Polygamist leader trained 'wives' for sex
 On audio tapes, Warren Jeffs is heard telling girls 'how to be excited sexually'
 
Postmedia News And Reuters
Vancouver Sun
 
A Texas court has released graphic audio tapes and photos of convicted child rapist Warren Jeffs, revealing how the polygamist leader trained his "spiritual wives" to have sex with him.

"You have to know how to be excited sexually, and to be exciting, to administer that comfort and strength," Jeffs is heard saying on the tapes. "You have to be able to assist each other. No one just stands around. Everyone assists. And you have to be prepared, to be trained, to do this," Jeffs says in one recording.

"Know that I, the Lord thy God, am pleased with you, my daughters, at this time. My smile shall continue to shine upon you, and you will be strengthened of me and be filled with my spirit to the overcoming of all your sins and weaknesses."

Jeffs, head of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, was sentenced Tuesday to life plus 20 years in a Texas court after being convicted of sexual assault and aggravated sexual assault on two girls that he "married" when they were 12 and 14 years old. The jury of 10 women and two men deliberated for less than an hour before delivering the sentence. Jeffs, 55, fathered a child with the older girl and was heard on audio recordings telling groups of teenage girls they would be "rejected by God" if they refused his sexual advances.

The tapes, part of some 984 boxes of evidence released by the court, were seized in a raid on his sect's Yearning for Zion Ranch in rural Texas in April 2008. Authorities took custody of some 400 children but returned them to their families after an investigation and DNA tests.

Prosecutors said Jeffs, "played a sick game of child molestation under the guise of religious ceremony."

Considered the spiritual leader of the church, Jeffs had abused his position "to victimize children, to break up families and to satisfy his own personal appetites and desires," assistant Texas Attorney General Eric Nichols told the jury during the trial.

His sect, which experts estimate has 10,000 followers in North America, is accused of promoting marriages between older men and girls and has been condemned by the mainstream Mormon Church.
 
VancouverSun.com
Originally published August 13, 2011
 
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