WashPost
A new trial was ordered by the Utah State Supreme Court this week for Warren Jeffs, leader of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter-Day Saints (FLDS), a breakaway Mormon sect that, under cover of the First Amendment, forces teenage girls to marry and have sex with men chosen by the head of the cult. Jeffs had been convicted of two counts of felony rape for insisting on the marriage over the objections of 14-year-old Elissa Wall, and the court ordered a new trial on technical grounds so complicated that reading the legal opinion is a form of self-torture. But the real issue raised by this case is how a group can get away with breaking the law, on matters ranging from compulsory education to the sexual and emotional abuse of minors, year after year in the name of religion. (I should state here that the FLDS is not affiliated with the official Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter-Day Saints. Indeed, no one was more eager than established Mormon church leaders to see Jeffs covicted, since the breakaway sect has the effect of reminding the public of the polygamous origins of Mormonism.)
Incredibly, the Utah high court ruled that the lower court judged had erred by failing to instruct the jury that Jeffs could not be convicted as an accomplice to rape unless he specifically intended the girl's husband to force sex on her. What does this court think the entire FLDS cult is based on. apart from the practice of forcing young girls to marry and obediently have sex with whoever the leader of the sect chooses? Wall, a virgin who had begged that Jeffs not require her to marry her 19-year-old first cousin, later beseached Jeffs to release her from the marriage. According to the court's own summary, Wall told this pervert who heads her "church" that her husband was touching her in ways that she "was not comfortable with and didn't fully understand." Jeffs told the girl that what she must "go home and give [her]self to her husband...mind, body, and soul and obey wihtout any question." Yet the high court found that the prosecutor had failed to prove that the fundamentalist Mormon head (also under indictment in Texas for sexually assaulting a minor) knew that this marriage would lead to forced sex. What an unbelievable abuse of the religious freedom guaranteed by the First Amendment!
(More here.)
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