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Raymond M. Jessop, one of the leaders of a polygamist sect was convicted Thursday night of sexually assaulting an under-age girl whom the church elders had assigned to him as one of his nine wives.

The state used birth records, a marriage certificate and FLDS church records to show Jessop, already married, took the girl as a spiritual wife in 2004 when she was 16. [video]
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Women in the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints polygamist sect were taught that their fathers or husbands and the sect’s prophet had the right to direct every aspect of their lives, a former member testified Wednesday in the child sexual abuse trial of a current sect member.

Prosecutors asked Musser to talk about her experience in the FLDS and how church records are kept, as they are relying heavily on records and dictations by jailed FLDS leader Warren Jeffs that were seized from the ranch.
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Cult leader Warren Jeffs’ attorney, Walter Bugden Jr., said the state could have charged Jeffs with performing an illegal marriage, but instead decided to charge an unpopular religious figure with a serious crime that didn’t fit the facts of the case.

Note that Jeffs — notorious for his ruthlessness — told the girl in question she would lose her salvation if she did not obey.
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Defense attorney Mark Stevens argued that much of the content of the documents, mostly marriage records or dictations made by Warren S. Jeffs, leader of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, are extraneous, prejudicial and not relevant to the crime charged to Jessop because they refer to polygamy.
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A birthing center on the bottom floor of a log cabin-style building at a polygamist group’s West Texas ranch was set up like a medical office with one distict difference: A portrait of jailed polygamist sect leader Warren Jeffs hung over the delivery bed.

The photo was introduced into evidence by prosecutors in the trial of FLDS sect member Raymond Jessop.
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The child sexual assault trial of a polygamist sect member came to a screeching halt just before 3 p.m. today because a jurist’s child may have swine flu.

Raymond Merrill Jessop is the first of 12 men from the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints to face a criminal trial in Texas. The assault charge stems from his alleged marriage to a girl who was 16 when she became pregnant.
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Attorneys moved closer to seating a jury in the first criminal case resulting from the state’s 2008 raid on a polygamist sect’s ranch after narrowing a jury pool to 34 on Tuesday.

Raymond Jessop is the first of 12 FLDS men to be tried on a variety of sexual assault and bigamy charges as a result of the April, 2008 raid on the cult’s Yearning for Zion Ranch.
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The first of a dozen polygamist sect members charged with abuse of women stands trial Monday, 18 months after agents raided the group’s remote ranch and carted off more than 400 children in the largest child-custody case in American history.

Raymond Jessop, 38, faces up to 20 years in prison if convicted of sexual assault of a child, a charge stemming from his alleged marriage to an underage girl in the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. He will be tried later on a separate count of bigamy related to a second alleged underage bride.
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Canada will not appeal a court ruling tossing out criminal charges against two men in polygamous religious sects, authorities in British Columbia said Thursday.

Provincial Attorney General Michael de Jong said that westernmost British Columbia will instead ask its provincial Supreme Court whether Canada’s law against polygamy is constitutional.
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A polygamous sect is asking the Utah Supreme Court to overturn a state court decision that stripped the religious purposes from its communal land trust.

In a court filing Tuesday, attorneys for the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints say making the United Effort Plan Trust secular was a violation of the faith’s constitutionally protected religious rights.
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SAN ANGELO, Texas — A Texas judge ruled Friday that prosecutors could use thousands of documents seized during a weeklong raid of a polygamist sect’s West Texas ranch in upcoming criminal trials even though search warrants were prompted by faked reports of abuse, AP reports.

Attorneys for FLDS sect men charged after the April 2008 raid had sought to have the documents — including family photos, records of multiple marriages and journal entries by jailed sect leader Warren Jeffs — kept out of their trials because they were obtained using search warrants that relied on false reports to a domestic abuse hotline.

The defendants argued law enforcement officials were looking for an excuse to raid the Yearning For Zion Ranch and did little to check the reports before rummaging through the ranch’s homes and other buildings.

Prosecutors disputed that claim, saying law enforcement officials believed the reports were real at the time of the search.
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A polygamist sect member set to go on trial for bigamy and sexual abuse of a child next month deliberately skirted anti-money laundering laws and used a wife he once abandoned to help front a company in Arizona, prosecutors allege in a court filing.

The Texas Attorney General’s Office isn’t seeking additional charges against Raymond Jessop, 38, but wants to use the allegations to bolster Jessop’s punishment if he is convicted.
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The Utah Attorney General’s Office has declined to prosecute a case of polygamy alone, citing resource issues of building prisons for tens of thousands of polygamists and creating an enormous burden on the welfare system to care for their wives and children.

Instead, prosecutors have followed Utah Attorney General Mark Shurtleff’s advice in going after crimes within polygamy — including child-bride marriages, abuse, and fraud.
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Criminal polygamy charges against B.C., Canada religious leaders Winston Blackmore and Jim Oler were thrown out last Thursday — which, Canada’s National Post writes, means they can continue to practise what they preach: Accept multiple wives, including teenage girls.

