Alleged Rape Victm Testifies to Suicide Attempt
The woman said she was raped by her cousin after being forced to marry him.
Sept. 16, 2007 — -- In a Utah courtroom Monday morning, a woman who says she was raped by her first cousin after being forced to marry him at the age of 14 will be cross-examined by the defense in the most anticipated showdown yet in the trial of polygamist sect leader Warren Jeffs.
The woman, now 21 and known in court papers as "Jane Doe IV,'' testified Friday that after a month of unconsummated marriage, her husband told her it was "time for you to be a wife and do your duty.'' Afterwards, she said, she tried to commit suicide by swallowing two bottles of over-the-counter painkillers.
With Jeffs looking on impassively from the defense table, she told a rapt courtroom that as her new husband undressed her, she told him, "I can't do this. Please don't.
"I was sobbing,'' she said. "My whole entire body was shaking and I was so so scared. He didn't say anything. He just laid me onto the bed and had sex."
Afterwards, she testified, "I went into the bathroom and there was a couple bottles of painkillers ... and I took both bottles. The only thing I wanted to do was die. I just wanted to die." She said she eventually realized what she had done "and tried to throw up."
Defense attorneys told a jury of seven women and five men in opening arguments that Jeffs merely married the couple, as was his practice as leader of the sect, and never specifically discussed intercourse with the woman.
"Pressure to marry is different from pressure to submit to rape,'' defense lawyer Tara Isaacson said. She also said that Doe has a pending civil lawsuit against sect leaders, including Jeffs, and went to an attorney before going to police or a therapist. Isaacson also said that the woman has admitted that she eventually "sugared up'' to her husband -- consenting to sex when she wanted to spend time away from him with friends or family, or wanted spending money.
As a sect elder and later sect "prophet," Jeffs paired the community's girls and women with the men he said God told him in revelations were meant to be married. Sect teachings emphasize that young girls and women are to be obedient to their husbands and serve them "mind, body and soul'' in order to achieve salvation in the afterlife.
Earlier Friday, Doe described being "shocked" to learn in 2001 that she was to be married at the age of 14 to an unknown member of her sect. She recounted how a church elder surprised her with the announcement that she would be married just two days before the event.
