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Jul 22, 2008 10:57 am US/Central
Grand Jury Proceedings Begin In Polygamist Case
ELDORADO (AP) ―
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Attorney General's Office
Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott arrived in this west Texas outpost Tuesday as a grand jury met for a second time to consider possible criminal charges against members of a polygamist sect raided in April.
Abbott entered a small community building early Tuesday near the courthouse, which was surrounded by yellow tape and state troopers. Two women in prairie dresses were later escorted into the same building, while lawyers and members of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints crowded a bench in front of the courthouse.
The grand jury met in June without issuing indictments in the case.
Grand jury proceedings are supposed to be secret, but documents released as part of the separate child custody case involving the FLDS children have revealed some of the evidence collected by law enforcement during the weeklong raid that began April 3.
Among the hundreds of boxes of photos, documents and family Bibles, investigators found photos of jailed FLDS leader Warren Jeffs in intimate embraces and kissing several apparently underage girls.
A journal entry purportedly from Jeffs attached to a report by a child advocate indicates he married his daughter to a 34-year-old man the day after she turned 15. The girl turns 17 on Saturday and has denied being married, though the child advocate report indicates intimate notes between the girl and man were also found in the raid.
The journal entry also talks of Jeffs blessing marriages of two other sect member daughters to himself and another member when his daughter was married.
The grand jury meetings follow the ill-fated child custody case in which more than 400 children were swept into foster care from the Yearning For Zion Ranch.
The children were placed in state custody after officials accused FLDS parents of abusing them by forcing underage girls into marriage and sex and teaching boys to become adult perpetrators.
Child Protective Services returned the children to their parents after the Texas Supreme Court ruled that the agency had overstepped its authority because it didn't show any more than a handful of teenage girls may have been abused.
FLDS leaders have consistently denied there was any abuse at the ranch and vowed not to sanction underage marriages.
Under Texas law, a girl younger than 17 cannot generally consent to sex with an adult. Bigamy is also illegal in Texas, although FLDS plural marriages were not licensed by the state.
The FLDS, which believes polygamy brings glory in heaven, is a breakaway sect of the mainstream Mormon church, which officially renounced polygamy more than a century ago.
Jeffs, who is revered as a prophet, is jailed in Arizona awaiting charges related to the marriages of young girls. He was convicted in Utah of rape as an accomplice for his role in the marriage of a 14-year-old last year.
(© 2009 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.)
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