What Does It Mean To Be a Willing Child Bride?
Double X’s XX factor November 09, 2009.
For the past two weeks, I’ve been camped out in a west Texas courtroom watching the trial of fundamentalist Mormon polygamist Raymond Merril Jessop unfold. Sentencing begins today, and Jessop could face up to 20 years in prison for impregnating his underage “celestial” wife in 2004. The victim, 16 at the time of the sexual assault, never took the stand, and all the evidence in the case seemed to indicate that she was Jessop’s willing bride. But what does that even mean in an environment where girls are conditioned from birth to believe that marrying an older, powerful man is the highest honor?
In the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, girls are taught that being a plural wife and mother is the only way to reach the highest rung of heaven. In this atmosphere, getting married at 14 or 15 becomes the next logical step in a girl’s life. They are into placed in marriages—”sealed for time and all eternity”—whenever the sect’s prophet deems them worthy, regardless of their age, according to the testimony of former FLDS member Rebecca Musser. Once married, girls must show perfect obedience to their husbands, who are viewed as their only connection to God.
Polygamists as Packrats
Double X’s XX factor November 05, 2009.
What have I learned over the past week watching polygamist Raymond Merril Jessop’s trial in the sleepy west Texas ranching town of Eldorado? Members of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints save everything. And now, with the first criminal prosecution of an FLDS leader in Texas, this tendency to hoard every little scrap has come back to bite them. In trying to prove Jessop impregnated his 16-year-old “spiritual” wife in November 2004 at the sect’s Yearning for Zion Ranch, the prosecution is relying heavily on documents seized during last year’s raid. And there are a lot of them.
Rebecca Musser, who was married off at 19 to then-83-year-old FLDS prophet Rulon Jeffs, was the first former fundamentalist Mormon to take the stand, and spent several hours on Wednesday describing the church’s painstaking record-keeping practices. Musser fled the sect in November 2002, after Rulon died and his son Warren Jeffs tried to force her to marry him. Now in her mid-30s, Musser has shed her braided updo for highlighted locks, and lives in Idaho, where she has worked as a realtor and at a yoga studio. Musser, who testified against Warren Jeffs at his Utah trial, also helped Texas authorities in the aftermath of the raid.