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Leader Of Polygamous Sect Convicted As Accomplice In Rape

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The Associated Press

Published: September 26, 2007

ST. GEORGE, Utah - The leader of a polygamous Mormon splinter group was convicted Tuesday of being an accomplice to rape for forcing a 14-year-old girl to marry her 19-year-old cousin.

Warren Jeffs, 51, could get life in prison after a trial that threw a spotlight on a renegade community along the border between Arizona and Utah where as many as 10,000 of Jeffs' followers practice plural marriage and revere him as a mighty prophet with dominion over their salvation.

Jeffs stood and, like his 15 followers in the courtroom, wore a stoic look as the verdict was read.

Prosecutors said Jeffs, who performed the ceremony, forced the girl into marriage and sex against her will.

Jurors said they agreed Jeffs rejected the girl's pleas and refused to release her from the marriage.

'He was pretty much her only ticket out of the relationship,' said juror Jerry Munk, 36.

Defense attorney Wally Bugden, who told jurors that Jeffs was a victim of religious persecution, declined to comment.

The jury deliberated about 16 hours over three days.

Jeffs succeeded his father in 2002 as president of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. Former members say he rules with an iron fist, demanding perfect obedience from followers and exercising the right to arrange marriages as well as break them up.

At the trial, widely different versions of the relationship - and Jeffs' influence - were presented by the woman, now 21, and her former husband, Allen Steed, 26.

At their wedding in 2001 at a Nevada motel, the woman said, she cried in despair when pressed by Jeffs to say 'I do.'

The woman said the couple were married for at least a month before they had intercourse, her husband telling her it was 'time for you to be a wife and do your duty.'

Steed testified that his teenage bride initiated their first sexual encounter.

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