is known in court, said she was trying to preserve her eternal salvation when she obeyed Jeff's command to marry her 19-year-old cousin.
When her husband tried to consummate the marriage, she was terrified, she added.
Jeffs, 51, who leads the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, is charged with two counts of rape as an accomplice for using his church authority to coerce the unwilling girl into marriage.
About two dozen followers, mostly men in Western-cut suits, crowded into the courtroom, about 50 miles from the sect's base in the twin border towns of Hildale, Utah, and Colorado City, Arizona. Watch the trial get under way »
While they slowly rose from their seats as ordered when Judge James Shumate entered the courtroom, the followers popped up unbidden when a shackled Jeffs was brought in.
Jeffs officiated over the couple's religious ceremony in 2001 in Caliente, Nevada. Afterward, he told the newlyweds to "go forth and replenish the earth." Instead, the bride said, she ran into a bathroom, locked the door and refused to come out.
"I cried and cried and cried," she told the seven women and five men on the jury.
Her new husband continued to badger her for sex. But she couldn't stand him, or the marriage, she said. "Every day felt like an eternity. He was continuing to touch me. I couldn't stand to be in the same room, much less 10 feet away from him."
He exposed himself on a walk in the park one starry night, she said. Later that evening, he attempted to undress her and have sex with her, she recalled.
"I was crying and saying, 'I don't want you to do this. It doesn't feel right,' " she testified. He replied, "This is what he was supposed to do," she recounted. "This is what married people did."
In earlier testimony, Jane Doe recalled she was given less than a week's notice that she was to be married to the cousin who teased her as a child and once had sprayed her with a water hose on a freezing day.
She had heard gossip of three "placements," as arranged marriages are known in the sect. She found she was to be a bride when the groom-to-be sat next to her at a family gathering -- a level of intimacy not permitted among young unmarried people, she testified.
She wrote in her journal: "Many things happened this weekend to make my world go upside down." Being married was supposed to make her happy, she believed. "In this community this is what we live for. This is everything a woman in this society can achieve."
On her wedding day, she left the girlish bedroom she shared with a sister and returned to find it redecorated, a queen bed taking the place of the twin beds. Cookies and chocolates were scattered on the bed and two signs, one saying "Honeymoon Hideout."
Despite her reservations, she said, she then tried to follow Jeffs' counsel to submit to her husband "mind, body and soul."
Her testimony provided a snapshot of a childhood spent in the sect, also known as the FLDS.
It splintered from the Mormon church more than a century ago over the practice of polygamy; the Mormon church now repudiates it.
Regarding Jeffs, she said, "I've known him since my earliest years." Jeffs, she added, taught at Alta Academy, which she attended from the first through sixth grades. Jeffs later became headmaster at the FLDS-based school in Salt Lake City, Utah.
As she grew up, tapes of Jeffs' 1990s lessons and sermons were played constantly on her family's home stereo or on her portable cassette player, she said. Four of those tapes were played Thursday for the jury. Hear Jeffs' words (Caution: Content may be offensive) »
Teens are pressured to avoid the opposite sex or face being considered "damaged product," she said. "You were taught before you married you treat the boys and boys treat the girls as though they were snakes."
Girls were counseled to obey their husbands, who were their ticket to heaven. "Give yourself to him," one tape said, "Be obedient to the principle" of polygamy. Another directed, "Be committed and do as directed as a 'keep sweet' attitude."
Yet another tape, dated March 13, 1998, states that young women should pretend there is a wall of bars between them and the opposite sex. "That one man, your husband -- do the opposite," Jeffs lectures. "When you marry, let the bars drop."
The girl first had sex with her cousin about two months after the ceremony, according to prior testimony in the case. She described her husband's attempts to consummate the marriage as an ordeal.
But the defense maintains Jeffs never commanded his female followers to submit to sex.
During a 1999 sermon, defense attorney Tara Isaacson said in her opening statement, Jeffs told followers that a "man should only have marital relations with a wife if she invites it."
Jane Doe might not have liked being married to her cousin, but "being unhappy is different from being raped," Isaacson told the jury.
She also pointed out that Jane Doe's marriage was not polygamous.
But polygamy casts a long shadow over the case.
Jeffs has led the FLDS church since his father's death in 2002.
Child bride describes traumatic marriage - CNN.com
ST. GEORGE, Utah (CNN) -- A reluctant child bride told a Utah jury Friday she knew nothing about sex when she entered into an arranged marriage at age 14, as commanded by polygamist sect leader Warren Jeffs.
