Trial Begins for Polygamist Warren Jeffs

ST. GEORGE, Utah, Sept. 13, 2007 — -- Opening statements are expected to begin this afternoon in the Utah trial of Warren Jeffs, the leader of a desert-based polygamous community, who is accused of forcing a 14-year-old girl to have sex with her 19-year-old cousin.

Jeffs, 51, head of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, is charged with two counts of rape by accomplice. The accuser testified at a preliminary hearing that Jeffs had insisted that if she didn't marry and have sex with her older cousin, she risked her own salvation.

One of the key tenets of FLDS, as it's known locally, is the belief that the group's men must have at least three wives to achieve salvation in the afterlife. Women in the sect seek salvation by submitting unquestioningly to their husbands, fathers and Jeffs, their prophet, according to published teachings and law enforcement officials. Arranged marriages between male church elders and young teenage girls have long been commonplace, say critics and former members of the sect.

"I think a lot of people think of this as a polygamy case or a religious case, but this case is really about child abuse," Sam Brower told ABC News. Brower, a private investigator hired by a number of former sect members who have claimed in civil lawsuits that Jeffs' abused them, has been investigating sect activities for four years.

"A 14-year-old little girl that was placed into an illegal sham marriage, an incestuous marriage with her first cousin. This case is about child abuse," Brower said.

Hundreds of jurors — many of them apparently sympathetic to the FLDS — were queried before lawyers could agree on a pool of 28, which will be winnowed down to eight jurors and four alternates this morning.

The case is fraught with emotion and seemingly painful familial schisms, pitting wives against husbands and brothers against sisters. According to a witness list, the accuser's father, brother and two sisters are testifying for the government, while her mother and another brother and sister are listed as potential defense witnesses.