Former teen bride wins the right to sue polygamous sect

The Supreme Court has cleared the way for a Utah woman to seek millions in damages after she claimed that polygamous church leader, Warren Jeffs, forced her to marry her cousin when she was 14.

Elissa Wall can seek the payout from the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, through its communal property trust, which is now controlled by the state.

Her testimony helped convict Jeffs, in 2007, of being an accomplice to her rape, though the verdict was later overturned on a technicality. Jeffs is serving a life prison sentence, in Texas, for sexually assaulting girls he considered wives.

The federal government is going after the group on multiple fronts, including court cases alleging food-stamp fraud and child labour in Utah. A jury in Phoenix also found that the twin polygamous towns on the Utah-Arizona border denied basic rights, like police protection, to non-believers.

Allen Steed, the cousin whom she married, in 2001, previously said the sexual relationship was not forced, but he agreed not to stand in the way of her lawsuit, if she approved a lighter plea deal to resolve a rape charge against him, Shields said.

Wall’s lawyers say Steed was 19 at the time, and claims sect leaders who held sway over him are to blame for what happened.