SAN ANGELO, Texas — Prosecutors played two audio recordings Tuesday of a polygamist sect leader instructing his 14-year-old “spiritual wife” and several other young women on how to please him sexually, and thus win favour with God.
Warren Jeffs, 55, is head of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, which believes polygamy brings exaltation in heaven. He is accused of sexually assaulting two girls, ages 12 and 15, he took as brides in what his church calls “spiritual marriages.”
A forensic analyst testified Monday that Jeffs was the father of the 15-year-old’s child. On Tuesday, prosecutors played a tape of Jeffs talking to the girl when she was 14, after Texas Ranger Nick Hanna testified about documents and electronic files seized during a 2008 police raid at the church’s remote compound in West Texas.
Among the materials recovered during the raid was a record of Jeffs’ marriage “for time and all eternity” with the 14-year-old in January 2004. An excerpt from hundreds of pages of Jeffs’ personal journals said the child was “pure and innocent and willing to obey” and that he summoned her parents and “informed them of their girl belonging to me.”