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Posted: 11:30 AM- ST. GEORGE - The defense has begun cross-examining Jane Doe, the woman at the heart of rape as an accomplice charges against polygamous sect leader Warren S. Jeffs, focusing on discrepancies between her past statements and what she told jurors last week.
Defense attorney Tara L. Isaacson asked Doe about a 2001 meeting she described with the late Rulon Jeffs, then president of the polygamous Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.
Doe told jurors she begged to be released from her upcoming marriage to her 19-year-old cousin. Rulon Jeffs, Jeffs' father, told her to "follow your heart," she said, but after the meeting, Jeffs told her her heart was "in the wrong place" and she had a duty to go forward with the wedding.
Fifth District Judge James L. Shumate had expressed concern about that testimony, saying the state was using it to imply Jeffs had usurped power that belonged to his father.
Under questioning by Isaacson today, Doe described a longer time period between the two statements. Warren Jeffs left and preached a sermon before making his comment, she acknowledged. And he also said, "The prophet wants me to remind you this is the right thing for you and you will go forward," Doe testified.
The couple was married later that year.
At a preliminary hearing in 2006, Doe said her husband never raped her, Isaacson noted. But when she asked the same question today, Doe answered yes, saying she had been raped by him.
Doe also clarified that she did not gather the recordings of Jeffs' sermons and other speeches played for the jury last week, and acknowledged she had never heard some of them. One lesson focused on the duties of wives and mothers.
Jeffs is charged with two counts of rape as an accomplice based on the 2001 marriage he conducted between Doe and her former husband and advice he gave them.
The sect leader's attorneys contend Jeffs had no way of knowing nonconsensual sex would occur after he married the couple.