Jane Doe, as she is known in court, said she was trying to preserve her eternal salvation when she obeyed Jeff's command to marry her 19-year-old cousin.
When her husband tried to consummate the marriage, she was terrified, she added.
Jeffs, 51, who leads the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, is charged with two counts of rape as an accomplice for using his church authority to coerce the unwilling girl into marriage.
About two dozen followers, mostly men in Western-cut suits, crowded into the courtroom, about 50 miles from the sect's base in the twin border towns of Hildale, Utah, and Colorado City, Arizona. Watch the trial get under way »
While they slowly rose from their seats as ordered when Judge James Shumate entered the courtroom, the followers popped up unbidden when a shackled Jeffs was brought in.
Jeffs officiated over the couple's religious ceremony in 2001 in Caliente, Nevada. Afterward, he told the newlyweds to "go forth and replenish the earth." Instead, the bride said, she ran into a bathroom, locked the door and refused to come out.
"I cried and cried and cried," she told the seven women and five men on the jury.
Her new husband continued to badger her for sex. But she couldn't stand him, or the marriage, she said. "Every day felt like an eternity. He was continuing to touch me. I couldn't stand to be in the same room, much less 10 feet away from him."
He exposed himself on a walk in the park one starry night, she said. Later that evening, he attempted to undress her and have sex with her, she recalled.
"I was crying and saying, 'I don't want you to do this. It doesn't feel right,' " she testified. He replied, "This is what he was supposed to do," she recounted. "This is what married people did."
In earlier testimony, Jane Doe recalled she was given less than a week's notice that she was to be married to the cousin who teased her as a child and once had sprayed her with a water hose on a freezing day.
She had heard gossip of three "placements," as arranged marriages are known in the sect. She found she was to be a bride when the groom-to-be sat next to her at a family gathering -- a level of intimacy not permitted among young unmarried people, she testified.
She wrote in her journal: "Many things happened this weekend to make my world go upside down." Being married was supposed to make her happy, she believed. "In this community this is what we live for. This is everything a woman in this society can achieve."
On her wedding day, she left the girlish bedroom she shared with a sister and returned to find it redecorated, a queen bed taking the place of the twin beds. Cookies and chocolates were scattered on the bed and two signs, one saying "Honeymoon Hideout."
Despite her reservations, she said, she then tried to follow Jeffs' counsel to submit to her husband "mind, body and soul."
Her testimony provided a snapshot of a childhood spent in the sect, also known as the FLDS.
It splintered from the Mormon church more than a century ago over the practice of polygamy; the Mormon church now repudiates it.
Regarding Jeffs, she said, "I've known him since my earliest years." Jeffs, she added, taught at Alta Academy, which she attended from the first through sixth grades. Jeffs later became headmaster at the FLDS-based school in Salt Lake City, Utah.
As she grew up, tapes of Jeffs' 1990s lessons and sermons were played constantly on her family's home stereo or on her portable cassette player, she said. Four of those tapes were played Thursday for the jury. Hear Jeffs' words (Caution: Content may be offensive) »
Teens are pressured to avoid the opposite sex or face being considered "damaged product," she said. "You were taught before you married you treat the boys and boys treat the girls as though they were snakes."
Girls were counseled to obey their husbands, who were their ticket to heaven. "Give yourself to him," one tape said, "Be obedient to the principle" of polygamy. Another directed, "Be committed and do as directed as a 'keep sweet' attitude."
Yet another tape, dated March 13, 1998, states that young women should pretend there is a wall of bars between them and the opposite sex. "That one man, your husband -- do the opposite," Jeffs lectures. "When you marry, let the bars drop."
The girl first had sex with her cousin about two months after the ceremony, according to prior testimony in the case. She described her husband's attempts to consummate the marriage as an ordeal.
But the defense maintains Jeffs never commanded his female followers to submit to sex.
During a 1999 sermon, defense attorney Tara Isaacson said in her opening statement, Jeffs told followers that a "man should only have marital relations with a wife if she invites it."
Jane Doe might not have liked being married to her cousin, but "being unhappy is different from being raped," Isaacson told the jury.
She also pointed out that Jane Doe's marriage was not polygamous.
But polygamy casts a long shadow over the case.
Jeffs has led the FLDS church since his father's death in 2002.
