ElDorado, USA - A leader of a Texan polygamist sect and two other church members have surrendered to authorities to face felony charges over the marriage of underage girls to older men.
Fredrick “Merril" Jessop, 72, an elder from the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (FLDS), oversaw its Yearning for For Zion Ranch in west Texas, which in April was raided by state police amid allegations of rape, forced marriage and child abuse.
He faces one count of conducting an unlawful marriage ceremony involving a minor on July 27, 2006 - the same day his 12-year-old daughter was allegedly married to jailed FLDS leader Warren Jeffs.
The girl is now the only child from the ranch still in foster care after her mother refused to cooperate with child welfare authorities. At the height of the abuse case, which rocked a country where polygamy is usually pushed to the far reaches of the national consciousness, 439 children were removed from the compound and taken into state custody. However, they were later ordered to be returned to their parents due to a lack of evidence of abuse in all but a handful of cases. Some three dozen remain under court oversight.
In all, 12 FLDS men have been indicted since the raid, during which authorities found safes stuffed with cash and a tousled bed in the compound temple, which they suspect was used for the consummation of “celestial” marriages.
A grand jury in Eldorado, Texas, indicted Mr Jeffs, Mr Jessop, Wendell Loy Nielsen and Leroy Johnson Steed on November 12.
Only Mr Jeffs’ name had been released before yesterday, when the other three men were booked and released after posting bond.
“We’ve said all along we’re not running. We’re going to take it head on,” FLDS spokesman Willie Jessop said. “The allegations they’re making and what they’re trying to do is nothing more than harassment.”
Mr Nielsen, 68, is charged with three counts of bigamy. The indictment includes few details, but church records released as part of a separate child custody case list 21 women married to Nielsen in August 2007.
Leroy Johnson Steed, 42, is charged with sexual assault of a child, bigamy and tampering with evidence. Church records show that Steed was married to a 16-year-old girl in March 2007.
Mr Jeffs was jailed in Utah last year after being arrested during a routine traffic check in 2006, months after he appeared on the FBI's most wanted list. In his car police found $55,000, 16 mobile phones and disguises, including three wigs and 12 pairs of sunglasses. The 52-year-old preacher was jailed on two counts of being an accomplice to rape, and is currently awaiting trial in Arizona on charges related to underage marriages of sect girls. He now also faces charges in Texas of sexual assault of a child and bigamy. He is believed to still be running the sect from his prison cell.
Church records and journal entries released in the custody case indicate several of Merril Jessop’s daughters were married to men in the church when they were 16 or younger.
One of Merril Jessop’s wives, Carolyn, fled the FLDS community on the Arizona-Utah line with her children in 2003 and wrote a best-selling book, “Escape.”
Teens younger than 17 cannot consent to sex with an adult under Texas law. Bigamy is also illegal. While the sect's plural marriages are not legal marriages, Texas law forbids even purporting to marry.
Willie Jessop, a relative of Merril Jessop, claimed the state was now making criminal cases to justify what he called a botched child custody case.
The child welfare case was prompted by calls to a domestic abuse hotline from someone claiming to be a teen mother who was abused by a church elder. Those calls are now being investigated as a hoax.
The FLDS, which believes polygamy brings glorification in heaven, is a breakaway sect of the Mormon church, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The Mormon church renounced polygamy more than a century ago but fundamentalists view this as a heretical rejection of the tradition of Abraham, who had many wives.
Mr Jeffs and his followers believe that men must “seal” as many wives as possible in “celestial marriages” so they can go to heaven and the women can be closer to God’s wife Gonhorra, who lives on a faraway planet.
Their brides must be white, as Mr Jeffs proclaimed that “the devil always brings evil unto earth through the black people”.
Some 40,000 polygamists live in dozen other fundamentalist compounds in Utah, Arizona and Nevada. They claim authorities' attempts to break them up constitute religious persecution.