Polygamist sect leader jailed for sex assaults on child 'brides'
Polygamist leader Warren Jeffs has today been sentenced to life in prison for sexually assaulting two under-age followers he took as brides in what his church deemed "spiritual marriages".
The head of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints stood quietly as the decision of the Texas jury was read. He received the maximum sentence on both counts.
The jury deliberated less than half an hour.
The 55-year-old Jeffs was convicted last Thursday. During the trial, prosecutors used DNA evidence to show Jeffs fathered a child with a 15-year-old and played an audio recording of what they said was him sexually assaulting a 12-year-old.
Jeffs is the eighth FLDS man convicted since a raid of a ranch run by the church, which believes polygamy brings exaltation in heaven.
Jeffs walked out of the sentencing phase in protest after reading a statement that he claimed was from God, promising a "whirlwind of judgment" on the world if God's "humble servant" wasn't set free.
"If the world knew what I was doing, they would hang me from the highest tree," Jeffs wrote in 2005, according to one of thousands of pages of notes seized along with the audio recordings from his Texas ranch.
Jeffs claimed his religious rights were being violated. Representing himself, he routinely interrupted the proceedings and chose to stand silently in front of jurors for nearly half an hour during his closing arguments. He called just one defence witness, a church elder who read from Mormon scripture.
The Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, a radical offshoot of mainstream Mormonism that believes polygamy brings exaltation in heaven, has more than 10,000 followers who consider Jeffs to be God's spokesman on Earth.
He spent years evading arrest - criss-crossing the country as a fugitive who eventually made the FBI's Ten Most Wanted list before his capture in 2006.
Several former members of the church have testified that Jeffs ruled the group with a heavy and abusive hand. Jeffs also allegedly excommunicated 60 church members he saw as a threat to his leadership, breaking up 300 families while stripping them of property and "reassigning" wives and children.
In an audiotape played during the sentencing phase, Jeffs was heard softly telling five young girls to "set aside all your inhibitions" as he gave them instructions on how to please him sexually.
Jeffs is heard telling the girls that what "the five of you are about to do is important".
Prosecutors suggested that the polygamist leader told the girls they needed to have sex with him - in what Jeffs called "heavenly" or "celestial" sessions - in order to atone for sins in his community.
Several times in his journals, Jeffs wrote of God telling him to take more and more young girls as brides "who can be worked with and easily taught".
Fathers who gave their young daughters to Jeffs were rewarded with young brides of their own. Girls who proved reluctant to have sex with Jeffs were sent away.
Police raided the group's remote West Texas ranch in April 2008, finding women dressed in frontier-style dresses and hairdos from the 19th century as well as seeing underage girls who were clearly pregnant.
The call to an abuse hotline that spurred the raid turned out to be a hoax, and more than 400 children who had been placed in protective custody were eventually returned to their families.
