Phoenix, USA - The leader of a polygamous sect has been indicted on charges that he arranged a marriage between a 16-year-old girl and a man who was already married, prosecutors said Friday.
Warren Jeffs, president of the Fundamental Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, was charged with sexual conduct with a minor and conspiracy to commit sexual conduct with a minor.
Mr. Jeffs, 49, did not have sex with the teenager but arranged her marriage to a 28-year-old married man, said Matthew Smith, the Mojave County attorney.
"He can't marry someone else," Mr. Smith said.
The 28-year-old man, whose identity will not be released until the indictment is delivered to him, was charged with two counts of sexual assault and one count of sexual conduct with a minor.
If convicted, Mr. Jeffs would face a jail sentence of four months to two years.
Calls left with Rod Parker and R. Scott Barry, lawyers who have represented Mr. Jeffs and the church in the past, were not returned Friday.
Linda Kelsch, a spokeswoman for the pro-polygamy group Principle Voices for Polygamy, said she thought anyone committing abuses - a polygamist or otherwise - ought to be prosecuted.
But Ms. Kelsch also said she thought it would be discriminatory to prosecute a case just because it involved plural marriage.
Mr. Jeffs's whereabouts were unknown. He has not been seen publicly in more than a year and is thought by some to be in Texas on a new church ranch.
Prosecutors asked a judge to allow authorities to release Mr. Jeffs's name in the hope that it would help apprehend him, Mr. Smith said.
The girl is no longer a member of the church, the authorities said, and is being protected.
Polygamy is practiced openly in Colorado City, a remote enclave in northern Arizona that is dominated by the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
The sect split from mainstream Mormonism after the broader church renounced polygamy more than a century ago.
The fundamentalist group holds that plural marriage is a key to reaching the highest place in heaven.