But McGill University law professor Angela Campbell isn’t too worried. While she does not endorse polygamy, her research into the religious groups suggests Bountiful is neither a community of horrors nor a utopia.
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Criminal polygamy charges against B.C. religious leaders Winston Blackmore and Jim Oler have been thrown out.

Former attorney-general Wally Oppal did not have authority to appoint a second special prosecutor to the decades-long case after the first one declined to proceed, Justice Sunni Stromberg-Stein ruled.
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A former police officer from a polygamous community has filed a lawsuit against Arizona officials, claiming he was defamed and his civil rights violated when they revoked his police certification, AP reports.

Preston Barlow’s certification was revoked in September 2007 after allegations of misconduct the previous year.

The lawsuit contends that Barlow, a member of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, was targeted for his faith and misled about the nature of the investigation that ended with his decertification and the loss of his job.

Barlow, 30, is one of at least six officers from the Colorado City Town Marshal’s office to be decertified by authorities in Arizona or Utah since 2003, some for the practice of polygamy, a tenet of the FLDS faith.
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A week after announcing plans to hold the oral arguments in polygamous sect leader Warren Jeffs‘ appeal at Brigham Young University, the Utah Supreme Court has reversed itself.

Reportedly the venue at BYU is too small to accommodate the high interest in the case.
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The Utah Supreme Court has set a date to hear arguments in an appeal of the 2007 criminal conviction of polygamous church leader Warren Jeffs, AP reports.

Jeffs, leader of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (FLDS), was convicted on two counts of being an accomplice to rape.
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Winston Blackmore says charges of polygamy against him have not undermined his authority to offer advice on moral issues.

The Globe and Mail earlier this week reported that Mr. Blackmore was offering online advice to women in abusive relationships.

Nancy Mereska, who has campaigned against polygamy, was startled by Mr. Blackmore offering moral advice. All polygamous relationships are abusive, she said in an interview with The Globe and Mail
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An appeal filed with the Utah Supreme Court says a district judge went too far when she stripped a polygamous sect’s charitable trust of its religious purpose and denied church members “an effective voice” in court proceedings.

In rulings in the United Effort Plan Trust case, 3rd District Judge Denise Lindberg has sanctioned “continued violations” of constitutional rights of thousands who belong to the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, the appeal claims.
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A Utah judge has ordered the sale of a 400-acre parcel of land that is part of a communal property trust established by followers of jailed polygamous sect leader Warren Jeffs.

The sale of Berry Knoll, considered by FLDS members to be the site of a future temple, is necessary to solve the trust’s liquidity crisis.
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For the second time in five days, Mohave County Jail officials are force-feeding polygamous sect leader Warren S. Jeffs because of a self-imposed fast.

Jeffs’ bouts of fasting are often tied to significant court hearings involving the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.
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A Utah judge suggested Wednesday she may offer a polygamous sect’s historic farm to the highest bidder — a sale hundreds of FLDS members gathered outside the Matheson Courthouse Wednesday to oppose.

Salt Lake City accountant Bruce R. Wisan, who has overseen the trust for the past four years, wants to sell the farm property to solve the trust’s “liquidity” crisis. The trust has debts of about $3 million, mostly in fees owed to Wisan’s firm and that of his attorneys.
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Prominent fundamentalist Mormons, most of whom were excommunicated by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints for practicing polygamy while they were alive, have been posthumously re-baptized in LDS temples, a Salt Lake City researcher says.

“The LDS Church appears to be reinventing its polygamous history, as it ushers excommunicated Mormon fundamentalists back into the LDS fold through a postmortem back door,” Helen Radkey wrote in her report.
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The RNB Religion News Roundup for Friday, Apr. 24, 2009 includes items about Scientology, Aum Shinrikyo, Korean cult leader Jeong Myeong-Seok, the continuing popularity of Aum Shrinrikyo’s jailed cult leader, and China’s on-going ban on Falun Gong.

Also: • A US state must pay benefits to the wife of a Jehovah’s Witness who died after refusing a blood transfusion  • A killer turned pastor upsets his victim’s son  • Nigerian preacher speaks out against witch hunts  • Vampire story gets demoted…

Plus: what do you see? Pareidolia?
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1. Polygamy... Utah's Open Little Secret
2. Cult stories enough to make you want to cry
3. Jane Doe in Warren Jeffs case no longer seeks anonymity, shows photo
4. Thou shalt obey
5. Escape from polygamy: Ex-plural wife alleges rampant abuse in FLDS unions
6. Warren Jeffs: Fugitive Mormon leader's reign of fear ended by traffic violation
7. 1984 Lafferty case still haunts
8. Winston Blackmore: Polygamist group's leader expects to be charged soon
9. At Warren Jeff trial, an inside look at his church
10. Meeting sheds light on Colorado City polygamist sect

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