Hurricane, Utah - Sitting on the witness stand in 2003, Ruth Stubbs started crying as soon as she was asked a question.
Rodney Holm - whom she married at age 16, when he was 32 - was on trial for bigamy. Stubbs was Holm's third wife. Her sister Susie was, and still is, his first.
"I didn't know how I was going to tell my kids that I was the reason their father went to jail," said Stubbs, who had three children with Holm. "I thought, they're going to hate me."
But it was more than that.
"When you're up there, you're going against the entire town and everything that you've ever been taught," she said.
Holm was convicted and served a year in jail, sealing Stubbs' escape from her life as a member of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, which practices polygamy. Holm has appealed his conviction to the U.S. Supreme Court.
Stubbs is one of the few "willing" witnesses to testify against a member of the sect.
On Tuesday, another witness is expected take the stand at a 5th District Court hearing to determine if Washington County prosecutors have enough evidence to try polygamist church leader Warren Jeffs on two felony counts of rape as an accomplice.
The witness was a child bride, identified in court papers as Jane Doe No. 4, allegedly forced by Jeffs, 50, to marry her first cousin in 2001 when she was 14 and the groom was 19.
"You can imagine the worry and stress she's under right now," said Gary Engels, a special investigator working for the Mohave County attorney's office on the two felony cases Jeffs faces in Arizona after his Utah case is concluded. "This is the type of thing they say you are going to hell for."
Members of Jeffs' FLDS church make their homes in the twin border towns of Hildale, Utah and Colorado City, Ariz., It's a place where women still wear long braids and prairie-style dresses and children ride ponies through town.
It's also a place where faithful church members "fast and pray" for the demise of insiders-turned-traitors and state officials trying to chip away at the insular, devout lifestyle they've practiced in the high desert.
Washington County prosecutors have said for months that Doe is strong and ready to testify, despite rumors that Jeffs loyalists would like to try to intimidate her into silence.
"It all depends on how she feels about the Creek' and everything about it," said Stubbs, referring to the sect's home base by the shorthand for its historical name, Short Creek. "I don't feel like I'd have any problems sitting in front of Warren and telling my story. I'm not tied to anybody out there. But if she is, it will be hard. They'll be fasting and praying for her demise."
It's nearly impossible to get the FLDS faithful to willingly testify, said Mohave County prosecutor Matt Smith, who filed eight cases last year against men from the sect for sex crimes involving underage girls married in religious ceremonies. Of the eight cases, he could only get two of the alleged victims to testify.
One is Stubbs, who will testify again against Holm, but said she would prefer being subpoenaed so it's clear she has no choice.
The other was Candi Shapley, who balked on the stand in the trial of Randy Barlow in August and refused to answer questions. An Arizona judge found Shapley in contempt and sent her to a women's shelter for 30 days. The trial has been rescheduled for January, but Smith doesn't know if Shapley will testify then.
"Witnesses do feel that they are testifying against the community and the prophet," Smith said in an e-mail to The Associated Press. "Even those that are no longer part of the FLDS Church have issues dealing with their salvation and their prior beliefs."
In a letter to the court, Shapley said she was only a "supposed victim of a case that has been blown out of proportion in an effort to get at Warren Jeffs." She claimed coercion on the part of Engels and other investigators.
"I did not want to be part of making trouble for anyone," she wrote.
Smith relies heavily on the testimony of former sect dissidents, who serve as experts to explain FLDS culture. He's built most of his eight cases through DNA test results, birth and marriage certificates, when they've been found. In two cases, that's been enough for convictions. In a third, the defendant was acquitted.
Earlier this year, six men from the community, including a police officer, were sent to federal prison for refusing to testify before and Arizona grand jury that was reportedly seeking information about Jeffs. Some spent as long as four months behind bars. All were released a day after Jeffs' arrest in August in a Las Vegas-area traffic stop.
"They were doing it for the priesthood, taking one for the team," said Stubbs, who left Holm in 2001, two days shy of their third anniversary. "They think our forefathers went through it and now it's our turn. It's just our cross to bear."