Girls 'Conditioned' to Accept Sex From Adult Men

April 9, 2008 — -- The 16-year-old girl -- pregnant for a second time and possibly suffering from three broken ribs -- who alerted Texas authorities to raid a polygamist compound wanted to escape and save her younger sister from the same fate, court documents have revealed.

The girl, whispering into a cell phone late at night so she would not be overheard, was apparently terrified to be caught. But by the end of her final phone call to a family violence shelter, she broke down crying and tried to get counselors to forget what she had said.

"She began crying and then stated that she is happy and fine and does not want to get into trouble and that everything she had previously said should be forgotten," court documents stated.

It is a picture of a young cult member afraid of being caught talking to the outside world and also afraid of the outside world.

Police are still trying to determine whether she is one of the 416 children taken from the Yearning for Zion Ranch this weekend.

In a series of hushed calls from a cell phone that wasn't hers, the girl told family violence counselors how she had been forced into a "spiritual marriage" with a 50-year-old man who had six other wives and would force himself on her sexually.

She said the man "would beat and hurt her whenever he got angry." When he would choke her or hit her in the chest, "another woman in the home held her infant child," the court documents stated.

Carolyn Jessup, a former wife of the leader of the group, who escaped with her eight children years ago, explained that this kind of abuse was the norm on the same compound where she used to live.

"If he's abusing one of their sister-wives, they view that as, well, she's really wicked or evil, he needs to do that or she'll corrupt our family. They're very supportive of it," Jessup said.